Why Do Parents Cry When Their Children Leave for College?

The Talmud (Shabbat 151b-152a) recognizes that people cry different types of tears. There are tears of sorrow and pain, of relief and catharsis. According to the Talmud, some kinds of weeping are beneficial and some are not.

Today, as Heidi and I bring our oldest child to his first year of college, the Rabbis’ observation seems especially insightful. Of course we are tearful. But we are well aware that there are many reasons why parents may cry when their children leave for college.

Some parents may cry because of the realization that their family structure will now be different. Sure, their son or daughter will return home in the future, even many times, but with less and less frequency as the years pass. And inevitably the day will come when their parents’ house is no longer what their children mean when they say the word “home.”

Some parents may be drawn back to the hopes and dreams and promises they made when their child arrived eighteen-or-so years ago, when life was nothing but potential waiting to be realized. And we may think about how wildly divergent life’s path actually turned out to be.

Some may weep because of the realization that time passes so quickly, and that the sweet toddler who reached for your hand is now, all too suddenly, an adult. 

Some may cry because of undifferentiated longing for their child. That is to say, their tears are not for their child’s new beginnings, but because of the loss of the parent’s own youth.

And some tears come from a new vulnerability, a realization that we can’t be there to shield and process and interpret every challenge, failure, and risk that our children are about to discover. When we discover how vulnerable we really are, the tone of our prayers changes, as Dylan identified so perfectly:

My only prayer
is if I can’t be there
Lord protect my child.

And then there is the sensation of wanting just a little bit more time. There’s a great joke from The Simpsons about the last day of school: As the last bell rings, the children leap for the door and the freedom of the summer. Then a teacher exclaims, “WAIT! You didn’t learn about how World War II ended!” The students freeze. The teacher peers into a book. “We won!” The students shout “Hooray!” and now, fully satiated with the teacher’s wisdom, can enjoy their vacation. 

I know the teacher’s feeling. As we drive away from the university, the car one seat emptier, I want to hit the brakes and say, “WAIT! There’s still something I haven’t taught you!”

But that moment is gone. What we hope for, of course, is that our children leave home with the spiritual and emotional confidence to navigate life’s inevitable disappointments and challenges. We hope that they have pride in their Jewish identity, and the knowledge that the prerequisite of functioning in a multicultural society is an assurance of yourself and where you come from.

But we also hope for something more than pride: We hope that we have given them literacy in Jewish wisdom and competence in Jewish practice to allow Judaism to inform and deepen their lives every single day. We hope that we have encouraged them to develop unquenchably thirsty minds built upon a solid bedrock of faith.

The Talmud understood that tears are complex, and the mixture of many conflicting emotions at the same time is what all of life’s most poignant moments are about. As a strange city recedes in the car’s rearview mirror and we return home, we appreciate the complexity of those feelings. We’re full of confidence, pride, and excitement for new beginnings. And we utter a short prayer, perhaps the most honest and basic prayer that there is: “God, protect our child.”

Borrowed Dresses: A Thought about Tu B'Av, the Festival of Love

Tu B’Av is a return to normalcy: Just six days after the Tisha B’Av fast that marks the destruction that senseless hate can wreak, Tu B’Av (the fifteenth of the month of Av) is a day devoted to love.

According to the Mishnah, Israel in antiquity had a minor summer festival when young women would dance in the fields, inviting young men to court them:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said:

There were no festivals more joyful for Israel than the 15th of Av and the Day of Atonement, for on [Tu B’Av] the maidens of Jerusalem would go out in borrowed white garments – borrowed, so not to shame anyone who didn’t have a garment of her own. Each of the garments required previous ritual immersion. And the maidens of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards.

 This is what they would say: “Young man! Pay close attention and see whom you are about to choose. Don’t be seduced by beauty, but pay heed to a virtuous family.” After all, “Grace is deceptive and beauty is illusory, but a woman who fears God is to be praised” (Prov. 31:30)…  
                         Mishnah Ta’anit 4:8

אָמַר רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל, לֹא הָיוּ יָמִים טוֹבִים לְיִשְׂרָאֵל כַּחֲמִשָּׁה עָשָׂר בְּאָב וּכְיוֹם הַכִּפּוּרִים, שֶׁבָּהֶן בְּנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם יוֹצְאוֹת בִּכְלֵי לָבָן שְׁאוּלִין, שֶׁלֹּא לְבַיֵּשׁ אֶת מִי שֶׁאֵין לוֹ. כָּל הַכֵּלִים טְעוּנִין טְבִילָה. וּבְנוֹת יְרוּשָׁלַיִם יוֹצְאוֹת וְחוֹלוֹת בַּכְּרָמִים. וּמֶה הָיוּ אוֹמְרוֹת, בָּחוּר, שָׂא נָא עֵינֶיךָ וּרְאֵה, מָה אַתָּה בוֹרֵר לָךְ. אַל תִּתֵּן עֵינֶיךָ בַנּוֹי, תֵּן עֵינֶיךָ בַמִּשְׁפָּחָה. שֶׁקֶר הַחֵן וְהֶבֶל הַיֹּפִי, אִשָּׁה יִרְאַת ה' הִיא תִתְהַלָּל

There’s so much here in this passage—it seems so against-the-grain of what we might imagine ancient Israel was like, including the young women, in this case, controlling their own romantic destinies. I’ve written about Tu B’Av and love in Judaism, and Rabbi Tzvi Sinensky has posted this excellent essay about the festival’s possible biblical roots.

It’s easy to skip over that passage about the “borrowed white garments.” What an astonishing custom that is: on a day of frivolity and frolicking, the young women of Jerusalem were determined that none of their peers would be hurt or humiliated while the celebrations were happening. So none would wear her own dress; instead, they would share with each other, including those from poor families who couldn’t afford a dress at all. This was how Jews celebrated.

I wonder how this principle might apply today. Our celebrations have become disasters of consumption. The more money you have, the more elaborate the celebration seems to have become. Somehow, brisses turned into bar/bat mitzvahs, bar/bat mitzvahs turned into weddings, and weddings turned into… what? Papal ordinations?

Each May in Boston, it seems that every Jewish organization has its “Annual Dinner,” where much-needed funds are raised to finance the crucial work that these non-profits, day schools, and synagogues perform year-round. And yet… I know many Jewish professionals dread that time of the year, when night after night they have to experience this season of conspicuous consumption, when many of the values of modesty, equality, and integrity go out the window in pursuit of the big donors’ money. One (important) organization, for instance, is known for charging substantial dollars for a seat at its annual dinner—and for those who pay less, but are committed to the cause, there are tables in an entirely different room from the rest of the donors and speakers! They get to watch the event videostreamed to them in their "annex."

But enough grumpiness. I’m thinking about the daughters of Jerusalem, and what we might learn from them. They teach us, for instance, why Tzedakah organizations that feed hungry people need to serve dinner on china, and use real utensils, even though plastic utensils are so much easier to clean up. It’s why food programs need fresh baked pies and chocolate chip cookies, not just soup and a green vegetable.

It’s why it’s not enough to donate your old clothes—by definition, clothes that you wouldn’t wear any more—or your old furniture, or old video games, or anything else. Laudable as those gifts may be (they certainly shouldn't be thrown out), we're supposed to reach for a higher standard. Maimonides had this nailed 900 years ago. He said that the definition of “Love your neighbor as yourself” was this: “What I want for myself, I want for other people. And what I don’t want for myself, I don’t want [to happen to] them.” (Sefer HaMitzvot, Positive Mitzvah #206)

Can you imagine a high school prom—where all the students, boys and girls alike, wear “borrowed clothes” from one another, so that no one is trying to outdo their neighbor? No one would show up in a fancier car than anyone else—not only because it’s in extremely bad taste, but also because they wouldn’t want to humiliate anyone whose family couldn’t afford otherwise.

Can you imagine how different synagogue life would be—especially in the notorious “Bar Mitzvah Year”? Rich families would no longer say, “If I’ve got it, why shouldn’t I flaunt it?” Because they would understand that exorbitant spending puts pressure on all the other families in a community, making others think, “I suppose that’s the community standard that is expected of us.”

Of course, every child in the class would be invited to everyone else’s birthday party—because no one would ever want to have someone else be hurt on the occasion of their celebration.

I'd be curious to know other ways in which readers would apply this principle. Can you imagine how different, how sensitive, how empathetic our communities could be?

I can imagine it. Call it a hippie-socialist-Bernie-kibbutz fantasy if you want, but I'll take the Sages and the young women of Jerusalem from long ago, and their definition of what a "Festival of Love" really should be. 

The Exile of Tisha B'Av: What Are We Mourning?

Exile is one of the preeminent themes of the Torah. From the outset of Genesis, Adam and Eve are exiled from the Garden of Eden. Abraham is called by God to “the land I will show you” but famine forces him to seek refuge in Egypt. Joseph is sold off to Egypt, where, at the end of his life, he makes his family promise, “When God has taken notice of you, carry up my bones from here” (Gen. 50:25). The remainder of the Torah – all of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy – charts Israel’s pursuit of a path back home.

Jewish history works in similar cycles of dispersion and return. David and Solomon established a kingdom and a Temple in Jerusalem, but these were demolished in 586 B.C.E. and the survivors of Judah were deported eastward. They longed for Zion by the rivers of Babylon. A generation later, a remnant returned and rebuilt the kingdom and its Temple in Jerusalem. The Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 C.E., and again the Jews became a people in exile. For centuries, Jews built Diaspora communities even as stragglers returned to the Land, to pray or to die there. The advent of Zionism in the 19th century marked our most dramatic effort since the days of the Bible to return home. 

We have known different kinds of exile. There is political exile – distance from our physical home – and there is spiritual exile – distance from our spiritual Source. Zionism sought to put an end to the political state of exile, but spiritual exile continues to be our existential reality everywhere, including in the Land of Israel.

The fast of the 9th of Av – Tisha B'Av – is devoted to reflection on what it means to live in exile. The shorthand is that it is the date when both the First and Second Temples were destroyed.

But Tisha B’Av isn’t only about history, just as Pesach and Chanukah are not “only” about history. The genius of the rabbis who shaped Judaism is in the way they spiritualized history and filled it with religious meaning for subsequent generations.

Thus, the events of Tisha B’Av aren’t simply understood as historical calamities. After all, catastrophes have befallen the Jewish people on every day of the calendar year. But they are signposts for a religious condition:

Exile from the homeland
Exile from God
Exile from one another

This is the great secret of Tisha B’Av: The last two are really one. Because in Judaism’s religious humanism (or humanistic religion?), distance from other people necessarily results in distance from God:

Why was the First Temple destroyed?
Because of three things:
Idolatry, Sexual immorality, and Bloodshed….

But the Second Temple –
when people were occupied with Torah, Mitzvot, and gemilut chasadim –
Why was it destroyed?
Because of senseless hatred (sinat chinam).
(Talmud, Yoma 9b)

Consider the theological outlook the Talmud is teaching. The First Temple stood at a time of rampant perversion and hypocrisy, so naturally (in the rabbinic mindset) it was lost. But the Second Temple stood during centuries that were recalled for Torah and adherence to mitzvot (commandments). Why would God allow it to be destroyed?

The answer, says the Talmud, is because of rampant hatred that existed among the Jews – even as they were living according to the letter of the Law. Service to God in the Temple was not meant to be performed with hate in their hearts.

The Temple was designed to be a place of intimacy – between God and the People, and between and among the people who gathered there. As people became estranged from one another – when they could no longer see the image of God in the face of the person opposite them – then their worship and the Temple itself became hollow. An institution based on lies and hypocrisies cannot stand. Made as trivial as a piece of tissue paper, it is as if God crumpled it up and tossed it aside – because, spiritually speaking, it was already destroyed. The assault of the Romans was just a final punctuation mark.

The astonishing lesson of the Torah is that only one creation is made “in the image of God” – human beings. To treat other people with contempt or disgust or hate is to treat God’s only image that way. As a result, estrangement from one another and estrangement from God are intertwined.

The Tisha B’Av fast marks a sad reality: this is the world in which we live, each in our own isolated cones with our own preoccupations and nursing our own hurts. This scenario illustrates what it means to live in exile; exile is the metaphysical sense of being alone, and it is our own doing.

If we find it hard to mourn the loss of “The Temple” on Tisha B’Av, no matter; mourn for something else.

Mourn for our distance from God.

Mourn for our distance from each other. 

This piece originally appeared on reformjudaism.org on July 19, 2018.

...an entire world...

Great visual midrash from @thelucidreams:

On Sanhedrin 4:5:

לְלַמֶּדְךָ, שֶׁכָּל הַמְאַבֵּד נֶפֶשׁ אַחַת, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ אִבֵּד עוֹלָם מָלֵא. וְכָל הַמְקַיֵּם נֶפֶשׁ אַחַת, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ קִיֵּם עוֹלָם מָלֵא

...to teach you that whoever destroys a single life is considered by the Torah to have destroyed an entire world; and whoever saves a single life is considered by the Torah to have saved an entire world... 
 

Elegy for… a Character: A Tzedakah Story

Even a poor person—one who is sustained by Tzedakah funds—
is required to give Tzedakah to another person.
Maimonides, Mishneh Torah
Laws of Giving to Poor People 10:5
 

My friend Renee was a character. She was well known in our town; you couldn’t miss her. Her frizzy salt-and-pepper hair was often bound in a pigtail like a schoolgirl’s. She drove an SUV that was constantly breaking down, packed to the roof with the telltale possessions of an inveterate hoarder. She had weary eyes that conveyed years of adventures.

She lived on the precipice of homelessness. For a while she stayed in emergency shelters—scary places that she would recount with stark tales. In recent years, she found more stable housing, finding cheap rooms to rent in residential homes around Natick. And she knew how to work the system, making her rounds to get the food, gas money, and, especially, the money for medications that she needed.

I suppose that’s where I came in. She started dropping in on me years ago at the synagogue where I worked. At first she came for Tzedakah money, knowing that people gave me funds to distribute in emergency situations. But she would linger, telling me stories, asking about my family, and, I think, looking for some human contact that can be the harshest thing people who are very poor lack.

Like many such characters, she tested the nerves of those who didn’t “get” her. When she began to show up at the synagogue—ensconced in one of the wealthiest Zip Codes in America—some people whispered behind her back. Being Jewish herself, she accepted my invitation to come to Friday night services. Sometimes the bar/bat mitzvah families with out-of-town guests would murmur about the woman who looked funny and took too much of the food that was offered before the service began. The staff grumbled when she would sit on the couch outside my office, waiting without an appointment to grab a few minutes of my time. Hebrew school parents and kids kept their distance.

She was funky. She looked funky, she talked funky, and sometimes she smelled funky. Initially our relationship was based on shnorring—she needed money, and she knew that I was usually reliable to help her pay her heating bill during the cold winter, or fill a prescription for her urgently-needed heart medicine.

Sometimes she exasperated me. I know, of course, about the social service agencies in our area that are there to provide a safety net. I begged her—I insisted—that she connect with them. She would reply that her nonconformist hippie soul wouldn’t be part of their “system.” That made me crazy; I threatened to cut her off if she didn’t take their assistance. But she would inevitably show up with a bill for heart medication, and of course I would help pay for it.

After a while, the dynamic of our relationship changed. She knew I was going through some rough times personally, so one day she invited me to lunch. I demurred—where in the world would she get the money from?—but she insisted. So a few days later, she took me out to a local diner. I’m sure we got a few stares. But the gesture meant so much to me: she considered me a friend; she knew I was down, and she treated. She didn’t even let me cover the tip.       

Yes, she was a character. She wasn’t invisible, but she became one of those offbeat folk who populate a suburban town who are tolerated as long as they don’t become too much of a nuisance.

But because she was my friend, I knew things that others didn’t.

I knew that she had a Master’s degree in counseling from the University of Wisconsin. I knew about her daughter at American University, of whom she was very proud. I knew that she had spent time in Israel, and spoke a limited but comprehensible Hebrew. And I knew she still saw herself as a “Sixties Person”—committed to volunteerism and social activism. She once told me stories about working on the Clearwater Project on the Hudson River with Pete and Toshi Seeger.

But now I’ll share something with you that very few people knew (including her daughter, until I told her). She couldn’t stand just being on the receiving end of the cycle of caring. “This isn’t me,” she’d say, insisting that her younger self was alive and well inside her rather emaciated and graying body.

So one day she handed me a large folder. “I know you see a lot of hurting folks throughout the course of the day,” she said. “So when you feel it’s appropriate, please give people one of these.”

Inside the folder were ten envelopes labeled “For You.” In each one was a handwritten personalized note. Each was a gentle message of compassion and tenderness. For instance:

To remind you
How unique and
Wonderful You
Are—
every day,
every hour
—And to wish you
extra energy for the things you’re
currently tackling…

Or:

Please accept this
as a symbol
of some
great things
comin’ your way—
for example
Brightness
Fairness
HAPPINESS…
Enjoy your
wonderful
future.

And enclosed in each card was a $2 bill. (A $2 bill!) The instructions were not to keep this money for yourself, but to take it and use it to brighten someone else’s day.

Look at what an extraordinary Mitzvah that is. She did it completely anonymously; she left it to me to identify the adults, teens, or kids who needed cheering-up. I was not to tell the recipients where it came from; it was just from “a friend, someone who cares.” And the cards were designed to trigger a chain reaction of compassion and human kindness. This is Tzedakah—but Tzedakah with the personal touch, rooted in compassion and a desire to make a connection with people who may be desperately lonely.

Renee died last week; her heart finally gave out, surely not helped by the on-the-edge lifestyle she was living. There weren’t obituaries in the paper or online; few people noticed. Many who encountered her over the years may have forgotten her, or figured that she just skipped town. But she deserves a better memorial.

I know many more juicy stories that she shared with me, but I won’t tell them here. Suffice to say that she was a character, and she lived out the Rambam’s principle that everyone’s (everyone’s) task is to bring kindness and caring into the world, not indifference and lies. I just wanted to say that she was my friend, I’ll miss her, and she made a difference.

Philip Roth: An Appreciation of the Wicked Child

I am one of the Exiles of Newark, New Jersey.

My father was raised on Goldsmith Avenue, became a Bar Mitzvah at Young Israel, and went to Weequahic High School, class of ’59. His mother was born in Newark; both she and my grandfather spent their careers teaching in the Newark public school system. My great-grandparents’ graves are in Newark, in the McClellan Street cemeteries.

No doubt I would have been there too. Except that, to bastardize the words of Agnon, through a historical accident—the upward mobility of postwar Jews, the riots of 1967—I was born in one of the villages of the Diaspora.

The Old B'nai Jeshurun building in Newark, now Hopewell Baptist Church.

It always struck me that Newark must have been one of the most extraordinary communities of the American Exile. All the currents of Jewish life in early 20th century America—socialism, Zionism, Reform, Orthodoxy, Yiddish culture, labor—flourished in its environs. In 1948, nearly 60,000 Jews lived in Newark[1], served by scores of synagogues. The caliber of rabbis, cultural figures, political leaders, labor and social justice advocates, business leaders, and philanthropists that emerged from that place is astounding. And it disappeared so incredibly quickly.

But Newark endured in the stories of Philip Roth, and for that reason I always took Roth’s writings personally. As he dissected the psyche of the city and its expatriates, I told myself I was discovering my origins. (That’s ridiculously romantic, of course. Like many Jews of Eastern European descent, my family lived in Newark for barely two and a half generations. But we’ve got very little to go on about the Old Country—the shtetlach and hamlets that were annihilated by the Russians, Poles, Ukrainians, et al—so Newark is all I’ve got.)

Roth left Newark, but wouldn’t leave it behind. Newark—with its concentration of Jews anxious to become optometrists and entertainment lawyers and accountants; its polio terror and stickball in the streets; its racial tensions and Nazi paranoia—was a prism through which he wrote about America.

Now that Roth is dead, the American Jewish community can start doing what it always does: remaking him in our image. Which is rather a shame.

Because Roth at his core was the wicked child of the Seder. He dared to fling our pieties in our faces and say, “Yes—but what does all this mean to you?” Starting with Goodbye, Columbus and running like a crimson thread throughout his work, he satirized and criticized the Jewish community as only an insider could.

Consider his devastating short story, “The Conversion of the Jews” (1959). Ozzie Freedman is a bored Hebrew school kid of the sort that the Coen Brothers captured so perfectly in the movie A Serious Man. He is punished by the rabbi and other authorities for asking “dangerous” questions, the kind that the wicked child asks. Ultimately Ozzie ends up on the roof, threatening to jump unless the Rabbi and the adults answer the question that got him rebuked in the first place: “Do you think that an almighty God could make a child without intercourse?”

It’s so perfect, because Ozzie found the exact question to prick everyone’s sensibilities: the rabbi’s platitudes, the newly-emancipated liberal Jews’ boundaries with their Christian neighbors, and of course the sexual obsessions which Roth would explode in Portnoy’s Complaint.

Or consider his 1993 novel Operation Shylock. The narrative itself is outrageous. A famous Jewish writer named Philip Roth discovers that some nutjob has taken the alter ego “Philip Roth” and is spreading the gospel of “Diasporism,” leading Jews out of Israel and back to Europe—an antisemitic fantasy!

But here’s the rub: like any great critic, Roth knew intimately the subject he criticized, which ultimately rebounded back on himself. If he mocked Israel as a modern Jewish shibboleth, Operation Shylock also shows a deep intimacy with its people, its culture, and its totems. For instance, his true (not fictional) dialogues with Israeli author Aharon Appelfeld in the book (Appelfeld died just this past January) reveal sensitive insights about what, exactly, Jewish identity means at the turn of the twenty-first century.

Ultimately Roth’s subject wasn’t Judaism, it was America. He asked: Why shouldn’t the Jewish lens be as valid as any other lens through which we can understand America? After all, Faulkner wrote about America, but through the perspective of the American South. So did Steinbeck, via the western frontier. So did Ellison, and Kerouac, and so on. America is big and complex and refracted into a thousand hues. Who’s to say that America’s freedoms and dysfunctions aren’t perfectly represented through the eyes of Bucky Cantor, a Newark playground director terrorized by polio (Nemesis, 2010)? Or Coleman Silk, the classics professor who gets caught in the wheels of the political correctness machine (The Human Stain, 2000)?

Or, for that matter, Roth’s masterful creation Swede Levov, the protagonist of American Pastoral (1997)? His name is the perfect encapsulation of Roth’s work: a Newark Jew who marries a (shiksa) beauty queen, flees to the Jersey suburbs, and expects that his Nordic looks and nickname will help him shed his history. But the shtetl, and the past, is as present as his surname.

America does fascinating things to the identities of its immigrants and their descendants. Those complexities are more than enough to stake a career on. We were blessed to be of a generation that had such an articulate master to challenge our assumptions and satirize our self-righteousness. If we grapple with Roth seriously, we will understand ourselves better—because it will be much harder to hide.

[1] William B. Helmreich, The Enduring Community: The Jews of Newark and Metrowest, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999, p.30.

Broken Clocks (on the U.S. Embassy Opening in Jerusalem)

Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounts from his horse and enters Jerusalem on foot, December, 1917.

I was wrong.

I was wrong in December when I wrote ambivalently about moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. At that time, I wrote that while of course Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, “sometimes it is better to be smart than to be right.”  It’s hard to admit being wrong, but I was.

And it’s even harder when the messenger is someone like President Donald Trump, who it seems is determined to wrap even the moments when he’s right with so much narcissism, abuse, and seventh-grade-bully smarminess that you just want to say, “what he’s for, I’m against.”

But you know the saying about broken clocks, and it is foolish to conclude that, just because another’s motives are suspect, they are actually wrong.

I was ambivalent about moving the embassy because I thought it was bad for Israel’s security, because I thought it would launch tirades of anti-Israel violence, and because I thought it would isolate American foreign policy as a broker in the Middle East.

I realize now that each of these premises was faulty. American isolation is following apace due to the Administration’s other “America First” policies and obnoxious diplomacy, not because of the embassy. But regarding Israel, in fact, a trickle of countries are tentatively indicating that they will follow the American lead and move their embassies as well (Guatemala, and possibly Honduras and Romania, although the Czechs seem to have changed their minds). This is a very good thing, and I hope we quickly reach a tipping-point of other countries following suit.

Further, the expected waves of violence in Arab countries did not follow. (The Hamas-inspired violence on Gaza’s border is not because of the embassy move. If anything, it is connected to the 70th anniversary of the Independence/Nakba, and the delusions that terrorism will reset the world’s clocks to a time when there was no Israel.) 

And I argued that moving the embassy was symbolic; no one’s life (except for the ambassador's) would be enhanced by moving it, so the risk of disaster outweighed the benefits of symbolism.

But symbols are important. Our religious and civic lives are full of symbolism. For instance, at the Brandeis graduation yesterday, I was struck again by how full of  “ancient” symbolism our academic exercises are (from caps and gowns—make sure your hood is the right color!—to the regalia that the university president wears, to the solemn intonation of an alma mater). Israelis understandably feel delegitimized by the refusal, even of allies, to acknowledge that Jerusalem is the authentic capital of the State—the place where, de facto, everyone knows the political and legal seats of government are.

The move really has nothing to do with Palestinians, and nothing to do with peace processes, or two states, or even preventing a future Palestinian state from having its capital in East Jerusalem.

So the administration was right—I daresay, even courageous in moving the embassy.

And I was wrong.  I just hope and pray that six months from now, I won’t be writing a blog that says, “I was wrong about being wrong.”

Because these people sure know how to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Instead of approaching Jerusalem with modesty and humility, as when Gen. Edmond Allenby dismounted his horse and entered the City of Cities on foot in 1917, the embassy opened with triumphalism and backslapping. Instead of celebrating Jerusalem, they celebrate themselves.

“Modesty and humility” are incoherent to these people. (“When President Trump makes a promise, he keeps it,” said son-in-law Jared Kushner, the sort of sycophantic and self-serving comment we’ve come to expect in lieu of what could have been a moment of oratorical inspiration.) The presence of uber-racist pastors, the voices of the evangelical hard right, is obscene. So, too, was the presence of the pro-Israel but anti-Jewish millenialist reactionaries (hello, Michele Bachmann? Are these people really interested in reviving this lunatic’s career?).

Supporters of the Administration love quoting the Bible. Some of them even compare Donald Trump to a modern day Cyrus of Persia! (As if Zionist history never happened! As if we hadn’t already returned to the Land!)

They might consider other parts of the Bible, such as the words of Jeremiah. Over twenty-six hundred years ago, Jeremiah (7:1-15) warned about the hypocrisy of those who spend too much time mouthing praises of Jerusalem (“The Temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord, The Temple of the Lord are these!!”, v.4) while simultaneously promoting injustice, moral perversion, and arrogance. Jerusalem demands morality, both personal and social. To behave otherwise is to mock its religious premise.

Moving the embassy is a very good thing. It should be accompanied by a set of moral values that represent city’s ancient heritage: a place for God to dwell among human beings, a place of seeking moral repair, and a place of yearning for real peace.

On Israel's 70th Independence Day

My prized possession:

The front page of the daily American Yiddish newspaper “Der Tog” ("The Day"), May 15, 1948, the day after Israel’s independence. On that day the paper was produced in blue ink. My grandfather saved it for me, giving it to me about five years after his death.

The large headline says, Iddishe Melukha: "Jewish State."

"Recognition from America"

“Ben Gurion proclaims Jewish State: 'Israel'”

Lower left corner: Truman, Herzl, and Ben Gurion

1,978 years after the destruction of Jerusalem.

!חג שמח

Reflections on a Winter Nor'easter

As I write, my family is stuck in our home, as the most recent nor’easter has brought down trees and power lines on our street. We spent last night by candlelight, cooking dinner in our fireplace.  Shabbat is arriving imminently, so a cousin will come and pick us up around the corner and bring us to her house, and we’ll get a reprieve from the cold and dark.

Much more important is the elderly couple on our block, who are being evacuated by the fire department and will be taken to stay in a local hotel until the street is cleared and the power returns, which seems to still be a few days away.

And you know what? It doesn’t matter. It’s a hassle, for sure.  But if nothing else, it should be a reminder—a reminder of just how darn easy and comfortable we have it here in these affluent suburbs. Not everyone, of course. We have neighbors in our town who struggle to make ends meet, people who have grave financial worries about their future. My wife and I know people well who have lived without a roof over their heads, who are not able to provide three meals a day for themselves and their families.

But most of us live fairly comfortable lives here—not just the wealthiest nation in the world, but the wealthiest nation that the world has ever known. 

And a little inconvenience from Mother Nature should be a reminder of just how good we have it, and how there are people near and far who know real desperation. If times like this don’t help us grow into people with deeper stores of empathy and compassion, then we are truly hopeless.

If you happen to live in an affluent place, and if you know that your electrical power, automobile, food supply, and security in your housing will regain their equilibrium pretty quickly, you should be profoundly grateful. Because that means you don’t have to count yourself among:

·      The ¼ of all human beings in the world who live without electricity, approximately           1.6 billion people[1]

·      805 million people in the world who do not have enough food to eat.[2]

·      769 million people who live (or not) on less than $1.90 per day.[3]

It means that your children, whom you would do anything to protect, need not be counted among the 1 billion children of other people who are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 die due to their poverty every day.[4]

And if we needed reminders, America is not immune to extreme poverty either. There are 40.6 million Americans living poverty; 12.7% of the population.[5] According to the point-in-time count of America’s homeless community in 2017, there are 553,742 people without housing on a given night.[6] (Noting that there are different kinds of homelessness—chronic, transitional, episodic; plus the many thousands in America who live on the brink of homelessness, just a paycheck or two away.)

If I sound crabby, it’s not because I haven’t showered in two days. It’s simply a profound frustration of our human nature—my own absolutely included—that forgets that what we consider to be inconveniences are so ludicrous in the grand scheme of need that really exists in the world.

It’s a frustration born of living in general proximity to some of the wealthiest Zip Codes in America—and knowing that materialism, greed, and complacency co-exist (and often prevail) over empathy, generosity, and living gratefully.

A destructive winter storm like this one really stinks. Some neighbors will experience lots of property damage (and insurance claims), work hours will be lost, appointments will be missed, food in the freezer will probably go bad.

But in a few short weeks, equilibrium for most of us will return. Spring will arrive. At that time, Jewish people will sit down at their seder tables. We’ll raise a piece of matzah and say, “This is the bread of affliction… Let all who are hungry come and eat.”

In order for those words not to reek of irony and hypocrisy, we have to recognize that in our inconvenience is the tiniest taste of what real suffering is like; a flavor that a staggering number of human beings around the world know intimately.

If we can emerge from our inconveniences with a deeper sense of empathy, generosity, and an awareness of how unbelievably, undeservedly blessed we really are—then maybe this Passover will bring a bit of real liberation after all.

[1] United Nations, “The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007.”

[2] Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2014, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World, 2014.”

[3] “The U.S. Can No Longer Hide from Its Deep Poverty Problem,” Angus Deaton, New York Times, January 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/24/opinion/poverty-united-states.html

[4] “UNICEF: Committing to Child Survival: A Promise Renewed,” United Nations Interagency Group for Child Mortality Estimation (UN IGME), 2014.

[5] https://www.census.gov/topics/income-poverty/poverty.html

[6] National Coalition for the Homeless, http://nationalhomeless.org/about-homelessness/

​​​​​​​Nevertheless, Esther Persisted: Purim in a Nutshell

An insecure ruler, prone to acting on his whims and accustomed to a lifestyle of outrageous luxury and recreation, loves nothing more than dining and celebrating with the wealthy elite who support him.[1] He declares a nationwide holiday, many months devoted to opulence and debauchery.

The king's holiday is a celebration of deregulation.[2]

The king has a closed circle of male sycophantic advisors[3], all of whom are outwardly subservient to the king (but behind the scenes, know that he is easily manipulated by flattery[4]). They call for the queen to perform erotically for them.[5] Vashti rejects the king’s crass locker-room talk.

Vashti, the king’s first wife and a victim of his sexual predation[6], disappears from the story, never to be heard from again. The king is excited to marry a new and younger wife, perhaps an immigrant to Shushan. In essence, the king holds a "Miss Persia" pageant which he owns (and of course has no reservations taking advantage of the young hopeful contestants).

A young Jewish woman named Hadassah—but who goes in polite society by the less ethnic-sounding name Esther[7]—against all odds ends up in the royal household. To ensure populist approval, the king cuts taxes and distributes favors among his supporters.[8]

The king appoints Haman, who has a notorious nationalist[9] and anti-Semitic record,[10] to be his senior advisor.

Mordecai, who like many Jews has achieved great success in Persia[11], uncovers a plot and saves the king’s life. When Mordecai refuses to bow to Haman, Haman issues a decree of annihilation against the Jews. He seduces the king with talk about how a third-column of immigrants threatens real Persians.[12] It is time to put Persia First; Haman posits that a sinister cabal of Jews who follow only their own protocols is holding the nation back from being great.[13] Antisemitic incidents rise; it’s worse than it’s been in anyone’s recent memory.

There is no official response from the administration.

Mordecai petitions Esther to take a stand. Esther agrees, but notes that everyone in the king’s inner circle knows that he is very prone to impulsiveness and lashing out, so who knows what will happen?[14]

Nevertheless, Esther persisted.[15] She invites the king and Haman to a most exclusive royal banquet.

Meanwhile, despite the air of general prosperity, Haman is incensed that a foreigner—Mordecai—continues not to know his own place.[16] He plots to have Mordecai killed.

The king, unable to sleep, instructs an aide read to him (rather than actually reading himself).[17] There, he discovers that even though Mordecai had saved his life, he had not remembered to thank him. Haman is forced to lead Mordecai in a royal procession through the capital. Humiliated, Haman mourns for his once-great country.[18]

Haman, the king, and Esther have their private banquet. She reveals Haman’s plot and the king, enraged, declares that his friend and former advisor has clearly lost his mind.[19] Haman is publicly executed.

However, the edict calling for the destruction of the Jews remains in effect. The arcane founding laws of the country have not evolved with current technology, so there is no legal way to prevent a massacre from happening.[20]  An edict calls upon the Jews to defend themselves against their enemies.

The resistance is successful. The Jews find success unlike any they have received in any other kingdom.[21] Esther and Mordecai are ensconced in power. In their opulence, wealth, and feasting—and in becoming accustomed to violence committed in their name, always in self-defense, of course[22]—the Jews of Shushan even start to act just like the Persians did at the beginning of the book. [23]

A holiday is declared to remember these events. Part of the observance is a reminder to give gifts to poor people,[24] who previously have been invisible in this story.

An annual day of irreverence and celebration—called “Purim,” to remind us how so much of our fate relies on chance—is established.

The king raises taxes.[25] Life returns to normal. The book ends with praise of Mordecai, who apparently saved the Jews singlehandedly.[26]

[1] Esther 1:3
[2] 1:8
[3] 1:10, 1:14
[4] 1:19-20
[5] 1:11, Esther Rabbah 3:13
[6] 1:12
[7] 2:7
[8] 2:18
[9] Esther Rabbah 7:4
[10] 3:1
[11] Esther Rabbah 6:2
[12] 3:8
[13] 3:8
[14] 4:11
[15] 4:15
[16] 5:9
[17] 6:1
[18] 6:12
[19] 7:8
[20] 8:8
[21] 8:17, 9:4
[22] 9:5, 9:16
[23] 9:17
[24] 9:22
[25] 10:1
[26] 10:2-3