Known to God Alone

Today,  Cook County observed the annual Interfaith Memorial Observance for Indigent Person. In the past year, 138 people, overwhelmingly male, were buried by Cook County Medical Examiner.
This service was an effort to lend dignity to their passing and to celebrate the lives of people who may have been loved by others, may have experienced love, but who died alone.

Appropriately, the Interfaith service was held in the heart of the city, at the beautiful Chicago Temple, opposite the City of Chicago offices at Daley Plaza.
I had the honor of chanting Psalm 23 and the traditional El Maleh prayer for any Jews who might have been among the deceased homeless people. I felt I was praying for them all.
A Muslim women offered a beautiful prayer celebrating the divine spark in all humans. There were Christian and even Zoroastrian prayers too.

All the names of the deceased were read at the service.

On September 23, 2010, three people were buried who had no identification. They are listed in the record as "unknown." When the man (of the Isma'ili Shia faith) who read the names of those who died that day came to the "unknowns" he said, instead "known to God alone."

I met wonderful people who work with the homeless and who talked about the challenges of getting people to accept help. It is sad that these men and women could not be helped while they were still alive.

A New Judaism

Out with the old...

Yesterday I approached a leading Orthodox rabbi about getting his organization to engage on the Hyatt campaign. The conversation took a surprising turn when the Orthodox rabbi mentioned the name of a well-known rabbi activist. This Orthodox rabbi said that his organization would not respond favorably if Rabbi X was involved in this initiative.

The scope of the  Jewish religion has always been characterized by divergent trends. On the one hand, the number of laws has a natural rate of expansion. In the Torah (Exodus 20), God speaks once and  this instantaneously becomes 10 commandments which themselves are immediately followed by a  host of new laws. Famously, Jewish tradition counts 613 Biblical commandments. Rabbinic literature multiplies these into tens of thousands.

Concurrently and consequently, in order to make sense of this mass of information, the authors of Judaism felt the need to define core values. In the 12th century Maimonides compiled the first encyclopedia of Jewish law, totalling 14 volumes and thousands of pages long. Alongside this exhaustive manual he proposed a one page "read-me-first" list of 13 Principles of the Faith.

Maimonides is part of a tradition of expansion alongside defining core values. The Biblical Book of Ecclesiastes concludes a long list of exhortations with one fundamental principle. The enormous Talmud similarly quotes a series Rabbis who reduced all of Judaism to one core principle. The most famous of all is Hillel. He reduced the whole of Judaism to the golden rule: do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.


Orthodoxy sees itself, in practice and dogma, as the true heir to pre-modern Judaism.  Orthodoxy defined itself in the modern era when it rejected the drive to modernize Judaism. These watershed issues included the use of the vernacular in religious service and rejecting other innovations in ritual (early 19th century Hungary and elsewhere), observance of kosher laws (late 19th century, United States),  rejecting interfaith marriages (20th century). Movements, like individuals, define themselves most clearly not by what they declare they are but by what they reject.

Rabbi X, along with many Jewish leaders, does not preach the Orthodox practice with regard kosher food, Sabbath observance and officiating at interfaith marriages.Yet, he is welcome in the Orthodox world and other mainstream Jewish bodies. Where he crosses the line is in his open criticism of the State of Israel.

The largest Jewish organizations, along with Orthodoxy have declared a new core principle. This principle supplants values of social justice or learning, separation of church and state, study, and even (the recent principle of) Jewish continuity.

...in with the new

The Talmudic Rabbi Hillel, were he an Orthodox Jew today, would indeed say:
"Support the State of Israel, this is the whole Torah, all the rest is the commentary"

What's $3,000,000,000.00 among friends?

Israeli Prime Minister's speech to Congress tomorrow is being seen as his rebuttal to President Obama's speech to AIPAC yesterday.
Netanyahu addressed Congress at the beginning of his first term as prime minister in the 90s. He won a standing ovation from the U.S. lawmakers when he declared that Israel would no longer ask for billions in U.S. dollars. Back in Israel, economic analysts mocked their prime minister's lofty promise. Nehemia Strassler, Economics Editor of Israel's paper of record, Haaretz, predicted that should Israel decline the annual infusion of U.S. aid, the rate of exchange of the Israeli shekel would shoot up by at least 33%. In his analysis, the Israeli economy could not withstand such a shock.
So, this was never going to happen.
And it didn't.  In the interim, Israel has asked  - and received - not less, but more U.S. aid. In the period 2000-09, the U.S. gave the State of Israel over $24b in military aid.

Pro-Israel advocates still claim that these sums are insignificant and they amount to just 5% of Israel's GDP.

If the money is insignificant, tomorrow, will Netanyahu renew his 15 year old commitment to wean Israel off U.S. aid? And why are we told that Israel's security hangs in the balance and needs more and more money?
And if it is not significant, then does that not drive home the point that Israel is the region's military superpower and should take the lead in bringing security to the Middle East?
With greater power and privilege come greater responsibility.
Tomorrow, Netanyahu could win an honest ovation in Congress.
1. Declare that Israel will sign the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty.
2. Commit to suspending State of Israel laws that grant more civil rights to Jews than to Palestinians.
3. Commit to end colonizing the West Bank, rein in the settlers and work to restore a life of dignity to its Palestinian residents.
I won't hold my breath.

Reclaiming Jewish Values

Recently, I participated in  a training for creating  flashmobs. It was a lot of  fun. Organizing a flashmob is more involved than it might look. There is the obvious: thinking up and rehearsing the lines and the dance moves, organizing lots of people and getting them into a public space without arousing suspicion. But there are other pieces too: the videographers, the "innocent bystanders" who seem keenly interested in the flashmob but are really plants, other people whose job it is to act as buffers if there is any belligerent behavior against members of the flashmob and others and many other pieces of organizing.

What I loved about this flashmob in D.C. on Friday is the riff on the iconic Jewish wedding/Bar Mitzvah song "Hava Nagila." "Hava Nagila's" ubiquity  makes it instantly recognizable not only to Jews but to anyone whose ever been to a Jewish event. In big-city America, you'd have to lead a severely isolated existence not to recognize  "Hava Nagila" and identify it as Jewish.

This flashmob in D.C. was directed  at AIPAC. Jews are challenging the supremacy of the pro-war Israel lobby. AIPAC is no longer is the sole voice of America's Jews.

Move over AIPAC! A New Judaism is arising. A Judaism of solidarity with the dispossessed, a Judaism of peace and justice.

you tube clip taken from Mondoweiss

Obama/Netanyahu vs. Israel/Palestine, 1:0

                                
So, the President actually said it. "1967 borders with negotiated land swaps".
Netanyahu protested.
Obama can say he tried. Netanyahu can say he stood up to the Americans.

And nothing will happen. Again, what they both want.

David Samel over at Mondoweiss gets it right.

Israel vs. the Jews

In advance  of his trip to the States, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu laid out his new plan for peace. He spoke from the Knesset podium in Jerusalem.

First the soundbite:

Israel would be prepared to compromise and cede parts of our homeland for true peace with the Palestinians

 but:

A Palestinian government that comprises representatives of Hamas and refuses to recognize that Israel is the state of the Jewish People is not a partner for peace.

But Netanyahu's own government enforces as system that invalidates his own criterion. The State of Israel per Netanyahu's government is not the state of the Jewish People.

It is fair to day that the State of Israel is constituted as as the state of the Israeli Jewish people.
This state's laws and institutions grant superior privileges to Israeli Jews over, and at the expense of, non-Jewish Israeli citizens.
As an American Jew, my religious rights in the State of Israel are inferior to those of Israeli Jews.
The State's actions in the West Bank, Gaza and Lebanon are not recognizably Jewish to me.

As such, I do not recognize in the State  Israel the "State of the Jewish People" of the Israeli leader's statement. Whether you define Jewish as a set of morals or a tribe, the State of Israel does not fit the definition.

So why not meet with Hamas? Hamas in Gaza was democratically elected and enjoys the trust of their people. Now, they have agreed to share power with the Palestinian Authority on the West Bank.

This is a golden opportunity for Israel to reach an agreement with all the Palestinians.

But Netanyahu wants peace-and-quiet not peace and justice.

"2,000 Years of Any Day Now"

Billboard in Oakland, CA

                           
For Jews, its the coming of the Messiah. Periodically, end-of-time believers release a new date.
The people who engage in these calculations are known as mehashvei kitzin. Our tradition raps them on the knuckles. No one holds God to a timetable.

Evangelical Christians await the coming of "the rapture."

A new date for the rapture is upon us. According to this e-mail that was personally sent to me (outreach to Jewish clergy?), we can expect the rapture this coming Saturday, May 21.

"The Holy Bible tells us that May 21, 2011 will be this appointed Day of Judgment!  Following it there will be 5 months of awful torment for this world; and then on October 21, 2011 God will destroy this earth and the entire creation."

Good news for some of them. Bad news for everybody else who won't make the cut. Apparently, God's is powerless in the face of the space limitations of the rapture.

Since the birth of Christianity, the imminent return of the Messiah has inspired the faithful. The first generation of Christians expected Jesus to come back in their lifetime. Ever since, periodically, a new date is announced. In the past, devout believers have sold their possessions and quit their jobs in preparation for the great day. Only to be left with nothing once the date came and went with no sign of the Messiah.


Everyone's entitled to their belief in the absolute truth. But, as the folks over at atheists.org point out, who will pick up the pieces for those believers who quit their jobs and disrupt their lives in preparation for this Saturday's rapture?

Fantasizing About Fleeing the Front

        +            

Here's a thought exercise. Let's say U.S. Jews abandon the conservative AIPAC and the centrist J Street. Instead, they all begin to identify with radical left Jewish organizations, such as JVP or IJAN.
Subsequently, the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations asks for a meeting with President Obama and Congressional leaders. Abe Foxman of the ADL urges the US Administration to pay heed to the group. At the meeting, the Jewish leaders declare that they want the US to withhold all military aid from the State of Israel until Israel brings justice to its Palestinian population.
Rabbis and Jewish academics declare that to be Jewish is to stand in solidarity with the Palestinians and other dispossessed people. The campaign against Iran is denounced as a distraction. President Obama issues a stern warning, cautioning Prime Minister Netanyahu from building any more Jewish homes on the West Bank. Congressional leaders refuse to meet Netayahu until he publicly commits to lift the siege on Gaza, release Palestinian prisoners in return for Gilad Shalit and commits not to attack Gaza again.
Israeli and Palestinian activists in groups such as Ta'ayush, Anarchists Against the Wall and the Sheikh Jarrah rallies tour the United States speaking at rallies and in synagogues.
The Jewish community meet every year at the Annual Peace and Justice Rally, marching alongside Palestinian leaders.

What would happen then in the United States? Would non-Jewish Americans rally to the Jewish community (with the likely exception of Christian Fundamentalists). The Israeli government is forced to re-visit its discriminatory policies. Palestinians are granted full civil rights under Israeli law.

I hope that's how it would happen.

But something else could happen. If Jews pulled out of the Middle East conflict and were perceived as standing in solidarity with Muslims (in the public eye, that also includes non-Western Christians), I wonder if the magical, privileged status of U.S. Jews would evaporate. Are American Jews just serving a secularized Christian agenda? Jews are the face of Christian America's battle in the Middle East.

Even if this were not the case. Jews' fear of losing their privileged status will, in itself, prevent this scenario from ever materializing.
Once Jews stop serving the Christians in the Christian-Muslim class of civilizations, what will our role in society be? Will Christians turn on the Jewish community if Jews befriend Muslims?

End of daydream.

Judaism as Performance Art

                                 

1) This week I had a great conversation with a progressive Jewish activist. She is queer, politically savvy, knowledgeable and committed both to her social justice values and to her Judaism.
She hosted her own seder this year. The participants were mostly non-Jews along with some Jews who have no other Jewish affiliation. She crafted an alternative Haggadah that reflects her values.  The seder was a smashing success.
But, she had one complaint. As the only committed Jew in the room, she felt like she was putting on a performance. She missed sharing the commitment with a community of like-minded Jews.

2) When leading services, particularly Bar Mitzvah services, I often find that there is no participation in the congregtion. The congregation is a polite and passive audience; the bima (raised dais, the equivalent of the area around the altar in a church) is a stage. The clergy and musicians perform Judaism for the visitors. One of my colleagues has actually quipped to the congregation: "You know. This is not TV. We can see you!" He gets a laugh and it does help people become engaged in the service.

3) A couple of years ago, I heard the Israeli consul-general in Chicago speak about Israel. This was a well-rehearsed presentation and he hit the usual points in the Zionist narrative. The Consul-General ended with a quote from Amos Oz: "We, in Israel are the actors. We are on the stage. We invite you in the audience to come up onto the stage and join us in the play." This was the classic Ben-Gurion Zionist line. Israel is the center and America is the periphery. Israel is the place of Jewish life and Jewish America is inconsequential.
The audience applauded appreciatively.

All this leads me to believe that Judaism for many Jewish Americans is something that is performed, by others, for them. I don't know if this comes from Christianity or from watching TV, but passivity and being spectators is the default way of being. Whether it's a home ritual, synagogue service or Israel-as-Jewish-state, the role of the average American Jew is to be a polite and passive spectator.

Does it have to be this way? I  hope not.

h/t Rob Jury

Which Rabbi Jacobs Will Lead the Reform Movement?

Rabbi Richard Jacobs, President-Designate of the URJ

 The Jewish Reform movement has just started the transition to a new leader. In 2012, Rabbi Eric Yoffie is stepping down after 30 years in leadership roles in the Reform Movement. The process of introducing his successor,  Rabbi Rick Jacobs to the public has begun. One of Jacobs' first public appearances after the announcement was made was with Rabbi Yoffie was in DC last week. Speaking to Reform social justice activists he mounted a vigorous defense of his pro-Israel credentials. Rabbi Jacobs is a moderate. He has supported Rabbis for Human Rights, an activist group that does great work on behalf of Palestinian human rights. While he is a member of J Street's Rabbinic Cabinet, Rabbi Jacobs has aligned himself with Jewish Voice for Peace's position on BDS (economic sanctions and other measures). Namely, Rabbi Jacobs does not oppose BDS  against West Bank settlements.
His appointment to the head of the Reform movement is being hailed  - and attacked – as a victory for the  left-of-center J Street.
In this speech, however, Rabbi Jacobs goes out of his way to appease the right-wing. After coming under attack by the right wing,  he is now speaking with a different voice, answering Amen to the anti-Palestinian camp’s talking points.

Which of is two two public personas will Rabbi Jacobs bring to the URJ? The Rabbi Jacobs who supports BDS against or the one who supports the IDF's onslaught on Gaza?

 

I posted this response on The Forward website:

Rabbi Jacobs speaks of equality between Jew and Arab in Israel and speaks approvingly, if only in passing, of activism to dismantle settlements. These are important messages.

But these good points are, unfortunately, overshadowed by major sections of the speech.

Rabbi Jacobs speaks admiringly of Daniel Pipes, a man whose idea of reaching out to other faiths is expressed in statements such as "we should tolerate moderate Islam", and, in commenting on the peaceful, democratic revolution in Egypt said: "Muslims...at this time, they are the least democratic of peoples". Notwithstanding that one of the world's most populous democracies, is the Muslim country of Indonesia.

Where is Rabbi Jacobs' voice urging Reform Jews to reach out to American Muslims?

2. Rabbi Jacobs has nothing to say about Israel's shameful attack on the people of Gaza in 2008-9. He boasts that he anticipated the partisan retraction of one of the 13 serious war crime charges against Israel in the attack on Gaza in 2008-9. He implies that the retraction by a single member of the commission of just one finding is sufficient to invalidate the other 12 accusations of war crimes. Rabbi Jacobs surely knows that in our tradition, a da'at yachid, (a minority, dissenting opinion) does not decide the law.

Where is the Rabbi's moral concern for the horrendous destruction of civilian institutions and human life in the IDF's campaign in Gaza?

3. Rabbi Jacobs speaks approvingly of AIPAC and disparagingly of J Street. Jewish Voice for Peace is not mentioned in his speech on Israel.

Where is the "big tent" that the leader of the largest denomination in Judaism seeks to build?

Given such a partisan, political stance, Rabbi Kaplan's call for Reform Jews to disengage from Israel is understandable. However, this is less than optimal. A new generation of young American Jews is emerging who will not put aside their values in the name of loyalty the State of Israel. What will Rabbi Jacobs and Rabbi Kaplan tell them?

In the U.S. we have Palestinian and Arab neighbors. What message do we want to send them?

In the past the leadership of American Jewry gave the Israeli government the authority to bring settlements to the West Bank. Rabbi Yoffie has since retracted that support.

I wish Rabbi Jacobs well in his new position as leader of the Reform movement. There is still time, before he takes office next year, to go beyond narrow partisan politics and reach out to the broad, diverse spectrum of opinion that is American Reform Judaism.

I hope he does so.

           

           

The Solution to Hyatt Corp's Problem

Jane Ramsey (JCUA), a translator & the three Hyatt housekeepers:
Linda Lopez (L.A.)  Drupatiie Jungra (Boston) Ofelia Martinez (Chicago)
Chicago, August 28, 2011

Last week I heard the story of a Hyatt worker who was fired from her job of 29 years and replaced by temp workers whom she had trained. On August 31, 2009, all the housekeeping staff at three Boston Hyatt hotels were fired and replaced by temps. Management had lied to her and her co-workers about why they were training these new workers. According to this worker, the general manager of the Hyatt Regency Cambridge told the housekeeping staff on the day of their dismissal that the reason they were being fired was because the hotel was short of money. The reality is that the hotel industry is, and has been doing very well, with high occupancy rates, as reported by Hyatt itself. The actual hardship is born by the workers. In our "jobless recovery" desperate people will take any job, undercutting workers who are just a little better off than they are.

Hyatt has a problem. The company is required to constantly increase its earnings. Since business is already booming, the money will have to come from cutting costs. Since the hotel cannot lower its standards of hospitality,  this means that costs must be cut. And that means labor. Our 'jobless recovery' has generated an abundance of poor, unemployed people, a bonanza in cheap labor.

You might think that dismissing veteran, loyal, hardworking staff might be a bump in this plan. But, actually, the real problem is how to exploit this change to cut out the messy business of dealing with people.

Thankfully, this problem has a solution. Hospitality Staffing Solutions provides affordable, hassle-free labor. HSS sums up its pitch with one advertizing image. "HSS offers convenience at affordable prices." - just like the vending machine in the company's advertizing:

HSS ad targeting Hyatt and other hotels and hospitality businesses

I find the company's ad offensive on several levels.
1) The size of the workers. The images are reduced to the size of a packet of M&Ms. You can pop these workers into your mouth. This is humiliating: all these workers added together are still smaller than the client.
2) The workers in each category are identical to each other - all workers are equally indistinguishable from each other. These clones are faceless,  dependable drones.
3) The clean transaction of the vending machine translates into the business world. The vending machine offers you no shopping for food, cooking, sitting down to eat and cleaning up. Just put some change into the vending machine and pop instant food into your mouth.  Similarly,  HSS promises employers protection from dealing with all the human messiness of real people.

Finally - and perhaps it's my own sensitivity having just finished working Holocaust material -  but talking about human beings in terms of "solutions" leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Now, take another look at the workers in the first picture. Do they look like they belong in a vending machine?

Too Much, Too Little, Too Late

Osama Bin Laden's death should be a cause for relief. The mastermind of 9/11 is gone. 
But I'm left with an uneasy feeling.

Firstly, as Jerry Haber points out it wasn't just the guilty who died. A woman was targeted and killed by the U.S. force.

Secondly, I heard several times in the media coverage interviewees using the phrase "justice has been served."

Well,  according to the Guardian report:

As the raiding party closed in on the last unsecured room in the compound, Bin Laden, who according to the White House had no weapon, was shot dead. US officials say – and there is no independent verification of this fact – he was shot twice, once in the chest and once in the head. "Done in by a double tap – boom boom – to the left side of his face," wrote Marc Ambinder of the National Journal, a beltway insider's journal.

That sounds to me like the execution of an unarmed man. Since the death penalty is controversial at best and Osama Bin Laden was not served with a legal process, how can this be called justice?

The New York Times offered a different angle:

Pakistani authorities, kept in the dark by their allies in Washington, scrambled forces as the American commandos rushed to finish their mission and leave before a confrontation. Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head. A member of the Navy Seals snapped his picture with a camera and uploaded it to analysts who fed it into a facial recognition program.

Since, so far, the only source for this information as to what happened in the compound rooms has been the United States government, there is no way right now of verifying what actually happened.
I am suspicious of the argument that time was pressing. Clearly, there was enough time for:
1. the Navy Seal's picture
2. transmitting the picture, running the facial recognition program, making an evaluation and transmitting that through command to the Navy Seals.
3. removing Osama Bin Laden's body for burial at sea.
Why could the forces not have stunned him and removed him for interrogation and trial?
It is clear, even from President Obama's statements, that the U.S. goal was not justice but retribution by execution.

The scenes of people rejoicing at the news of the killing in Time Square and elsewhere are IMHO distasteful. I sincerely hope that President Obama did not order an execution to satisfy that sentiment.

If Osama bin Laden was too potent a leader to be taken captive and put on trial like Saddam Hussein, then we better put on our thinking caps fast. Let's figure out Osama's allure and fix that problem.
Killing him won't do it and there's no cause to rejoice until we do.

Already the U.S. and its allies are bracing for the inevitable counter-attack. If Osama Bin Laden was the figurehead of Al Qaeda,  he will not inspire his followers any less now that he is a martyr.


Lastly, we have lived through 10 years of disastrous U.S. policy in response to and justified by 9/11. These policies resulted in the killing of many more innocent lives than were lost on 9/11.
How can the death of Osama bin Laden make that right?