A Very Short Note About Parashat Noach

This is from a weekly “Shabbat Shalom” notice that I sent out to my students at Babson College on Friday. Babson - for those who don’t know - is an entrepreneurial school located in Wellesley, MA (it’s consistently ranked the best business school for entrepreneurship in America, and I hope that helps explain the last line in the post about “future business leaders.”)

This week's Torah reading is Parashat Noach (Genesis 6:9-11:32), and it's the saga that so many of us learn when we're little kids: the story of Noah and the primeval Flood. But even though we learn this story when we're young, it's hardly a children's story.

The story of the Flood is actually Creation 2.0. It essentially teaches that G-d's first attempt at an ideal Creation goes terribly awry, so G-d wipes almost everything out and starts over with a new template. Noah, his family, and a small sample of life go out from the ark to repopulate the world that has been wiped clean.

At the culmination of the story, G-d puts a rainbow in the sky, as a "sign" to Noah and his descendants:

וְהָיְתָ֥ה הַקֶּ֖שֶׁת בֶּֽעָנָ֑ן וּרְאִיתִ֗יהָ לִזְכֹּר֙ בְּרִ֣ית עוֹלָ֔ם
 בֵּ֣ין אֱלֹהִ֔ים וּבֵין֙ כּל־נֶ֣פֶשׁ חַיָּ֔ה בְּכל־בָּשָׂ֖ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
When the bow is in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant 
between G-d and all living creatures, all flesh that is on earth. (Genesis 9:16)

What is the significance of this "sign"? G-d essentially says: I'm not doing this again; this is the last planet that I'm giving you. I’m not going to destroy the earth again - you humans, however, might. 

It's one of those Torah passages that stunningly speaks to our own situation. The climate crisis is not a divinely ordained situation; it is purely the result of human obliviousness and corporate greed. And its solution, too, is given over to human hands.

There's a shocking modern midrash that speaks to this, asking: What do you imagine that Noah and his family saw when they first stepped out of the ark? Many of us, taught the story as children, picture that it's springtime: birdsongs fill the air; the sun is shining; animals are frolicking; all the strains of Vivaldi's "Four Seasons."  But the midrash imagines that Noah sees something quite different:  He sees corpses.

After the Flood, Noah opened the ark and looked out. He saw the earth desolate, forests and gardens uprooted, corpses visible everywhere. There was no grass, no vegetation; the world was a wasteland.

In pain and dismay, Noah cried out to G-d: “Ribbono shel Olam! In six days You made the earth. Now you have brought the work of Your hands to nought, uprooting all You planted, tearing down all You built. Why didn’t you show compassion for Your creatures?”

G-d said to Noah, "Excuse me? Now, after the destruction, You come to Me and complain?When you saw what was about to happen to the world, you thought only of yourself and your family, while everyone else died by the fire and the water!"

And Noah realized that he had sinned. 

The story of the Flood is fundamentally about this: You get one planet. You get to be either part of the solution - or you're precisely the problem. What could be a more timely message for us, and for every future business leader?

Image credit: R. Crumb, The Book of Genesis Illustrated (2009)

Twenty Years

Twenty years.

No doubt others will have much to say about this dismal anniversary, but I hope that my reflections will help you come to terms with yours. I’ll share three things here: (a) where I was; (b) a strange fantasy that I had at the time; and (c) what it all meant to me as a Jew.  I can only share what I felt and learned, because ultimately, each of us is on our own; the great coming-together in unity and mutual empathy of the post-9/11 world never arrived. (Today, under Covid, that couldn’t be clearer.)

Like many people in New Jersey, I was driving to the office that Tuesday morning, and one year-old Avi was in his toddler’s seat in the back. It was during our four-minute commute into New Brunswick that we heard the news that the first plane hit the first tower.

I dropped Avi off in the Anshe Emeth preschool and hurried down the hall to Rabbi Bennett Miller’s office, where together we listened on the radio as the events unfolded. There was the second plane, and then the towers collapsing. There was the attack on the Pentagon. There was the plane full of heroes that was wrested from the terrorists and forced down in a southwestern Pennsylvania field. I recall how for the rest of the day there was chatter about how many more planes were out there, unaccounted for, and we braced ourselves for even more crashes that never came.

We put out word that there would be a gathering in our sanctuary that afternoon. And I remember Rabbi Miller putting his arm around me and saying, “Neal, don’t be disappointed if very few people come out. Many people’s impulse will be to go home and stay home on a day like today.” And I remember the overwhelming emotions when we went up to the sanctuary and every seat was full, and we sang songs of peace, and one by one people came up to the microphone and just spoke from their hearts.

The anger came later, and I still don’t think that 9/11 commemorations give enough credence to the integrity of anger. In New Jersey, everyone was one degree of separation or less from a funeral.
 

I had a fantasy in the weeks after 9/11… and it was just a fantasy, a pretty naïve one as it turns out. You see, something rather remarkable happened in the world after the attacks.  Many countries around the globe said, “We’re all Americans today.” Many cities renamed some of their main thoroughfares with names like “New York Plaza” or whatever. That was certainly the case in Israel, where every citizen knows what it feels like to live in the shadow of terrorism. There was a remarkable sense of international empathy, of gathering behind the United States, this wounded giant.

But not everybody shared that sense of unity. In many Arab nations, there was celebration. In the Palestinian territories—and I don’t write this with spite or viciousness, just candor—there was dancing in the streets, and passing out candies to children on this ‘great day.’

And my fantasy was that America would use that momentary international unity for something truly profound… My fantasy was that President George W. Bush would, in the months after 9/11, bring Arafat and the Palestinians and Sharon and the Israelis together. And he’d say: “Here’s the deal. We have the weight and support of the entire world behind us. We’re putting an end to the conflict, now. The plan is the Clinton plan, that one that you, Arafat, walked out on. We saw you dancing and celebrating. We’re willing to put that aside. But now, today, everyone will sign this agreement, and we’re putting the decades of conflict to an end. By the authority of the United States and the entire world which stands with us.”

That was my fantasy. I told you it was naïve. But what authority, what consensus we had for a few moments there… and I shudder to think how it was squandered.

The other thing I will always remember is how the attacks came just six days before Rosh Hashanah.

When we assembled in shul that year, everything was illuminated in new and unfamiliar ways. The words of the Machzor were on fire. The prayers spoke of things that hadn’t been there last year. There was ash in the air.

Rabbis scrapped the sermons they had been writing over the summer and composed new ones from the heart. I haven’t been able to track down the sermon I wrote, but I still remember how it ended. It was about Cain and Abel. At the end of the drash, I reflected on Cain’s famous dodge when the Lord of the Universe asks him, “Where is your brother Abel?” Cain, of course, says, “I don’t know. Am I my brother’s keeper?”

And I remarked that the very next verse, when G-d speaks again, seems quite disconnected; instead of answering Cain’s question, G-d responds that Abel’s blood is crying out from the ground. The non-sequitur bothered me. Why doesn’t G-d answer? Why doesn’t G-d reply to Cain’s question?

I proposed then that G-d does, in fact, reply to Cain. The entire rest of the Torah is G-d’s answer to the question.

And the answer was, and is: “Yes.”

Brain Freeze on Israel

The recent statement by Ben & Jerry’s that they will stop selling ice cream in the West Bank is giving a lot of people brain-freeze. Personally, every time I look at my newsfeed I feel the sensation of  swallowing a mouthful of Americone Dream way too quickly. Yet I’m surprised by the intensity of the pro-Israel community’s reactions.

“If only Ben & Jerry’s chose instead to say, “Our corporate policies promote peace, co-existence, and bridge-building - that’s what those frozen Peace Pops represent.” ”

Of course, the echo chamber of social media has whipped itself into a frenzy, including official statements and actions from the Israeli government itself. And surely, in the days ahead, every Jewish organization is going to feel compelled to do what they do: Issue A Statement. Some supermarkets in Orthodox areas are now counter-boycotting Ben & Jerry’s. So, apparently, is New York Mayor Bill de Blasio. And the Kashrut Authority of Australia and New Zealand has declared that Ben & Jerry’s is no longer kosher!

The unexpected statement from Ben & Jerry’s board of directors was issued on July 19. Under the incendiary headline, “Ben & Jerry’s Will End Sales of Our Ice Cream in the Occupied Palestinian Territory,” the brief statement says that selling in the “OPT” is “inconsistent with our values.” It acknowledges that “we hear and recognize concerns” from activists—implying that the BDS movement has caught their ear.

The final sentence says that Ben & Jerry’s will “stay in Israel through a different arrangement” yet to be determined.

This is fairly ridiculous on a number of levels—a manufactured controversy that the pro-Israel community is pumping far too much oxygen into. As others have pointed out, Ben & Jerry’s statement is all posturing and mildly incoherent. As always with these boycotts, they don’t indicate what specific results they would like to see from their action. They don’t distinguish that there is a difference between the natural urban sprawl of Jerusalem and radical isolated outposts. And furthermore, Palestinians, like the Jewish settlers, will be denied their Chunky Monkey - as well as jobs.

As ever, boycotts are blunt and dull-witted weapons. If only Ben & Jerry’s chose instead to say, “Our corporate policies promote peace, co-existence, and bridge-building - that’s what those frozen Peace Pops represent.” They could have used this moment to celebrate the exciting thawing of relationships (surely there’s an ice cream metaphor there) between Israel and certain Arab nations in the Abraham Accords. And if only they chose to reinvest their profits in the many good people and organizations that are really promoting a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike, in mutual co-existence!

As others have shown, there are also some sneaky corporate practices going on here. Ben & Jerry’s is owned by Unilever—a conglomerate that owns several ice cream brands, all of whose business will continue uninterrupted. Ben & Jerry’s maintains a distinct Board of Directors within Unilever, and this action seems to have spurted from there. So no one is losing any money: Unilever will continue to sell its umpteen products wherever it wishes and Ben & Jerry’s will get to nod to its progressive amen-corner.

Look, we’ve been here before. But there’s something different about the responses to this particular news cycle. And it needs to be discussed in our Jewish communities.

“Mark this as the official moment when rejecting the settlements became an anti-Israel, antisemitic act. ”

Because Ben & Jerry’s statement clearly said they’re only pulling out of the occupied territories. While in some hateful and ignorant quarters the occupation is “from the River to the Sea”—i.e., the entire State of Israel itself—I assume Ben & Jerry’s is referring to the West Bank. Their statement clearly affirms that they have no intention of pulling out of Israel inside the Green Line. (As I said, the move is insipid. But it’s not quite the “boycott Israel” statement that activists on either side seem to assert.)

Many institutional Jewish responses have linked Ben & Jerry’s with the international BDS movement. The rhetoric has been angry, including most disturbingly the local Israeli Consulate’s statement, which called Ben & Jerry’s action “economic terrorism” with “antisemitic undertones.”

Really?

Avoiding the West Bank is now the equivalent of BDS? That will be news to all the pro-Israel Jews—and they are legion—who look carefully at labels to avoid products made over the Green Line. That will be news to all the advocates of two-states-for-two-peoples who make up the majority of Jewish Americans and their elected officials.

Hell, for most of the past fifty years, most regional Jewish Federations (the “United Jewish Appeal” from the old days) made clear that their Israel fundraising did not support activities that were beyond the Green Line. That’s a very similar policy to Ben & Jerry’s new one. So almost every Federation in America is a retroactive secret conspirator with BDS and Israel’s enemies?

Mark this as the moment that it became official policy that being pro-Israel equals supporting the settlements. And that includes the illegal outposts, of which the previous and current governments choose to look the other way.

I fear that Israel has been inching in this direction for many years, and that mainstream American Zionist organizations have been deluded. These angry responses are part of a tactical move on the part of the right, nudging towards a reality where the only legitimate supporters of Israel are right-wingers.

The times are a-changing, and not necessarily for the better. In addition to the trend that asserts that the settlements are Israel, there are other disturbing changes to the status quo:

·      It was a longstanding consensus in Israel that Meir Kahane’s (yimach sh’mo) racist politics were beyond the pale of civilized society; his Kach party was labeled racist and forbidden from running in elections as far back as 1988. Yet Kahane’s students and admirers have established several uber-right-wing parties in recent years, and ex-PM Netanyahu actively courted them to be members of his coalition. Several Kahanists sit in the current opposition bloc in the Knesset.

·      It was a long-standing status quo arrangement that Jews would not gather to pray on the Temple Mount, the home of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, and site of the two historical Jewish Temples. Historically, politicians recognized that the site was volcanically volatile; Orthodox rabbis decreed that it was halakhically forbidden for Jews to tread on that space. But increasingly Jewish extremists penetrate and pray on the Temple Mount, and knowingly violate the law while authorities look the other way. After decades of status quo, suddenly the “eternal Jewish right” to pray on the Temple Mount has become a mainstream Orthodox position—as well as the new Prime Minister’s.

·      Do you think the Temple Mount issue is about religious freedom? These people don’t care about religious freedom. On Tisha B’Av—the day that the rabbis mourned the destructive power of senseless hatred—a group of thugs associated with the Ateret Cohanim Third Temple-movement physically invaded and assaulted a prayer service at the egalitarian section of the Western Wall, ostensibly to “liberate” it from the horrors of women wearing tallitot.

I fear that these trends are becoming normalized in Israel—trends that even in the recent past were considered the domain of only the most hardcore and vile extremists.

Look, I cling proudly to my Zionist credentials. My love for Israel is like my love for family: it is unconditional, even when we inevitably disappoint each other. And I’ve been vigorous and public opponent of BDS again and again and again; it’s an antisemitic movement, born in hatred for the very existence of the Jewish state. I emphatically reject the vile and ignorant suggestion that Israel is an “apartheid state.”

But that doesn’t mean that it is impossible for Israel to ever become an apartheid state.

I fear for the country I love if the Kahanists and Third Temple radicals continue in their trajectories towards normalization and acceptance. The Jewish community simply must talk about what these movements represent - and how the status quo on so many topics is shifting.

This is a complicated moment. I don’t care much about Unilever’s foolish corporate policies, but I care very much about how the Jewish community chooses to respond to Ben & Jerry’s. The very definition of what it means to be “pro-Israel” is up for grabs. Liberal Zionists who are still standing must make clear that Evyatar is not Tel Aviv.

Greens in Salt Water: Our Second Covid Passover

הָשַּׁתָּא עַבְדֵי, לְשָׁנָה הַבָּאָה בְּנֵי חוֹרִין
This year we are slaves. Next year we will be free people.  —Passover Haggadah

 
Last year at this time, we were all adapting to what it meant to conduct a seder via Zoom, physically distant from our loved ones. And, to some degree or another, we made the adjustments. Even if those seders weren’t the greatest of our entire lives, most people agreed that technology made it 70%, or 43%, or 29% successful. 

At that time, we figured that this was a temporary gesture. Within a few weeks (remember?), we said to ourselves, this will all be over, and we’ll remember how strange and different the Seder of 2020 was. Surely we’ll be “free” by summer.

Now we’re preparing for our second Pandemic Seder. Almost 540,000 Americans have died from Covid, let alone the victims all over the world. We’ve learned how to adjust our behaviors, adapt our daily rituals, and act responsibly for our own sake and the sake of others. (Well, most of us—except for the most obtuse and irresponsible among us—have learned how to do so.)

This year’s Pandemic Seder will feel different. The availability of vaccines has made it possible for some people to be with each other; we don’t live in mortal terror for our parents, grandparents, and the elders of our community quite so much. There is a feeling that even if we are having socially-distanced seders now, there is hope on the horizon that we’ll be liberated from these narrow, confining spaces very soon.  And that hope, it seems to me, is very “Kosher for Passover.”

Early in the seder, we observe a ritual involving two symbols. We take up a green vegetable—“Karpas”— a symbol of springtime’s renewal. A Hasidic commentary reminds us that Pesach is also Chag Ha-Aviv, the Festival of Springtime, and after a long, cold winter, the world is slowly renewing its warmth and vitality. Even though we have just passed through winter, this holiday endows us with renewed energy for Life.[1]

We take the Karpas and dip it into a dish of salt water, which symbolizes the tears of suffering.

Each symbol thus has a distinct meaning—but what does it mean to dip one of these symbols into the other?

It means that our lives are almost never entirely joy or entirely sorrow. Real life is a mixture of those two elements, one dipped in the other. Our celebrations include a reflection of those who are no longer with us. By contrast, our bereavements are tempered by sweet memories and love that endures.

Dipping the Karpas into the salt water is a timely and powerful ritual. Because this year, as much as ever, we know the symbolism of hope mixed with tears. As our world opens up, it is crucial that we do not lose sight of the fact that there has been so much death and sorrow all around us for these many months; social distancing hasn’t just been about inconveniencing ourselves, it’s been about minimizing the danger to ourselves and others. So much loss is contained in the seder’s salty waters.

But in that loss there is hope. The green vegetable promises us that we’ll emerge and from this and new life will blossom—soon. The winter has passed. The vaccines are here; they’ll be available to everyone in the near future. Soon we’ll be out of this, if we can just hold on a bit longer. And when we emerge, our freedoms should be to us sweeter than ever; our relationships should be even more precious; and our empathy to those who hurt should be so much deeper.

From our pains, we learn the preciousness of life. Passover promises liberation from all forms of enslavement. Its hope, as ever, is born from salty tears.

[1] In The Chassidic Haggadah, Rabbi Eliyahu Touger, 1988.

One Year's Passing Since "That Day"

.וְכָל הֵיכָא דְּאָמְרִינַן ״בּוֹ בַּיּוֹם״, הַהוּא יוֹמָא הֲוָה
Anywhere in the text where we simply say “That Day”—it’s referring to that day.
(Talmud, Berachot 28a)

March 10 is an auspicious and melancholy anniversary. It’s the date in my mind when everything changed for us.

It was on March 10, 2020—it was the afternoon of Purim in the Jewish calendar—and I was sitting with a group of students, planning an upcoming Holocaust-education program for our community.  It was late afternoon, and of course we were all aware of the encroaching pandemic and the murmuring that college campuses were closing down. And then it happened:  we all received the email simultaneously from the university President that informed us that Babson was shutting down, too.

Remember how young and innocent we all were back then? The initial outreach from the school encouraged students to take all their stuff with them when they left campus in a few days; it was Spring Break. The hope was that we would all be able to return in two or three weeks. Certainly, we figured, we would be back by Passover. Okay, by May 1. Okay… by graduation?  And everything kept getting pushed back by a week, then a month, and so on…

None of us imagined then that we’d be marking the one-year anniversary of staying-at-home, social distancing, and Zoom fatigue. Let alone well over a half-million Americans dead, due in no small part to the incompetent machinations of a self-serving federal government.

But here we are. And while some have told me that it’s “depressing” to mark such an anniversary, it is not my intention to be a downer. While I yearn for the physical presence of my friends and family as much as anyone, I draw inspiration from the remarkable resilience that I’ve seen from many people.

The role of technology in our lives has been incredibly valuable; just imagine the strain of staying at home if it were just a few years ago, before videoconferencing technology was as smooth and effective as it is now. For me, personally, this has been especially true. I had cochlear implant surgery in August 2019, and can actually hear with 90% clarity for the first time in many years. If the pandemic had struck just two years ago, I would have been rather hopeless in all of my Zoom classes, meetings, and interactions. I would have been much more isolated. I would have been in terrible trouble.

The anniversary is a useful time to reflect on “that day” – the moment when everything changed in our lives, and all of our responses and behaviors seem to be re-oriented around those changes.

The Talmud has a “that day”—it was the moment of a political shakeup that occurred among the Tanna’im in the 2nd century, when Rabban Gamliel was deposed (temporarily, it turns out) from community leadership and the entire structure of the Academy was democratized. On “that day,” new books were written, new rules were put into place, and new leadership (Rabbi Elazar ben Azariah) was installed.

But if a moment in Israel 1800 years ago is too esoteric, consider that each of us has a “that day” as well, depending on what generation we belong to:

The JFK assassination, of course. The murder of Yitzhak Rabin. 9/11, G-d knows. A diagnosis, a car accident…

And probably good things as well: weddings; births; b’nai mitzvah, certainly.  New jobs, new loves, moving to a new home…

Days when everything changed, for better or for worse.

Someday soon, G-d willing, these newly acquired Covid-behaviors will recede. We’ll be in the company of friends and even strangers again. The masks will come down, or at least loosen up. We’ll hug our distant family members. We’ll travel without reservation. There will no longer be daily Corona tolls in the media.

And when that happens, I hope we’ll remember the lessons that we’ve learned since “That Day.” Lessons about caring for the most vulnerable among us; about using technology for good; about how precious it is to be in the presence of people we care about. If it’s true that “everything will be different,” let’s pray that those differences will be to make us better, and that they will be for blessings.

Do you have a “That Day” in your life? You’re invited to tell us about it in the comments section below.

Parashat Shemot: The Big Lie

A thought as Shabbat approaches.

With this week’s sidra, we return to the Book of Exodus. As Exodus opens, the Israelites are well settled in the region of Goshen in the Land of Egypt. Then, of course, a new Pharaoh comes to power—a king who does not know history and the legacy of Joseph. This Pharaoh is a brute and a thug, but also a master manipulator of his citizenry. And he speaks words of incitement:

הָ֥בָה נִֽתְחַכְּמָ֖ה ל֑וֹ פֶּן־יִרְבֶּ֗ה וְהָיָ֞ה כִּֽי־תִקְרֶ֤אנָה מִלְחָמָה֙ וְנוֹסַ֤ף גַּם־הוּא֙ עַל־שֹׂ֣נְאֵ֔ינוּ וְנִלְחַם־בָּ֖נוּ וְעָלָ֥ה מִן־הָאָֽרֶץ׃
He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are much too numerous for us.
Let us deal shrewdly with them, so that they may not increase;
otherwise in the event of war they may join our enemies
in fighting against us and rise from the ground.” (Ex. 1:10)

They’re just words, right? The same sorts of words and logic that common gutter racists have used countless times throughout history. But immediately in the next verse, Pharaoh’s audience acts on his words:

וַיָּשִׂ֤ימוּ עָלָיו֙ שָׂרֵ֣י מִסִּ֔ים לְמַ֥עַן עַנֹּת֖וֹ בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם
So they [they?!] set taskmasters over them to oppress them
with forced labor… (Ex. 1:11a)

That’s how Israel became enslaved. You can imagine their bystander neighbors muttering, “Hey, I’m not racist, but if we don’t do something, there won’t be any real Egyptians left around here anymore…”

Yet lying tyrants are never satisfied. They always have to up their game:

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ מֶ֣לֶךְ מִצְרַ֔יִם לַֽמְיַלְּדֹ֖ת הָֽעִבְרִיֹּ֑ת אֲשֶׁ֨ר שֵׁ֤ם הָֽאַחַת֙ שִׁפְרָ֔ה וְשֵׁ֥ם הַשֵּׁנִ֖ית פּוּעָֽה׃
וַיֹּ֗אמֶר בְּיַלֶּדְכֶן֙ אֶת־הָֽעִבְרִיּ֔וֹת וּרְאִיתֶ֖ן עַל־הָאָבְנָ֑יִם אִם־בֵּ֥ן הוּא֙ וַהֲמִתֶּ֣ן אֹת֔וֹ
וְאִם־בַּ֥ת הִ֖יא וָחָֽיָה׃
The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives,
one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
saying, “When you deliver the Hebrew women, look at the birthstool:
if it is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” (Ex. 1:15-16).

This is the Egyptian version of the Big Lie, a term coined in Mein Kampf. If you repeat Big Lies often enough, and with enough charisma, people who don’t know better will follow, even to the point of dehumanizing others. Even to the point of radical violence.

Here’s what Yale history professor Timothy J. Snyder says about the Big Lie, in his crucial book On Tyranny (New York, Tim Duggan Books, 2017):

As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality…

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. As Klemperer noted, the fascist styled depends upon “endless repetition,” designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction… requiring a blatant abandonment of reason.

The final mode is misplaced faith. It involves the sort of self-deifying claims… “I alone can do it.” (pp.66-70)

The American version of the Big Lie has been cultivated for a long time, by Donald Trump, his enablers, conservative media, et al. They have told their audiences outright falsehoods for years. They have repeated those mantras constantly (“Socialism!”, “Lock her up!”, “The elections are rigged!”). They love magical thinking (“the pandemic will disappear like a miracle”). And the misplaced faith: scientists, journalists, experts in the field, etc., are all lying; only Trump tells you the truth.

As you know, over sixty court cases verified that Trump decidedly was the loser in the November election. Governors and election officials from both parties around the country confirmed that the election was completely secure and accurate.

And yet the President and his minions repeat their Big Lie, that it was rigged and stolen.

The angel of decency passed over these people.

Now we’ve seen the fulfillment of what the Big Lie has done after all these years. Monsters in Auschwitz shirts and MAGA hats, with their gun in one hand and the flag of Southern treason in the other, storming the United States Capitol.

And when it was over, and the U.S. Congress reconvened to ratify the results of the November election, still eight Republican Senators and one hundred thirty-nine Republican Representatives voted to overturn the democratic election results representing the will of the American people. Learn their names; they are seditious traitors to democracy.

But those ignoble 147 know an open secret: Repeat the Big Lie long enough and the true believers will fall into line. And then G-d have mercy on the nation.

Don’t expect divinely-ordained miracles—a/k/a “Ten Plagues”—to rescue America from the suffering that the Big Lie has created. As Snyder instructs us:

            Post-truth is pre-fascism. (p.71)

But Shabbat is coming, so we have to find solace and comfort somewhere. It’s there in the Torah: While the rest of the Egyptians were following the lies that Pharaoh fed them—“we have to put Egypt First”—there were some heroes. We know their names: Shiphrah and Pu’ah, two midwives, who said that no matter how personally risky it would be for them to defy Pharaoh’s whims, they would not throw babies into the Nile.

We know their names.

The Torah doesn’t tell us the name of this Pharaoh. As far as the text is concerned, he’s just another tyrant of the sort we’ve seen in every generation, as the Haggadah reminds us. But these two Hebrew midwives, people with the strength of character to stand up to tyrants, who do what is right and decent and life-affirming, those are the names that get recorded and celebrated for all posterity.

Each of us is called upon, at this crucial moment, to be a Shiphrah and a Puah. Pharaohs and their enablers inevitably crumble under the weight of their own lies. Their names will, eventually, be buried in the shifting sands. Those who speak the truth, and apply it with decency, compassion, and love, will be the ones whose names endure.

Photo credit: Olam HaTanakh: Shemot, Tel Aviv, 1998

Statement from the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault on America, January 6, 2021

Statement by the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis on the Assault
on the Nation’s Capital on January 6, 2021

23 Tevet 5781 | January 7, 2021

Like all Americans of good faith, the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis is horrified and appalled by the acts of insurrection in Washington, DC on Wednesday. We urge the members of our rabbinic council, and all the members of our communities, to renew the call for justice and decency in our country in accordance with our Jewish and American values:

1.    The perpetrators of Wednesday’s violence and their enablers are criminals and enemies of American democracy.

As Jews, we cherish dissent, differences of opinion, and the precious freedom to question authority and express unpopular opinions. Wednesday’s events, which included vandalizing the Capitol building, invading the offices of national representatives, and the clear threat of violence, violate each of these principles.

The Mishnah enjoins us: “Pray for the welfare of the government, for if it does not inspire respect, people will devour one another” (Pirkei Avot 3:2). Today we pray for those who defend the nation’s laws and maintain order with integrity and evenhandedness, especially those who have been put in harm’s way.

2.    Wednesday’s violence was predictable and, considering the history of incitement,  sadly inevitable. We demand accountability from President Donald Trump and his enablers.

One resounding lesson from Jewish history is that violent words directly lead to violent actions. The President’s winks and nods to alt-right and white supremacist groups—from his refusal to disavow neo-Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017, to his encouragement of the racist Proud Boys to “stand by”, to his feeble and cynical words of “We love you” for Wednesday’s insurrectionists—implicitly endorsed the assault on the Capitol.

We have no doubt that the President’s words incited Wednesday’s violence. Prior to the election, the President refused to indicate if he would support a peaceful transfer of power in the event that he lost. Earlier this week, the President encouraged his followers to go to Washington to protest the election that he lost, insisting that the protest on January 6 would be “wild.” The President’s counsel, Rudy Giuliani, likewise encouraged violence when he insisted the demonstrations would be “trial by combat.”

The President’s insistence that November’s election, which he decisively lost, was rigged and invalid has been proven unequivocally to be a lie. Over sixty court cases, and the affirmations of the election results by governors and election officials all over the country, have demonstrated that the elections were valid. The President’s public refusal to accept the results is not only a demonstration of his low character, but it also is an assault on the democratic institutions of our country, which directly led to Wednesday’s violence.


3.    We demand clarity about the clear racial disparity in the use of force by the authorities in responding to the attack on the Capitol.

Why were the responses of the Capitol Police and law enforcement so disproportionately mild compared to similar events of the past year, when Black Lives Matter protesters and other left-leaning protests were met with much more severe displays of force? MBR’s continued commitments to racial justice and our partnerships with our neighbors compel us to call attention, yet again, the unfair and unequal application of the law.

Our Torah insists: You shall have one law for stranger and citizen alike (Leviticus 24:22). We call for official investigations into the disparity of the applications of the force of law, and the apparent lack of security preparations, given the size and toxic incitement of the crowd.

We call upon our Rabbis and other leaders to name the transgressions that led to this moment. Rabbis should not engage in partisan politics from their pulpits, of course, but rabbis often feel constrained in voicing moral truths so as not to upset some members of their communities. But this is not a partisan moment: Democrats and Republicans, left-leaning and right-leaning constituents alike must be able to identify the profound offenses that have taken place in order to move our country forward.

Jewish tradition warns of “righteous people who had the power to protest the actions of others, but did not” (Talmud, Shabbat 55a). American democracy is resilient, and we are confident that the potential for national healing exists. But our shared future is in our own hands; we have much work to do.

This is not a time for  self-righteous pieties or genteel calls for peace. This is a moment to reclaim the integrity of our democratic institutions from those who would pervert them, and to demand accountability, even unto the highest office in the land.

Massachusetts Board of Rabbis Executive Committee
Rabbi Neal Gold, President (ndzahav@gmail.com)

Michael Oren's Ghostly and Liberating Tales

Michael Oren is certainly a Jewish renaissance man. He’s a respected historian who wrote the definitive history of the Six-Day War. He’s an accomplished diplomat, serving as Israel’s Ambassador to the United States from 2009-2013. He has been a widely admired political leader, representing the centrist Kulanu party in the Knesset from 2015-2019 and serving as a deputy minister in the Prime Minister’s cabinet.

To that list of accomplishments, add that he’s a terrific and provocative storyteller, as we discover in his new collection of short fiction The Night Archer and Other Stories.

Oren’s imaginative GPS is set to a place where the paths of Delmore Schwartz, Stephen King, O. Henry, Etgar Keret, I. B. Singer, and episodes of The Twilight Zone all intersect. This collection of stories—most of them are quite short, just three to six pages—reveal a vigorous and wide-ranging imagination. And underneath it all is a freewheeling and slightly wicked Jewish sensibility, even in the tales that have no obvious Jewish referents.

In the Introduction, Oren reveals that many of these stories were written and stored away during his years as a diplomat. No wonder: not only are Israeli political leaders expected not to publish books during their tenures, but these stories also unveil a dark, romantic imagination of the sort that politicians prefer to keep tamped down.

And many of these stories are quite haunting—and haunted.

Ghosts abound in Oren’s fiction. “Ruin,” the story that opens the collection, is a sort of ghost-story-in-reverse, with a clever moral at its climax.  In “The Reenactor,” a Polish actor has a job at a local Jewish museum (that is, a museum to Judaism; the Jews are gone from this place)—until he drunkenly stumbles into the forest, where the ghosts of Jewish martyrs are everywhere. Likewise in “Aniksht,” which also features an Eastern European forest which becomes a place of flight during the Holocaust—and many years later as well.

Some stories seem to draw inspiration from Stephen King. (A compliment: I think King is one of our greatest living storytellers, who knows the economy of words and whose oeuvre is much broader than he receives credit for.) Like King, in some of these stories you can viscerally feel the writer’s glee in taking an idea—sometimes a genuinely twisted one—and riding it home. “The Betsybob” is the most overtly King-ish story, concerning four women who, as childhood friends, once had a shared mystical encounter in the woods near their summer camp. In adulthood, they return, looking for one more connection with one more desperate wish.  Oren knows how to stick the landing, too: some of the tales build to a witty and occasionally shocking punchline.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. These short stories also include: would-be political power couples, parents and children, love found and love lost, medieval conquistadors sojourning to the New World, lachrymose novelists, Civil War reenactors, outsider suburban schoolkids, and much more. Oren writes science fiction, mystery, romance, tragedy, animal fables, detective stories, some elaborate allegories, and many sober reflections on human absurdity. It’s all a lot of fun, and written with such economy of language that none of the chapters overstays its welcome.

Oren wears his Jewish sensibility comfortably; that is to say, it’s never heavy-handed or pandering. Two of the stories here—“Day Eight” and “The Book of Jakiriah”—are outright midrashim, told through a comedic lens. And “The Betsybob,” too, is self-aware enough to make reference to the famous Talmudic legend of the Four Sages Who Entered the Orchard (of mystical speculation). Still, Oren’s grasp is much larger than the narrow niche of “Jewish literature.”

In his Introduction, Oren makes the case for a Jewish sensibility that underlies everything that he writes. In particular, he reflects on the paradoxical relationship that Judaism has with freedom: namely, that true freedom is framed by responsibilities and statutes. As it says in Pirkei Avot:

The tablets were God’s work, and the writing was God’s writing, incised [חָרוּת] upon the tablets (Exodus 32:16).
Don’t read “חָרוּת/incised on the tablets,” but rather “חֵרוּת/freedom was on the tablets.”

Michael Oren’s freedom—after years of serving the Jewish people in a public capacity—has been well-earned. Here’s hoping there are many more wonders to be drawn from his prolific literary imagination.

I’ll be hosting Ambassador Michael Oren in conversation about The Night Archer on my online platform on Thursday, November 12, at 12:00 noon Eastern time. Register here to receive the Zoom link and passcode.

Light in Darkness

This short piece was written for the newsletter of Babson College’s Office of Religious &
Spiritual Life, who requested a post on the subject “creating light at dark times.”

I was invited to write a short piece about “Light in the Darkness.” Well, there is a sequence of ideas sprinkled throughout the Torah that leads us, I think, to a provocative and timely conclusion.

Hang on tight and follow my logic:

(1)  The Torah opens with darkness. The second verse of Genesis reads: “…darkness over the surface of the deep, and wind from God sweeping over the water…” before any act of creation came into being.

(2)  And then, the first act of creation: “And God said, ‘Let there be light.’” (Gen. 1:3). Divine creativity commences by pushing away darkness with light.

So far, so good. Except for one dilemma. A seventh-grader reading Genesis for the first time can spot the obvious quandary: the sun, moon, and stars do not come into being for a few more paragraphs, not until the 4th day of Creation! So what kind of light was this on Day One?

The Zohar, the preeminent book of Kabbalah, suggests that the divine light of the 1st day of Creation—this primordial Light, by which one could see from one end of the universe to another—was withdrawn for a variety of reasons. Its replacement, the light of the celestial bodies, is something qualitatively different.

But that’s not the end of the story, for there continue to be periodic glimpses of the divine Light.

(3)  Noah, says Jewish lore, had a radiant jewel in the midst of the ark that radiated the Light, so that the remnants of life could survive the flood.

(4)  Similarly, when the infant Moses was born into the slave-house of his parents, the Rabbis said that the house was flooded with Light.

(5)  Presumably, this is the sort of Light with which the burning bush glowed, not to be consumed.

 And so on.

But after a while, the Torah doesn’t take up the idea of the Light again, not for a long time. You could be forgiven for thinking that the Torah forgot all about the subject, for the sake of other things: creating families, freeing slaves, giving laws, etc.

(6)   Then, a couple of dozen books later, a thousand pages ahead (1,633 pages in the Hebrew-English Bible I’m looking at), there it is, the great secret:  “The human spirit is the lamp of God” (Proverbs 20:27).  That concealed light from Day One was hidden away - in each human soul, including your own. Human beings have the potential to illuminate the world with the divine Light of Creation. People bring light to the darkness. This is what it means to be God’s partner in completing Creation, an important Jewish theological idea.

If you followed the trail this far, you can draw the logical conclusion:  If the world seems dark, due to ignorance or cruelty or barbarism or selfishness… then you’ve gotta be the light.

Election 2020 / A Lesson from the Days of Barry Goldwater

On October 21, 1964, Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf wrote the following in his monthly synagogue bulletin:

 In every single deviant position, Senator Goldwater has opposed not only the American consensus but also the religious commonality. No religious body in America, no serious church leader, no responsible congregation would today dream of sharing his dangerous nationalism, his economic primitivism, or his incredible appeal for good feeling rather than plain justice between the races. No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. Goldwater has placed himself squarely against the whole ecumenical struggle of the American churches to find a better way to live together.

…I believe that religious men and especially Jews, and most especially members of this congregation, of whatever party and whatever conviction, should take it upon themselves to name Goldwater their enemy… He will not be the last threat to our American integrity, but he is the clear and present danger, and we should fight him while we still can.

 May G-d help us to elect Lyndon Johnson president![1]

Rabbi Wolf was one of the great Jewish voices of the 20th century. Much of his career was based in Chicago, first in its northern suburbs (where this was published), then, after an interim at Yale, on the south side of city. He was a profound religious philosopher and a great teacher of halacha and the imperatives that underpin being a religious person in the modern world.

He obviously knew that congregations are not supposed to be politically partisan. The power of this writing is that he was saying: there is a limit; we are at a once-in-a-lifetime moment where our typical behavior must change.[2]

My commentary to the above, in light of where we are right now in America:

In every single deviant position. Goldwater was an extremist and nuclear warmonger. But at least in 1964 they were debating issues! Today that notion seems almost quaint. This election is not about a rational discussion about the issues that challenge our nation. It comes down to this: Does Donald Trump have any middot/virtuous character traits that you would want your child to emulate? 

No religious body in America. I presume Rabbi Wolf was overstating the situation in 1964, just as this would be an exaggeration today. Conservative religious bases are often the last refuge of right-wing extremists, especially since Reagan.

But I understand it this way. People of good faith do not have to agree on policy matters, as long as we agree to a certain common ground, namely: Human beings are endowed with a basic dignity. Hungry people should be fed. Homeless people should be housed. The oppressed should be liberated. Peace is a primary value. So is equitable distribution of justice. The individual’s pursuit of dignity and success and happiness should not be infringed upon—unless that pursuit causes harm to one’s neighbor. And every human being, being made in the image of G-d, is therefore endowed with inalienable rights.

And people of good faith—conservatives and liberals—can rationally disagree on the valid, best paths to take in order to arrive at these shared goals. It seems to me that this is the basis of how to live together respectfully in a community, or family, of people with different opinions.

I see nothing in today’s Trumpian agenda that shares those once-mutual goals. That is why Wolf’s “no religious body…” statement remains valid.

Between the races. 1964! And 2020. The Trumpian embrace of white supremacy is just one of a multitude of reasons why this regime must be vomited out.

No Protestant, no Catholic, no Jew. It was 1964, so this is what was understood to be an ecumenical/interfaith statement. Will Herberg’s famous sociological study of the American mid-20th century melting pot was called Protestant, Catholic, Jew, and surely that is what Wolf is referencing. Of course in 2020 we wouldn’t say it that way; our interfaith tent is much wider, to include many other faiths, especially Muslims (who continue to be cast as a fifth-column by right-wingers), Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, and Native American traditions. Our pluralistic tent is richer and broader than it was in the Sixties, to the betterment of all.

He will not be the last threat. Yup.

While we still can. The current president’s dictatorial instincts have been made clear in the past few weeks (and in truth, much much longer), and the urgency of this message is that the basic institutions of our democratic society—such as fair and free elections and peaceful transition of power—are gravely at risk.

This is a most perilous moment for everything America represents; like never before has its democracy been ready to unravel. Rabbi Wolf was prescient about the stakes in 1964, a time when it was time to say yesh g’vul, there is a limit to what we, in a free society, may accept.

May G-d help us to elect Joe Biden president!

Photo credit: Doug Mills, New York Times

[1] Congregation Solel (Highland Park, IL) Pathfinder, October 21, 1964; in Unfinished Rabbi: Selected Writings of Arnold Jacob Wolf, Ivan R. Dee: 1998, 187-188.

[2] Sometimes—with great and weighty hesitation—extreme moments call for conventional rules to be broken. In the language of halacha:  It is a time to act for the L-rd, for they have violated Your Torah (Psalm 119:126). The Rabbis read this verse backwards, violate Your Torah, because it is a time to act for the Lord;  and they interpret: Because we are facing the most extreme set of circumstances, the moment calls for extreme measures to be adopted. Rashi: “When the time comes to do something for the sake of the Holy One, and we must violate the Torah.” See the Babylonian Talmud, Yoma 69a; Berachot 63a.