Dealing with Sobering Times….. Again

Shabbat is coming and we are having our monthly Kabbalat Shabbat (special service to welcome our day of rest, for my non-Jewish friends) Partnership Minyan at our house. We are leaving for Israel on Wednesday. My entire family will be together to help me celebrate my birthday in a few weeks. I am in the midst of planning two conferences on Inclusion and Acceptance of all members of our communities for different populations – one for Orthodox Jews and one for people of all faiths. All of these involvements are so uplifting to me and I am so filled with gratitude to be able to have all of these wonderful experiences and so many more blessings in my life. And yet, my heat is so heavy.

Here we are again! Paris, Marseille, Chad, Israel, Cameroon, Turkey, Nigeria, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, Iraq, Mali – these are just the most recent sites of the approximately 300 incidents in 2015 attributed to terrorism. On one hand, it makes one afraid to think of travel, going out about one’s normal day, and just living for fear of their loved ones, community members and the general devastation that comes from thinking about what is happening in our world.

Peace rallies, tributes, creation of places of memory and comfort and community gatherings, people reaching out to help each other, Moslems gathering in France and elsewhere to proclaim in so many languages “We are Moslems and against terrorism,” staying glued to the television, internet and every possible news source, and just trying to get through the day…. This is how we fight the terrorism that threatens ALL good people, innocent citizens and purposeful and heartening communities of faith.

We are told that we are to go about our lives and we try to do the best we can. Our fellow citizens of the world in Paris and Marseille are showing us how to do this now as Americans did after 9/11 and as the citizens of the cities and countries listed above are doing and as the good people in the lands most threatened and vulnerable do every day. We KNOW not to take each other and our many blessings for granted, but this reminds us in such a palpable way to do so. How do we, as my daughter, Yoella, and I were discussing (as we often do) this week, continue to live and hold onto our values and our ethics and not let them be compromised by those who are responsible for these breaches in our daily lives and the well being of the masses? How can we not?

This week’s Torah reading in the Jewish cycle of weekly portions is about Yaakov (Jacob) and his isolation when he has been sent from his home because of his mother Rivkah’s (Rebeccah) concern for the well-being of both of her sons. As she states in our Torah narrative, “Shall I lose both of my sons?” Yaakov and Esau are very different, there has not been honesty amongst them, and there is now an irreconcilable rift, which Rivkah feels can only be avoided, not healed. So that is, we are told by some of our commentaries, both classic and more modern, the reason that she separates her sons, forgoing her own motherly instincts to keep her children as close as possible.

As a mother, I know all too well that desire to keep all safe – our family, my children, their children, their friends, our community, our world! Golda Meir often spoke about how she led Israel when she was Prime Minister with the mindset of a mother. As a mother and as a woman, I totally get this as I am sure so many of us do. How do we protect ALL innocent citizens?

Golda Meir poignantly stated that she was angry with those who killed her children, the Israelis, but she was more angry and distraught who forced her children, the Israelis to kill others. This sentiment is clearly from the mindset of one who values life – the life of all of God’s human beings. Let us hold onto this notion that we want to protect all innocent life and now the challenge is how do we do this in the face of the threats that are facing ALL of us no matter where we are? How do we help the Syrian refugees? How do we continue to engage in initiatives that bring together Palestinians and Israelis in so many successful ventures, ranging from concern for the environment to sharing circus arts, to living room dialogue groups and so much more? How do we NOT judge each other by how we look and the association of that appearance with those who use a similar one to act in the name of terrorism, nothing else!

Terrorists are NOT acting within the context of a religious framework, but rather taking the faith that so many of us believe in so fervently and corrupting it, offending all believers in our communities of faith. I was horrified by the murder of Shira Banki z’l by an extremist who was NOT acting within a Jewish context and others like him, and am now equally horrified by those who are perverting what Islam teaches. May we all find a way to live together and support each other so that our only response is not to have to send “the other” away from us – My prayer is that we continue to work together so that it is so clear that there are many more masses of people who are peaceful people of faith and NOT terrorists.

May this be a peaceful Shabbat and Sabbath for all.

How Do We Normalize the Conversation about Inclusion in our Faith Communities?

In 1951 a man by the name of Maurice Ogden wrote a terrifying poem called The Hangman using a pseudonym. It was first published in 1954. I have used this poem in my teaching often through the years. It is about a hangman who comes to town and one by one hangs all of the citizens. If you want to hear a dramatic reading of it, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mgX-wtO_ys8

It is about community on an extremely important level, namely when community does NOT function as community and then people within that community are isolated, maligned, ignored, not included, and eventually destroyed. In Ogden’s poem, the destruction comes from the “stranger who came to our town.” However, what about those in our community upon whom we depend for support, love, validation and so much else?

These days, so much of my work is about just that – inclusion of all within our community. In this case, it is about including LGBTQ community members in our communities of faith. This includes the general Jewish community, the Orthodox Jewish community specifically and all communities of faith in my work with our area’s Multi-Faith Council. I approach this work thoughtfully and ever so intentionally, trying to convey that this is NOT about politics, grandstanding or making any large social statements. Rather, it is just about being…. who we are and who God made us to be. As you know by now, for me this has always been part of my hardwiring – this is the way God made me to be – an Ally for the inclusion of all members of our community. Yet, we cannot be so naïve as to think that this is not a huge leap for too many in our various communities of faith. So how do I approach this conversation?

I try to normalize it! Let us look back and consider that ever so long ago, the Talmud with its accepted Jewish authority as a seminal text is quite clear about how left-handed people only have qualified inclusion in our community. However, no one would question that in spite of centuries of thinking left-handed people to be sinister and of other such non-normative status; long ago, in fact in the Talmud itself, we acknowledge that we found a way to accept this variation in God’s created beings and accept those who are left-handed.

Women were definitely at a clear disadvantage and not included in so much of social gatherings, which is still a problem in too much of our world today. Even Jewish texts from so long ago speak to the need to meet the needs of this fully one half of our population. Other faith communities have definitely lived through many chapters of coming to terms with acceptance and provision of as full as possible inclusion of women in as many situations as possible. We in our civilized world acknowledge that we have found a way to validate that half of God’s created beings are women and accept them; while separating ourselves from societies who have not yet figured this out. Parenthetically, there are still needed steps to insure this equality but we would generally agree in this learning circle of which we are part that this must be on our agenda and that ways of consideration and inclusion have definitely been found and utilized..

In the Jewish community’s observant sectors, agunot (women whose husbands will not grant them a needed divorce) have had their share of challenges and in some communities become nothing s>hort of pariahs. This has hit families who could not be ignored as time has gone on, and here too, we are finding ways to deal with this challenge and to facilitate a process by which these women can move on with their lives. To not have done so would be oppositional to some of the most basic of Foundational Torah concepts, so we must find a way.

Members of our community who are hearing impaired also have limitations placed on them by the strictest and most basic reading of our Torah text and codes of law. Yet, we know all too well that due to hearing aids, cochlear implants, use of sign language and other strategies, our community members with hearing deficits can and do function fully as members of our community. In terms of Jewish law, ways have been found to validate and adapt this process so that full participation is granted in our religious as well as judicial spheres. The same challenge has been presented for the visually impaired, the physically limited, and other groupings. As a side comment, I find it ever so interesting that it is Israeli doctors and medical centers that are disproportionately so present in the field of creation of adaptive devices to allow such full participation and involvement. Yes, we have learned here too that where there is a will, there is a way.

Not so many years ago, children and members of our community who are learning disabled were excluded, not acknowledged, put away and families were ashamed because of the fear that such children meant that someone must have done something wrong. We have come to learn the incredible gifts that these children and the adults they grow into bring into our community. PTACH and other organizations with a similar mission have taught us all too well that EVERY Jewish child should be included and educated. There was a will, so a way was found.

And now, here we are on the cusp of an amazing time of growth, discussion, deliberations and consideration of how we fully include and validate the members of our Jewish community and other faith communities who are LGBTQ. Will there be religious challenges requiring creative and thoughtful and intentional approaches? No doubt there will be, but haven’t we done exactly that in so many different cases through the years? That is precisely what I mean by “normalizing the conversation.” We ask for no more and no less for our LGBTQ members than our left-handed members, women, our agunot, community members with various impairments, limitations, different learning needs and so many others. Where there is a will and a thoughtful intentional consideration of what it means to be fully human, we have seen in so many instances in the past that there is a way. May it always continue to be so.

So what is my ultimate goal in this work? Ogden ends each stanza of his chilling and horrifying poem with the execution of yet another not-to-be-accepted community member and fear regarding who would be next on his scaffold. My hope is that we will end each chapter in our own history of our faith communities by showing ourselves able to come to terms with the approach of “who do we include” by considering how we find a way that is reasonable and compassionate so that all are protected from whatever Hangman and cloak that may come by. That to me is normalizing the conversation – using those tools and strategies we have already learned for our beloved community members, whatever their differences may be.