Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

Susan Briante recently won the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation for Defacing the Monument, which addresses immigration along the U.S.-Mexico border.

Bill FinleySpecial to the Arizona Daily Star

The literary awards season is well underway and the spotlight has again found Tucson.

Walking a red carpet similar to the one traveled by Tucsonans Lydia Millet and Lissie Jaquette, both finalists for National Book Awards last year, University of Arizona Professor Susan Briante has received the 2021 Pegasus Award from the Poetry Foundation.

Briante was honored for Defacing the Monument, a remarkably unique look at the human drama unfolding every day along Americas southern border and how the words of earlier poets, addressing other dark moments in U.S. history, still echo in and around Nogales.

The Pegasus is one of the Poetry Foundations top annual awards, honoring the best book-length work of poetic criticism published in the United States the previous year.

Monument is Briantes fourth book, three being collections of her own work and this one a collection of selected excerpts by other poets, connected and re-illuminated by Briantes own personal essays.

She would probably have published more poetry by now, but she spends too much time doing poetry. When she isnt writing it, she is teaching it. Then theres this: shes married to a poet, Farid Matuk.

I think poetry has had a special place in my heart since I was in high school, Briante said. At some point I wrote a poem, not thinking much about it, and my friend liked it so much she started carrying it around in her wallet. That made such an impression on me. I liked writing fiction. I worked for a newspaper for awhile, but I kept hearing the poet in me.

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This Tucson poet won an award for her look at immigration - Arizona Daily Star

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

Thank you, dear God, for this good life, and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I wont feel so thankful then. Garrison Keillor

The membership in the synagogue I pray in is made up of many grandparents and great-grandparents. We dont have too many young couples, and the few that we have tend to leave our neighborhood after a year or two of marriage. Its not often that we have the fortune to celebrate a baby-naming. This week we had that fortune, and it was for a fourth-generation baby girl, the great granddaughter of one of the synagogues early members.

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According to the Talmud, Leah was the first person to express openly her feelings of thankfulness to God. It says in Brachot 7b: Rabbi Yochanan said in the name of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: From the day that the Holy One, Blessed is He, created His world, there was no person who offered thanks to Him until Leah came and thanked Him as it is stated, This time let me thank God.

The reason that after her fourth son she expressed thanks is because, according to Rashi, Now that I have received more than my portion, its time to express my gratitude to God. The question then is what is so praiseworthy about this?

I saw an answer given in the name of Rav Dovid Kviat. He says, The praiseworthy aspect of Leahs behavior here was that she viewed what she received as more than her fair share. It is the nature of human beings to view that which they receive in life as something that they had coming to them. This is what I deserve. If my friend is earning $30,000 a year and I am earning half a million dollars a year, it may not be so easy to recognize my great fortune. It is easy to think Im smarter than him, Im more clever than him, I earned this on my own it was coming to me! The novelty of Leahs comment is that we see that a person has the ability to step back, look at a situation objectively and come to the conclusion that I am getting more than I deserve. This is not our normal tendency. The normal tendency is to view life as either I am getting less than I deserve or I am getting my fair share. The rare person, who lives their life with the attitude that I have gotten more than I deserve, is indeed a praiseworthy person.

THERE IS an old investing adage, with a couple of variations but Ill use this one: Sometimes bulls make money, sometimes bears make money, but pigs get slaughtered.

I have a running joke with my brother that inevitably whenever he tries booking an airline ticket online he watches the price fall and fall. Then instead of being satisfied with the price, he waits, hoping it will continue to fall. It doesnt and then the ticket price spikes higher. He then sends me a pig emoji and a recording of a pig snorting.

Its important for investors to be satisfied with their profits and not try to be pigs. Earlier this week I had a client call and ask if she should sell a particular stock. I mentioned to her that she actually bought the shares, not to hold them long-term, rather she thought the price had dropped too much and thought it would jump higher when they announced their quarterly earnings. She was correct in her short-term analysis. My thought was that she should probably sell because her theory played out perfectly, and she should be happy with the money made. Had she set out to hold it for the long term, I would have discouraged the sale, but her goal was a short-term trade and she achieved his goal. Be thankful, and take your profits to the bank.

Conversely, I had a client who about a month ago gave me a trade to sell. I asked if he should just sell at the market price and he said no. He wanted to sell the shares one dollar higher than the market price. We are talking about a stock with a share price well above $1000. Well, needless to say that in trying to make another $150 he lost over $8,000. Oink, Oink!

Be thankful for your financial wins and dont end up getting slaughtered out of greed.

The information contained in this article reflects the opinion of the author and not necessarily the opinion of Portfolio Resources Group, Inc. or its affiliates.

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Giving thanks and slaughtered pigs - opinion - The Jerusalem Post

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

It is easy to be swept up by the emotional power of the first narrative in our Torah reading. Yaakov, who is running for his life, is suddenly homeless and hopeless; he lies down to sleep in the middle of nowhere, with the ground as his bed and a stone as his pillow. He has a powerful vision, with angels walking up and down a ladder, and God calling out to him, offering blessings of protection and redemption. Yaakov awakens overawed by his dream; he names that place Beit El, the house of God, and dedicates the stone he slept on as a monument to be used for divine service. Yaakov promises he will return to Beit El to build a house of worship, one that will be used by future generations.

But this plan is not meant to be. When we skip forward to the Book of Kings, we see that the site of Yaakovs dream is desecrated. After the Kingdom of Israel split, Jeroboam refuses to let the people of the Northern Kingdom return to the Temple in Jerusalem. Instead, he builds a competing Temple in Beit El, along with competing holidays, and installs two golden calves for worship. Beit El fails to live up to its original promise.

Even more dramatic is the Torahs change in attitude toward monuments. Yaakov sees his holy monument as the foundation of a future Temple; but in Deuteronomy 16:22, monuments are not just forbidden, but condemned as a mode of worship that the Lord your God detests. What is loved by Yaakov will be rejected by the Torah of Moshe. Many commentaries struggle to resolve this contradiction. Rashi offers a fascinating interpretation, and writes that although monuments were pleasing to God in the days of our Patriarchs, He now hates them, because the Canaanites made monuments a fixed rule in their worship of idols. It doesnt matter that monuments have a deep historical connection to Jewish worship; if they are now used by the Canaanites for idol worship, they are to be rejected.

Rashis insight is profound. Our Jewish identity is not just about who we are, but also about who we arent. Elsewhere, the Torah forbids imitating the practices of idolaters, a prohibition called Chukat Akum. This Rashi reference is cited as an example of how far this law extends; even if a practice is a long held Jewish custom, it can still be prohibited as Chukat Akum if it is similar to idolatrous practices. Chukat Akum insists a Jew must make a point of being different than others. This prohibition of reaction and negation might seem strange, because contemporary spirituality is always expressed in affirmations. But Chukat Akum reminds us that an authentic identity is not just about what you choose to be; it is also about what you choose not to be.

Rashis insight is profound. Our Jewish identity is not just about who we are, but also about who we arent.

In the diaspora, the laws of Chukat Akum have been critical to maintaining communal cohesion. One school of thought in rabbinic literature saw Chukat Akum as primarily about separatism, of distinguishing Jews from non-Jews. Maimonides expresses this view when he writes that we may not follow the statutes of the idolaters or resemble them in their [style] of dress, coiffure, or the like. In another passage, Maimonides offers another example, that the prohibition includes saying that since they go out wearing purple, so too I will go out wearing purple. Rabbi Israel Bruna, a 15th-century German Rabbi, sees separation as the reason for Chukat Akum. Even though the Talmud makes it clear that men do not have to cover their heads, Rabbi Bruna writes that Jews of his time had to wear a head covering for otherwise they will not be distinguishable among the non-Jews. He explains that what was permitted by the Talmud would not be allowed in times of exile, when it is critical for a Jewish minority to establish an independent and separate identity.

Among the medieval authorities, there is a competing school of thought, one of selectivity. It sees rationality as the determining principle of whether or not a practice is considered Chukat Akum. What is prohibited are practices that reflect paganism, superstition and indecency. Beth Berkowitz points out in Defining Jewish Difference: From Antiquity to the Present, that in medieval Jewish-Christian polemics, Jews would often refer to the rationality of the Jewish tradition, in contrast with Christianity; and that may have influenced how the law of Chukat Akum was perceived as well.

This definition of Chukat Akum offers a different lesson; the goal is for Jews to take a critical eye to every new practice, and reject foolish customs. This will ensure that one doesnt unconsciously assimilate unworthy pagan perspectives.

This definition of Chukat Akum offers a different lesson; the goal is for Jews to take a critical eye to every new practice, and reject foolish customs.

This debate was less important when Jews were largely excluded from communal life. But as Jews began to enter general society in the Renaissance, Chukat Akum was debated once again among Halakhic authorities. Does Jewish identity require one to always be different, even in dress, language and culture?

Around 1460, Rabbis Judah Messer Leon and Samuel de Modena posed a halakhic question to the Maharik, Rabbi Joseph Colon Trabbatto. Both had been given the privilege of wearing academic gowns; but local critics said that the academic gown was a violation of Chukat Akum, because it is an imitation of non-Jewish dress. The Maharik ruled that the gown was permissible. He disputes the idea that Jews must dress differently than others, and adds that the academic gown is rational, and allows people to be recognized for their achievements. The Mahariks ruling best articulates the philosophy of selectivity, and gains wide acceptance. But some later authorities, including the Gaon of Vilna, dispute the Mahariks ruling.

Even the celebration of Thanksgiving is forbidden by some authorities; Rav Yitzchak Hutner writes that it is forbidden because one must resist any desire to imitate the customs of general society. This ruling is striking in its extremism; even Thanksgiving, a celebration based on the virtue of gratitude, in appreciation of a country that has done so much for the Jewish community, is considered to be anathema. However, many rabbis disagree. Affirming what is good is a critical value as well, and Thanksgiving represents values cherished by the Jewish tradition. (For precisely this reason, my synagogue, Kehilath Jeshurun, used to hold a special Thanksgiving prayer service.) To be a Jew in the 21st century requires one to carefully select, to affirm what is positive and reject what is negative in general society.

Since the early 1800s, it has become possible for Jews to fully engage in general society. To accomplish this, some argued that Jews need to blend in and stop being different. Judah Leib Gordon, in his poem Hakitzah (Awaken), famously wrote:

Be a man in the streets and a Jew at home.

This is very comfortable advice. Turning Judaism into a private affair hidden behind closed doors makes it much easier to be part of a minority; there is no standing out in public spaces, no uncomfortable glances from strangers. Unfortunately, this approach has been spiritual quicksand. What was carefully hidden became unimportant, and what was private became a mere hobby. Without a strong and independent identity, Jews slowly assimilated. It became the path of least resistance.

Chukat Akum is a reminder that one cannot just be a Jew at home; sometimes a Jew needs to be a Jew in the streets, to resist fads and fashions. That is part of our mission. Jews have been iconoclasts from the very beginning, from the moment that Avraham smashed his fathers idols; and we are ready to smash Yaakovs monument as well. As a minority, we must know who we arent as well as who we are. But how far do we have to go in distinguishing ourselves? That still is a matter of debate.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

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Who We Are, and Who We Aren't: Vayeitzei 2021 - Jewish Journal

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

If you ask Reuben Sinclair what the key is to a long and rewarding life, the 110-year old won't shy away from sharing some words of wisdom.

"Never worry," he said to a crowd of fellow servicemen and reporters moments before he was honoured at a Remembrance Day ceremony inside a Vancouver elementary schoolon Wednesday.

"If you have a problem, fix it. And that goes a long way," he said.

Sinclair is the oldest living veteran in Canada, having served during the Second World War for three years in the Royal Canadian Air Force. His age also makes him one of the oldest living men in the country.

"I always found time to help people who were less fortunate, and Ithink that's one of the reasons the good Lord keeps me around," he said, laughing.

After laying a wreath at Talmud Torah Elementary school, Sinclair was awarded service medals by the Royal Canadian Legion the latest in a long list of accolades he's received over his lifetime.

His daughter, Nadine Lipetz, said she was proud the children "have a chance to meet a veteran who has a story to tell, and hopefully they can learn from it."

Sinclair was born on a farm in Lipton, Sask.His birth certificate reads that he was born on Dec. 5, 1911 but his family says he was actually born months earlier.

"His older brothers told him he was born in the summer of 1911," said Lipetz. "We think it was the registration date that we've used as his birthday, but in effect he's really 110."

Sinclair worked a number of different jobs during the Great Depressionbefore enrolling in an accounting course. He was hired by the Treasury Department, where he worked until the Second World War.

Lipetz says her father said hecouldn't stand by and do nothing while people were dying in Europe.

He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force at 31, but he was diagnosed with flat feet which kept him from serving overseas, Lipetz said.

Instead, he served as a wireless operator mechanic in Montreal, Vancouver, and North Battleford, Sask.,running transmitters that were used to train pilots to take off and land on blacked-out runways. The program prepared pilots to fly in the night skies of Europe.

When the war ended, he settled in Metro Vancouver, where he opened a garage and wrecking yard with his brother.

In the '60s, he moved to California with his wife Ida. The pair returned to B.C. in 1994, before she passed away just a couple of years later.

Sinclair still lives inside his Richmond condo, where he receivessupport from caregivers.

He spends much of his time reminiscing about years past, including his time in the war. Lipetz sayshe's happy to see more of his family members after being separatedfrom many of them during the pandemic.

"Visits from the family and friends are very big for him," she said. "He's happy and enjoys every day."

Over the years, Sinclair's family has grown to include sixgrandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren and a great-great-grandchild.

Asecond great-great-grandchild is on the way.

"We feel blessed that every day is a gift," she said.

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

Congregation Beth Yeshuruns Rabbi Steve Morgen and his wife, Cantor Diane Dorf, will be this years Jewish representatives at the 36th-annual Houston Interfaith Thanksgiving Service, Nov. 18 at 7 p.m., at St. Philip Presbyterian Church, 4807 San Felipe St.

Religious leaders from nine faiths will share texts related to giving thanks from their own traditions. The event is sponsored by the Ecumenism Commission of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston.

The theme this year is The Gift of Life.

While G-d manifests in different ways for different people, all religions give thanks, organizer Garland Pohl told the JHV. I hope in the future that we come together around common experiences like this Thanksgiving Service to make friends who we can rely upon each others support during challenging times.

Rabbi Morgen and Cantor Dorf are collaborating on their joint presentation. Cantor Dorf will chant three traditional morning blessings, thanking G-d for waking our souls and our bodies, and Rabbi Morgen will explain and interpret these blessings.

Rabbi Morgen has been involved with interfaith dialogue groups for many years, including as a board member of Interfaith Ministries, a contributor for programs at the Muslim Turquoise Center, and as a participant in several other groups of faith leaders who are committed to building a better understanding between peoples of all faiths.

Rabbi Morgen strongly believes in the power of dialogue as a way to heal the world.

Our society today is very polarized, Rabbi Morgen told the JHV. People are isolated into homogenous groups. When we dont interact with people of other faiths, there is a tendency for us to wonder what they think about us and fear the worst. And they, in turn, may wonder and fear what we think, believe and do. Fear can then lead to hostility.

By interacting with each other, we can break down barriers and realize that we are all human beings with much in common. We all want to improve our world, to be fair, honest and just.

Social media can enable this isolation and hinder us from having real interaction with people not like ourselves. Interfaith events broaden our own perspective and allow us to think more clearly about our own faith and be more accepting of people of other faiths.

Cantor Dorf emphasized that, in addition to giving thanks in prayer, Judaism commands us to give thanks through tzedakah.

At Thanksgiving, we can share our food and volunteer in ways that help those in need, Cantor Dorf told the JHV.

Rabbi Morgen emphasized the point. Judaism is about not just saying words but also taking action, he said. The Talmud teaches us to honor parents, do deeds of loving kindness, visit the sick, study, make peace between each other and many more acts of loving kindness.

One of my favorite quotes by [Rabbi] Abraham Joshua Heshel is A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of faith. And it is so much better if we can take that leap of action with people of other faiths. That has a multiplying effect that is more than the sum of its parts.

To register for the event or watch a live-stream, go to saintphilip.net/Interfaith.html, COVID protocols for wearing masks and social distancing will be observed.

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Community invited to Houston Interfaith Thanksgiving Service - Jewish Herald-Voice

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

INDIANAPOLIS Priests, imams, rabbis and reverends gathered together at the Indiana Statehouse on Friday to deliver a message to Gov. Eric Holcomb on combating climate change and prioritizing a just transition to cleaner energy.

The delivery of the petition, signed by nearly 800 Hoosiers, coincided with the final day of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland.

Our call to address this issue cannot be delayed as governments across the globe have spent the past few days announcing their pledges and commitment to climate change, the Rev. Dr. Carlos W. Perkins, pastor of Indianapolis Bethel Cathedral African Methodist Episcopal Church, said. It is time we make our own pledge.

According to Purdue University, climate change directly impacts Indianas corn production with hot weather and drought stress potentially reducing corn yields by 12% or more in the coming decades.

Human activities in Indiana emitted 192 million metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2018, the schools Agriculture News reported. Indiana had the eighth-highest emissions of carbon dioxide of any state that year despite being ranked only 17th in population.

Indianas coal and gas plants used for generating electricity contribute the most to Indianas carbon dioxide emissions followed by transportation.

Rabbi Brian Besser, leading the Congregation Beth Shalom in Bloomington, described a story in the Talmud, a Jewish religious text, which details passengers on a boat. One passenger begins drilling under his seat, alarming fellow passengers who fear sinking and demonstrating how the actions of one can affect many.

I sign this petition because my faith tradition teaches that we are all in the same boat together, Besser said. Each one of us is responsible for the home we share.

Interfaith leaders promoted proposed legislation to create a climate change task force and urged elected officials to signify their recognition of the crisis through a resolution. Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, announced in September that he would sponsor both pieces of legislation written by youth activists with Confront the Climate Crisis.

We are calling on our governor and legislators to finally address decisively the climate crisis in the coming legislative session, T. Wyatt Watkins, a pastor at Cumberland First Baptist Church, said.

We ask the legislature to declare climate change not only a looming threat but a present and current reality and appoint a task force to develop a climate plan, a mitigation plan, a resilience plan and an energy plan that will allow us to transition to a sustainable energy future here in Indiana.

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Indiana interfaith leaders petition governor for 'just transition' to cleaner energy - The Herald Bulletin

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

By ohtadmin | on November 10, 2021

Weve all heard the story of why Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days. The Maccabees reclaimed the Temple but discovered that all of the oil to light the Temples menorah had been defiled except for one cruse. That cruse, we learned, was just enough oil to light the Menorah for one day, but a miracle ensued and the lights remained lit for eight days. What we dont all learn, however, is that this story is a late story appearing in the Talmud, and it is only one explanation for why Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days. Now, my goal is not to ruin Hanukkah for you, so if finding out that this story might not be the reason Hanukkah is celebrated for eight days would ruin the entire holiday, I encourage you to stop reading now. That said, in looking at another explanation we may find new meaning to a holiday weve been celebrating our entire lives.

In the Second Book of Maccabees (not included in the canon of the Tanakh) we read that upon reclaiming the Temple an eight-day celebration followed in the manner of the Feast of Booths (Sukkot) remembering how not long before, during [Sukkot], they had been wandering like wild beasts in the mountains and the caves (10:6-8). The text goes on to talk about their lifting up palm fronds (the lulav). While it could be a coincidence that Sukkot (an eight-day festival including Shmini Atzeret) is mentioned in connection to another eight-day celebration taking place two months later, it most likely is not. It seems as though the Maccabees and their followers missed the Festival of Sukkot because they were fighting, and upon the end of their battle, they celebrated the neglected festival.

While quite different from the miracle of the oil, this does not have to change our Hanukkah celebrations. It can, however, leave us with a new value in this season. Too often we think of missed opportunities as permanent. In celebrating a second Sukkot a month and a half after the festival ended, the Maccabees and their followers teach us that its never too late for a second chance. As we prepare to enter our Hanukkah celebration at the end of this month, think about that conversation you meant to have but never did. As you light your Hanukkah lights, think about that joyous occasion you meant to celebrate but let slip by. As you eat your latkes, think about any other moments in life that slipped by, and embrace this lesson of the Maccabees. Take advantage of the opportunity to have a second chance.

Neis gadol haya sham A great miracle happened there. Whether or not one day of oil lasted eight days, the Maccabees victory was truly a miracle, and rather than mourning a missed festival, their combination of nostalgia and optimism led them to celebrate that missed opportunity with more passion than they would have the first time around. We can learn from both of these miracles by making the most of every opportunity and creating a second chance for those times in which we cant.

Rabbinically Speaking is published as a public service by the Jewish Press in cooperation with the Tampa Rabbinical Association which assigns the column on a rotating basis. The views expressed in the column are those of the rabbi and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Jewish Press or the TRA.

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The eight days of Hanukkah: The miracle of oil or a second Sukkot? - jewishpresstampa

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

There's a pop-culture notion that 11:11 o'clock is "angel time," a spiritually magical moment. This weeks clergy discuss the biblical foundation for belief in spiritual beings who act as messengers and perform missions to carry out Gods word and will.

Rabbi Mendy Goldberg

Lubavitch of the East End, Coram

The concept of angels is so large and expansive that it cant be covered briefly. Angels are mentioned in the Torah, starting in the book of Genesis. They are mentioned numerous times in Prophets and Scriptures as well. Angels are not physical but spiritual beings. All of the physical characteristics of the angels mentioned by the Prophets such as having wings and arms are metaphors referring to their spiritual character.

The Hebrew word for angel is "malach," which means messenger, and the angels are indeed God's messengers, performing various tasks and missions. Michaels tasks are expressions of God's kindness; Gabriel executes severe judgments; and Rafaels responsibility is to heal. All are at times called the archangels, or angels of high rank.

Some angels are created for a specific task, and upon that task's completion, they cease to exist. According to Jewish mysticism, one angels task is to transport people's words of prayer and Torah-study on high.

Angels are created through the deeds of humankind as explained in the words of the Talmud: "He who fulfills one mitzvah, acquires for himself one angel-advocate; he who commits one transgression, acquires against himself one angel-accuser." (Ethics 4:11.)

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The Rev. William McBride

Religious director, Interfaith Community Religious Education Program, Brookville Multifaith Campus

When I think about what angels are doing in heaven, I'm reminded of what my Dad once said to my Mom, a notoriously bad singer. He said, "When you get to heaven, you should stand next to an angel that plays the harp really loud."

Angels on high are associated with music and described in song as "sweetly singing o'er the plain." But what do angels do on Earth? Both Scripture and tradition suggest that angels are sweetly revealing the ripple effect of goodness on earth. They enter real moments in history and deliver messages when bitter realities threaten our beliefs.

In Judaism, Islam and Christianity, angels do things that remind us of our inherent goodness. An angel who appeared to Sarah made her laugh after revealing she was to have a child in her old age, thanks in part to her generous spirit of hospitality. The angel Gabriel made Mary feel highly favored in a lowly moment while revealing her place in history as a person focused on the good from the beginning of her life.

As we ponder what angels do, let's listen and look while angels are sweetly singing on high and revealing here below the ripple effect of goodness.

Samantha Tetro

Founder, Samanthas Lil Bit of Heaven Ministries, East Northport

A study of angels soon reveals that they are not doll-faced babies so commonly (and adorably) depicted in books and movies. Quite the opposite! Angels are ministering spirits created by God for his plans, his purposes and his people.

The most important thing to realize is that angels will not carry out anything that is not in accordance with Gods word or his will. (Psalm 103:20) Scripture tells us that in the heaven, thousands upon thousands of angels worship and praise the Lord day and night to declare and bear witness of his glory and honor. (Psalm 148:2) Angels are designed to carry out the Lords commands and assignments.

Their positions here on Earth could be one of protector (Daniel 6:22), messenger (Matt 1:20-21), comforter (Luke 1:11-17), worshipper (Psalm 148:2) and even warrior (Rev 12:7). Angels are also sent to serve those who will inherit salvation (Hebrews 1:14) and provide care at the time of death (Luke 16:22). They are even called to be part of the "sounding of the trumpets" (Revelation 8:2) as the end draws near.

DO YOU HAVE QUESTIONS youd like Newsday to ask the clergy? Email them to LILife@newsday.com.

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Asking the Clergy: Angels' work in heaven and on Earth - Newsday

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

By EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP via G...

A couple walk on a salt island formed on the Dead Sea in the Israeli resort town of Ein Bokek on Mar. 27, 2021.

I recently joined a rally to protest the horrific conditions at Rikers Island, where 14 people, all awaiting trial, have died in the past year. I walked away in tears at the pain of these families and individuals, and angered yet again by the racist structures that put a disproportionate number of people of color in prison. Yet I also left inspired to continue fighting for the United States to become a country committed to equity, and to the safety and dignity of everyone who lives here.

This experience of both recognizing the ingrained and persistent racism of this country and committing to building a better future likely does not strike many as a paradox. However, when it comes to Israel, conversations too often assume a false dichotomy in which one must choose between caring about Israelis or Palestinians, and either supporting Israel or opposing occupation.

A recent New York Times Magazine story reinforced this disingenuous choice. The students interviewed in the piece are thoughtful, nuanced and engaged with deep questions about the future of the Jewish state. But reducing their positions to either supporting Israel or opposing occupation, as the author does throughout, erases the reality that for many, love of Israel demands working for the human rights of everyone under its jurisdiction just like love for the United States compels many to fight racism here.

As the article notes, many rabbinical and cantorial students come face to face with occupation for the first time through Truah, which runs a yearlong human rights program for American rabbinical and cantorial students studying in Jerusalem. Each year, more than 80% of future rabbis and cantors spending the academic year in Israel, as required by the major non-Orthodox seminaries, take part in the Truah program.

Over the course of a year, we show them human rights challenges on the ground and introduce them to Israeli and Palestinian civil society leaders working for a different future. They visit Hebron with Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli veterans who testify about their experiences enforcing the occupation, to see for themselves how settlement there has resulted in evictions and violence against Palestinians. They plant saplings in the South Hebron Hills with Combatants for Peace, a group of former Israeli and Palestinian combatants who advocate nonviolent resolution to the conflict, in order to replace trees uprooted by settlers. They visit Mizrahi Jewish activists in Haifa, Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem and Bedouin Israeli citizens in the Negev.

In asserting that A reliable subcurrent in American students conversions away from the ardent Zionism of their youth is firsthand confrontation with reality in the West Bank, the Times article misses an essential truth about these experiences. Yes, the future clergy who participate in our programs come away upset and angry about the reality on the ground in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. But crucially, in every one of these programs, they meet Israeli and Palestinian human rights and civil society leaders who are choosing hope over despair and working for a better future for their own families.

It has been especially important to these students to meet Israeli leaders who are devoting their lives to ending the occupation precisely because they love their country just as patriotic Americans can and should devote themselves to fighting racism, and to coming to terms with the ugly parts of our countrys history and present. These meetings, along with deep dives into Jewish texts and traditions, help build a real connection with Israel, a vision of a future in which Israelis and Palestinians enjoy human rights, and the necessary capacity to be moral leaders who stand for the human rights of everyone in the region.

My own experience illustrates the ways in which encounters with occupation can precipitate an even deeper connection with Israel. In Sept. 2000, I arrived in Jerusalem for my third year of rabbinical studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary. The Second Intifada had begun just days earlier. Planes breaking the sound barrier, bombs exploding in cafes and buses, and military attacks on Bethlehem became the background noise for our Talmud study. We feared for our safety. At the same time, I began to learn about the experience of Palestinians facing closures of entire villages, shelling attacks and the ongoing violence of occupation.

The following year, during a JTS mission to Israel, a classmate and I organized a day for our classmates in East Jerusalem, in partnership with BTselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. We visited a refugee camp and met a Palestinian family whose home had been demolished repeatedly because of the near impossibility for East Jerusalem residents of acquiring building permits.

I could have walked to this neighborhood from the apartment where I lived the previous year. And yet, it felt like another country. Before that day I might have said that I opposed occupation, but after that visit I understood what occupation meant on a day-to-day basis.

I could easily have walked away. But that would have meant abandoning hope. It would have meant deciding that the country where half the worlds Jewish population lives isnt worth saving. And it would have meant turning my back on the brave Israeli and Palestinian activists who are fighting every day to end the occupation and to ensure basic freedoms for everyone.

Its curious that, when it comes to Israel, too many assume that one cannot be deeply committed to the country, while also intensely opposed to occupation. As an American citizen, I am painfully aware that my own country was founded on the genocide of Native Americans. I know that we are still living with the brutal legacy of slavery in the ongoing racism built into too many of our institutions and policies. And yet, this knowledge makes me even more committed to building a multiracial, multiethnic society in the United States with equity at its core.

Similarly, anyone who cares about Israel must confront the most painful parts of its past and present. This includes acknowledging the Nakba, (the Arabic word for catastrophe,) in which some 700,000 Palestinians became refugees upon the creation of the state of Israel, the ongoing structural discrimination against Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the military occupation of Palestinian noncitizens in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Confronting these realities need not mean abandoning Israel or questioning its validity but it does force us to take responsibility for its future.

Over the past nine years, more than 200 rabbinical and cantorial students have participated in Truahs Year in Israel program. They tell us that they are not stepping away from Israel, but rather guiding their communities to a deeper connection with Israel. That connection is not one of uncritical devotion, but instead takes as a given that those who care about the future of Israel must also work for Palestinians to have the same human rights, including the right to self-determination, that we Jews claim for ourselves.

To contact the author, email editorial@forward.com.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Forward.

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Posted By admin on November 12, 2021

In 1963, when he was 29, Leonard Cohen gave a speech in Montreals Jewish Public Library: I believe that the God worshipped in our synagogues is a hideous distortion of a supreme idea and deserves to be attacked and destroyed, he said. I consider it one of my duties to expose the platitude which we have created. Cohen had come to imagine himself as part of an underground catacomb religion of poets, a new kind of cantor, one of the creators of the liturgy that will create the church.

At that time, Cohen had never sung on a record or a stage. He had published two narrowly acclaimed volumes of poetry and a experimental novel. His speech, part of a symposium on the future of Judaism, carried weight in part because he was a son of one of the most notable Jewish families in Canada his paternal grandfather was the founder of the Canadian Jewish Times, whose uncle had been unofficial chief rabbi. His maternal grandfather had written A Treasury of Rabbinic Interpretations. Cohen himself resolved to go into exile from his faith, to think up other possibilities for spiritual life like love and sex and drugs and song, for which there was little room in the synagogue.

In this book, Harry Freedman examines that spiritual journey, which took Cohen not only through a storied succession of lovers and more than his fair share of narcotics but also deep into Bible study, and, over several decades, into the rigours of Zen Buddhism, in which tradition he became an ordained monk. Pop music has always explored the shifting borders of sacred and profane devotion, from Elviss spirituals, through the gospel roots of Motown to Madonnas raunchy confessionals, but Cohen found his own way to reconcile what he called his lifelong obsession with earthly love with his more mystical urges: I decided to worship beauty the way some people go back to the religion of their fathers.

The first vivid expression of that impulse came a few months after he made that library speech when he met the young avant-garde dancer Suzanne Verdal. The pair never became lovers, but Cohen was among the friends that Verdal would invite to her cheap apartment in one of the abandoned warehouses on the St Lawrence waterfront. She served him jasmine tea and little mandarin oranges from nearby Chinatown, and the pair of them would walk along the river past Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours where sailors went to be blessed before heading out to sea. Cohen used the elements of these encounters almost verbatim in his first hit song, Suzanne, which became a blueprint for lyrics that shifted between conversation with a lover or with a God or with both, and allowed him to find his unique voice.

Freedman, whose previous books include The Talmud: A Biography and Kabbalah: Secrecy, Scandal and the Soul, suggests that Cohen became a reincarnation of a fifth-century Israeli tradition of the paytan: poets who were also prayer leaders, who wrote allusive verses to be recited alongside traditional liturgy. In workmanlike fashion he deconstructs the Talmudic and New Testament references in a series of Cohens most familiar songs to show how the poets songwriting circled back to the scriptural study he had undertaken with his grandfather in his teens.

The exercise works best with those songs that have almost become modern incantations to rival the Lords Prayer or the Kaddish. Notably, Anthem, the centrepiece of Cohens 1992 album, The Future, which provides the seminal line theres a crack in everything, thats how the light gets in (the closest thing I have to a credo, Cohen said) and, of course, Hallelujah, the song that launched a thousand X Factor auditions.

Cohen spent five years writing Hallelujah, famously filling notebooks with 80 potential verses before he found those six that might best please the Lord, and his concert audiences. Freedman is lucid on the ways in which the songwriter identified himself directly with King David (who Cohen called the Bibles sweet singer, the embodiment of our higher possibility) and on the consummate expression of Cohens synthesis of the sensual and the divine (I remember when I moved in you and the holy dove she was moving too) but in chasing down every biblical reference, he risks losing that balancing irreverence in Cohens lyrics, which rhymes God-fearing Hebrew with breathy pillow talk. I wanted to push the hallelujah deep into the secular world, Cohen once said. I wanted to indicate that hallelujah can come out of things that have nothing to do with religion.

Freedman mentions a favourite quote, which Cohen attributed to Ben Jonson, a couple of times Ive studied all the philosophies and all the theologies but cheerfulness keeps breaking through but that wisdom is not always at the forefront of his own quest for the roots of the poets genius. You rather hear it in passing in some of the books better anecdotes. For example, when Cohens son Adam was critically ill, in a coma following a car crash, Cohen sat by his hospital bed for months. Sometimes, he read to his son favourite passages from the Bible. When Adam eventually came round the first thing he said was: Dad, can you read something else?

In part because of his longevity as an artist, Cohens own life became a gift to parable. He had trouble finding a record deal in 1967 because everyone thought he was too old, at 33, to ever be a hit. He enjoyed the irony that the album he released 45 years later, Old Ideas, came closest to topping the charts. He told Jarvis Cocker that most of its reference points were about 2,614 years old. That final hallelujah was itself a kind of dark joke on the part of his Gods. In 2005, he brought a lawsuit against his manager Kelley Lynch for cleaning out $5m from his bank account, partly while he was studying to be a monk. In 2008, at the age of 74, he was therefore obliged to resume his touring career, playing 387 concerts in five years, and securing his legend.

Cohen died on 7 November 2016, the day before the election of Donald Trump as US president. His final album came out a few weeks earlier, pointedly titled You Want it Darker, with no question mark. Having forged his own spiritual path, Cohen inevitably returned, in a voice now lower than Johnny Cashs, to where it had begun. As Freedman points out, the title track of this album was accompanied by Gideon Zelermyer, cantor of the synagogue in Montreal that Cohen had attended as a child. Zelermyer utters the songs last word, hineni, which Cohen translates as Im ready, my Lord. Listening to it again, you also hear something unspoken: a powerful sense of mission accomplished.

Leonard Cohen: The Mystical Roots of Genius by Harry Freedman is published by Bloomsbury (18.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

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