Score One for Progressive Judaism

As I have mentioned on this blog, I was raised Reform (in a kosher home) and am now Shomeret Shabbat and belong to a Modern Orthodox shul, although I would have no problem belonging to a traditional egalitarian Conservative shul. I am not a strictly halakhic Jew, in other words, but my practice may be described as Orthodox-style, and I believe in a personal God Who gave us commandments and in Divine Providence. My instincts for social justice, however, are sometimes shocked by my experiences in a Modern Orthodox community, and this morning was no exception.

On account of said practice, I needed to find out the sof z'man kriyat Sh'ma this morning (the last time to say the Sh'ma prayer; yes, there is a time limit). I wasn't sure if Daylight Savings Time affected this. So, I went on to the Orthodox Union website (www.ou.org, natch). Right before I had gone on the website, my browser flashed the cover of the New York Times website, with its latest horrible news on the massive casualties and nuclear disaster of the Japan tsunami.

I am feeling some despair about what has been going on in the world in 2011. I'm not sure what I want (or can) do about it other than pray and give charity, but that's for another post. When I went to the OU website, I saw the following headline: "OU responds to Terrorist tragedy in Israel." Over Shabbat, a Palestinian breached the security of the West Bank settlement of Itamar and stabbed five people, including a BABY. I find this sick and disgusting, of course, and I find it even more sick and disgusting that the coverage of this tragedy has been less than, um, ideal, as the victims have often been described as nameless "settlers" and their story buried on page 15 or something. If an Israeli civilian had gone into an Arab village in the West Bank and killed five people, that would have been on page 1 for at least a week. And I am no fan of settlers or settlements.

That being the case, we are talking about five people here. And how, exactly, can the OU respond to that? What about Japan? People there need food, clothing, radiation detectors, etc. I am sure there are more than five expatriate American Jews who might need something. I know that every life is important, and I believe that, but this struck me as particularism and refusal to engage with the rest of the world run amok.

So I went to the website of the Union for Reform Judaism and saw this headline: "Earthquake and Tsunami in Japan
In response to the tragic devastation of the earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011, the URJ has partnered with a number of North American Jewish organizations to form the Jewish Coalition for Japan Relief."

This struck me in my kishkes, as they say, as the far more appropriate headline, although I would have been pleased as punch to see both websites having both headlines. I guess you can take the girl out of Reform Judaism . . .

Shut up, Shylock

Anti-semitism was a joke in my house when I growing up--literally. My parents firmly believed that anti-Semitism in the US had ceased to be a major problem and were irked that many Jews seemed to base so much of their Jewish identity on fighting it, or just being offended by it. So, if we suffered some kind of minor mishap (the mail was late, my brother couldn't find his left shoe, etc.), and complained, the answer to our childish "Why?" was a smirky "anti-Semitism." I still tell this joke to TH and close friends today.

I think that anti-Semitism was, and still is, both over- and underestimated. On over-estimating, see everything related to the ADL. I am not saying that anti-Semitism is gone, but its prevalence and power depend a lot on context, which is a pretty post-1950 phenomenon. If that American coke fiend Charlie Sheen wants to make anti-Semitic comments about his boss's name change (never mind that Sheen was born with the last name "Estevez"), who cares? He said he was a warlock, so obviously he is not exactly in his right mind. Muammar Gaddafi in Libya is a much bigger problem because he has all those weapons and not a lot to lose right now. But both of them were using anti-Semitic speech to attempt to distract others from their actual problems, as is often the case with anti-Semitic speech, and the Jews are the least of those problems. If Gaddafi is going to use those weapons on anyone, it's not going to be the Jews, at least not initially. The anti-Semitism of Hamas and Hezbollah and the publication of works in the Arab world that perpetuate the blood libel are almost unspeakably bad.

The distinction between these different kinds of anti-Semitism may be the hardest to draw in the US precisely BECAUSE this is such a safe country for Jews. What pisses me off about this, though, is that all of the political correctness and anti-Semitic-speech-watching pervading American media today (if I have to hear one more word about that freak British designer and HIS rant, I may scream), is that people can no longer tell the difference between real anti-Semitism and anti-Semitic speech by cokehead lunatics. I'm not saying that the latter can never be a problem, but it's obviously not as big a problem as serious anti-Semitism, or even the casual purveying of old anti-Semitic stereotypes that still have real salience for some people, especially outside the US, and especially in the Arab world.

This brings me to The Merchant of Venice. As you know, faithful readers, unless you have been living under a rock, the play was revived this summer to rave reviews, first as part of NYC's free Shakespeare in the park, and then on Broadway. Al Pacino played Shlock. A mere week or two after the Pacino Merchant closed, a new one opened off-Broadway, starring F. Murray Abraham. TH asked if I wanted to go to the off-Broadway version, since we were willing neither to sleep overnight in Central Park nor to pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for the Broadway version.

I said no. Why?

Well, The Merchant of Venice is one of the most anti-Semitic plays ever written. It is, by a factor of a lot, the most anti-Semitic work of literature that is still read and interpreted seriously in the Western world. AND NOBODY SEEMS TO KNOW IT. One need look no further for evidence of this ignorance than the New York Times's review of the off-Broadway/F. Murray Abraham Merchant of Venice. Under a picture of FMA in an expensive suit, holding a dagger over a captive blond personifying WASP-hood (how many of those do you think there were in Renaissance Venice, btw?), Charles Isherwood chatters on blithely about how the play captures the conflicting forces of good and evil that vie for dominance in every human heart. Never mind that earlier in the article, Isherwood said that the play's "modern dress" is "evoking the bottom-line-obsessed world of today's Wall Street."

So, let me get this straight, Mr. Isherwood. A play by William Shakespeare, who did not exactly live in the heyday of the tolerance of Jews, in which the main character is an evil Jewish moneylender, is being revived on the New York stage with a Jewish actor dressed like a Wall Street trader demanding a pound of flesh from a non-Jew, and I am supposed to focus on its universal themes? We are not very far away from the economic crisis and the calls on Main Street, U.S.A., for the heads of the bankers, especially from Goldman Sachs. (I don't care what you think; I still maintain that Matt Taibi's widely-read Rolling Stone article, then book, on the subject was anti-Semitic). Where are we in the Jewish community when we can scream our heads off about Charlie Sheen and then skip off to our Jew-sploitation theater performance when we're done? I, personally, am comforted to know that there are no mosques within ten blocks of the theater. Because that could be problematic.

A Classic

Today is my grandmother's yahrzeit (Hebrew-calendar anniversary of her death). May her memory be a blessing.

This Weekend SUCKS!

In case you haven't already figured it out, Internet, this weekend SUCKS. big. time. Let's review:

--Apparently, it is open season in Arizona on Jewish Democratic Congresspeople. Oh, and federal judges are fair game also. And nine-year-old girls who were FREAKING BORN ON 9/11. Guess what, Republican nimrods looking for that perfect sound bite that will be crazier-than-thou? Violent speech leads to violence.
NOTE: I am not saying that people do not have the right, within already existing case law, to say whatever they want in this country. But I'm saying that some of the so-called leaders of the people in this country might want to exercise some judgement and, um, leadership, rather than snickering in the corner when their supporters are bringing guns to everything. And to Sarah Palin and her PAC, I can only say, "Fuck you." Maybe this incident will help show some of the non-wingnuts in this country who kind of like you how crazy you really are.

--Debbie Friedman died. She provided the soundtrack for my Jewish childhood. And my Jewish young adulthood. And even a not-insignificant part of my Jewish adulthood. And those of my friends and relatives and their friends and relatives, etc. Here is the Reform Movement's tribute. I know it's corny to say that she will live on through her music, but it's true. My three-year-old niece, who has probably never heard the name "Debbie Friedman," was singing the aleph-bet song the last time I saw her.

--I have to stop comparing my professional accomplishments to other peoples'. I actually like what I'm doing as a postdoc and don't know what I would do with a super-high-stress job of the sort some of my friends from grad school have. But it's not like anyone is offering any of those jobs to me, so who cares? And this week I have to go to an event that will include some former grad-school classmates who are super-hot tenure-track assistant professors at elite colleges. This will make me feel like shit. It just will. Even if I know I should chill.

So, internet, are you going to cheer me up? Please?

MO Jews and Food

I know this isn't exactly a revelation, but the way Orthodox Jews eat, especially on Shabbat, is GROSS!

The shul TH and I joined a year ago has "hot kiddush" on Shabbat, meaning that kiddush includes Cholent (a kind of beef stew made in a crockpot so as not to violate the laws against cooking on the Sabbath). Everyone always runs at the food, and I can't say I haven't been guilty of this, too. I guess one difference is that TH and I consider a kiddush with cholent lunch, but many of the people at shul don't. They go to another meal afterwards! That is grooooooossssssssssssssss. I realize that some people don't eat that much at kiddush, and that those who do may not eat that much at lunch--either or both can be attending primarily for the socializing, especially by women--but isn't there something wrong with sending a message that the holy Sabbath is primarily about stuffing your face?

I grew up in a Reform home in which politeness and decorum, in shul or elsewhere, was prized. I realize that the Orthodox world, and even the Modern Orthodox world, does not necessarily put a very high premium on either quality, and I have gotten pretty used to davening while kids are running up and down the aisles. As long as they are not screaming, I'm okay. And I realize that this rushing at the food is about a lack of decorum almost as much as it is about a generalized lack of mindfulness regarding the advisability of face-stuffing. (Wasn't that last sentence beautiful? I have a doctorate, you know).

A possible source of my frustration may be what I learned as a kid about keeping kosher. We kept kosher at home (kosher meat, two sets of dishes, etc., except that we did not insist on kosher supervision for canned vegetables and other processed vegetarian food). This came largely from my mom, who grew up Conservative. Kashrut is very fraught in the Reform Movement, and people would ask my parents why we bothered. For those who wouldn't back away after the "Katrina's mom's parents have to be able to eat here" explanation, my dad, who had not grown up in a kosher home, would launch into a speech about kashrut and holiness. This is something most of you have probably heard, but the general point was that kashrut is about kedushah, or holiness. Even though human beings have animalistic appetites, we do not have to give into them all of the time. We can choose which foods to eat and which foods not to eat, and we can say a blessing before and after eating, and this all reminds us that we are not animals but special creations of God, that food comes from God, and that we should be mindful of, and thankful for, that.

Because I went to a Jewish school that was kosher, many of my friends kept kosher, and I never felt entirely comfortable in the homes of Jewish friends who did not keep kosher. It was a cultural divide, really, and sort of a surprise, which I assume is what people who don't keep kosher feel in a kosher home. But I guess I always assumed that people who did keep kosher did so at least partially for the reasons that my dad outlined, which had something to do with holiness and mindfulness. So belonging to a Modern Orthodox (MO) shul has been kind of a shock. My family and many of my Jewish friends in college and many in the Jewish community in GradSchoolTown thought a lot about why they performed various ritual mitzvot. Part of joining an MO shul, which really has smart, friendly rabbis and a nice community, has been seeing, in person and in a very concrete way, that so many of our fellow congregants are going through the motions of doing the mitzvot. I always assumed that being Orthodox was hard, and so those who do it must be on a higher spiritual level (or something) than I, but it has pointed out to me that in NYC, being Orthodox isn't that hard. There are kosher restaurants and employers who may have a vague idea what Sukkot is and your pick of Orthodox day schools and synagogues, etc. So if Orthodoxy is all that you have ever known, the theory goes, and you like the community aspect, then you do the mitzvot because you have always done them, and you don't think about why. It's not my job to decide how other people do mitzvot; this whole thing has been a culture shock, though. Plus, it means that "why do we do this mitzvah?" discussions at Shabbat meals tend to fall very, very flat.

And since Orthodoxy tends to look at kashrut as more of a mechanical issue than an ethical/moral/mindfulness one, I suppose that, for many, even among the modern Orthodox, there is no inherent contradiction between keeping kosher and stuffing your face with sugar and fat for three hours at a time, at least twice, on Shabbat. But that doesn't mean I can't think about my own behavior and, God willing, in the future (but not in nine months), my kids'.

It Shouldn't Be a Secret

The "it" to which I am referring is chesed (kindness) and/or tzedakah (charity).

When TH and I decided to join a Modern Orthodox (MO) shul (synagogue) here in NYC, I thought a number of things would bother me, chief among them the mechitzah (divider between the men's and women's sections) and associated non-participation of women in the service. What I was not expecting, though, was to be so disturbed by the shul's approach to chesed and tzedakah (I am using these terms more or less interchangeably).

I admit there is a certain amount of understandable culture clash on this subject between Orthodox and non-Orthodox shuls. I grew up Reform, and the Reform Movement very heavily emphasizes social justice. At the shul where I grew up, there was always one, and most often more than one, tzedakah project going on at any given time. The youth group volunteered at a food pantry, many of the holidays were accompanied by food and/or money drives of some sort, the shul had a partnership with a school in a disadvantaged neighborhood, etc. The Solomon Schechter school I went to also had frequent tzedakah projects, although I have to admit that without one particular, somewhat strange, rabbi, who started a social action committee and spoke in his classes and at davening (prayers) with great passion about the importance of helping the poor, I'm not so sure we would have gone beyond the occasional food drive.

At our MO shul, however, there is . . . nothing. Well, not quite nothing, because there are announcements every week urging us to engage in bikkur cholim (visiting the sick). The sick in question, though, are members of our own shul. The "nothing" refers to what we do for those sick and/or poor people, Jewish or not, who are not members of the community.

I have a few caveats here: First, it is a small shul, both in terms of its space and in terms of its population. It has no religious school, although there are Shabbat morning services for kids. One of the rabbis works for very little money and has a fairly demanding day job. It is not very organized. Second, I realize that many of the "tzedakah hours" my Reform Temple performed were on Shabbat. As a youth-group member, I was driven, along with the other members, to the food pantry on Saturday morning, while the adults were still in services. All of the rituals, including daily minyan (services), that people in the shul have to do of course takes time away from potential tzedakah projects.

But, fundamentally, neither of these are acceptable excuses. If a MO Jew can look at a Reform Jew and say, "You are mechalel Shabbos (desecrating the Sabbath) when you drive to do acts of chesed on Shabbat morning," that same MO Jew should consider whether he or she really thinks that Orthodoxy has a monopoly on Torah. The Torah "speaks" in pretty absolute terms about the need to pursue justice (Deuteronomy 16:20) and to help the widow, the orphan (or fatherless), and the proselyte (Deuteronomy 10:18, e.g.). If MOs want to claim a monopoly on Torah, I think they have the responsibility to follow all of it (with the exception of the laws only applying to Beit Hamikdash, of course), not only the strict ritual parts. If they are willing to admit that other Jews may pursue Torah in their own way, they might want to see what they can learn from those other Jews.

Don't get me wrong here. I am Shomeret Shabbat and (mostly) kashrut, and I wish that many more Jews were as well. I just think it shouldn't have to be an either/or in either direction.

You might ask, "Katrina, what is all this about the post title and secrecy?" The answer is that, a few Shabbatot ago, I asked a few friends of mine and TH's, also pretty recently married and without kids, whether they agreed with me that the shul should be doing more tzedakah. One answer I got shocked me: "I'm sure that many people in the shul perform acts of chesed regularly; you just don't know about it." On the one hand, I believe she is correct. But the premise is crazytown. Tzedakah should be a secret? The shul (and especially the rabbis) have no duty to (at the minimum) urge us to do tzedakah and (even better) organize, or urge others to organize, tzedakah projects in which everyone is urged to participate? The rabbis give hardly any mussar (moral instruction) from the bimah (pulpit), but maybe in this case, for the sake of Torah, they can make an exception.

Is Halloween Okay?

I went trick-or-treating as a kid. I really enjoyed it, especially before I was ten or so. Sometimes when I think about having kids (God willing, but not within the next nine months, if you catch my drift), I think about taking them trick-or-treating, and so does TH.

But I really think it might be seriously assur (prohibited) to do so. I mean, first of all, this is a holiday that began as a Christian holiday (eve of All Saints' Day, November 1) and is now seriously observed by some as a pagan holiday, although obviously most people don't celebrate it in any kind of religious way. If there were no pagans anymore, that would be a different issue, but there are people who claim that they worship the devil or the sun or what have you. How is dressing up on Halloween different from observing XMas or Easter in some way? I am not including going to church in that, because going to church is so obviously not okay that it is not analogous.

Last year, I read what R. Student had to say on Hirhurim about just passing out candy to non-Jews. I realize that R. Student tends to be way to the right of me hashkafically, plus I live in an apartment in NYC and don't have to deal with it. I also don't get the point of adults dressing up for Halloween (I try to get into it on Purim, but it's hard), so I'm not worried right now. But I am curious.

So what do you guys think, beloved readers? How comfortable are you with Halloween? What does halakhah as you understand it have to say about it?