vayishlach - reconnecting

This week’s parsha, Vayishlach, tells the story of reconciliation between Jacob and Esau. Recently I coordinated a three part series on Islam. We, Jews, are descendants of Jacob while Moslems are descendants of Esau. We ended our series with an evening of discussion on open dialogue between Jews and Moslems.  One of the things we heard during the sessions was how similar the religions are to each other. We are, after all, cousins; descended from the same brothers, and from the same grandfather, Abraham. What could be a more appropriate message for today than that of reconciliation shown in the embrace of Esau and Jacob when they meet after so long?

A lot has been written about what we learn about family dynamics from the characters in Genesis. It always strikes me as a shame that for twenty years these two brothers not only didn’t talk but didn’t have any news of each other. But, they obviously didn’t talk to each other as youngsters either. These boys were a rough pregnancy for Rebecca. She evens questioned God about why she had to suffer so much. And their rivalry culminates in Jacob fleeing for his life from his brother and their home. But after twenty years, the brothers have grown up, built their own lives and feel so secure in themselves that they can now let go of the rivalry. They reunite and reconcile and bury their father together.

We’ve just finished celebrating Thanksgiving and Chanukah is next week. We gather family and friends to share our lives. We commemorate the miracles of the first years in America. Chanukah is a rededication of our spiritual and communal connections. We celebrate the miracles of rededication of our Temple. And, like Esau and Jacob did, we celebrate our reconnections to each other.

The Lessons of the Lollipops

Honey and very sweet food enlighten the eyes of man. (Yoma 83b)

I have become the lollipop lady.

For the past few years, I have been giving caramel apple lollipops to kids on the first day of school. Besides the idea that all learning, especially Jewish learning should start with sweetness, the caramel apple flavor seemed to fit right in with the holiday flavors. We eat apples and honey, why not apples and caramel? 

And then I learned of the wonderful SImchat Torah tradition the synagogue I am currently working with has of giving lollipops to the students starting their Jewish education. We had a whole gaggle of kiddles on the bimah, covered by a large talit, being blessed by the pulpit as they formally begin their lifelong learning. But, I realized that for many of the community, the only contact they have had with me is through a lollipop.

Once the dancing and the hakafot began, I was approached by child after child to request a lollipop. And, while I apologized to several parents who (I hope) jokingly said they would send their dental bills to the synagogue, I got to meet and talk with (albeit briefly) all the children in the room. I had the opportunity to meet younger siblings of our current school children and to meet many of the LGA and the Gan Keshet students.

I even made some friends. One little girl gave me her half eaten apple to hold while she danced and came back to nibble when she wanted (of course, she wouldn’t give me her lollipop to hold; she hung on tightly to that).One little boy sat next to me for a long while and generously gave me his sticker for my sweater. One older boy was curious about the stickers and three older girls wanted all their stickers to match. Obviously, the lollipops served as a sweet entry point to conversation.  

Besides Shabbat, there are no more Jewish holidays for almost two months. We have started our year with this amazing assortment of holy days. Rosh Hashanah which jump-starts the spiritual journey, Yom Kippur in which we dig deep inside ourselves to find a way to better connect our lives to God, and Sukkot which reminds us of the fragility of life are all followed by Simchat Torah which seems to incorporate all the swirling emotions of the past few weeks.

I had one more wonderful conversation at Simchat Torah because of the lollipops. One girl wanted to look at several of them to find the ‘prettiest swirls’. She looked for the colors and for the patterns and finally chose the best one.  I think we can all learn from her approach. The lollipops lasted through the evening, but the memory of the sweetness lasts longer.

The holidays are over but their sweetness will last for awhile.

Of Prisoners and Watermelons

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice but I am also conflicted. I firmly believe we should not negotiate with terrorists and yet I firmly believe that we should do anything we can do to bring every Israeli soldier home.

I think about Gilad and I think about his parents, friends and family. 

I also think of all the others who will be impacted by the release of hundreds of terrorists. I realized this week that it is 25 years since I was discharged from the IDF.  Time has flown and time has crawled and times - they have certainly changed.

I was in uniform in 1985. I served in a smaller outpost just south of tzomet Mickey Mouse; named not after the efficiency of the soldiers but after the shape of one of the original building which ( I was told) looked like Mickey Mouse ears. When I first arrived on the base in January, it was a pretty relaxed place. When we weren’t on guard duty we would often change into civilian clothes and walk down the hill into the Arab village and buy fresh bread and cremebo-im. The locals greeted us warmly and sometimes saved loaves of bread for us. There was no bus service into the base so we would be trucked down to the nearest Egged stop and left alone to wait for the bus. To be honest, in the first few weeks, I would often hitch hike home to Beer Sheva rather than wait for the bus to Jerusalem and then take another bus south.

By March, there had been some terrorist activities in the area. Couples out walking in the hills had disappeared and were later found dead. A number of soldiers were taken from trampiadas and killed. Security in our area was increased. We were no longer allowed to wander into the villages in the evenings. If we went during the day to buy fresh bread or produce, we were only allowed to go if one of us was armed, and female soldiers were discouraged from going at all. The truck which took us to the bus stop to go on leave now waited with us until we got on the bus. I was told by my commanding officer that if he heard I was hitching, he would never give me leave again.

But, the villagers were still friendly for the most part. The children would wave to us as we drove through and the adults waved and smiled.

When the prisoner exchange was arranged, there wasn’t the same oversaturation on the news. Granted, in 1985 nothing was as oversaturated in the news and our little outpost had only a radio for news and music and of course, cable tv wasn’t standard issue with our uniforms.  I know that there was concern. We went into full alert, no leaves, more guard hours and we were armed all the time, even on kitchen duty. Of the roughly 1500 prisoners, convicted terrorists and felons, roughly 800 were expected to return to their homes in our area. The army set up road blocks in the villages and our small outpost became headquarters for part of the added security and intelligence gathering teams who were supplementing the regular teams.

It was a strange place for a woman soldier to be. Theoretically, women were still not allowed to be on the front lines. And yet, the front lines had come to us. I think had they been able to evacuate us, they would have. But, there wasn’t time or capability and so they left us on the base, with our male counterparts. We served as front gate guards, radio room operators, and kitchen cooks, just like the men did. The only thing we were not allowed to do was to walk the perimeter. But, when the road blocks were set, the men were taken to ‘man’ them and the women were left to fill in on the base. Instead of one shift a day at either the front gate or the radio room, we were now doing two shifts, one at the radio room and one at the gate. And of course, there was still kitchen duty and more mouths to feed because of the extra teams.

One of the things I am most proud of is my IDF training. Because of the division I served with I had more in depth training, more on par with a typical male soldier than a typical female soldier. I was trained to serve on an outpost and to be part of the non-gender specific team, including being qualified on many of the ‘larger’ weaponry and potential bullet wounds. We had been trained to be soldiers and yet somehow, the nascent Jewish mother genes kicked in.  I, and the other women who served on that outpost at that time, were more concerned with whether our men were getting enough to eat at the roadblocks than whether we were being shot at.

The first couple of days, we sent food to the roadblocks. We baked, and cooked and sent the best pieces of chicken, and the freshest produce out to them. In fact, I have vivid memories of trying to keep my gun slung over my shoulder onto my back while taking trays out of the oven. The first day, they came back to the base grateful for the wonderful chuparim( treats). But the second day, they brought back some of the cookies and fruit we had sent them but also a couple of watermelons which hadn’t come from the base.

It turns out that some of the villagers who had been stopped at the roadblocks  had taken pity on the soldiers and left them with watermelons, and in the coming days, peaches, avocado and fresh bread. Relationships which had been developed through the years of soldiers walking into the villages for produce and ice cream were still intact. For the week the blockade was up, we had more fruit and vegetables on the base than we ever had before.

We also had our military incidents as well. If you have ever gone to bed with the sky lit up from flares, or to the sound of not so distant gunfire, then you know how easy it is to fall asleep when you need to. I have been fired at and returned fire and consider myself lucky that I don’t know if any of my bullets actually hit anyone.  And in those weeks which followed the prisoner exchange in 1985, we were in more overt danger than we had been before the exchange. Combatants were injured on both sides, as were civilians.

But, I would not have told the government to not exchange prisoners.

As I watch the images of Gilad coming home, the parades and groups of people outside his hometown, I can’t help but rejoice; just as I can’t help but think of the soldiers in the outposts. I hope that someone is saving them the best bread and watermelons.

Welcome home Gilad.

Can Atheists be Good Jews?

This originally appeared in the American Jewish World

Judaism and atheism - AJW article 2009.doc

Can atheists be good Jews?

My simple answer is no. Atheism is not only the belief that there are no gods but also that the belief in gods is wrong. I believe that true atheists are few and far between and that they would not be able to connect to Judaism because of the second part of their belief.

But, questioning the existence of God, agnosticism, does not conflict with Judaism. The name Israel means to have struggled with God. To be the Children of Israel connects us with a heritage of struggling not only with what God wants of us but also with the belief that there is God. Each generation has struggled with the relevancy of traditions and how to be good Jews while balancing input from society around us. The joy of Judaism is the nuances, the variety, and the potential for personalization of the communal responsibilities.

Jewish rituals and traditions are beautiful. As we practice them, we each find different interpretations and symbolism which makes them our own. For some of us the belief that the practices connect us to God is important. For others, connecting to our heritage and to our history is what’s important. While we may not be certain there is a God, connecting to our ancestors who were certain, allows us to continue our own questioning and our own struggle.

True Atheism believes there are no gods. They are done wrestling. Judaism is challenging. It challenges our spirit, our bodies and our minds. And by wrestling through the challenge, we grow; not only as Jews but as human beings as well.

Am I Ever Bored At Services?

This originally appeared in the American Jewish World newspaper:

Are You Ever Bored In Services?

Rabbi Charni Flame Selch

There is a wonderful midrash in Shir Hashirim Rabbah which starts, ‘Once, when Rabbi Judah Hanasi was teaching, the congregation became drowsy…’

Imagine, people at the time of the Talmud were bored sometimes, so why not us? The simple answer is yes, I do get bored. And I’m in good company. Everyone is bored at one point or another.

I think the issue of being bored is what we do about it. It helps to ask why we are bored. Do we not understand the prayers? Do we not like the tunes? Do we need to connect to God in a different way? Are we relying on someone else to engage us?

Boredom is not the end. It should be a beginning The cure for boredom is curiosity. The midrash about Rabbi Judah says that when he saw that the congregation was drowsy, he changed his tactics and told an engaging story to grab their attention and nurture their curiosity

We are each responsible for our own approach to God. When we are bored, we owe it to ourselves to change our own tactics and approach the situation in a different way. Sometimes when I’m bored I will re-read the English while we chant the Hebrew or read other excerpts in the Chumash. Other times, I watch others around me and enjoy their sense of connection. That’s why communal prayers are so important. They give us a framework in which we can indulge our boredom and cultivate our answers to it.

The Back Story on Belief and Leadership

As we read the book of Exodus, I am often torn when we read this section of the Torah- it cries out as a national history; a development of us as a nation and of us as a community.  But, there are voices that are not heard here. When I see the Children of Israel dancing in freedom, I think of the people through whom God channels in order to get them there.

There is a wonderful verse in this week’s parsha which we recite every morning during shacharit. “And when Israel saw the wondrous power which the Lord had wielded against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord; they had faith in the Lord and His servant Moses.” (14:31)

Sure, it’s easy for the people to be completely awed by God’s works. But why is it that the Torah needs to mention that the Children of Israel believed in Moses? Moses isn’t a God, Moses didn’t take them out of slavery - God did.

I see that one verse as being full of a huge back-story. No matter how much Moshe did, no matter how vast the changes he was involved in, he was still not accepted by the people. When he saved the slave by killing the task-master, the slave’s response wasn’t ‘thanks’. He responded by implying Moshe might kill him as well. When Moshe leads the people on God’s path to the edge of the Red Sea, their response isn’t ‘great job’. Their response is; ‘Weren’t there enough graves in Egypt? Did you have to bring us out here in the desert to die?’

When the Children of Israel celebrate their new found freedom by dancing and singing on the shores of the sea, it is with Moses that they sing to God. And when a few days later, they find no water to drink, they again come back to blame Moshe.

So why am I torn and whose voice is missing?

My sympathies lie with Moshe. Is there nothing he can do right? Is nothing he does ever enough? Did anyone think that maybe just like they have doubts, he had doubts?

This is one of the voices missing- Moshe’s voice. When he stopped and asked why he was doing this did he say “let someone else lead today, I’m going to spend the day with my family”? When he missed the mannah pick up because he was talking with Mrs. Y about her son’s problem, did he just say, “Oh well, I guess we’ll have leftovers again”? Was his household the shoemaker’s household, in which his children go barefoot because he is too busy making shoes for others? I would like to hear Moshe’s explaining what it is that keeps him going.

And one of the other voices missing in this story is Tzipporah, Moshe’s wife. What did she think when the Children of Israel abused her husband? What did she think when he was due home for dinner but didn’t make it? What did she say when there was a knock on the tent flap at 2 in the morning? I would like to hear her voice explaining how she had the strength to be supportive when the Children of Israel are not. It is, after all, Tzipporah who allows Moshe to be Moshe. She is the one who said, “Hon, whatever you want. I’ll follow you anywhere.”

So I am torn, my sympathies lie with Moshe but I understand the fear of the people. Change and adventure and re-envisioning are scary and difficult, and the known is often easier than the unknown. But I think that verse also explains this. Amidst the arguing and the complaining, the Children of Israel also come to Moshe for the smachot, the celebrations. Amid the fear and anxiety, the Children of Israel and their leader could celebrate life’s unexpected turns as well. The Children of Israel saw God’s greatness, and believed in God and accepted Moshe as God’s servant. And as someone wise once said, “as long as the good days outnumber the bad, you can accomplish anything.”

May we all sing together as we continue our journey.