Yitro 5779: Shame and Murder

We read this Shabbat about the 10 commandments. We tend to think these are ingrained in the fabric of our society—just look at people trying to plaster them on the sides of courthouses—we think they are the basis for Western morality. But the fact is, many of them are flouted.
The first commandment, which Rambam says is to know there is a God: many people nowadays say they are atheists. The truth is, the God they don’t believe in, is a God I don’t believe in and in fact the overwhelming history of Jewish thought rejects. There is no invisible guy way up high in an invisible castle. Believing in God means believing in goodness, in right, that there is something toward which I personally strive that is greater than myself, and toward which we try to move the world.
Sadly, murder seems to be becoming more common—most recently, the bank shooting up the road in Sebring, where a gunman pointlessly murdered 5 victims on cold blood. I do not believe our society is adequately teaching the sanctity of life.
The Talmud says that there is more than one way to murder somebody. According to the Talmud, public shaming—halbanat panim—is a form of murder. Why is shaming a type of murder? On a literal level, halbanat panim means to make one’s face white—if I shame you and make your face pale, I have shed the blood from your face.
On a more figurative level, we are social animals. My livelihood, my experience in society, depends on what others think of me. Destroying someone’s reputation is destroying the life they built
I have been thinking this week about the video of the student from Covington, who smirked at older native American drumming. A picture of this was put on twitter with a very judgmental caption claiming the student was harassing the native American. The tweet went viral, was even re-tweeted by the congresswoman from Minnesota. This led to threats of expulsion from the school, and even a death threat against student.
It turns out the student was not harassing anybody. The elderly Native American had approached their protest, and was drumming in their faces. They just stood their ground. Should they have smirked and been silly? No, they were disrespectful, but they did not deserve to be dragged over the coals in front of millions of people.
We cannot let ourselves be recruited by the forces of judgment, into believing shameful things about others. The Jewish tradition teaches us to give the benefit of the doubt, and this will take the ammunition away from the forces of judging and embarrassing. Pictures can always be interpreted multiple ways. Giving the benefit of the doubt means to question the caption, and assume the best—they were kids, thought it was funny, and were singing along. Nothing about the video suggested anything more.
We live in a society where people are judged & shamed, and lives & livelihoods are ruined. To not kill, is to not participate in killing, in ruining another’s life, by believing in the positive, giving the benefit of the doubt, and helping build, create life rather than destroy

Vayashev 5779 Sermon: Hanukkah and Bullying

In our prayers celebrating Hanukkah, we say that “you delivered the mighty into the hands of the weak.” Hanukkah celebrates the victory of faith over might. Might doesn’t make right; in the long run, we win through faith, not by might.
This is true on a historical level-look at the collapse of Russian communism. It did not happen because of the cold war, because we built larger weapons. It happened because of economic pressures, and because democracy and freedom are right. At times, we do backslide, but ultimately “the arc of history tends toward justice.”
On an interpersonal level, too, we “win” not by vanquishing our foe, not by being more powerful, but by interacting with compassion and openness, and not always getting our way. There are people who always need to get their way, and will use every tool at their disposal to get it. They may force their will, but the other person is not happy, and ultimately it is a pyrrhic victory: they have won the battle but lost the war. By getting their way through force, they have already sown the seeds of their own undoing.
Bullying is very real. I believe the word is so overused now that kids don’t know what it means. Saying something mean online is not cyberbullying. Bullies are people who have power and enjoy using it. When I was a child, I was beaten up on the walk home by a group of children, for no reason other than to gratify their desire to be powerful.
The Greeks were bullies. They had a lot of power: they used elephants to build was essentially a tank, unstoppable by foot soldiers. They had massive phalanxes, which were clouds of lances killing anything in their way.
The Antiochus approach to relationships, which is basically bullying, is to try to use whatever tool I can to get my way. It is a game of mercy, bending the other person’s hand backward painfully until they give in. I can use threats, volume (yelling), insults. There’s no dynamic interchange of ideas, and ultimately, it kills the relationship: if the other person says yes, they only do so out of fear, but their heart wants to go the other way. We all do this at times; sometimes I do it with my own children. It is a challenge to do it differently.
American culture is built on this kind of relationship. As a father of small children, I watch a lot of Disney. Think about Sleeping Beauty: the prince defeats the evil witch by force. So many movies have the following dialogue, or some version:
“Ha ha ha”
“Oh no you don’t”
“I’ll get you next time”
We still teach our children that force solves problems; really, it only causes more problems.
And we see these problems in our synagogue culture. So often, somebody wants something, and uses all sorts of power plays to try to get it. Imagine someone who wants to paint the shul pink: It’s Florida, so pink is appropriate, and it would make us stick out. They may yell at volunteers and staff, insult them, badmouth them, threaten to resign. These kinds of interactions, sadly, happen all the time. They are really forms of bullying. We need to find a different way.
The Jewish approach is very different. At the end of the Amida, we read a prayer that says “may my soul be as dust to all, and may I be silent to those who curse me.” Can I be non-reactive, absorb insults without needing to strike back? We are taught to be flexible, and that it is good to compromise even if we are right, for the sake of peace.
What is a victory of faith?
Avoiding anger: the Talmud says our words should all be calm
Avoiding lashon hara: not badmouthing the person we are speaking with
Giving the benefit of the doubt to the person we are speaking with: they have the best intentions, and have a different experience than myself
Being flexible—The Talmud says we should bend like a reed, and not be stiff like a cedar. It is okay not to get my way 100%, even if I still know im right
Finding solutions cooperatively, which means listening to the person opposite me

The real victory is not winning every conflict. It is not being sure we beat the Greeks, or the Romans, or the neo-Nazis. It is making sure we retain our integrity, that we stand for a different way of being in the world. The victory happens when we model and teach that way of being to the world, increasing the radiance of holy light in the world

Bernie's boycott of AIPAC

I was deeply saddened and disappointed by Bernie Sanders not addressing the AIPAC convention. It was sad to me, for one, to see the only Jewish candidate skipping a major Jewish convention. It was also disappointing to me since, just by virtue of being the only Independent in Congress, Bernie is something of a hero to me. But I was also deeply saddened by what it suggests for the possibility of conversation around Israel, and conversation in general over difficult topics.
For me, this raises some central questions: What’s the best way to deal with someone if I disagree vehemently? What does boycotting accomplish, and what does it destroy?
It is easy to engage in a “conversation” if I have enough things to say that you will agree with; this was the direction Hillary and Trump both went. It’s much harder to have a meaningful conversation if I assume you disagree with me if I walk in assuming there’s a conflict. The belief that there’s a conflict itself creates conflict.

I can think of two important ways to keep converations both real and productive, both of which 9I think) have a basis in Jewish tradition.
1. find common ground
In the classic debate between Shammai and Hillel (over a person sitting in a sukkah, but the table is in their house), Hillel wins the argument, not because of their superior reasoning, but because they were humble. What’s the proof they were humble? They quoted Shammai first. I imagine: they tried to fully understand his position first, and were even happy to explain his reasoning to others. I imagine they were even open to his arguments, even if (as in this case) they ultimately disagreed.
What would this have looked like? If you ever are a candidate for president who feels AIPAC is too easy on Israel, what could you do? You could first meet privately with AIPAC leaders, try to understand their position, try to learn if there are any facts that you may not have considered. try to understand whether there really are substantive differences.
I am not convinced the difference is really so far—maybe a difference in emphasis. Everyone at AIPAC already believes in a “2-state solution”-that’s not really a question. Could Bernie agree that Palestinians need to renounce violence before negotiating boundaries? Probably—he did say so in his speech. Could AIPAC agree that once Palestinians renounce violence, we would talk about a freeze of settlements? Probably.
What often strikes me in these conversations is that there’s much less substantive disagreement than the rhetoric leads us to believe.

2. engage personally,
In the debate between Hillel and Shammai, which was inherited by their followers (Bet Hillel and Bet Shammai), there were differences in their understanding of marriage laws that could have split the community. But nevertheless, their kids married each other. They were still friends. They didn’t
let it result in a breakdown of their relationships.
By boycotting, the conversation is automatically shut down. Once I boycott, I announce, I disagree with you no matter what, and there’s no conversation.
I would like to think that if Bernie had taken his proposed speech to AIPACleaders, and asked what they thought, he might have toned down what he said. I would like to believe he would have backed down from criticizing alleged Israeli bombing of hospitals in Gaza, if he realized they were being used as weapons bases (which he said are legitimate targets). I would like to believe he would not have criticized the alleged economic blockade of Gaza to the same extent, if he was educated about the military nature of the blockade, the challenges of allowing economic borders to remain open while trying to prevent weapons from entering, and the material support Israel does allow through.
When we shut down conversations, we prevent ourselves from growing, from learning our own blindspots. It’s easy to stay locked in my position, to think I’m right and build barriers against the world. It’s harder to engage in a meaningful conversation, where I learn and grow, and where I run the risk of actually changing my opinion.
The Talmud says that Torah scrolls should be written with a reed (rather than something stiffer) because reeds are flexible. May we all be flexible like reeds, growing in wisdom and understanding from deep conversation with each other.

Fragility and Interdependence

This past Tuesday, when I came into work, somebody commented that he needed to go back and repair his sukkah, because it had been blown over. I smugly thought about how lovely my own sukkah was, and visualized it in my back yard, erected the prior evening, standing beautifully. Very late that evening, as I came home, I thought to look out back just to see how it was doing. It wasn’t good.
I was surprised: I thought I had done a good job. But the truth is, this is how sukkahs are by necessity. As we studied over the past 2 mornings, the sukkah has to be impermanent, and anything impermanent is inherently fragile. According to the Talmud, anything that looks permanent (like by being too high) is treyf. For a week we surround ourselves with the experience of impermanence, fragility.
What’s so great about fragility?
The truth is, that which is most important in life is the most fragile. We davenned on Yom Kippur a prayer about our extreme fragility: we wither like grass, vanish like smoke, like a dream. People, god forbid, have heart attacks, get hit by cars, and are gone in an instant. There we say, “atah hu meleck el hay vekayam.” God is the eternal king, somehow if we can root ourselves in transcendent values, we can transcend our own fragility, our own mortality.
Today we read in kohelet (4:7-8):
There is one [person], and there is no second [with him]; yea, he has neither son nor brother, and there is no end to all his toil; neither is his eye sated from wealth. Now for whom do I toil and deprive my soul of pleasure? This too is vanity and an unhappy affair.”
Yes, my bank account seems pretty stable: it’s insured, I could leave it there forever. We insure our possessions, and can replace them if anything happens. But what good are possessions if you don’t have anyone to leave them to?
There was an excellent movie on this theme, “Up in the Air.” The protagonist has as his ambition amassing one million miles in the sky, has no home, no base, no true friends. His job is to go around firing people, making them rootless, destroying their lives. By the time he finally reaches the goal, he realizes his life is completely empty. There is no family there to congratulate him, just a flight attendant and a legendary pilot, and a glass of champagne he doesn’t enjoy.
I have worked in nursing homes around Philadelphia, especially the Philadelphia geriatric center. I will tell you that on their walls, people didn’t have pictures of their cars or homes. They didn’t save the letter telling them they’d paid off their mortgage, or their student loans. They had pictures of their grandchildren and greatgrandchildren. And the ones with no pictures, no visitors, were the most depressed.
The Earth for ages was thought of as the image of permanence: think of the ad slogan, solid as a rock. Kohelet says: dor ba, vedor holech, veha’aretz leolam omed—a generation comes, a generation goes, but the earth stands forever. The earth was used as a counterpoint to highlight our own fragility. But now we see that the earth itself is deeply vulnerable. Because of deforestation, pollution, unsustainable agriculture & climate change, the world’s species are disappearing 1,000 times faster than the rate at which species naturally go extinct. By the year 2100, researchers say that 1/3 to ½ of earth’s species could be wiped out. Nahmanides says we are prohibited from making one species go extinct. This is a mass tragedy.
The physical earth, too, is fragile, and changing. Many of you may have read about the massive sink hole, 330 feet across, in Siberia, which may have been caused by methane released from the permafrost. The black panther is coming back, but an estimated quarter of its habitat will likely be lost to rising oceans. The earth is changing.
Zalman shachter shalomi, who died last year, said one of the major shifts in consciousness was when we went to space and could see the earth as a whole. He called this gaia consciousness: earth is a living organism that we are ethically responsible to, that we are limbs of. The earth is finite, just a big spaceship, and there’s not really anywhere else to go. Maybe Mars, but it’s not much of a life. The earth, like us, is a beautiful and fragile divine creation.
If life is so fragile, if we are so vulnerable, how do we respond?
Kohelet posits at least 2 parts of the response:
1. don’t try for safety—enjoy that which is fragile. Enjoy your limited time here. Enjoy those things which are most meaningful in life, and also most fleeting.
2. find safety in Healthy interdependence:
It is amazing to me how pathetic babies are. When they are born, the only thing they can do is cry, suck, and move their eyes. They can’t use their limbs effectively, they flop over, they can’t hold their heads up, they fall off furniture if you let them. They are completely vulnerable, completely fragile. So how have humans survived for millions of years? By being carried by their mothers, and in the days before slings and strollers, carried in their mothers arms, around the world, for millions of years. Parental love that has kept babies safe, has kept the human species and all mammals alive for millions of years. We cannot survive alone
Kohelet 4:9-12: Two are better than one, since they have good reward for their toil. For if they fall, one will lift up his friend, but woe to the one who falls and has no second one to lift him up. Moreover, if two lie down, they will have warmth, but how will one have warmth? And if a man prevails against the one, the two will stand against him, and a three- stranded cord will not quickly be broken
In America, and perhaps this is human nature, we prize independence. I know of Iraqi vets who couldn’t go to bathroom by themselves, and felt deep shame for it. I have met many seniors scared of aging because they don’t want to be “a burden,” and who prefer to live alone in a nursing home where they are lonely and depressed rather than impose on their children.
My college years: only felt successful if I could accomplish a task by myself. At Dartmouth, there was a legendary challenge, “the moose.” I had a goal of hiking all the 50 miles of trails on mt mousilauk in one day—a sign of individual strength & endurance. I never did it. The person who did, my friend, Tom Marlowe, had other people stationed around, ferrying him, giving him food, maybe a massage. Now he’s a doctor, helping people walking their way through the world.
The truth is, every minute of our lives we are amazingly interdependent. Sitting in this building, with concrete made by one person, poured by another. Wearing clothes, cotton picked, transported, processed, woven, shipped, sold. Our bread, planted, harvested, the grain ground, shipped, baked. The electric company that powered the lights in the store where we bought the bread. And just think about our iPhones!
Back to the sukkah which was blown down, I had 2 people helping me, and for part of the time I was taking care of the baby; the other 2 people told me, I think you are needed inside. You can only imagine what would have happened if I had tried to put it up alone.
It is no coincident that sukkot, and festivals and Shabbat in general, are celebrated with family. The Talmud gives us advice: guys, eat red meat and wine, buy toys and candy for the kids, and jewelry for your wives. Not bad advice. Joy is celebrating together. Hold each other up. Two is better than one, and three is even better.
Judaism institutionalizes interdependence, forces it on us, by making it a mitzvah to get married. You can’t have a celibate clergy in Judaism because it’s not an ideal—lo tov heyot ha’adam levado—it is not good for a person to be alone. We studied this last week in our discussion of solitary confinement, and the detrimental psychological effects it has. People need human contact, and literally go crazy without it. I have often heard it said that we need to know who we are before we can love someone else. I don’t agree- we can’t know ourselves until we are in relationships. And we never finish knowing who we are- we grow, are challenged, are kept on our toes by having a partner. we grow through love, through relationships, through realizing our mutual dependence.
In the sukkah, we surround ourselves with that which is truly important, truly valuable, irreplaceable, and completely fragile: our family, our friends, our planet. Enjoy it.
Hag sameach, a festival of joy, togetherness & celebration

Judaism and the "right to stand your ground"

The George Zimmerman verdict is
Scary: opens door to vigilantes,
to becoming the wild west all over.
Whether or not jury was right there’s no just result

“right to stand your ground”

If you think about it, any time 2 people believe they have a "right to stand their ground," you end up with escalating conflict. When I imagine what happened that night (and I admit this is my own imaginative reconstruction), I imagine 2 people each thinking they are just standing their ground. Zimmerman, believing he had a right to protect his community against someone he thought seemed suspicious, even if only because of the color of his skin and his clothing style. And Martin, believing he had a right to protect himself against someone who seemed to be stalking him

When 2 people stand their ground, you have a stand off where only 1 person can win
There’s always a loser,
Since nobody wants to lose, so each person raises the stakes--there is a mutual escalation.
In this case, the stakes were raised so high that at least according to zimmerman’s testimony, only 1 of them would come out alive
Nobody felt an obligation to stand down, to de-escalate,
to walk away, which was what the dispatcher had told Zimmerman to do
It was a tragic inability to de-escalate
This is the problem with the whole attitude of "standing your ground."

“Standing your ground” is not a jewish value
Talmud: Jerusalem destroyed because people insisted on their legal rights—
let’s say shimon owed rubin 10 zuz, but shimon only had 9
so rubin insisted on the full 10 zuz
Rubin wouldn’t compromise.
Rubin was right halachically—but he was wrong because he wouldn’t compromise
And for this Jerusalem was destroyed

In jewish court proceedings, too, the court is instructed to try to negotiate a settlement first
And only then to adjudicate
The whole idea of a settlement is that it’s not necessarily what the halacha calls for
It’s about making peace between the two sides
Because the world survives through peace, not through who’s wight or wrong

Any of us who are married or have been know this
How long would a marriage survive if spouses stood their ground
If spouses always insisted on having their way?

Here at FJC, we are trying to build a spiritual community
It’s a lot like a mixed marriage—we’ve got traditionalist and progressive jews
Which creates a beautiful challenge
the rules we davven by, whether we have a mechitza or not,
Are far less important than how we treat each other,
Whether we care for each other, and treat each other respectfully.

Any win-lose struggle is really a lose-lose struggle
Any time we have a conflict and one sides wins, really both sides lose.

May we all learn
To be more gentle, more understanding, and willing to always seek compromise, to find solutions by which everyone comes out feeling good about what we are building together.