Ariel Haber wrote: To me, Israel is a place of miracles with unlimited possibilities.
Tuesday, April 10, 2012
Monday, April 9, 2012
Day 3
Tonight begins day 3 of the counting of the omer.
The question this year is, What does Israel mean to me? Here's the answer from David Sosnick. Israel means where the Jews can be in the holiest place of all. They also have the chance to get to know the history of Israel. It has the history of good Jews that obey God and the bad Jews that don't obey God. Also, you can practice Judaism and be traditional.
Day 2
Today is day 2 of the counting of the Omer. At our community seder, I had many answers to this year's question, what does Israel mean to me. Send in your responses and I'll post them here. Keep checking each day as we count the omer together.
Saturday, April 7, 2012
Four Questions about Israel. Omer day 1.
Day 1 of counting the Omer.
Here's a part of a post asking four questions about Israel. The whole piece is here:
http://ejewishphilanthropy.com/four-zionist-questions-for-the-seder/?utm_source=Thurs+April+5&utm_campaign=Thurs+Apr+5&utm_medium=email
Four Zionist Questions for the Seder
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Time for seder and then counting the omer!
It's that time to count the omer as we travel from slavery to freedom at Mt. Sinai. Here is this year's question.
Israel is a complicated place. It means so much to so many on cultural, religious, historical levels. It is also heartwarming and frustrating. Sometimes it is a source of pride and sometimes it is a source of shame. With all that, can you answer this simple and complex question: What does Israel mean to me?
Send your answers in to me at RabbiLF@tbjnewburgh.org.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Getting ready for the seder.
March 23, 2012
Temple Beth Jacob of Newburgh
There are many korbanot discussed in Leviticus and the fourth aliyah of parashat Vayikra gives us the zevach shelamim the offering of well being. This offering is not mandatory but offered from time to time when things are going well and you want to show appreciation. You didn’t do anything that requires you to bring it. You didn’t sin, you didn’t curse. You just have good things going on and you want to rejoice and give thanks.
But you don’t want to do that alone. You rejoice and give thanks with others so you bring your animal to the Temple, let the cohanim slaughter it, remove the suet which is burned completely as smoke as a token portion for God, leave a little something for the cohanim and then you take the now roasted animal for a feast with family and friends.
Life is good, you want to celebrate and you want to share the joy. And don’t forget, eating an animal depletes your flock so this was a big deal.
The idea of a ritualized meal is a very old idea. The heightened religious experience of eating food dedicated to God is part of the reason. Sharing food is already intimate enough and now we share with the Divine! That is really something. The more obvious sense of relaxation around a meal seems to me to be so elemental that I can’t imagine that feeling never existing.
And of course, to this day, we have a ritualized meal each Spring with the Pesach seder. What is the highlight? There are many for many families but surely it must be gathering around. Everyone gathers, it is festive and whether modest or abundant the food is always good, always special and we give thanks whether we want to or not. We are thankful for the springtime and the promise of months and months of warm weather. We are thankful for our friends and family, that we are surrounded by people who care about us. We are thankful we are blessed with what we have and then we are thankful we are free.
The seder helps us express that thanks. It gives us a framework to repeat words, and repeat actions that tell the story of moving from sovereign life, to living under someone else’s rule to living in slavery and then ultimately to sovereignty and living with the freedom of ethical rule.
Back to Torah, just imagine the preparations for the zevach shelamim. You have to make provisions for the journey to Jerusalem and then choose the animal which you do very carefully. You have to either let the animal walk with you or get some kind of cart for the trip to Jerusalem because if the animal is bruised on the journey, it might not be suitable for the offering. You have to find lodging in Jerusalem and then, getting very excited, head off to the Temple, the largest building you or anyone else has ever seen. And then, flushed with the power of the ritual, you celebrate with friends. And it’s all good, it’s great! It may be a lot of work but it’s worth it.
We live in an age of convenience. We live in a time where we don’t need to get up out of our seats to go to a reference book to check some fact. We don’t need to wait for the right season for a specific fruit. We can get almost anything at anytime and often we can get anybody else to do it for us. And all of this is great because it is more convenient. But there is still something to be said for doing it yourself. We live in an age of convenience but at the same time we live in an era of contrived complications. We take things upon ourselves that give us the pleasure of accomplishment. Whether it’s a craft or Sudoku or some new hobby or working out, a lot of the time we’ve saved by convenience we now spend on other time consuming activities because we like accomplishing things.
Our seder is an old thing to which we want to bring convenience because that is what we do. The seder in my lifetime has changed from solemn to festive and even silly. Most of these changes are great when it means we can engage those at the table. I would just encourage us not to try to make the seder too convenient. Passing a pitcher of water around for urchatz so everyone can partake is not convenient. However, having everyone wash means everyone is part of the seder. The transition is made from the very start that those at the table go from observer to participant. We don’t watch the leader wash, watch the leader dip, watch the leader taste. We wash, we dip, we taste. We go through these movements
It may be more convenient to eat when the food is ready but we wait to make it through the story. We tell the story of how we went down to Egypt and how we were rescued. And it takes longer but a good story takes some time. We may adjust, we may edit, we may move along there or linger here because that is what drama needs but we don’t cut corners. The seder, if we are very fortunate, should transition from an inconvenient thing to a DIY thing. The seder should move from the old telling our grandfathers used to do to a vibrant discussion of freedom and gratitude and hope for the future.
The afikoman, everyone’s favorite was a solemn munching on the worst dessert ever. And then it turned into a game and then the game had a prize and the prize became more elaborate and now, often, the prize is the moment with the joy of watching children’s eyes bug out. I like that too. But can we turn that moment into a moment of gratitude everyone can share in? The afikoman is the official dessert meaning it is the last morsel we all eat meaning we finish an amazing meal with a boring taste so that when we get to birkat hamazon, we can remember to be thankful for our food, any food we get no matter how grand or modest. And just as we all settled ourselves to start the seder together, we all come back from the kitchen or bathroom or chasing the kids or whatever and settle ourselves again, focus ourselves again, eat a crumb of afikoman matzah and finish the journey.
It would be more convenient to just stop there but we would miss hallel and more wine and chad gadya and who knows one. In my family, these are big moments. It is a struggle to get ourselves back into seder mode but we are always grateful we did.
And we haven’t even talk about the historical journey or the spiritual journey or the metaphysical journey. We’ve arrived at the end of our seder and we barely discussed so much of it. Good thing we’ll be back next year.
Bringing a zevach shelmim, an offering of well being was not convenient but the effort was worth it. Planning and producing a seder is not convenient but the effort is worth it. It is worth it when you are together. It is worth it when we remember our past and when we discuss how to apply ancient lessons to the present. It is worth it when we celebrate our good fortune of being free.
Next week I will talk about different haggadot. But until then, Shabbat Shalom, an early chag Sameach and with two weeks left to go, let’s begin our preparations.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Occupy Wall Street
Occupy Wall Street and Veterans Day
Temple Beth Jacob of Newburgh
Rabbi Larry Freedman
November 11, 2011
Veterans Day is not Memorial Day. Memorial Day we remember those who gave up their lives in defense of our country. Veterans Day shows appreciation to all those who serve in our military. And, I have to say, as a member of the military it is nice to be appreciated. When in uniform I do have random people come up to me and say, “Thank you for your service.” Everyone likes to be appreciated. As a chaplain, I am also very appreciative of the families of military members. They put up with a great deal of stress that strains a marriage and family. The deployments of six months, nine months, a year away from family is very difficult. Two weeks ago I was away for training to be an instructor for a course on helping couples stay together so that the stress of military life doesn’t cause divorce. If you want to thank a veteran, be sure to thank the family as well.
Military members take an oath to defend the Constitution and they serve to defend the country from harm. But the military does more than that. There is what is called mootw, military operations other than war, which can range from drug interdiction to supply flights to Antarctica to training other armies to natural disaster relief. All of these things are done to further our national interests. The military, ultimately, is there to advance and defend our national interests as determined by our civilian leadership. This is not my opinion. That is what the military itself has expressly taught me. To serve in the military is to be part of that vast organization that advances and defends our national interests.
There are also uniformed members of the US Merchant Marine as well as the US Public Health Service. They too serve to advance the national interests of our country.
Of course, these are the people who serve in uniform. They are the ones who follow the orders of superiors as decided by civilian leadership. That leadership is chosen, ultimately, by the people. Therefore, we all take part in advancing and defending our national interests. All of us who live here should constantly be paying attention to what is going on so that we can speak on the issues of the day that affect our national interests and influence policy. Most regularly, we do so through the ballot box. But every now and then, a group of people feel frustrated and decide to exercise their right to assemble and they create a movement. We have seen two such movements arise in the last couple of years. One is the Tea Party and the other is Occupy Wall Street.
These are two groups on either side of the political spectrum but leaving specifics aside, they both talk about being a grass roots expression of public sentiment. They both are distrustful of government and they both tap in to frustration felt by the citizenry.
The Tea Party talks about defending America. OWS supporters tend to stay away from nationalistic lingo but they too feel they are defending America. It’s hard to find a piece of paper with a platform for OWS. The horizontal structure and commitment to consensus means that the will of the assembled is the platform of the group and thus it is dynamic but in large part they speak of economic injustice and they fear for the future of democracy if corporations are freed from oversight by the government -assuming government is an extension of the will of the people. They worry about the income gap in this country and they fear the accumulation of so much wealth by so few Americans is not in the national interests of our country.
We have all heard the statistics I hope. From the Congressional Budget Office[1] we learn how the disparity in the income gap has grown over the years.
Using 1979 as the baseline year and 2007 as the last year of the survey, the share of total income the top 1% of households making a bit under $2 million a year today has gone up over 120%. The top 20% of household income share has gone up almost 20%. That alone tells us that even the gap between the rich and very rich is huge. Meanwhile, the next 20% has, since 1979, lost almost 10% of its share of income and the rest of the households lost more than that. Another way of looking at income during those years is that between 1979 and 2007, the top 1% had a 281% change in after tax income. The top 20% had a 95% gain during those years. The bottom 20% had a 16% increase.
| The situation in 2007: Percentile % of Total Income Top 0.1% 11% Top 1 % 23.5% Top 10% 50% |
This change is not accidental and it is not due to hard work and innovation alone. It is due to changes in our tax codes as well as a variety of regulations that allowed the richest to earn even more and pay less in tax. In 2007, the top 10% of income earners earned half of all income in this country. The top 1% earned 23.5%, close to half of what the top 10% got and then the top 0.1% of earners had 11% of total income, again almost half of the top 1%.[2]
I hasten to add that neither I nor Judaism is opposed to rich people getting rich. You should all live and be well and make as much money as you can. We should understand that Judaism doesn’t favor any particular economic system. How you arrange your economy is less important to Judaism than the moral basis of that economy. Sharing the wealth is no more of a value in Judaism than accumulating wealth. What matters is that a sense of justice and morality prevail.
That’s why the question becomes, are the rich getting richer in a way that benefits the whole country? Is it in our national interests to have such huge disparity in income? And then we have to ask if the rich are paying their fair share of taxes. Yes, it is true the small numbers of the rich contribute more tax dollars than the large numbers of the poor but that is because they are rich. The poor cannot contribute nearly as much. We hear that 47% of Americans paid no taxes at all. That is not true if we count social security and Medicare as taxes but leaving that aside, many Americans paid no Federal income tax because they are poor or retired or disabled.[3] We can hardly expect those who earn little to no income to pay on a level similar to those making $2 million a year.
And then there is the matter of wealthy people having access to professionals who know how to shelter money to avoid paying taxes but that is another topic. And then there is the issue of corporations who have access to off shore strategies to reduce if not completely avoid Federal taxes. These are complicated strategies though some easy enough to understand with a clear graphic in a magazine. New York magazine recently explained how to lesson or avoid US taxes.[4] That is also another topic.
The situation we face today and that OWS wants to point out is the vast disparity in wealth distribution. Something is not right if the middle class who work hard and pay their taxes are not seeing the benefit of our country’s economic growth. There is something wrong with our laws that allow a CEO to earn tens of millions of dollars while sending a factory and its jobs overseas. There is something not right. This is the frustration we are hearing.
Occupy Wall Street is, at this point, an international phenomenon. There are occupy groups in hundreds of cities all of whom are expressing a general frustration with the economic status quo that they argue is maintained by cheating, by unfair advantage and by policies designed to keep this disparity maintained. For those of us who make less than $2 million a year, shouldn’t we all share some of this outrage?
Isn’t in our national interest to be sure that everyone pays his or her fair share in taxes? Isn’t in our national interest to be sure that giant corporations contribute to the tax rolls as much as small businesses do? It’s not about being punitive. Not as far as I’m concerned. It’s about fairness and smart thinking.
The Jewish attitude to all of this is also pretty clear. I found an essay by Dr. Meir Tamari, an Orthodox economist who has written extensively on this. Dr. Tamari is former chief economist in the office of the Governor of the Bank of Israel. I ordered his book which may make for some interesting discussion. He wrote an essay that coincidentally comments on this week’s Torah portion.[5] He begins by quoting Mishna (Avot 5:10) that says that the attitude of “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” is the value of a mediocre person. (I should add that person who says, “what is mine is yours and what is yours is mine” is called an ignoramus.) The person who says, “What is mine is mine and what is yours is yours” is called mediocre because while this person does not infringe on others, neither does this type of person see an obligation to share. This type of person thinks people should stay to themselves and forgets the social obligation we have to each other. Indeed, the Mishna goes on to suggest that this is the attitude of the people of S’dom, the people we read about this Shabbat. The evil of the Sodomites was not the graphic thing people like to talk about but the attitude they had that spurned attention to others. They would not let anyone enter their town and refused to share. They were interested only in themselves and forgot the very Jewish value of looking out for others. In S’dom, the people would not share the benefits of their wealth. They spurned others and kept them out except, of course, when Lot came by. Lot was a wealthy man. Lot was welcomed in.
Dr. Tamari goes on to say that having selfish people in a society is not a problem. Societies will always have selfish individuals. The problem sets in when the society itself internalizes that selfishness. When society becomes selfish there is moral decay and society will collapse. Capitalism is our economic system and justly celebrated but markets should never be so free that we forget compassion and obligation to one another. Capitalism without compassion is simply greed. Business and government need to strive for economic fairness: not always equality but fairness. And we need fairness not because capitalism demands it but because morality demands it and certainly Judaism demands it.
Yes, parnassa, making a living, is a value in Judaism. Everyone should be free to make a living and free to make a good living. But we should never be free to make that living by cheating others whether legally or not. It is a Jewish value to care for the workers, to look out for the poor and that is a moral stand we take and it is a moral stand we must choose to impose on capitalism.
Just down the river an international phenomenon is happening. They are speaking about fairness and justice. I want to see what’s going on.
I’m told it’s dangerous. Yup, there have been some arrests for criminal activity and assaults. But is the entire enterprise a cauldron of danger? There is no evidence of that.
I’m told it’s anti-Semitic. Yup, some people had some anti-Semitic signs but the stated platform of the General Assembly tolerates no such abuse, there was a sukkah, there are Shabbat gatherings and over 600 people turned out for Kol Nidre services. There are anti-Semites and then there is an anti-Semitic movement. I’m not convinced about the movement being hateful. But we’ll see, won’t we?
I’m told its hurting local businesses and so it is bad. I’m not sure how the local businesses are hurting given all the people in the area but we’ll find out.
I’m told that most people are just hangers on. Thousands of people go in and out. There are all these working groups and organized areas. Are they all done by hangers-on? We’ll find out.
Mostly I’m told that we should stay away from it all. But I want to see what’s going on. So tomorrow, I’m going. Anyone who wants to join me can. If not, not.
But more than curiosity, I want to go because what the OWS movement speaks of is a very Jewish value. The idea of holding government and business accountable so that all of us are treated fairly; the idea that corruption violates Judaism on every level; the idea that we all have the responsibility to look out for the poor and downtrodden; the idea that you cannot take advantage of people. These are Jewish values. As a Jew, I certainly support OWS on that level. And as an American on this Veterans Day, I support the rights of people to express their grievance. As a citizen, and patriot, I am called to watch for things that will harm our country and our way of life. Greed, corruption, inequality, unfairness are damaging to our democracy and to our national interests and that is why I want to go down. You should join me tomorrow on the 10:57 train to Grand Central. Let’s go see what is happening for ourselves.
[2] The statistics can be found in numerous places but are collected in this location: http://acivilamericandebate.wordpress.com/2011/04/10/the-30-year-growth-of-income-inequality/
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