Monday, March 22, 2010

Herding Katz

An editorial in the FORWARD newspaper cites Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, on the need for raising levels of observance among Conservative Jews—“too many Conservative Jews can’t read Hebrew, don’t keep the Sabbath and other central Jewish observances, and don’t find synagogue prayer meaningful or attractive.”

I doubt this is a problem unique to Conservative Judaism. Most Jews don’t read Hebrew for the same reason most Jews don’t read French—they don’t need it. The reason most Jews fail to observe Shabbat or keep kosher is that these traditions no longer speak to them. The reason they don’t find synagogue services meaningful or attractive is that 1) the liturgy reflects a medieval worldview that most 8-year olds have outgrown, and 2) because we have become used to theatrical production values that synagogue services cannot match.

What most Jews want—what most postmodern, postindustrial first worlders want—isn’t more tradition but more meaning and authentic encounters with reality. We live in a world of contrived meanings faux reality fed to us by advertisers and reality television. Even real disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are turned into soap operas by the infotainment media. Synagogue is just another faux reality where Jews are asked to believe in a god and worldview that most do not take seriously.

Liberal Judaisms as a whole rarely offer their members anything truly deep, challenging, existentially compelling, or spiritually transformative. But most Jews wouldn’t get involved even if they did.

Why? Because deeply transformative spiritual work is, well, work. And most people aren’t interested. This is true in any religion. The truly devout are always a minority. If liberal Jews wanted to be more observant they would be more observant. No one is stopping them; they just don’t want to.

So let’s focus on making our respective forms of Judaism as powerful as we can. Let’s make our ideas and our institutions as affordable and as available and as welcoming as we can. And then let’s let the people do what they want. That is what they are going to do anyway.

Trying to get Jews to do what they don’t want to do is like trying to herd katz.

Thursday, March 18, 2010

Insulting America

I know this is going to earn me the ire of lots of people who insist that Israel can do no wrong, and that Jews must support Israel no matter what it does, but I find Israel’s continued building and/or expanding settlements on the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and its slap in the face to Vice President Joe Biden infuriating.

Israel isn’t a stupid country, or a country of stupid people. Things don’t just happen. The announcement of the Israeli decision to build hundreds of new apartments for Jews in Arab East Jerusalem on the day of Vice President Biden’s arrival in Israel to promote peace talks between Israel and Palestine was a deliberate act. Whether it was perpetrated by Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu or by one of his enemies in the government hoping to embarrass him, I can’t say and I don’t care. Israel seems to assume it can do what it wants and America will simply fall in line. And they may be right.

Diplomacy aside, if I had been Joe Biden, I would have cancelled all talks with Israeli government officials, and met exclusively with Palestinian leaders and those Israelis from the human rights and peace ends of the political spectrum. And, if I were President Obama I would have sent the Israeli Prime Minister a note saying that the United States is done playing games with Israel, that we are putting a freeze on all aid monies until real progress has been made in bringing Israeli policy into alignment with the US position on settlements. Why should the United States fund policies we consider antithetical to our own interests and the interests of peace in the Middle East?

Yes I know Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. So what? And what kind of democracy is it? The theocratic nature of Israeli democracy is troubling; the second-class status of Israel’s Arab citizens is troubling; and the very idea that there are roads for Jews only and buses in which women must ride in the back smack of anything but democracy. And even if Israel were perfectly democratic, the US makes friends with lots of anti-democratic countries. It isn’t a country’s political system that matters to us, but whether or not it can serve our over-all strategic objectives. This is how politics works: you pay off your friends as long as they do what you want them to do, and threaten your enemies until they are willing to be bought off as friends. Or, if that doesn’t work, you bomb the shit out of them.

On a similar note: sometimes politically correct is simply politically stupid. Case in point: the decision by the US government not to fly the US flag over US compounds providing aid to Haiti so as not to drag up anti-American sentiment by reminding Haitians of all the times we actually invaded their country. Look, if the Haitians don’t want our help, fine. We can take our 12,000 troops home. If they do want it, then we have the right to fly our flag.

The same thing happened in Kuwait in 1991 when we agreed to cover up all images of the US flag. We were just a bunch of people armed to the teeth risking our lives for the sake of Kuwaitis who could have hired Blackwater to defend them against Saddam Hussein.

Come on. I have no problem saying when the US is wrong—in Afghanistan and Iraq for example, but this doesn’t mean I should sit back and ignore it when we are being insulted.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

A Pope of Their Own

“Protestants’ leader is God, not man.” Or so says the headline in USA TODAY’s Letters department. Responding to recent criticism by Catholic leaders that Protestants need a pope of their own a woman from Cleveland, Ohio wrote in to USA TODAY to protest. Of course protesting is what Protest-ants do, so that in and of itself isn’t surprising. What I found delightful was the woman's love of the Bible; a love matched only by her ignorance of what the Bible actually says. So in the interest of Bible scholarship I will reprint much of the letter here (in italics) followed by Biblical passages (boldface) to illustrate what the Bible really says.

If more people would read their Bibles, they would know the Golden Rule and that would be their mantra. Instead, the world is full of hatred, bigotry, homophobia, and racism.

Really? No hatred, bigotry, homophobia, and racism in the Bible? Let's see:

Regarding hatred:

Do I not hate those who hate you, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against you? I hate them with perfect hatred; I count them my enemies. (Psalm 139:21-22)

Regarding bigotry:

You (Jews) are of your father the devil, and your will is to do your father's desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, and has nothing to do with the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks according to his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies. (John 8:44)

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judea; for you suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they did from the Jews, who killed both the Lord Jesus and the prophets, and drove us out, and displease God and oppose all men. (1 Thess. 2:14-15)

The women should keep silence in the churches. For they are not permitted to speak, but should be subordinate, as even the law says. If there is anything they desire to know, let them ask their husbands at home. For it is shameful for a woman to speak in church. (1 Cor. 14:34-35)

Wives, be subject to your husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. As the church is subject to Christ, so let wives also be subject in everything to their husbands. (Eph. 5:22-24)

I permit no woman to teach or to have authority over men; she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness, with modesty. (1 Tim. 2:12-15)

Regarding homophobia:

If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them. (Lev. 20:13)

Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the surrounding cities, which likewise acted immorally and indulged in unnatural lust, serve as an example by undergoing a punishment of eternal fire. (Jude 7)

I do not need someone to dictate what I should eat and when or how I should conduct my personal life.

Really?

You shall not round off the hair on you temples or mar the edges of your beard. (Lev. 19:27)

You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh on account of the dead or tattoo any marks upon you: I am the LORD. (Lev. 19:28)

They shall not make tonsures upon their heads, nor shave off the edges of their beards, nor make any cuttings in their flesh. (Lev. 21:5)

A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman's garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God. (Deut. 22:5)

Judge for yourselves; is it proper for a woman to pray to God with her head uncovered? Does not nature itself teach you that for a man to wear long hair is degrading to him, but if a woman has long hair, it is her pride? For her hair is given to her for a covering. (1 Cor. 11:13-15)

Also that women should adorn themselves modestly and sensibly in seemly apparel, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly attire but by good deeds, as befits women who profess religion. (1 Tim. 2:9-10)

I can go on and on with the atrocious lies told that have led to tragedy and even slavery. These were perpetrated by man, not the Bible.

Really?

As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are round about you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their families that are with you, who have been born in your land; and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you, to inherit as a possession forever; you may make slaves of them, but over your brethren the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another, with harshness. (Lev. 25:44-46)

I, too, could go on and on, and I agree that these are human documents not divine revelation, but I’m afraid that just being able to read the Bible for yourself doesn’t preclude you from doing evil in the Name of God.

The only defense we have against madness, both divine and human, is a commitment to reason, compassion, and a willingness to question even the most sacred “truths.”

Sunday, March 14, 2010

Smarter Than Thou

I knew it! I’m smarter than you! Well, not you, necessarily, but lots of people. And most of my neighbors. You see, I’m a liberal, and liberals are smarter than conservatives. I knew it.

I used to know this because I watch Keith Olberman and Rachel Maddow on MSNBC, and they are smarter than Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity and all the friends at Fox News combined. But now I know it because science has proven it.

Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary biologist from the London School of Economics, has found that young adults who identify themselves as “very liberal” score 11 points higher than their “very conservative” counterparts on standard IQ tests. I knew it! Not only are these smarter liberals liberal, but they also tend to be atheists. So take that Zeus!

Now I’m no longer an young adult, but I am very liberal, and my theology is atheistic if the theist’s god is an invisible white man who lives in the sky and constantly spies on people and who may or may not have a son, so I must be smarter than my very conservative and very religious neighbors.

Of course “very liberal” and “very conservative” are highly imprecise terms (though the fact that I can use a word like “imprecise” shows how smart I am, and the fact that I can challenge my own superiority shows how very liberal I must be). I may be very liberal when compared to those in my town who still harbor fond memories of the good ol’ days of slavery when black folk and women folk knew their place and there was no gay folk, at least not if they knew what was good for them. But I may be less than liberal when compared to those in my town who long for a total nanny state.

I’m neither a fascist nor a nannytarian. I’m just very liberal. Or at least I used to be. I don’t like income taxes much, and I think the government is too big, and big business is too big, and there is nothing too big to fail (remember the dinosaurs?), and I don’t like forcing people to buy health insurance from private insurers, and I don’t like cap and trade, and I don’t like fear mongering by climatologists any more than I like fear mongering by politicians, and I think we a live in a plutocracy (which is a state of the rich, for the rich, by the rich), and I think government is just a shill for corporate interests, and having discovered that the CIA allows agents to moonlight for private corporations doing global corporate espionage I have taken to wearing a tinfoil yarmulkah to protect myself from the mind probes of the corporate fascist overlords who are invisible white men with eyes in the sky that are constantly spying on me, and having watched what was supposed to be a very frightening CNN expose on air toxicity in airplanes, and having been captivated by the production values of the piece which was designed to frighten me despite the fact that the conclusion was that the amount of toxic poisons in the air of jet airplanes is so low as to be irrelevant, I now wear a hazmat suits whenever I travel by plane, and while I want to be environmentally wise and drive a Prius I won’t buy one until Toyota equips each car with an anchor that I can manually throw out the window to stop the car in the case of a computer malfunction that makes the car accelerate almost to the speed I normally drive at.

I had better stop thinking like this; I can feel myself IQ score dipping. How about you?

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Compassion Man

“Hey, compassion man!” a guy called out to me waving a copy of the Murfreesboro Pulse newspaper with a full page photo of me on the cover accompanied by the headline, “Rabbi Rami… man of compassion.”

“You’re compassion man, aren’t you?”

“Yes, Citizen,” I said in a deep comic book hero voice, “I am Compassion Man, friend of all the little furry woodland creatures and…”

“I suppose you’re in favor of President Uganda’s health care plan, aren’t ‘cha? Why the hell should I have to pay for some loafers health care?”

Obviously this fellow didn’t get my joke, so I thought I’d try again.

“Actually I am opposed to any health care for loafers. A good spit shine once a week ought to suffice.” I paused. He paused. Neither one of us heard a laugh track, so he continued on:

“I worked hard all my life to pay for my health care. I went to school and studied hard and didn’t do crack or get some bimbo pregnant, and so I got a good job and full health care benefits…”

“So you don’t actually pay for your health care.”

“…and I don’t want to pay for anyone else’s. People make choices. They take crack instead of cracking the books and so they haven’t got jobs. That isn’t my fault. I’m no evolutionary Darwin atheist but this is survival of the fittest. Who wants near the wells to live and have babies anyway? If they haven’t got health care they will die sooner and in the long run that is what God wants.”

“So you are in favor of abortion funding for ne’re-do-wells? That way they won’t raise more ne’re-do-wells.” I was hoping by repeating the term ne’re-do-well and pronouncing it properly I could at least improve this fellow’s vocabulary.

“You know for a so-called man of God you really don’t know much. That’s ‘cause you’re a Jew and killed Christ and all, but God would forgive you if you come to Christ and do what’s right on health care.”

“But didn’t Jesus plead for the ‘least of these?’”

“I’m the least of these! I’m the one who put off having fun as a kid and stayed in school and got a job and raised a family while these others just drank booze and smoked crack and made babies and cashed their welfare checks. I suffered while these loafers loafed! But that is what God wants and that’ll get me into heaven while these crack smokers will be smoking in Hell.”

“Along with the Jews.”

“Damn straight.”

“Good luck with that… [We interrupt this factual account to bring you this fantasy ending:] I wish you well, brother. And I will pray for you, for I am Compassion Man. But now I must be off for there are others for whom my heart must bleed. Take care, Citizen. Compassion Man awayyyyyyyyy!” [We now return you to our factual account:]

I turned and walked away, but like Lot’s wife I had to glance back and saw the man toss my photo in the trash. And while I wasn’t turned into a pillar of salt, I have to admit it hurt.

Monday, March 08, 2010

The Rabbis and A Serious Man

Neal Conan, host of NPR’s “Talk of the Nation,” asked people in his “Post Oscars” show to call in to discuss how Hollywood treats their professions. I thought about calling to talk about the rabbis in A Serious Man. I thought about it a lot. I thought about it for 58 minutes and some odd seconds, and then decided to call—oh! Out of time! Too bad.

Yes, I’m a coward. I’m also an Enneagram 9 and thus avoid conflict like the plague. Well, that isn’t really true. My writing and teaching always seems to get me embroiled in some conflict, but it always surprises me. I don’t write to start arguments. I write to share what seems obvious to me. And that is what starts arguments.

Anyway, if I had had the guts to call Neil Conan, I would have said that the Coen brothers portrayal of rabbis was exactly as I experienced it growing up, and as I all too often experience it today.

I grew up with Rabbi Marshak, the aging Orthodox sage. Unfortunately even at my Bar Mitzvah I never really got to know the Rabbi, but I doubt he would have known who Jefferson Airplane was.

With the passing of our Rabbi Marshak (he didn’t die, he just got too old to fund raise and was fired), we hired a series of Rabbi Scotts, guys just out of seminary who didn’t have a clue about life, God, suffering, or anything else meaningful. “Look at the parking lot, Larry,” just about captures the depth of their spiritual insights. We hired them because they were cheap. When they got old enough and experienced enough to become a middle aged Rabbi Nachtner, we fired them. They cost too much.

Now that I am older I know lots of Rabbi Nachtners—the senior rabbis with lots of experience who hope that they can double talk you long enough to make you feel it is your fault that God is irrelevant and Judaism doesn’t speak to you, rather than theirs.

I have read several commentaries on A Serious Man claiming the Coen brothers are self-hating Jews, and that they stereotyped rabbis and Hebrew teachers. Maybe. But the Hebrew teacher in the film was taken directly from my life, as were the rabbis. These are not stereotypes for nothing.

Of course I have known brilliant sages as well— Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, Arthur Waskow, Art Green, Shlomo Carlebach, Ellis Rivkin, and Eugene Mihaly, to name a few, but I suspect the Nachtners and the Scotts are the norm.

Anyway, Neal, thanks for taking my call. I’ve got to go and drain a cyst.

Friday, March 05, 2010

Beyond Denominationalism

An editorial in this week’s FORWARD newspaper cites Arnold Eisen, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary, on the need for raising levels of observance among Conservative Jews—“too many Conservative Jews can’t read Hebrew, don’t keep the Sabbath and other central Jewish observances, and don’t find synagogue prayer meaningful or attractive.”

I doubt this is a problem unique to Conservative Judaism. Most Jews don’t read Hebrew for the same reason most Jews don’t read French—they don’t need it. The reason most Jews fail to observe Shabbat or keep kosher is that these traditions no longer speak to them. The reason they don’t find synagogue services meaningful or attractive is that 1) the liturgy reflects a medieval worldview that most 8-year olds have outgrown, and 2) because we have become used to theatrical production values that synagogue services cannot match.

What most Jews want—what most postmodern, postindustrial first worlders want—isn’t more tradition but more meaning and authentic encounters with reality. We live in a world of contrived meanings faux reality fed to us by advertisers and reality television. Even real disasters such as the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile are turned into soap operas by the infotainment media. Synagogue is just another faux reality where Jews are asked to believe in a god and worldview that most do not take seriously.

Liberal Judaisms as a whole rarely offer their members anything truly deep, challenging, existentially compelling, or spiritually transformative. And most of their congregants wouldn’t get involved even if they did.

Why? Because deeply transformative spiritual work is, well, work. And most people aren’t interested. This is true in any religion. The truly devout are always a minority. If liberal Jews wanted to be more observant they would be more observant. They just don’t want to.

What should be done? Stop thinking in terms of competing denominations and start thinking in terms of a spectrum of community offerings. Every decent sized Jewish community ought to have a JCC where rabbis from Chabad to Neo-Hasidic/Renewal to Humanistic Judaism are on staff, serving the needs of different kinds of Jews. These rabbis wouldn’t have to worry about building private communities to support themselves and their families. They would be paid by the Federation and hired to teach the theory and practice of their denominations.

Shabbat and Holy Day services of different kinds would be offered around the JCC campus, and the community would come together for Kiddush and, perhaps, dinner. No one would join a separate community; rather they would pay dues to the Federation or JCC to be registered as a member of the Jewish community at large. Membership would entitle you to access to all Jewish services, educational programs, and rabbis.

Denominations are draining our resources, financial and intellectual. Rather than retreat into our respective shtetls, let’s create new forms of belonging and learning.

Tuesday, March 02, 2010

Mystic Heart of Judaism

This past weekend I was at a Lutheran Church in San Francisco teaching with the Spiritual Paths Institute faculty on the “Mystic Heart” of our respective traditions. Here is the gist of what I taught.

First, let me make it clear that the Mystic Heart of Judaism I will share with you is my own understanding and not that of any authority. This is how I see it, and you are free to see it otherwise. Second, let me say that the Mystic Heart of Judaism has to point beyond Judaism. When a religion only points to itself you can be fairly certain you are hearing propaganda rather than prophecy, and you are engaged in a exercise of marketing rather than mysticism. Mysticism is the direct experience of Reality without the conditioning of words, theologies, ideologies, isms of any kind. Marketing is just clever ways of proving that my way is the best way, or even the only way.

So what is the mystic heart of Judaism? Where does Judaism point beyond itself? I suggest you find it in the opening verses of Genesis Chapter 12:

Now the Ineffable said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your parent’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” (Genesis 12:1-3)

Unpacking these verses will reveal the Mystic Heart of Judaism. And to do so rightly we have to be clear that Torah is talking to you; God is talking to you. If God is just talking to Abram, who cares? If Torah is just for the Jewish people, my talking to those of you who are not Jewish is a waste of your time. But God addresses each of us continually—first with a question, then with a command or challenge.

The question comes in Genesis 3:9: Ahyeka? Where are you? Where are you in your life right now? Where are you conditioned and enslaved? Before you can become free you must realize you are stuck. Where are you stuck? Genesis 12 tells us: we are stuck in our country, our kin, and our family; that is we are conditioned by the propaganda, prejudices, biases of nationalism, tribalism, ethnicity, religion, gender, race, sexual orientation, all the psychological madness imposes upon us by our parents and our families—indeed everything we use to hide beyond rather than step out of hiding and face the reality of the Unconditional naked, raw, and unconditioned.

So the question is, ahyecha, where are you enslaved? The challenge is lech lecha, get free! In the story lech lecha appears to be an external going forth; Abram and Sarai leave home. But the Hebrew is more nuanced than that. Lech means to walk, lecha means toward your Self. Not the conditioned egoic self, but the unconditioned Self that is an expression of the Ineffable Reality Judaism calls YHVH, and which we reduce to either the highly conditioned, patriarchal “LORD,” or to the essentially vapid and all-purpose bit of noise pronounced “God.” YHVH is neither.

In Hebrew YHVH isn’t a noun, but a verb. YHVH is a form of the Hebrew verb “to be.” God is the be’ing of Reality, the is’ing of Reality. Not a Being or a Supreme Being somewhere else, but being itself in all its variations and multi-dimensionality. Abram is being confronted by Reality, and that confrontation challenges him to free himself from the blinders that keep him from realizing the true nature of things as manifestations of the singular nonduality Jews call YHVH.

How do we do this? By walking inward, but leaving behind all we know and think we know. By walking without isms and ideologies to a Land that only the Unconditioned can reveal. I am not talking about the actual geographic Land of Israel, but the inner Land of Israel, literally the Land of God-Wrestling, the place where you encounter the Absolute.

And what happens when you arrive? You become a great, blessed, and well respected. That is to say your impact on the world is larger than you imagine, and it is for the good. Those who bless you are blessed; those who curse you are cursed.

Be careful how to think of this. If you think with the conditioned egoic mind you imagine you are Chosen, or saved, or better than others. But this is incorrect. Think in terms of electricity flowing through a wall socket. If used well, it can light your home. But if you stick your finger in the socket it can kill you. “Those who bless you” are those who see you as a paradigm for what they themselves can achieve. Those who curse you are those who see you as a guru to be followed. If they do as you do, practice lech lecha and attain freedom (an on-going process, by the way, and not a once and for all state), they are blessed. If they turn you into another hide out, another layer of conditioning, they are cursed.

You are a vehicle for blessing: “in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” That is the sign of one who is free. They are a blessing. They want nothing from you: neither money nor obedience nor loyalty. They aren’t asking you to follow them, but to free yourself. They offer you what God offered Abram: a territory to walk, but no map with which to walk it.

And that leads us to the mystic heart of Judaism—walking without a map. This is what I call fierce faith. YHVH doesn’t tell Abram where he is going. YHVH just says, lech, go! And Abram goes. No map, no brochure, no video showing him how glorious the destination. Nothing. He just goes. This is fierce faith, in Hebrew betachon, trust.

It is common today to mistake faith for belief, but they are not the same. Belief is all about content; faith has no content. Abram, Jesus, Mohammad (PBU), Arjuna, and the Buddha didn’t need beliefs; they encountered Reality directly. They freed themselves from what was supposed to be true, and saw for themselves what was true. And then—and this of course my opinion—they called us to do the same; and then—and this of course is my opinion—we betrayed them and turned their pointing to truth into a series of beliefs behind which we hide from that truth.

Fierce faith, the faith of the founders of the world’s great wisdom traditions, is a faith that dares to free the Self from the self and see what is without someone defining what is for us.

Fierce faith does not lead you deeper into the maze of your religion. Fierce faith doesn’t make you a better Jew or Christian, or Buddhist or Hindu or Muslim. Fierce faith makes you free. And freedom is the mystic heart of all religion that dares to speak the truth.