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In the Spring of 2008, as I prepared to go to rabbinical school, I enrolled in The Anne Braden Program – a then newly emerging antiracist training program for white activists. The program was transformational, allowing me to see the connections between the occupation in Israel/Palestine and racism in the U.S. And even more so, empowering me to shift my relationship to white power.
Of the many books we read, one stands out – Mab Segrest’s, Memoir of a Race Traitor. I was newly identifying as antizionist, grieving, afraid, and seeking courage. This book gave me a way forward because in many ways, I felt like becoming an antizionist Jew made me a race traitor. Which was confusing because I also felt a moral clarity that was deeply Jewish. Some 20 years later, I am still wrestling with the word antizionist, both in my own heart and now in public. At a dinner following the Conference on the Jewish Left in Boston, I sat at a table and talked about the power and limits of the words zionism and antizionism. And this week, Arielle Angel, invited Fadi Quran, Dove Kent and I to continue that conversation on the Jewish Currents podcast, On the Nose. As vulnerable as it feels, I invite you to listen, perhaps while you prepare for shabbat. On the podcast we discuss at length that no one knows what zionism and antizionism really mean, but don’t ourselves define the terms. I want to highlight an important point that Fadi makes in our conversation. To paraphrase, the ongoing debate and confusion about what zionism and antizionism mean should be secondary to the “facts on the ground,” meaning what is actually happening behaviorally in Israel/Palestine. Our need to process our feelings about those words can distract us from the work of disrupting violent oppression and genocide. That said, I rarely have the opportunity to speak with nuance about what the word means to me (and what it doesn’t mean), so before you listen, and with some trepidation, I shall try. For me being an antizionist is both a spiritual orientation and a political identity. What feels truest is that I am opposed to political zionism. This is because I am opposed to the idea of a state that privileges any particular religious or ethnic group, and that includes a specifically Jewish state. I do not think it is possible to have a democracy that privileges any one group of people. I believe equality under the law is the way everyone is safest. For me antizionist does not mean that I think all Israelis should perish or leave the land of Israel. I am deeply invested in the safety, survival and thriving of everyone who lives between the river and the sea. So when the Jewish federation requires that I and KT affirm the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state I feel it is a trick question because I don’t believe that is possible. I believe that citizens have the right to exist and states have a right to serve its citizens. But I don't think nation states have rights. But what's most important, (which I am so glad they didn’t cut from the end of the podcast), is that you do not need to agree with me about any of this. Prior to my tenure at Kol Tzedek, I have only ever been a member of a synagogue where I disagreed with the rabbi about Israel/Palestine. So please know, that is your sacred right. I welcome your questions, your dissent, your fears and your vulnerability. As we prepare for Purim, may delirium return us to a world where we can’t tell the difference between blessings and curses, good and evil, winter and spring, lion and sheep, zionist and antizionist. May joy soften our senses, heal our wounds, transform our fear and vengeance into dignity and liberation for all. This week was a big one for the cosmos.
On Tuesday we celebrated the new moon of Adar which ushered in the Lunar New Year (year of the fire horse !), the beginning of Ramadan, and Ash Wednesday. It was an interfaith cosmic mash up that I hope activated some kind of intergalactic portal that makes world peace imminent and irresistible. Or at the very least, transforms the rubble of Gaza into a glorious garden, freezes ICE agents in their tracks and melts all weapons into musical instruments. The Talmud teaches that when the Adar begins, joy increases. But what’s the right way to “increase [our] joy” in the context of so much loss and suffering? As a community, we have grown very familiar with the ways that Yom Kippur is like Purim. This year, I am realizing we may need to draw upon the discipline of Yom Kippur to give us the spiritual permission that Purim demands. In his teachings on Purim, Rabbi Kalonymous Kalman Shapira’s Esh Kodesh, written in the Warsaw Ghetto, pulls us even further in this direction: שכמו יוה״כ התענית והתשובה ביום זה, לא אם רוצה אותם האדם לעשותם עושה, רק בין אם רוצה בין לא, מקיימם מפני גזרת הקב״ה, כן גם שמחת פורים, לא רק אם האדם מעצמו בשמחה או עכ״פ במצב שיכול לשמח… To paraphrase, he explains that most of us don’t actually want to fast and afflict our souls and do the work of Teshuvah on Yom Kippur, but we do it anyway because it is “decreed”, which is to say, it's a collective practice. So too with Purim, which is not only for people who personally feel raucous or joyous, or find themselves in a situation worth celebrating… רק גם אם הוא בשפלות ובשבירת הלב, המוח וכל רוחו נרמס, חוק הוא שצריך עכ״פ איזה ניצוץ של שמחה להכניס אל לבו. Rather, even if you are yourself feeling low and broken hearted, like your mind and spirit have been trampled, it is a statute that you must, at the very least, bring a spark of joy to your heart. And the good news is that you don’t have to do that alone. We are gonna ignite that spark together. As I write I am listening to the Purimshpil come to life and it's cracking me up! But even still, if the joy feels unattainable there is a path for you. While the popular Purim brand is irreverent revelry, the core mitzvot of Purim are actually all about chesed. We are instructed to give gifts to everyone in our community who needs it (matanot l’evyonim) and share food with our friends (mishloach manot). Purim is about being excessively generous, whether we feel like it or not. And in my experience, there is so much delight in bringing others joy. So as you prepare for Purim, in addition to thinking about your costume, I encourage you to consider where you do want to donate money this Purim. At KT, we will be collecting money for Juntos. And can you make a list of all the people you might want to send care packages to? And if none of that is accessible to you, perhaps you can practice metta, and wish yourself and the world well. Perhaps the thing we need most this year is to express care for our community, and in doing so, we might feel more whole and an unexpected spark of joy. I am just returning from the Conference for the Jewish Left, which was held at Boston University. It was an inspiring gathering of nearly 1200 people, in person and on Zoom. What started as a local academic convening three years ago has quickly become an international movement-building opportunity. I wanted to take the time to share a few highlights.
There were academics and activists, artists, organizers, philanthropists, so many rabbis and rabbinical students, writers and retirees looking for a spiritual and political home. There were college students from more than 50 universities. It was a very hopeful window into the Jewish future. I had the privilege of teaching a session to more than 100 participants all hungry for liberatory Torah, which was awesome. But my personal highlight was getting to meet up with Zara Auritt, now a KT college student who came with a crew of eight friends from their newly forming campus student group at Smith called Tzedek Tirdof (Justice shall you pursue). The nachas of talking political strategy and community building with a young adult whose B’nei Mitzvah I officiated was more than a conference highlight; it was a life highlight. Each of the keynote speakers responded to questions in ways that touched me deeply. And I want to convey an insight from each of them. When asked what new he would add to his book, Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza, Peter Beinart shared that he finished writing before Donald Trump was back in the Oval office. He sees now that “the refusal of American Jewish institutions to hold Israel accountable to equity under the law for all its citizens reveals their inability to hold our government accountable for the same.” If he were writing the book today, he would stress that point. Arielle Angel of Jewish Currents spoke to the need for new Jewish institutions and the true financial constraints that limit our institution-building efforts. Given unlimited money she thinks we need a new federation (I couldn’t agree more!). But when asked the opposite question, “Given our limited resources, what is the most important investment we can make? She said without skipping a beat, “Synagogues.” There is a deep longing for there to be communities in every city where people can observe shabbat, study Torah, celebrate baby namings, educate their children, protest injustice and mourn their losses, without having to compromise their support for Palestinian freedom. Synagogues coalition spaces that strengthen our resilience and connect us to a moral and spiritual lineage. And coalitions are how we become more powerful. I do not take for granted that we have created that together at Kol Tzedek. That we exist and what we have created together really matters and creates a model for what is possible for the next generation. One of the most profound moments was receiving the words of Fadi Quran, a Palestinian leader who flew in from Ramallah for the conference. He talked about the need for Jews to emancipate ourselves from fear and create a politics rooted in dignity. As someone who has lived under Israeli occupation his entire life, he is intimate with both his own fears and also the manifestation of Jewish fear. He described with great intimacy and empathy the way Jewish fear has led Israel to violently occupy, dispossess and erase his own people and culture. And he articulated with clarity the need for a politics rooted in dignity for all people, as the only path to shared safety. But what really struck me was this moment when he quotes a leader from the African National Congress who said, “We don’t fight to win, we have to win so that we can fight.” Which is to say, we have to know what winning feels like, and then we can fight for it. As he said this, all I could think about was Shabbat. This is why we observe shabbat. To taste freedom, to feel it in our bones, to experience it in real time. So that we can embody it in the struggles that await us in the week to come. This is what it means that Shabbat is a taste of the world to come. It's the moment when we construct a world in which we are free. I arrive at the end of this week, my heart is feeling heavy. One headline captured it well, “The Olympics are a show of global harmony. The world is anything but.” The weight of so much cruelty, our inability to sufficiently disrupt it.
Which is why when I sat down to study this week’s parsha, an expected line attached itself to my heart. In parashat Yitro the Israelites are camped at the base of Mt. Sinai, eager and terrified to receive Torah. Moses climbs the mountain and there God speaks to him. Based on how things went in Egypt, we might expect more Divine instruction but what comes out instead is poetic inspiration. The Holy One begins, “You have seen…how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Me” (Ex. 19:4). About this moment Avivah Zornberg comments, “The fact that a metaphor is used at this most significant and serious moment, theologically considered, in world history, is in itself surprising. Indeed, except for the poetic text of the Song of Sea, this is the only metaphor in the Exodus narrative” (Particulars of Rapture, 257). So why, here, does the Holy One speak in hyperbole? I can imagine that after all of it, the Holy One might wish she had just picked up her people and delivered them to safety and freedom. But I would not, after all, describe the great fear and suffering of the plagues, the uncertain crossing of the sea with the Egyptian army chasing after them, as breezy. I think the use of metaphor here is in a way addressing the trauma of it all. God knows it was hard, maybe too hard. The sentiment of the Israelites is heavy. The people are weary. And so precisely in this moment, the image of God’s metaphoric flight catches our attention. Zornberg comments, “The effect of the image is, of course, to convey intimacy, protection, love, speed; but also I suggest, the enormous power of the adult eagle, effortless carrying its young through the air…it evokes the physical sensations of carrying and being carried, the imagined empathy with eagle and young, to convey a spiritual modality…to induce in the people a momentary and partial sense of a transcendent perspective…” It is this image that prepares, maybe even allows, the Israelites to reopen their hearts to God and to Torah. The mention of the eagle reminded me of the words of Franz Rosenzweig, from a letter written to his sister-in-law, which was shared with me by my teacher Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld: “Each of us can only seize by the scruff whoever happens to be closest to us in the mire. This is the “neighbor” the Bible speaks of. And the miraculous thing is that, although each of us stands in the mire of our self, we can each pull out our neighbor or at least keep him from drowning. None of us has solid ground under our feet; each of us is only held up by the neighborly hands grasping us by the scruff, with the result that we are each held up by the next one, and often, indeed most of the time…hold each other up mutually. “All this mutual upholding (a physical impossibility) becomes possible only because the great hand from above supports all these holding human hands by their wrists. It is this, and not some nonexistent “solid ground under one’s feet” that enables all the human hands to hold and to help. There is no such thing as standing, there is only being held up. As an eagle…hovereth over her young (Deut 32:11).” On eagles wings, on ICE watch, on Shabbat, may we feel held up, carried and cared for. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143