Rabbi David Ellenson זצ״ל

Rabbi David Ellenson has died. I hate typing that sentence. Moreover, since it’s Chanukah, Jewish tradition says that part of the simcha of the season means that we shouldn’t give eulogies. So don’t consider this a eulogy, in the sense of a lament for a lost mentor. Consider instead a tribute: He meant an enormous amount to me, as a rabbi, mentor, and friend, so I’d like to share with my community of students and friends a little bit about his brilliance.

Rabbi David Ellenson teaching at the Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem, Summer 2023 (photo: NG)

There are brilliant scholars in the world, and there are incredibly kind and compassionate people as well. But it is astonishingly rare to have both of those dispositions bound up in the same soul. Yet that was Rabbi Ellenson, as anyone who knew him will affirm.

David—and I mean no disrespect by calling him by his first name; he insisted on it, and he had a way of making you feel like such a cherished friend that it would seem impolite not to call him “David”—was an extraordinary leader. For much of his academic career, he was Professor of Jewish Religious Thought at the Los Angeles campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Since I was ensconced at HUC-JIR’s New York campus, I didn’t have the pleasure of studying with him in rabbinical school; I only got to know him after graduating.

I did things backwards: I had the great fortune over the years to become his friend, and subsequently I became his student. When HUC appointed him President, David invited me to be a founding member of something he called the “President’s Rabbinic Council.” He needed a kitchen cabinet of advisors, he said—with his ubiquitous smiling eyes—because he had no idea how to be a college president! That sort of modesty was characteristically David, and just one aspect that made him so beloved.

But no one was fooled by that self-deprecation. He was one of the most serious thinkers about liberal Judaism of this generation or any other. His scholarship on the development of modern Orthodoxy, modern Jewish philosophy, the meaning of liberal Judaism, the evolution of Jewish liturgy, the ethics of halakha, and so much more was impeccable. And just as important was his way of using knowledge and scholarship to articulate an ethical imperative for contemporary Jews of all stripes.

Here's a story. For many years my family lived in Highland Park, New Jersey, which has a unique mix of Jews from across the religious spectrum living alongside one another. Our next door neighbors were friends who became family (they remain so); they are observant Jews who are very active and committed to modern Orthodox institutions. I remember on occasion my neighbor would come over and ask, “Did you see Rabbi Ellenson’s editorial in the NY Jewish Week?” No, living in New Jersey and entirely overextended, I was not a regular reader of the Jewish Week. “I’ll clip it for you, it’s brilliant,” she said. And then: “How lucky we”—we, as in the entire Jewish community—“are, to have a voice like his.”

She was absolutely right. His intellect, his interests, and his menschlikhkeit overflowed the boundaries in which Jewish communities have fenced ourselves. Sure, much of his career was devoted to leading the academic flagship of Reform Judaism. But his intellectual seriousness and his generous disposition gave him credibility throughout the Jewish world. That sort of leader is, tragically, an endangered species in Jewish life today, and we need more of them desperately.

Others will trace his academic and writing career more completely than me. If you’d like a taste of his scholarship, I’d recommend the anthology Jewish Meaning in a World of Choice: Studies in Tradition and Modernity (2014), a collection of essays in the JPS “Scholar of Distinction” series.

Instead, let me make myself vulnerable by telling you what he meant to me.

When I was going through the hardest time in my life—when I was at a turning point in my career, abandoned by some people and institutions who said they “cared” about me—there were a few foundation stones in my life who totally embraced me: my family, some friends and colleagues… and David Ellenson.

At the time, David was the Director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University. He was, by that point, a dear friend. When I didn’t know where to go or where I might land, he said to me, “Neal, I want you to come to Brandeis and study with me.”

Let me parse that: it was one thing to be there for me as a friend, confidante, and counselor. But at a time when my self-esteem was shot, and I was feeling quite lost both personally and professionally, David said to me: “I want you.”

So I enrolled at Brandeis, and eventually received my second Master’s degree. The biggest privilege was to write a Master’s thesis with David, which included studying with him one-on-one, and eventually defending the thesis before him (and another brilliant Brandeis scholar and mensch, Yehudah Mirsky). He believed in me, and I can only hope to honor his memory by doing likewise and paying it forward.

He taught our A Tree with Roots community on two occasions. Two years ago, when his most recent book was published, he came to me and asked if he and his co-author Rabbi Michael Marmur could do a program on our platform. They were, of course, wonderful: insightful, enlightening, and funny.

The second occasion was just five weeks ago. As part of the 30th anniversary of the Kavod Tzedakah Fund, we asked David to give the closing Torah teaching. It was scholarly discussion of the ethics of war in the writings of Maimonides and Rabbi Shlomo Goren. But the passion and complicated human emotions of Israel’s war with Hamas also came shining through; it was quintessential David Ellenson:

Rabbi Ellenson’s teaching begins at 39:45 in this video from A Tree with Roots

There is one mistake I’m proud that I didn’t make in this relationship: I told him often in the past few years just how much his love and support meant to me.

There’s a passage I’m thinking of tonight from Tony Hendra’s extraordinary book Father Joe (2004). Hendra[1], an English comedian perhaps best known for his role as band manager Ian Faith in the movie This is Spinal Tap, had a private and remarkable spiritual sanctuary. His mentor was a monk who lived for decades at Quarr Abbey on the Isle of Wight, and Hendra throughout his life would visit Father Joe there, for centering and counsel. He always presumed that Father Joe was “his” priest, and that their relationship was special and unique. At the end of the book, he goes back to Quarr for the Father Joe’s funeral—and he is astonished to discover that there were hundreds, if not thousands, of people all over the world who also loved him went to Father Joe for solace and guidance:

Common sense suggests it would be hard for one person to maintain in one lifetime more than a few such friendships. It would be taxing physically—the toll it would take on time, energy, patience, concentration—and brutally hard on the emotions, let alone the spirit. Yet as the tributes came in and I dug farther, it became clear that Father Joe had undertaken not just a few, or even a few dozen, but hundreds of such life-altering voyages.

I’m under no such illusions: I know that David Ellenson loved and was beloved by countless students all over the world. I also know that part of his brilliance, part of his awesomeness, was that he loved each one of us uniquely and in our own way.

In Judaism, that sort of spiritual mentorship is called being a Rebbe. And among his accolades and accomplishments, surely that title is the most precious of all.

זכר צדיק לברכה / The memory of the righteous is a blessing.

[1] I’m quite aware that after Father Joe was published, sexual assault allegations were made against Hendra by his daughter. It was an early “Me Too” moment, and Hendra died in 2021 scarred by the scandal. I will not whitewash him, for sure. But I can’t unread his book, nor can I deny that it is truly powerful.

On Friendship—Part One

The Problem, and a Biblical Model of Friendship

 I’ve been thinking a lot about the idea of FRIENDSHIP in Judaism, and had the pleasure of teaching some texts about this topic at our recent Shavuot celebration. This essay, in two parts, is an abridged form of that program. (If you want to see the Jewish sources I assembled for that evening, you can access the Source Sheet here.)

I.               Introduction to the Topic, a Crisis

There is a crisis of loneliness in the modern world that’s been building for a long time and which was exacerbated by the pandemic. In past year or so, there have been a spate of articles (in the New York Times, Psychology Today, NPR, The Atlantic, and many more) along the lines of, “Why is it so difficult for adults to make new friends?”

There are many reasons for our increasing social isolation, but the burning irony is that all of our online technology somehow makes our distance from one another even worse. True, there is potential in social media and ever-present smartphones to keep people connected. I’m no Luddite: I have many friends and family members who are far away, and thanks to my devices I’m able to have a window into their lives.

But just as often, these tools worsen our ever-increasing estrangement from one another. So many of us are consumed with our own feeds and personalized diets of entertainment that our self-absorption is worse than ever. Sure, every generation of adults thinks the next iteration of technology is a calamity. (Remember when violent cartoons were going to be the destruction of all those ‘70s and ‘80s kids? Where’s Wile E. Coyote when you need him?) Yet it’s remarkable that people today can actually be nostalgic for the act of watching TV together as a family—as opposed to another evening with each family member subsumed in their own private screen.

Suffice to say that many psychologists identify loneliness and isolation as a health risk and a social crisis. The author Robert Putnam diagnosed this American syndrome in his classic study Bowling Alone (2000).

Of course, there is a big difference between “loneliness” and “being alone.” Plenty of people, not just the introverts among us, crave private time to be alone, for self-reflection, creativity, or simply to think. But that is very different from loneliness: the intense yearning for real connection with other people, but the failure to find someone who can reciprocate.

I’m also writing from a personal place. A few years ago, I went through a crisis that was both professional and personal. It was the most traumatic experience of my life, prompting therapy and lots of self-reflection. Of course, my family—especially my extraordinary wife—were my rock during this time. But I also discovered a few lessons about the nature of friends.

My discoveries were twofold. On one hand, I realized that the betrayal of a friend is surely the most painful experience in the world. I was saddened, to say the least, by the failure of some friends—people who said they loved me—to be there when I needed them. Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences, and if so, I empathize with that pain and loss.

But I discovered something else, too: I am blessed to have some truly extraordinary friends who stood up at that time. These friends were present, sympathetic, honest, and compassionate. Some were people who up to that point I didn’t realize were such good friends, and they revealed themselves to be loyal, loving, and partisan on my behalf. What a blessing!

My first prayer for you is that you should be blessed with such friends in your life.

So that’s the background for my inquiries:

·      Did our ancestors in antiquity have “friends”—or is that a modern construct?

·      Are there good examples of friendship in the classic Jewish literature?

·      Jewish sources have so much to say about the most important relationships in life—do they have anything to teach us about how to be a good friend?

II.             Friendship in the Hebrew Bible

 If you believe, as I do, that the Bible is holy because every facet of experience is found there, then surely there are examples of good friends in its pages. But that’s easier said than done. Why not stop reading for a few moments and ask ourselves—“Who are the Biblical examples of true friends?”

Did you come up with any? It’s harder than it seems—especially if you take off of the table family relationships, on the assumption that the place of authority between, say, parents and children distorts what we mean by “friendship.”

Then there’s David and Jonathan—a relationship that is often held up as a true model of friendship. Even the Mishnah (Pirkei Avot 5:16) perpetuates this idea.

But with due respect to the Mishnah, I don’t buy it. David, as presented in the Book of Samuel, is a far too complex and contradictory figure to be a paragon of friendship. If you read carefully, you’ll notice that everyone keeps falling in love with the charismatic and gifted David: his various wives (at least at first); “all Israel and Judah” (2 Sam. 18:16); and, indeed, King Saul’s son Jonathan. Time after time, people profess their love for David, and periodically they save his life because of their devotion to him.

The problem is: David is always the object of another’s love, the Hebrew verb אהב. Never does the text position David as the subject to declare, “David loved ________.” It’s hard to know if David ever loves somebody else.

I propose that such one-sidedness is no model for a real or authentic friendship.

Instead, I can think of one Biblical model that strikes many of the notes of genuine friendship: the three friends of Job.

After Job’s devastating losses—of virtually everything he has—the text reads:

When Job’s three friends heard about all these calamities that had befallen him, each came from his home—Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They met together to go and console and comfort him.

When they saw him from a distance, they could not recognize him, and they broke into loud weeping; each one tore his robe and threw dust into the air onto his head.

They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights. None spoke a word to him, for they saw how very great was his suffering. (Job 2:11-13)

Read that passage carefully and consider what an extraordinary group of friends Job has!

1.     They live far away. We can tell by their exotic names and the epithets that the Bible gives them. (I know I have many cherished friends who live far away, and it can be a long time—sometimes years—between moments when we see each other.)

2.     But when they hear of Job’s pain, they come. A time of real crisis is not a time to disappear, or to be too busy. They come to be with Job—without being asked.

3.     They tear their clothes—an act of mourning—when they see his distress. His pain is their pain because of the intimacy of their feelings for him.

4.     They sit on the ground with him (another ritual of mourning) and remain silent for days (surely the first example of sitting shiva). Regarding this silence: Yes, sometimes, a situation calls for a carefully chosen kind word. But just as often, what is really necessary is presence. Job’s friends don’t speak—at least, not right away; what is needed is their act of showing up and being present for their friend in his anguish.

Later, Job’s friends will have many things to say. Some of those words are helpful, others, not so much. But I’m struck by so many elements of their behavior, and their desire to bring compassion and healing to their ailing friend.

It’s a model that surely resonates with immediacy in our own age of distance and isolation and ever-creeping solipsism.

Coming in Part Two: The Rabbinic and Kabbalistic traditions offer some remarkable perspectives of genuine friendships. Stay tuned.  

Image: “Friendship Matters,” Psychology Today, June 19, 2015

Rabbi Harold Kushner ז״ל

I didn’t know Rabbi Harold Kushner all that well, but he did impact my life in two particular contexts.

First: I live in Natick, Massachusetts, the town where Rabbi Kushner lived and worked for most of his career. In the Jewish cemetery here his son is buried—Aaron, who died of progeria, the rare premature-aging disease which prompted Rabbi Kushner’s famous book When Bad Things Happen to Good People—and here on Monday he will be laid to rest.

I had never met him in person until I moved to Natick in 2005. The first time I ran into him in the Bakery on the Common, I was giddy—“I just met Harold Kushner!”—and he was very gracious and welcomed me to the neighborhood. More exciting was the second time I encountered him a few months later, when he came over and said, “Hi Neal!” Harold Kushner knew who I was!

After that, our paths crossed periodically: at events for local rabbis, or around town, or in contexts where he was a guest lecturer. He was always cordial and warm towards me.

But the main context in which I knew Harold Kushner is the same way in which countless other people knew him: He reached out through his books.

Just think, for a moment, about what a metaphysically extraordinary thing a book is. Through a book an author reaches across space and time to transmit ideas, provocations, comfort, and hope. Here’s the way Stephen King describes it:

What writing is: Telepathy, of course….

We’re not even in the same year together, let alone the same room… except we are together. We’re close.

We’re having a meeting of the minds.

I sent you a table with a red cloth on it, a cage, a rabbit, and the number eight in blue ink. You got them all… We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy. No mythy-mountain shit; real telepathy. (Stephen King, On Writing, 1997)

In this telepathic way, Rabbi Kushner reached me and countless people through his books. He was a publishing phenomenon, and through his writing, the healing wisdom of Judaism spread far beyond his reach in the pulpit or in the classroom - and to Jews and non-Jews alike.

I first read When Bad Things Happen to Good People in high school, as part of Temple Shalom’s Confirmation curriculum. (The assignment was simply: read a Jewishly relevant book and submit a report on it. How many synagogue Hebrew schools would expect their students to do that today? Very few, I bet.) It was probably the first book of theology I ever read, and the first place I learned the very Jewish tradition of wrestling with G-d, rather than offering apologies for G-d.

But every elegy for Rabbi Kushner is going to mention WBTHTGP, which made him famous. Personally, I return more frequently to some of his other great books, especially: Living a Life That Matters (2001), Conquering Fear (2009), and his self-published sermon collection Faith and Family (2007), among the others. Really, he never wrote a book that isn’t worthwhile. All of his books speak gentle but sublime spiritual truths, peppered with insights from classic Jewish literature as well as the lives of people in his community.

(By the way, many people don’t realize that he is the author of the “below the line” Torah commentary in Etz Hayim, which sits in the pews of many American synagogues. This, surely, is another aspect of his immortality.)

My personal favorite is How Good Do We Have to Be?, one of the wisest books I know. It’s typical of his style. The jumping-off point is a well-known Biblical touchstone; in this case, the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden. You may have thought that at this late date there wasn’t much more to say about Adam and Eve and the expulsion from Eden. Yet in Rabbi Kushner’s hands, it’s a stunningly contemporary exploration of universal themes: what it means to be a parent or a sibling, the American dysfunctional pursuit of perfection, healthy guilt versus unhealthy guilt, and the real possibility of being able to forgive others and ourselves. He always seems to have a perfect real-life anecdote at his fingertips (a skill that—as a writer and teacher—I covet desperately).

For instance,

The essence of marital love is not romance, but forgiveness.

….Romantic love overlooks faults (“love is blind”) in an effort to persuade ourselves that we deserve a perfect partner. Mature marital love sees faults clearly and forgives them, understanding that there are no perfect people, that we don’t have to pretend perfection, and that an imperfect spouse is all that an imperfect person like us can aspire to:

“For years I was looking for the perfect man, and when I finally found him, it turned out he was looking for the perfect woman and that wasn’t me.”

And:

How do you define a “good death”?... Let me suggest my own definition: a good death would be one that does not contradict what your life has been about.

…When we learn to think of life as a story, then we can come to think of death not as punishment, but as punctuation. What we want to know about a book or movie is not how long it is, but how good it is, and we can learn to think of life in the same way. (p.161-162)

And lest you still are under the misguided impression that after Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit the expulsion from Eden was some sort of punishment—it’s not. Here’s Kushner’s midrash from the book, and it is a beautiful epitaph:

How the Story Might Have Ended

So the woman saw that the tree was good to eat and a delight to the eye, and the serpent said to her, “Eat of it, for when you eat of it, you will be as wise as G-d.” But the woman said, “No, G-d has commanded us not to eat of it, and I will not disobey G-d.”

And G-d called to the man and the woman and said to them, “Because you have hearkened to My word and not disobeyed My command, I shall reward you greatly.”

To the man, G-d said, “You will never have to work again. Spend all your days in idle contentment, with food growing all around you.”

To the woman, G-d said, “You will bear children without pain and you will raise them without pain. They will need nothing from you. Children will not cry when their parents die, and parents will not cry when their children die.”

To both of them, He said, “For the rest of your lives, you will have full bellies and contented smiles. You will never cry and you will never laugh,, You will never long for something you don’t have, and you will never receive something you always wanted.”

And the man and the woman grew old together in the Garden, eating daily from the Tree of Life and having many children. And the grass grew high around the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil until it disappeared from view, for there was no one to tend it. (How Good Do We Have to Be?, pp.32-33)

Amen, and I’m grateful to know that through his writing he’ll continue to teach us for generations to come.

In the Talmud, A Weirdly Sobering Voice from My Own Not-So-Distant Past

Each chapter of the Talmud ends with some beautiful words from the editor: הדרן עלך / Hadran Alakh / “We will return to you.” It’s a reminder that the massive volumes of the Talmud are not read like any other books, but rather are something to be reviewed and revisited. When you come back to a certain chapter, you discover insights that you never noticed the first time around, because you’ve presumably grown and changed and are reading the words in new and different ways.

So with the tradition of Hadran in mind, I often write notes to myself in the margins as reminders for the next time I’ll be back on this page.

All of which is to say, this morning, I found a note to myself that was a sobering signpost of where we are in the world.

Some context: I learn the Talmud in two ways. I’m one of tens of thousands who are doing Daf Yomi, the one-page-a-day cycle of reading the Talmud which takes 7+ years to navigate (we just marked the two-year anniversary of this cycle!). I approach Daf Yomi as a spiritual discipline each morning, before I read the news or email or the day’s responsibilities; I give it 45-60 minutes and often simply plow through sections that are especially dense or obscure.

I also have been learning Talmud with a chevruta (study partner), Rabbi Ben Levy, which we’ve been doing for over 20 years! And our approach is the exact opposite of Daf Yomi: we read closely and meticulously, and give ourselves plenty of opportunity for reflection and free association. It sometimes takes us years to finish a single volume of the Talmud.

So, this morning I’m reading the Daf Yomi, Megillah 31, which Ben and I studied more intensively in the past. The page discusses the liturgical readings from the Torah that the Rabbis selected for the various holidays throughout the year. And in that discussion, we find this paragraph:

תַּנְיָא, רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן אֶלְעָזָר אוֹמֵר: עֶזְרָא תִּיקֵּן לָהֶן לְיִשְׂרָאֵל שֶׁיְּהוּ קוֹרִין קְלָלוֹת שֶׁבְּתוֹרַת כֹּהֲנִים קוֹדֶם עֲצֶרֶת, וְשֶׁבְּמִשְׁנֵה תוֹרָה קוֹדֶם רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה. מַאי טַעְמָא? אָמַר אַבָּיֵי וְאִיתֵּימָא רֵישׁ לָקִישׁ: כְּדֵי שֶׁתִּכְלֶה הַשָּׁנָה וְקִלְלוֹתֶיהָ

It was taught: Rabbi Shimon ben Elazar said: Ezra enacted for the Jewish people that they should read the Torah portion of the curses that are recorded in Leviticus (Lev. 26:14-46) before Shavuot, and the Torah portion of the curses that are recorded in Deuteronomy (Deut. 28:15-69) before Rosh Hashanah.

Why? Abbaye (4th C sage in Babylonia) said—and some say it was Resh Lakish (3rd C sage in the Land of Israel) who said it: In order that the year, and its curses, should come to an end!

(The next paragraph explains that Shavuot, at the beginning of the summer, can also be considered a “New Year,” just like Rosh Hashanah.)

There’s lots to say about those words. But what leapt out at me was a note that I had written in the margins when I last read this page with Ben. There I wrote: “I’m reading this on 12/30/2020, the year of the Covid-19 pandemic.” Look how naïve I was! I figured that it was unique that I was studying this text on the cusp of a New (secular) Year, and it resonated with me. Because surely when I would return to this page in the future, the curse of the pandemic would be a sorrowful memory of a lousy time.

My own voice from the past, in a private message to my future self.

Like so many others, I’m so tired of all of this—of irresponsible responses to the virus, of the stupid politicization of public health policies which should be one thing all of us have in common, of these frigging masks, and of people I care about being sick or dying or in mourning. Tired of it—but trudging forward and determined to do the right and responsible behaviors, for the sake fo those who are most vulnerable.

 Today I wrote another note in the margin of Megillah 31b: “And again, on Daf Yomi 1/12/22, while Covid still endures.”

I will return to you, Megillah 31. And, G-d willing, when I return to you, the curses of this damned pandemic will have come to an end, a distant memory.

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.”

A Troubling Thought on the Death of Ruth Bader Ginsberg זצ''ל

.תני רבן שמעון בן גמליאל אומר אין עושין נפשות לצדיקים דבריהם הן הן זכרונן
Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel taught:
We do not need to make monuments for the righteous—
their words serve as their memorial. (Talmud Yerushalmi, Shekalim 11a)

Like many of us, I’m grieved by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg זצ''ל (the memory of a righteous person is a blessing) on Erev Rosh Hashanah. She was everything people are saying about her: an icon of justice and equality, a shatterer of glass ceilings, and a role model for all Americans. And like others, I gape at the transparent hypocrisy and ethical hollowness of the GOP seeking to fill her seat six weeks before the election: We remember Merrick Garland.

For Jewish Americans in particular, her stature was enormous. Which is why the decisions around her funeral are burial are so unfortunate and saddening.

As has been widely reported, Justice Ginsberg* will receive national honors, with public viewings and opportunities for admirers to pay their respects. First her body will lie “in repose” at the U.S. Supreme Court, and subsequently it will lie “in state” in at the Capitol building. Amazingly, she will be the first woman in American history to lie in state. Second, the funeral and burial will be held after Yom Kippur—more than ten days after her death.

These national rites are intended to honor her in a manner befitting her stature, to be sure.

But these secular honors contravene Jewish tradition and values, and that’s a shame—especially for a person who carried her Judaism as proudly and confidently as Justice Ginsberg.

Two Jewish laws in particular are in play here. First, Judaism rejects “viewing” the deceased. Second, Judaism urges that a body should be buried as quickly as is feasible. Each of these traditions are rooted in two thousand years of practice.

The overarching principle for these laws is the idea of k’vod ha-met, which literally means “the honor/dignity accorded to a dead body.” In Judaism, the body is considered a holy container that once held a person’s spirit. After death, that container is washed and purified with love and respect. And it is to be lovingly returned to the earth from which it came. 

But that container is not the person who died. “Viewing” is not the Jewish way of showing honor or respect. We maintain that kavod—honor and dignity—means that people don’t view you when you have no control over your appearance. Kabbalah refers to the countenance of a dead person as a mareh litusha, or “a hammered image,” a grotesque distortion of the human being, made in the Image of G-d.

We bury quickly for the same reason: that Divine Image should be restored to the earth as promptly as is feasible. Sometimes there is a delay, when we honor a person by making appropriate arrangements for a Jewish burial, but Jewish law emphasizes that praise and honor require a quick burial (Shulchan Aruch, Yoreh De’ah 357:1-2).

But here’s what troubles me the most: Those who justify these violations of Jewish tradition by saying, “Yes, but she was important.” I’ve seen that argument in print—and even from rabbis. Yet the glory and beauty of Jewish burial practices is precisely this: we are all important, and we are all equal, in death.

A short excerpt from the Talmud’s laws of burial should make this principle clear:

At first, they would uncover [for “viewing!!”] the faces of the deceased rich people, but they would cover the faces of decease poor people, because the faces of the poor were often blackened by famine. The Sages established that every cadaver’s face should be covered—for the honor of poor people.

At first, deceased rich people were carried out for burial on an elaborate bier, and deceased poor people were carried out on a plain bier. The Sages established that every cadaver should be taken out on a plain bier—for the honor of poor people. (Talmud, Mo’ed Katan 27a-b)

And most striking of all:

At first, burying the dead was more difficult for relatives than the death of a loved one itself (because of the great expense of funerals)!  It got so bad that relatives would sometimes abandon the corpse and run away. Then Rabban Gamliel came and set some of his own honor aside, and instructed that he should be buried in plain linen garments. And the people adopted this practice after him, that the dead should be buried in plain linen garments.

Rav Pappa said: And now, everyone (!!) follows the practice of burying the dead in rough, cloth garments that cost only a zuz. (Ibid.)

All the Jewish funeral symbols—pocketless shrouds; a plain pine casket; no viewing; a speedy burial—emphasize humility and the idea that we are all equal in death. They even teach us about economic justice: there is no “rich” and “poor” when it comes to facing the Angel of Death.

Surely Justice Ginsberg, whose legacy is so bound up with the principle of equality, would have appreciated these extraordinary and powerful ideals.

I fear that when rabbis say, “Yes, but we make an exception for her—she was important,” they are not only denying these ideals; they are setting a bad precedent for the future. What happens when some super-wealthy financier dies and the rabbi is told, “Look, he was important, so we’re going to have a viewing, an extravagant casket, and bury him in a $10,000 suit”? Or some big donor says, “Rabbi, you have to make an exception to Jewish custom for my mother; she was important”? It’s a dangerous precedent—precisely what Rabban Gamliel was trying to save the Jewish community from so long ago.

It is a sublime religious ideal that even in death, we can still teach our family, friends, and students, by dying according the ideals that we lived by.

I concede there are more important issues to focus on right now, like stopping Mitch McConnell’s hypocritical crusade to fill her seat before the election. But imagine how rousing it would be to Jewish people—including all those young girls whom Justice Ginsberg so inspired!—if they said, “We appreciate the state honors, but she lived and died as a Jew, and we will honor her according to Jewish values.”

Justice Ginsberg taught and inspired us in so many ways with her life. I’m saddened that she did not choose to teach and inspire us in her death.

* I’ll refer to her as Justice Ginsberg in this essay. Out of deep respect, I’ll avoid calling her “RBG”, even though I appreciate her iconic status to liberals everywhere, who affectionately say “RBG speaks for me” and humorously call her “Notorious R.B.G.” And I won’t call her “Ruth,” as if I knew her personally. While she did have a public image that made people feel affectionate towards her, there is a casual sexism in referring to her by her first name or nickname, while similar men would be afforded the respect of title and surname.

Some RADIANCE for Dark Times - New Book!

Dear Friends,

I hope you and your family are safe and sound during these trying times. I hope that with this note I can share a little bit of light.

I’m pleased to announce that the book I edited—after more than 3 years of work—is now available:  RADIANCE: Creative Mitzvah Living—The Selected Prose and Poetry of Danny Siegel, just published from the Jewish Publication Society. It’s available now from jps.org, and—even though the sites say May 1—I understand it is now available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and elsewhere. Perhaps someday soon you’ll see it in your local bookstore (here’s a prayer that bookstores will still exist when this is all over).

 It’s an anthology of the most important writings by Danny Siegel, the noted Jewish educator, essayist, Torah teacher, and poet. Rabbi David Ellenson, President Emeritus of HUC-JIR, calls Radiance “A spiritual masterpiece!” and Professor Deborah Lipstadt calls it “a welcome volume that continues to challenge and teach us today.”

Danny Siegel’s teachings have shaped modern Jewish education with his urgency about how to do acts of Tzedakah, Tikkun Olam, and deeds of compassion and generosity. My experiences with Danny have very much shaped the person, professionally and personally, that I’m trying to become, and that’s a big reason why I wanted to create this book.

His prose essays are filled with translations and interpretations of texts from Jewish tradition—including many off-the-beaten track and unusual selections. Ideas for personal Mitzvah Projects fly off the page, and inspire readers to think creatively about how each of us is poised to personally make a difference in the world. And it’s not meant to be a period piece; there are five new essays where Danny takes his insights into the 2020s.

The poetry is saturated with Jewish spirituality—its history, pain, exhilaration, and hope. Many of these poems have been incorporated into Jewish liturgies over the years.  Some are ripe for rediscovery; I think he should be recognized as one of the most sublime Jewish poets of our generation.

I realize that there are other, greater concerns at this time. But it also strikes me that much of this book is about how to hold together as a community (especially at a time like this), and how to carry compassionate responsibility for the most vulnerable among us (now more than ever)—and in that way, it may be especially poignant today. 

For Jewish community leaders:  I’d like to suggest that this book may be especially useful to you as a gift for faculty and staff, for executive boards and volunteers, and for anyone involved in the work of building communities based upon Jewish values.

I hope you’ll check it out. Danny and I are available to speak to you or your community about  the ideas both in and beyond the pages of this new anthology.

With Gratitude,

Neal

On the Death of an Indigent Jew

At first, burying the dead was more difficult for families than the death itself—because of the enormous expense. Family members even abandoned the bodies and ran away.
That changed when Rabban Gamliel adopted a simple style, and the people carried him to his grave in plain linen garments. Subsequently, everyone followed his example.
—Talmud, Ketubot 8b

Today I stood by an open grave as we lay to rest a certain Mr. Cohen, with the honor of Jewish rite and ritual to which every Jew is entitled.

With me at the graveside were the gentile funeral director and four members of the staff of the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts (JCAM). And that’s it. There were no mourners; no family to say the Kaddish, no friends or acquaintances to pay their respects.

I was invited to be there, because for the past few months I’ve been part of a quiet but important conversation here in Greater Boston: How our community can create a policy for burying indigent Jews—for people who have nothing; no assets, no money to pay for funeral costs or burial plots, and often no family.

You may think that it’s rather astounding that a Jewish community like this one does not have a strategy in place to bury extremely poor Jews. And you’d be right.

For decades, the burden of burying Jews without money here has fallen on the shoulders of whoever happened to be there. Sometimes that’s the funeral homes; other times, it’s the fine people at Jewish Family Services, or Yad Chessed, the important Boston-area Tzedakah collective.

More often than not, the burden of providing a dignified burial falls upon JCAM, a non-profit organization which owns and manages 124 Jewish cemeteries throughout Massachusetts. My friend and colleague Jamie Cotel, the Executive Director of JCAM, estimates that they are called upon to provide approximately thirty to forty burials a year for people who have little or no funds. JCAM’s already thin budget is stretched to provide a free grave, to pay the facilities crew to open and administer the burial plot, to arrange for the ritual, to provide a gravestone, and more. 

That’s thirty-to-forty times a year. And that’s just the cases that come into JCAM’s domain. It doesn’t include those desperate poor who simply disappear beneath the communal radar screen. Our Mr. Cohen’s body, for instance, was alone in a local hospital for a distressingly long time before being turned over to a local Christian funeral home. They were prepared to bury his body in a pauper’s field in a Christian cemetery—until JCAM became aware of the situation, and advocated to bury him in one of their Jewish cemeteries, with full Jewish ritual and honor.

But JCAM has limited funds and staff. This crisis—and it is a crisis, if you believe that Jewish burials aren’t just for the rich—demands a systematic, community-wide effort to share the responsibility and the cost. I’m glad we’re working on it, even while I’m ashamed that it hasn’t happened until now.

We buried Mr. Cohen, but we knew almost nothing about him. The only family Jamie could identify was a distant and estranged cousin in another state, who could provide her with no further family information and certainly wasn’t offering to share the cost of a funeral.

Here’s a part of the eulogy I gave:

Our tradition says that the day of death is like the Day of Atonement, and optimally we go to our Final Reward in the spirit of humility, purity, and atonement for all the sins we committed in our lifetime. I pray today that his passing does indeed bring atonement for his sins, and peace to his soul, and comfort to those whose lives he touched during his years on earth.

….There’s another dimension of atonement that I’m thinking of today as well. We, too, need atonement. We, too, must ask for forgiveness—of Mr. Cohen, for our sins. We have sinned by living in a self-absorbed society where he found himself so alone at the end of his life; where he lingered so long in the hospital morgue.

Chattanu – we have sinned. Please forgive us, sir. You, and all of G-d’s children, deserve better.

I believe that the measure of a community’s integrity is the degree to which it cares for the most desperate, hurting, and defenseless members in it. The enormity of its bank accounts, the hugeness of its homes and synagogue buildings, and the grotesque assemblage of automobiles in its parking lots are not signs of moral grandeur—and they just may indicate the exact opposite.

May Mr. Cohen rest in peace. And may his memory, such as it is, give us no peace, until we are able to do far better for those like him, the living and the dead.

A New Adventure in Jewish Learning - Come and Join Me

Dear Friends of This Blog,

I’d like to invite you to join me in a new online Jewish learning adventure.

As you may know, my biggest passion (along with highly amplified music and trout fishing) is teaching Jewish texts, and exploring how they can be fun, intellectually stimulating, and provide spiritual meaning in a chaotic world. I teach regularly through Me’ah (in-depth courses through Hebrew College), at local synagogues, and as a visiting scholar-in-residence in Jewish communities around the country. 

For a long time I’ve been aware of the great numbers of potential students who, who for any of a wide variety of reasons, don’t have access to options and resources for Jewish adult education. And I’ve learned about the power of using technology to connect people and build virtual classrooms.

I’ve discovered that we really can do it: create online communities that are personable, interactive, and fun. I’ve also discovered that there are surprisingly few options on the internet for Jewish learning with an independent scholar. So I’m giving this a shot—and, if you’re interested, I’d love for you to be in on the ground floor.

As a pilot project, I’m offering a free class about THE TRUTH ABOUT CHANUKAH—SPIRITUAL REINVENTION IN EVERY AGE on Tuesday evening, December 17, 2019, from 7:30-8:30 pm eastern time. Click here for more information and to register. The class will be recorded, so you can register to listen to it after the fact, but I hope you’ll be able to join me in real time.

We’ll be using Zoom technology, which is quite simple to use. When you register, I’ll send you basic information about using Zoom, and for those who so desire, there will be a 30-minute training session before the class at 7:00 pm eastern.

Please feel free to share this far and wide, to anyone you think may be interested in online Jewish learning that is fun, meaningful, and spiritually exciting. There is no experience necessary, and all are welcome (but it won’t be juvenile).

I’m very excited about this project, and I hope you’ll be part of where it goes in the future.

With gratitude,

Neal

Mr. Rogers' Moment

When I was young, I admired clever people.
Now that I am old, I admire kind people.
—Abraham Joshua Heschel

Mr. Rogers is having a moment: a new movie starring Tom Hanks; a recent book about his life and legacy; and a 2018 documentary about his life about which (it was the law) every liberal pastor and rabbi in the world had to give a sermon.

The new movie, in which Hanks amazingly transforms himself into the legendary children’s TV host, is sweet and critic-proof. I mean, it’s the cinematic equivalent of a Mitch Albom book: it’s not exactly great art, but picking apart something so well intentioned would be churlish and harsh. After all, it’s about kindness, decency of the spirit, forgiveness, and giving people the benefit of the doubt.

And during these sick and unkind times, you have to be pretty jaded not to appreciate such a message. It’s worth remembering the famous quote attributed to Henry James:

Three things in life are important.
The first is to be kind.
The second is to be kind.
And the third is to be kind.

The real secret is that kindness itself is a radical and countercultural gesture. What could be more against the grain of today’s cultural moment than to affirm a stranger’s self-worth, and to receive one another with honest affection despite our differences?

It’s curious that one of the persistent themes in the recent works about Fred Rogers is that “he wasn’t perfect” and “he wasn’t a saint.” It’s repeated so many times that it made me wonder why. Who thought that a gentle and mentoring children’s TV host was a saint? Why is it not enough to be a thoroughly decent and kind human being—and just to leave it at that?

Why is there an expectation that people who do good need to morally perfect? In Jewish terminology, is it not enough to be a Tzaddik—must one also be a Tzaddik Gamur?

That’s a particular pathology that seems to be relevant to our own Mr. Rogers-less age and the world of cancel culture. There’s a cynicism in our society that has been building up for years, that assumes that there is a dark underbelly waiting to be exposed in every do-gooder.

Somebody performs remarkable feats on the athletic field? They’re probably abusing PEDs. A political leader advocates for justice and decency? Surely they’re hypocritical and corrupt. A prominent and compassionate clergyperson? Probably a secret pedophile. And all the well-publicized disgraces of certain athletes, politicians, and religious figures have solidified this point of view in many people’s minds—each scandal is an affirmation that one day all of them will be exposed for what they really are. That’s a secondary part of their tragedy (the primary tragedy must always be their victims).

To be sure, there are real predators and manipulators out there. But it’s tragic to traffic in a culture of cynicism that assumes that everyone’s motives are suspect; that solipsism and self-promotion are at the core of most people’s behavior; that decency is probably a cover for horrible impulses that pervade unwoke culture.

That cynicism seems to me an outgrowth of expecting that a hero has to be perfect, and always in hero-mode; otherwise that person is no hero whatsoever.  Which seems a shame, because if you get rid of all the imperfect heroes, you aren’t going to be left with any heroes at all.

Everyone has their tremors and their doubts. Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi told a story about a time, as a young Hasid, when he went to visit his rebbe for counsel. When he arrived, he was denied admittance and told to come back tomorrow. Returning the next day, he was received with the graciousness that he was used to. Forgive me about yesterday, the rebbe explained; “The one you wanted to see yesterday was not here. Today he is.” He didn’t cease being a rebbe because he had an off day.

The new Mr. Rogers movie ends on a fantastic note (so to speak). To understand it, you have to know that Tom Hanks’s Fred Rogers wears the same slight, gentle smile throughout the entire film. Earlier in the film, Mr. Rogers is asked if he ever feels frustrated or angry. Of course I do, he replies. So how does he handle these feelings? He responds: by going swimming, or “banging all the low keys on a piano at the same time.”

In the final shot, the day’s filming has wrapped, and Fred Rogers sits alone at a piano, playing Schumann. Suddenly he stops and unexpectedly slams his fists down on the low keys of the piano.

Then he resumes playing the light, classical melody that had been interrupted.

It’s a great, ambiguous moment. There’s no warning that he was experiencing a particular crisis or having an unusually difficult day. What gave him that moment of anguish? It’s one moment in the film where we get a glimpse that there exist some troubled, churning currents underneath his placid demeanor, and the film doesn’t choose to specify what’s stirring them at that moment.

It doesn’t matter. What matters is the measure of goodness and decency that he brought into the world. So a hero is troubled occasionally by self-doubt. So he is, in fact, un-saintly and complicated. Perhaps that’s the only kind of hero we’ve ever experienced, and we should be grateful enough for that.