It was a busy week, even more so, since I spent two nights away--Sunday in DC so that I could be with some of our high school kids lobbying on Capitol Hill for the Religious Action Center; and Wednesday in Cambridge, speaking to the board of a foundation that supports our work in Brooklyn. In each instance, I found myself thinking about clerks.
Clerks at the Amtrak Stations in New York, DC and Boston; and clerks at hotels in DC and Cambridge. I thought of their levels of friendliness; the way in which their comportment was one which carried the weight of serving a customer. And I especially noticed the more silent or even invisible clerks, who make train stations and trains and hotels comfortable places to be. Are they clean? Are they welcoming? Is it *pleasant* to connect with them?
This set of reflections was brought about by my recent visits to Trader Joe's, which, I'll admit, I'm finding very pleasant--and not just because their beer, Simpler Times, is made in Monroe, Wisconsin (which produced Huber, a Madison favorite.)
At Trader Joe's, I found everything about the experience--from walking in to checking out--to be enormously friendly and enjoyable. Why is that?
In the corporate world, it's because good service generally earns you more money. But besides that, it earns you loyalty (which translates into more money, I understand) but the loyalty piece is what interests me, especially since these days, good loyalty is hard to find. In many ways one might say it's undervalued, given the clicky epidemic of instantaneous information overloads that we all suffer from. We're always on to the next thing. It seems very little actually *abides*.
So it had me thinking about the synagogue. Our synagogue, yes, but all synagogues, everywhere. And ways in which the strength of a synagogue in fact rests upon the shoulders of the clerks, those tasked with serving the community on all levels--from the rabbis to the staff to the security to the maintenance crew. Do we own the shared mission of creating a space in which to not only abide but thrive? Do we greet with a willingness and pride in service? Does the very space in which we do our work exude a sense of mission--whether it's a mission to spend your contributions well or serve you with an open heart in whatever capacity you seek an encounter inside our walls?
The synagogue's strength is often that it breeds familiarity. This is a great asset. It connotes accessibility, warmth, and the value of connection. But familiarity, as they say, also breeds contempt. And when things are going wrong, that same familiarity can tolerate what ought not to be tolerated. It takes vision, and wisdom, perseverance, and hard work to maintain a familiarly accessible, warm and connected community.
I always marvel at how in the week following the incident with the Golden Calf, this week's double parshah--VaYakhel and Pekudei--concerns itself with the sacred task of completing the Tabernacle, the place where God will reside for the Jewish people as they continue their journey in the desert on their way to the Promised Land. The people's abiding interest in God and God's abiding faith in them is what fuels their reconciliation, one week after a disastrous apostasy, so that a home may be made for God and the people can keep God close.
The rather clerk-like "accounting" of the materials used to construct the Tabernacle give us an opportunity to be reminded that any synagogue community is, on one level, the aggregate of its individual parts. The strips of wood; the brass door knobs; the bathroom faucets; the memorial plaques; the answering machine; the website--each of these elements are portals into the reflective question, "Are we the sum of our parts?"
Or, perhaps more elementally, "Are we giving people a reason to believe?"
In Exodus 40.33, when the end of the building of the Tabernacle is described, the text says, "And he reared up the court round about the Tabernacle and the altar, and set up the screen of the gate of the court. So Moses finished the work." This *finishing* the Sages teach us, is described with the same verb used to describe God's finishing the work of Creation back in Genesis and so by analogy they teach us that this task of Moses was God-like in its devotion to and vision for creating a whole universe for others to enjoy.
A universe where there is presence; warmth; and a sense of community in all that one encounters when one enters the walls of the synagogue.
How does the journey from Egypt, the Exodus, end? "For the cloud of the Eternal was upon the Tabernacle by day, and there was fire therein by night, in the sight of all the house of Israel, throughout all their journeys."
May we merit such presence at the corner of 8th and Garfield.
Shabbat Shalom
12 March 2010
11 March 2010
Ye Civic Minded Patriots!
Penn Station in New York feels like the belly of the beast. It's hot, unventilated, and the smells of sweet rolls and coffee are less pleasant and more anesthetizing to just how disturbing a place it actually is. I contrast it with both Union Station in DC where I was on Sunday and South Station in Boston, where I am today, waiting for a train back to New York after being in Cambridge for a meeting.
Mayor Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver team up against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and developer Larry Silverstein on the Op-Ed page of the Times today, to make the point that the clock is ticking on making significant headway with construction of the final pieces of Ground Zero.
They write, "Delays at the site have already cost the Port Authority tens of millions of public dollars. Not only would further delays cost much more, but rent proceeds from a thriving World Trade Center would provide money for the Port Authority’s other transportation projects around the city, including Moynihan Station and a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River."
Bloomberg and Silver place blame squarely on the shoulders of the Port Authority.
Opposite their article, the Times editorial staff takes the opposite view, arguing that there may be a glut of office space at Ground Zero if all the building goes ahead as planned and therefore the Port Authority is correct in not helping Silverstein with the final phase of the loan program to make the project work.
And so the stalemate continues. The remarkably slow progress on civic projects is one of the things I find the most confounding about living in New York. It seems that no one really has the "whole pie" in mind and negotiations are forever getting bogged down in a series of bureaucratic stalemates and posturing that reminds me of what Joe Biden must be feeling on his mission to get Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other. Everyone's gotta get a leg up; few seem capable of making the necessary sacrifices for the greater good.
A city as big and powerful as New York needs an incredibly strong arm to muscle through successful civic projects like a re-conceptualized Penn Station. That the "greatest city in America" should have an energy conscious transportation hub should be a given. That the "greatest city in America" tolerates a hell-hole like Penn Station, where Maya Lin's public art is a grim after-thought and more attention is paid to the overwhelming circus like smells of cotton candy is just one of the dumbest things I can think of, literally.
There are projects that were under construction when we moved here in 1990 and twenty years later, they seem nowhere near complete. This can't be good for anyone, except the construction companies that keep winning the contracts.
What's the point, you ask?
In my neck of the woods, we're about to embark on a massive project to repair, renovate and renew our two buildings. As an historical project, we'll be taking on the Idea of the Reform Synagogue from one hundred years ago and seeing how those ideas are or are no longer relevant to who we are today. As a community project, we will be taking on all those ideas for what kind of community hub the synagogue should be, recognizing that we serve many populations in Brooklyn. And, most important, as a Jewish project, we will be managing multiple perspectives on what a public Jewish home is, what a synagogue is, what a gathering space, a meeting space, a learning space and a spiritual space is all about. It will be a tremendous challenge, requiring both strength and flexibility. But it won't take twenty years.
And it won't take twenty years because the goal is to develop a shared purpose, a unified mission, rooted in the notion that our synagogue is here to serve God, the Jewish people and humankind. Serving other interests will only distract us from this mission, and get us needless bogged down.
I'd like to hear THAT articulated by our civic leaders when they make their proclamations about Ground Zero, Penn Station, the BQE, or wherever. Public service, like Jewish service, is service. It is to, a degree, among the highest values of living a person can choose.
I yearn for a time, may it arrive soon, when the proud language of sacrifice and service returns to our public discourse.
Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the bright light and fresh air of South Station. My train arrives shortly, having arrived here by the electric powered T. Nicely done ye civic-minded patriots of Boston! To your continued success!
Mayor Bloomberg and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver team up against the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and developer Larry Silverstein on the Op-Ed page of the Times today, to make the point that the clock is ticking on making significant headway with construction of the final pieces of Ground Zero.
They write, "Delays at the site have already cost the Port Authority tens of millions of public dollars. Not only would further delays cost much more, but rent proceeds from a thriving World Trade Center would provide money for the Port Authority’s other transportation projects around the city, including Moynihan Station and a new passenger rail tunnel under the Hudson River."
Bloomberg and Silver place blame squarely on the shoulders of the Port Authority.
Opposite their article, the Times editorial staff takes the opposite view, arguing that there may be a glut of office space at Ground Zero if all the building goes ahead as planned and therefore the Port Authority is correct in not helping Silverstein with the final phase of the loan program to make the project work.
And so the stalemate continues. The remarkably slow progress on civic projects is one of the things I find the most confounding about living in New York. It seems that no one really has the "whole pie" in mind and negotiations are forever getting bogged down in a series of bureaucratic stalemates and posturing that reminds me of what Joe Biden must be feeling on his mission to get Israelis and Palestinians talking to each other. Everyone's gotta get a leg up; few seem capable of making the necessary sacrifices for the greater good.
A city as big and powerful as New York needs an incredibly strong arm to muscle through successful civic projects like a re-conceptualized Penn Station. That the "greatest city in America" should have an energy conscious transportation hub should be a given. That the "greatest city in America" tolerates a hell-hole like Penn Station, where Maya Lin's public art is a grim after-thought and more attention is paid to the overwhelming circus like smells of cotton candy is just one of the dumbest things I can think of, literally.
There are projects that were under construction when we moved here in 1990 and twenty years later, they seem nowhere near complete. This can't be good for anyone, except the construction companies that keep winning the contracts.
What's the point, you ask?
In my neck of the woods, we're about to embark on a massive project to repair, renovate and renew our two buildings. As an historical project, we'll be taking on the Idea of the Reform Synagogue from one hundred years ago and seeing how those ideas are or are no longer relevant to who we are today. As a community project, we will be taking on all those ideas for what kind of community hub the synagogue should be, recognizing that we serve many populations in Brooklyn. And, most important, as a Jewish project, we will be managing multiple perspectives on what a public Jewish home is, what a synagogue is, what a gathering space, a meeting space, a learning space and a spiritual space is all about. It will be a tremendous challenge, requiring both strength and flexibility. But it won't take twenty years.
And it won't take twenty years because the goal is to develop a shared purpose, a unified mission, rooted in the notion that our synagogue is here to serve God, the Jewish people and humankind. Serving other interests will only distract us from this mission, and get us needless bogged down.
I'd like to hear THAT articulated by our civic leaders when they make their proclamations about Ground Zero, Penn Station, the BQE, or wherever. Public service, like Jewish service, is service. It is to, a degree, among the highest values of living a person can choose.
I yearn for a time, may it arrive soon, when the proud language of sacrifice and service returns to our public discourse.
Meanwhile, I'll enjoy the bright light and fresh air of South Station. My train arrives shortly, having arrived here by the electric powered T. Nicely done ye civic-minded patriots of Boston! To your continued success!
10 March 2010
Look Long Enough and Learn
I had a such a strange experience today.
Riding on the train up to Boston for a meeting, I read a week-old issue of the New York Times Magazine that had two political articles I was very much interested in exploring.
One was Frank Bruni's story about Scott Brown.
The other was Nicholas Dawidoff's piece about Alabama state legislator James Fields (along with Gillian Laub's brilliant photographs)
I found Dawidoff's piece more engaging, evidence of a deeper dig into the issues driving this profound question of the role that race is playing in American politics today and the symbolism of the Obama Administration and how it plays itself out in a predominantly white and historically racist part of the United States, unafraid to both express its past and come to terms with it as well. As political writing and solid journalism, I was left feeling moved by Dawidoff's article. Deeply worried about abiding divisions in our nation while also oddly hopeful that despite deep rivers of hatred, there is movement toward a kind of new accommodation with who Americans are and what America can be.
I have to admit to not feeling the same about Bruni's piece on Scott Brown. It was too adoring; too predictably coy and flirty about the handsome hunk Brown and the lightning quick "inspiration" of his sudden rise to fame and fortune in the United States Senate.
James Fields' story was filled with pathos and tragedy and compromise and struggle and redemption; Scott Brown was a kind of classic Golden Boy scenario that felt saccharine, flat, and, ultimately, was representative of our attention-challenged nation and its annoying need for a quick fix (the more handsome and sexy and charismatic, the better.)
Do I have a point?
I dunno. Dawidoff's story and Laub's pictures had Jewish pathos. Bruni's was all glitter.
And I worry that we are too easily blinded by glitter at the peril of the substance of what it takes to understand one another at a time of heightened tensions and divisions.
That's my point.
Perhaps it illustrates just how broken Washington is that the lack of substance makes the cover of a magazine but the real substance is buried in the pages and sweating out racial redemption, one house at a time, in a small corner of Alabama, that eludes our understanding, unless, Moses-like, we have the patience and virtue to look long enough, and learn.
On the other hand, kudos to the magazine editors for putting two such different pieces of reporting in the same issue. The contrast itself was rich and if that was the point, well, then, well-done.
Riding on the train up to Boston for a meeting, I read a week-old issue of the New York Times Magazine that had two political articles I was very much interested in exploring.
One was Frank Bruni's story about Scott Brown.
The other was Nicholas Dawidoff's piece about Alabama state legislator James Fields (along with Gillian Laub's brilliant photographs)
I found Dawidoff's piece more engaging, evidence of a deeper dig into the issues driving this profound question of the role that race is playing in American politics today and the symbolism of the Obama Administration and how it plays itself out in a predominantly white and historically racist part of the United States, unafraid to both express its past and come to terms with it as well. As political writing and solid journalism, I was left feeling moved by Dawidoff's article. Deeply worried about abiding divisions in our nation while also oddly hopeful that despite deep rivers of hatred, there is movement toward a kind of new accommodation with who Americans are and what America can be.
I have to admit to not feeling the same about Bruni's piece on Scott Brown. It was too adoring; too predictably coy and flirty about the handsome hunk Brown and the lightning quick "inspiration" of his sudden rise to fame and fortune in the United States Senate.
James Fields' story was filled with pathos and tragedy and compromise and struggle and redemption; Scott Brown was a kind of classic Golden Boy scenario that felt saccharine, flat, and, ultimately, was representative of our attention-challenged nation and its annoying need for a quick fix (the more handsome and sexy and charismatic, the better.)
Do I have a point?
I dunno. Dawidoff's story and Laub's pictures had Jewish pathos. Bruni's was all glitter.
And I worry that we are too easily blinded by glitter at the peril of the substance of what it takes to understand one another at a time of heightened tensions and divisions.
That's my point.
Perhaps it illustrates just how broken Washington is that the lack of substance makes the cover of a magazine but the real substance is buried in the pages and sweating out racial redemption, one house at a time, in a small corner of Alabama, that eludes our understanding, unless, Moses-like, we have the patience and virtue to look long enough, and learn.
On the other hand, kudos to the magazine editors for putting two such different pieces of reporting in the same issue. The contrast itself was rich and if that was the point, well, then, well-done.
09 March 2010
Don't Prevent--Promote
Tablet leapt on it.
Haaretz covered it.
JTA picked it up.
That's right ladies and gentlemen: Get your copies now! The Reform Movement's Rabbis Group Thing (the Central Conference of American Rabbis) says we should work with couples where one of 'em is Jewish and one of em isn't!
What next? A press release declaring that "everyone deserves breakfast" or "a smile helps you have a good day?"
I love my colleagues but we're being too nice here. Judaism has such great value and if we really believe it we oughtn't tip-toe around its greatest assets--Torah and Tradition--that call us to establish an open tent, a welcoming approach to greeting others, and a mission-driven rabbinate that sees its purpose in enlightening the world with meaning as people build families and make choices about who they will be.
Woe unto us that the strategic energy organ of the Jewish community--a community that gave us One God, the Sabbath, Honoring Parents, and Thou Shalt Not Kill--insists upon getting exercised about the most obvious strategic decision since NOT requiring poppy seeds on EVERY challah bread? (Kidding, kidding.)
Emancipation--the European kind--came with a price: Freedom to fall in love with whomever you wanted. Fine. That means we better be prepared to help those lovers and their offspring make Jewish choices. Period.
Because the point isn't our racial propagation but rather the continued, Eternal (yes, the E-word, ladies and gents) Covenantal relationship with our God Who demands of us justice and righteousness; food for the hungry and clothing for the naked; and a better, more peaceful world.
We should be "preventing" war.
We should be "preventing" hunger.
We should be "preventing" greed, hatred, and strife.
But "preventing" intermarriage?
Get out of the bedroom.
Get into the public square.
Abraham, who wasn't a Jew when he did it, had the courage to smash the idols of false worship as a youth. That's why God chose him. And he liked that validation of who he was so much that at a very old age, he agreed to be circumcised. At the command of an invisible God he heard. Those spouses we worry about hear God calling while we're wringing our hands worrying about a meaningless ethnic purity. Enough is enough.
Don't prevent--promote.
God is One.
Shalom.
Haaretz covered it.
JTA picked it up.
That's right ladies and gentlemen: Get your copies now! The Reform Movement's Rabbis Group Thing (the Central Conference of American Rabbis) says we should work with couples where one of 'em is Jewish and one of em isn't!
What next? A press release declaring that "everyone deserves breakfast" or "a smile helps you have a good day?"
I love my colleagues but we're being too nice here. Judaism has such great value and if we really believe it we oughtn't tip-toe around its greatest assets--Torah and Tradition--that call us to establish an open tent, a welcoming approach to greeting others, and a mission-driven rabbinate that sees its purpose in enlightening the world with meaning as people build families and make choices about who they will be.
Woe unto us that the strategic energy organ of the Jewish community--a community that gave us One God, the Sabbath, Honoring Parents, and Thou Shalt Not Kill--insists upon getting exercised about the most obvious strategic decision since NOT requiring poppy seeds on EVERY challah bread? (Kidding, kidding.)
Emancipation--the European kind--came with a price: Freedom to fall in love with whomever you wanted. Fine. That means we better be prepared to help those lovers and their offspring make Jewish choices. Period.
Because the point isn't our racial propagation but rather the continued, Eternal (yes, the E-word, ladies and gents) Covenantal relationship with our God Who demands of us justice and righteousness; food for the hungry and clothing for the naked; and a better, more peaceful world.
We should be "preventing" war.
We should be "preventing" hunger.
We should be "preventing" greed, hatred, and strife.
But "preventing" intermarriage?
Get out of the bedroom.
Get into the public square.
Abraham, who wasn't a Jew when he did it, had the courage to smash the idols of false worship as a youth. That's why God chose him. And he liked that validation of who he was so much that at a very old age, he agreed to be circumcised. At the command of an invisible God he heard. Those spouses we worry about hear God calling while we're wringing our hands worrying about a meaningless ethnic purity. Enough is enough.
Don't prevent--promote.
God is One.
Shalom.
08 March 2010
Have A Good Day
Rise at 6.00
Coffee, Sporting News Baseball Issue, Asher Yatzar by 6.15.
Shacharit by 6.35.
A beautiful sunrise run on the Mount Vernon Path at 6.45, heading toward DC--Reagan Airport, Jefferson Memorial, Pentagon, Capitol, Lincoln and Washington Memorials in the distance.
Gulls and geese overhead.
The fading half-moon of Adar still in sky but one can hear the redemptive footsteps of Nisan, and Passover, in the distance.
I got lost on the way back and had to run along the highway, which made for quite an adventure.
But it turned out okay, back in the room by 8.00.
Lobbying today for a better world. We'll see how that goes. Not quite Moses and Aaron going to address Pharaoh but that's a good thing. There's an excess of grandiosity in the Land.
Have a good day.
Coffee, Sporting News Baseball Issue, Asher Yatzar by 6.15.
Shacharit by 6.35.
A beautiful sunrise run on the Mount Vernon Path at 6.45, heading toward DC--Reagan Airport, Jefferson Memorial, Pentagon, Capitol, Lincoln and Washington Memorials in the distance.
Gulls and geese overhead.
The fading half-moon of Adar still in sky but one can hear the redemptive footsteps of Nisan, and Passover, in the distance.
I got lost on the way back and had to run along the highway, which made for quite an adventure.
But it turned out okay, back in the room by 8.00.
Lobbying today for a better world. We'll see how that goes. Not quite Moses and Aaron going to address Pharaoh but that's a good thing. There's an excess of grandiosity in the Land.
Have a good day.
07 March 2010
Too Numerous
I saw an angry looking short guy in an NRA hat today as I was waiting for a train to take from Penn Station in New York City to Union Station in Washington, DC. I couldn't tell if he shot me a nasty look because he knew I was looking at his hat or because he was short and was used to being defensive about himself or if his train was late and he was in a bad mood. But whatever the reason, the hat sealed the deal.
My train ride was very pleasant. The last time I was on Amtrak, some drunk guy decided I would be the guy to save him from the police for being a stowaway (I wasn't) and he lunged toward me as the police attempted to track him down and flicked me in the face. It was the first time, and I hope the last, that I'll be flicked, a painless but oddly infuriating experience. I stood up when I got flicked and said, "What did you do?" But the guy was gone to another car and then grabbed by the cops, who cuffed him and led him off the train and onto the platform.
I calmed down quickly, found myself laughing about it, but still felt the flick. But no one heard a click. Like the click of a gun, that I imagined could have gone off--somehow. From the aggressor, who it turned out didn't have one; from the cops who were able to handle the situation without violence; nor, from myself, who would never own one.
The sun was shining in DC when I alighted from the train, hailed a cab, and headed into Virginia, where I am staying with some of our high school students as we prepare to lobby on Capitol Hill tomorrow for the social justice agenda of the Reform movement's Religious Action Center. As we drove past the Pentagon, I thought of the shootings earlier in the week, a disturbed man with a gun, now dead himself, who felt his rage against the government would be answered through the barrel of a gun.
The Pentagon, attacked on 9-11 for its symbolism of American Imperialism by one set of paranoids, now attacked by our own domestic paranoids, with or without permits, but with a gun.
I stood in the Hudson News back at Penn Station at the beginning of the trip and read an article in a magazine about the rise of militia groups and their determination to put a halt to the Obama Agenda, which now represents everything wrong with America for the angry and the armed. The sleepy station, the hungry and the homeless, the smells of coffee and sweet rolls filling the air. These paradoxes have filled trains stations for decades in our country. And some of the times we've lived through have been even worse. But this is the first time in my lifetime that the anger and the violence are so palpable, so strong, so seemingly on the verge of explosion.
I am deeply troubled by the level of anger and violence.
And so what do we do? Me? Tomorrow I'll put on a suit and lead high school students to the offices of Senators and Representatives where they'll engage in their civic duty to advocate on their own behalf, to argue for climate change legislation, sexuality education, immigration reform, and a comprehensive plan for peace in the Middle East. They will have studied the issues all weekend long; written and practiced some pretty persuasive speeches; even eaten in the House cafeteria, rubbing elbows with a whole class of civil servants who believe in the peaceful conveying of ideas and issues into law.
We'll walk past metal detectors to get in and out of the Capitol tomorrow and I'll say a special prayer for Capitol Police, who these days are risking their lives even more so, in order that each of us can exercise the privilege of having our voices heard above the alarming increase in explosions that are too numerous in our land.
My train ride was very pleasant. The last time I was on Amtrak, some drunk guy decided I would be the guy to save him from the police for being a stowaway (I wasn't) and he lunged toward me as the police attempted to track him down and flicked me in the face. It was the first time, and I hope the last, that I'll be flicked, a painless but oddly infuriating experience. I stood up when I got flicked and said, "What did you do?" But the guy was gone to another car and then grabbed by the cops, who cuffed him and led him off the train and onto the platform.
I calmed down quickly, found myself laughing about it, but still felt the flick. But no one heard a click. Like the click of a gun, that I imagined could have gone off--somehow. From the aggressor, who it turned out didn't have one; from the cops who were able to handle the situation without violence; nor, from myself, who would never own one.
The sun was shining in DC when I alighted from the train, hailed a cab, and headed into Virginia, where I am staying with some of our high school students as we prepare to lobby on Capitol Hill tomorrow for the social justice agenda of the Reform movement's Religious Action Center. As we drove past the Pentagon, I thought of the shootings earlier in the week, a disturbed man with a gun, now dead himself, who felt his rage against the government would be answered through the barrel of a gun.
The Pentagon, attacked on 9-11 for its symbolism of American Imperialism by one set of paranoids, now attacked by our own domestic paranoids, with or without permits, but with a gun.
I stood in the Hudson News back at Penn Station at the beginning of the trip and read an article in a magazine about the rise of militia groups and their determination to put a halt to the Obama Agenda, which now represents everything wrong with America for the angry and the armed. The sleepy station, the hungry and the homeless, the smells of coffee and sweet rolls filling the air. These paradoxes have filled trains stations for decades in our country. And some of the times we've lived through have been even worse. But this is the first time in my lifetime that the anger and the violence are so palpable, so strong, so seemingly on the verge of explosion.
I am deeply troubled by the level of anger and violence.
And so what do we do? Me? Tomorrow I'll put on a suit and lead high school students to the offices of Senators and Representatives where they'll engage in their civic duty to advocate on their own behalf, to argue for climate change legislation, sexuality education, immigration reform, and a comprehensive plan for peace in the Middle East. They will have studied the issues all weekend long; written and practiced some pretty persuasive speeches; even eaten in the House cafeteria, rubbing elbows with a whole class of civil servants who believe in the peaceful conveying of ideas and issues into law.
We'll walk past metal detectors to get in and out of the Capitol tomorrow and I'll say a special prayer for Capitol Police, who these days are risking their lives even more so, in order that each of us can exercise the privilege of having our voices heard above the alarming increase in explosions that are too numerous in our land.
05 March 2010
What We Do Not Demand
In the closing pages of his book, A Passion for Truth, Abraham Joshua Heschel tells the post-war story about an observant friend who worked for the Jewish Agency in Poland, helping Holocaust survivors with plans for emigration. On the train ride from Warsaw back to Paris, Heschel's friend shared his train compartment with a "poorly clad Jew" who couldn't find a seat anywhere else on train. Evening prayers came and the compartment guest didn't join the friend in prayer. Morning prayers arrived and as the friend put on his tallit and tefilin, the guest sat still. Later that second night, the two spoke and the guest said, "I'm never going to pray any more because of what happened to us in Auschwitz...How could I pray? That is why I did not pray all day."
Heschel continues: "The following morning--it was a long trip from Warsaw to Paris--my friend noticed that the fellow suddenly opened his bundle, took out his Talit and Tefillin and started to pray. He asked him afterward, 'What made you change your mind?' The fellow said, 'It suddenly dawned upon me to think how lonely God must be; look with Whom He is left. I felt sorry for Him.'"
I think there are fundamentally three reasons why most Reform Jews don't pray.
1. They don't want to because they don't believe in God or their agnosticism is such that their understanding of history is very similar to the compartment guest, who either sees or experiences evil and concludes that God is not worthy of prayer. Their lack of prayer is a protest against an idea of God that hears and deserves to hear prayer.
2. They don't need to because "in *Reformed Judaism* (it's just nuts when people get the name of the movement wrong) you get to "do whatever you want." The Reform movement in general suffers mightily from this perceived and actual "low bar" standard of performance. The lack of regular, daily, prayerful communities is one of the many manifestations of this phenomenon. Do-Whatever-You-Want-ism. Albany comes to mind--but not because Isaac Mayer Wise once served there.
3. They don't know how, a direct result of position number two above. Ignorance in education breeds inaction in life and when the standard of expectation is not set for daily practice and observance. When the demand is not made, there is a very large Rock left to push up a very steep Hill.
Ironically, in rabbinical school at HUC, there was a daily minyan. But there was also a paradox inherent to the experience of daily prayer: it was set up as a performance workshop which was managed and critiqued in such a stifling ways as to deprive it of any real meaning. Service leaders were judged by a panel of experts who rated decorum, tone of voice, and organization--leaving students often terrified (kind of funny in its own right) of failure. Every day those who had the discipline to show up would be treated to a morning service *as if* it were Friday night. There was accompaniment, cantorial solos, rabbinic teaching guides to help focus the prayer, and two service leaders standing at a lectern facing an "audience" of worshippers. I went nearly every day for four years and didn't enjoy it one bit but felt that it was my obligation to be there.
Imagine that: not enjoying your obligations. Like taking medicine. Or going to "work."
"Serve the Eternal with gladness; come before God with exultation." (Psalm 100)
Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that "Divine service with rejoicing can give us true happiness, the feeling of steady and constant spiritual and moral growth, the continuous growth of all that is truly human in us, a blissful joy of life that is not subject to change in any manner by the outward circumstances which life may bring."
Finding space for daily offerings of gratitude and thanksgiving is essential for ensuring a state of constant growth. Hirsch brings the Sages to make this final point, "When one day in the future that is to come, all things on earth will be in such an ideal state that there will be no more cause for prayers and offerings; even then, prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving will never cease."
Articulating a vision and executing a plan of action for the discipline of daily practice among Reform Jews--now there's a *performance* that deserves a critique.
To not attempt to meet this demand severs the synagogue membership of the largest movement in American Judaism from the normative narrative of Jewish practice that could well be one of the greatest losses of modern Jewish life today. Is the Reform movement growing because of what we offer? Or are we growing because of what we *do not* demand?
Since we're a tradition of questions, it seems like a good one to ask.
Heschel continues: "The following morning--it was a long trip from Warsaw to Paris--my friend noticed that the fellow suddenly opened his bundle, took out his Talit and Tefillin and started to pray. He asked him afterward, 'What made you change your mind?' The fellow said, 'It suddenly dawned upon me to think how lonely God must be; look with Whom He is left. I felt sorry for Him.'"
I think there are fundamentally three reasons why most Reform Jews don't pray.
1. They don't want to because they don't believe in God or their agnosticism is such that their understanding of history is very similar to the compartment guest, who either sees or experiences evil and concludes that God is not worthy of prayer. Their lack of prayer is a protest against an idea of God that hears and deserves to hear prayer.
2. They don't need to because "in *Reformed Judaism* (it's just nuts when people get the name of the movement wrong) you get to "do whatever you want." The Reform movement in general suffers mightily from this perceived and actual "low bar" standard of performance. The lack of regular, daily, prayerful communities is one of the many manifestations of this phenomenon. Do-Whatever-You-Want-ism. Albany comes to mind--but not because Isaac Mayer Wise once served there.
3. They don't know how, a direct result of position number two above. Ignorance in education breeds inaction in life and when the standard of expectation is not set for daily practice and observance. When the demand is not made, there is a very large Rock left to push up a very steep Hill.
Ironically, in rabbinical school at HUC, there was a daily minyan. But there was also a paradox inherent to the experience of daily prayer: it was set up as a performance workshop which was managed and critiqued in such a stifling ways as to deprive it of any real meaning. Service leaders were judged by a panel of experts who rated decorum, tone of voice, and organization--leaving students often terrified (kind of funny in its own right) of failure. Every day those who had the discipline to show up would be treated to a morning service *as if* it were Friday night. There was accompaniment, cantorial solos, rabbinic teaching guides to help focus the prayer, and two service leaders standing at a lectern facing an "audience" of worshippers. I went nearly every day for four years and didn't enjoy it one bit but felt that it was my obligation to be there.
Imagine that: not enjoying your obligations. Like taking medicine. Or going to "work."
"Serve the Eternal with gladness; come before God with exultation." (Psalm 100)
Samson Raphael Hirsch points out that "Divine service with rejoicing can give us true happiness, the feeling of steady and constant spiritual and moral growth, the continuous growth of all that is truly human in us, a blissful joy of life that is not subject to change in any manner by the outward circumstances which life may bring."
Finding space for daily offerings of gratitude and thanksgiving is essential for ensuring a state of constant growth. Hirsch brings the Sages to make this final point, "When one day in the future that is to come, all things on earth will be in such an ideal state that there will be no more cause for prayers and offerings; even then, prayers of gratitude and thanksgiving will never cease."
Articulating a vision and executing a plan of action for the discipline of daily practice among Reform Jews--now there's a *performance* that deserves a critique.
To not attempt to meet this demand severs the synagogue membership of the largest movement in American Judaism from the normative narrative of Jewish practice that could well be one of the greatest losses of modern Jewish life today. Is the Reform movement growing because of what we offer? Or are we growing because of what we *do not* demand?
Since we're a tradition of questions, it seems like a good one to ask.
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