Judaism for the Thinking Person

Desensitization, Jew Hatred, and the Hate of Cain: How To Love in the Face of Hate?

One year after the massacre of Jews at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Torah was rolled to the story of Cain and Abel.  A year earlier, I had spoken forcefully about our need to combat Anti-Semitism without mercy in our country, and I was criticized by many for not responding to Hate with "words of Love."  Again at the one year anniversary much of the blogosphere was filled with slogans and platitudes that we can combat hate with love, and yet I could not find specifics anywhere about how we do that.  In this 11 minute reflection, I try to answer what this really could mean, using the Cain and Abel text, and drawing on the research that says that many who become racist or anti-Semites have had an experience at one time in their earlier lives of feeling that what they deserve was robbed from them by a member or members of the group they come to hate.  I also consider social media conglomerates accomplices to the spread of hate. A key part of this teaching is the role desensitizing young white men to hate through videos and memes that mock political correctness. After I recorded this, the following article came out about the billions of downloads of Dennis Prager's conservative funded organization whose mission is to do this:  https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/josephbernstein/prager-university

FIXED: Anti-Semitism (Jew Hatred) & Gaslighting the Jews: Progressives Telling Us to "Go Fix Yourselves First"

I present new difficulties facing progressive rabbis from the Left, including a paucity of resources to even discuss the rise in anti-Semitic attacks because racism "cannot be perpetrated against people of privilege," by new progressive definitions.  This, combined with other progressive tropes, has created a situation whereby anti-Semitism can only be mentioned by white Jews of privilege (like rabbis like me) once we have "fixed ourselves" according to purity tests on the left, and which mainly mean leaving our Judaism and our Zionism behind.  In that sense, it's a "gaslighting" situation whereby every time we cry out for the injustice against ourselves, we are told first we must "get well" before anything will be addressed.

My reading of Jacob's Wrestling with the "Angel" is that it speaks to issues we are struggling with today around the prevalence and reality of depression and anxiety.  We want to say that Jacob overcame his fears in order to face his brother, when something closer to the truth is that Jacob only temporarily overcame his fears, but quickly returns to them (since he flees from his brother immediately after facing him and lying to him, and then he suffers great fear and depression ongoing in his life).  Similarly, we wish those who suffer depression and anxiety could overcome them in a way that we can celebrate, like the end of a Hallmark movie. I argue that this is a tendency to blame the victim, a tendency to say the problem is "in them" and must be "fixed" and "treated" in them, rather than consider that they, and many of us, live in a CRAZY-MAKING world, and the whole system needs to be fixed and addressed.  (In psychology, this is called the mistake of identifying "a target patient" rather than targetting the system.  Without acknowledging the system, we are "gaslighting" the victim when we tell them:  "Just get a better therapist, coach, self-help book... Learn to prioritize, do self-care, etc."  We do that to Yaakov/Jacob.

I never got to give a great sermon on this because there was a violent act of Anti-Semitism two days before.  And what I realized is that Jews are being told the problem is in many ways with themselves when it comes to Anti-Semitism.  We say, "We're anxious!  There is rising anti-Semitism!  The press isn't even covering the attacks!  I want to be able to be a public Jew!" and the reply from some progressive quarters is, "Well, maybe it's Israel's fault, or your own failing to reckon with your own racism or privilege, and maybe you could be cured by dropping your Judaism and by just voicing a fully secularized progressivism" which is another form of gaslighting, of telling Jews THEY NEED TO CHANGE rather than that THEY LIVE IN A CRAZY MAKING SITUATION.  I try to explore this comparison in this 16 minute teaching.

Change or Die: The Meaning of Lekh L'khah

In this 14 minute teaching, I use Alan Deutschman's book "Change or Die: The Three Keys to Change at Work and in Life" as the best explanation of the meaning of the famous command to Avrah and Sarai to "Lekh L'kha," to go for your own sake, or, in Deutschman's terms, to spiritually "Change or Die."  The thesis of the sermon is that the totality of Genesis/Bereishit is intended to tell God's story that change cannot be effected by an individual without a community of norms, positivity, and reinforcing habits.  The Garden of Eden, Cain and Abel, Tower of Babel, and the Flood and Noah all teach us the futility that the world can change based on an individual transforming their own society.  Therefore the covenant with Avraham is that he must create a brand new society or tribe within which God's intended changes are possible.  This mirrors the precision with which Deutschman spells out change within our own lives:  what's holding us back from changing, and what might, if we are willing to have the faith to embrace a new community, make possible the leap forward to change. 

4 Minute Teaching: How to Be Mindful of the Stories You Tell in Relationships Over Time

As I've been reflecting on the relationship of the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Garden of Eden story, and as I've been working with staff on the role of one's personal stories in engaging people in a holy way, I offer this teaching on when one's stories keep a relationship fresh and when they are a hindrance.  Avoid pointing to the skin that is sloughing off even as you are so invested in it being your identity.

"What Kind of Relationship Do I Want to Be Having?" - Constructing Our Relationships Without Superiority and Inferiority

The signature prayers of Yom Kippur are confessionals whereby everyone says together lines including "We have been guilty of slander" and "We have sinned wittingly and unwittingly."  The language is often felt to be archaic.  What does it mean for someone to say "We've slandered!"  I use examples from my own life, starting with a congregational rabbi's relationship with my community, to make it real, and then I expand to other relationships in my life, and to The Choice we all have to make:  Can I live a life of relationships in which there is no "higher" and "lower" in the relationship?  Can I live in which we're all just travellers on the earth trying to relate to each other in a real way, with no "higher" and "lower" judgments?  Our greatest power in "teshuvah," changing our lives for the better, is to purposefully ask of our relationships, "Is this the kind of relationship I want to be having?"  And if the answer is no, then I try to give a guide for changing it.  My sources are the books: Tribal Leadership, The Choice, and the essays of Natalia Ginzburg ("The Little Virtues").

The Middle Way: Conservative Judaism Without Apology

Conservative Judaism is pretty much always on the defensive these days.  We live in a world where all the legitimacy is ascribed to the Left or to the Right, and the voice of the Middle Way is discounted, even by those who are living it!  In the sermon, I try to show that the deepest religious path of spirituality, wisdom, and practice is The Middle Way.  In a world where conviction is shown in the extremes, we ought to embrace the holiness of truly believing and practicing The Religion of Hillel, not of Shammai.

Judaism and Buddhism: Enlightenment, Nirvana, and Shabbat

This is a summary lecture from a lecture series I did in Ann Arbor on Judaism and Buddhism: Examining Jewish Mysticism and Philosophy through the 4 Noble Truths.   What if we understand "revelation" as "enlightenment" rather than miraculous supernatural dictation (which is, after all, a thoroughly incoherent concept)?  What if the entire "teaching" (Torah) of Shabbat has to do with bringing enlightenment to the masses?

Did the Exodus Happen? Archaeology, Biblical Criticism, and The Torah As the Coming Together of Two Hebrew Peoples

A lecture in which I present the thesis of Richard Elliott Friedman's book on Exodus, which focuses on the two most ancient parts of the Torah (the Song of the Sea and the Song of Deborah), the historical trends in Biblical archaeology and criticism, and why the Torah could well be a story of two long lost parts of the Hebrew family tree coming together in Israel, possibly under a female leader.  The theme reflects the issues of our time:  overcoming tribalism to have a national vision based on values, and (surprisingly?) those values/Torah coming from those refugee cousins newly in the Land.

I've made an optional source-sheet of Biblical texts to go with this lecture.  See:

https://www.sefaria.org/sheets/178990?lang=bi

Why Are The Prayers Constantly Speaking of "When we lie down and when we rise up?" - A Practical Guide

If you were a literary critic analyzing the evening prayers, you would have to note how often the trope of going to bed and waking up is repeated:  Ahavat Olam before Shema, VeAhavta and VeHaya Im-Shmo'a after Shema, Hashkiveinu, and then Barukh Adonai  Bayom 'VaLayla on Weekdays or the Shabbat Psalm on Friday night.  Wow:  for a twelve minute service, you've prayed about going to sleep and waking up five times!) What is this all about?  And why is the most commonly studied volume of Talmud, Berakhot ("Blessings"), concerned greatly about the timing of nighttime and morning prayers as well?  In this podcast, I connect all of these with reflections about the psycho-physiological aspects of falling asleep and waking up, including theories about the function of prayer and a recent study on when one should be waking up.  I conclude with a very practical exercise for improving one's spiritual and physical health.

The Ten Commandments as Your Path to Encounter God Directly

We all know that the Ten Commandments are important, and many of us know that there's some way they're different from other "commandments," but we rarely get to the heart of the matter.  In this spontaneous presentation (and hence inferior audio quality), I try to convey exactly what this difference is, and why the Ten Commandments are truly a unique spiritual path of immediate connection to God's presence.  In addition to using real-world examples from my own life, I also explain the importance of Rabbi Abraham Joshua's theology without the typical poeticizing or trivialization of it.  We experience God at our own Sinai, no different from our ancestors, and yet we often walk away from our connection to God.  Why?  I try to explain in this very personal podcast.