God and the Obama inauguration in 2009

For those of you who Facebook with me, you already know that I was impressed by BOTH ministers who gave addresses at the inauguration on Jan. 20. Yes, I was even impressed by Rick Warren. His anti-gay rhetoric still leaves much to be desired, but fortunately, this kind of intolerance was missing from his speech. He did a commendable job of being inspiring without being offensive -- and his talk went the extra mile to put in certain touches that a Jewish audience in particular would recognize. I noticed too, that his one reference to Jesus was clearly done in a personal, rather than a universal, context.

I did not realize until I received the following email from the Shalom Center, however, that Warren's speech also was inclusive of Muslim faith communities. Yasher Koach, Warren, well done. You've proven yourself to be far savvier and more sensitive (when you want to be) than I, at least, would have ever given you credit for.

Here, Rabbi Wasgow explains in further detail why Warren's speech was so excellent -- at least as measured by the interfaith barometer -- as well as some of the reasons Lowery's speech was equally masterful:

I thought God - the real God, the One Who cares passionately about justice, peace, and diversity - came out rather well in the Inaugural ceremonies.

God's official spokespersons did better than I had expected. Rev. Rick Warren - whose choice I had strongly criticized because of his views about gay and lesbian sexuality - did far than I had feared. I was especially moved by his speaking, in English, the Jewish "Sh'ma" about God's Unity and the Muslim "Bismillah Er Rachman Er Rahim" -- "In the name of God Who is Compassionate and Merciful." I doubt that most Christians knew what he was doing in either case, but Jews and Muslims did.

And I respected his going out of his way to affirm that he spoke in Jesus' name not as if Jesus were the self-evidently, universally accepted God Incarnate but rather, explicitly that Jesus is the aspect of God that Warren himself feels called by. I also appreciated his effort to contextualize Jesus as both actually a Jew and in Muslim eyes a prophet by saying his name in both Aramaic and Arabic as well as in the Greek by which most of the Christian world knows him.

And though Warren did not confess and repair the sin of his attacks on gay sexuality, his words were in general pacific.

As for Rev. Lowery: He moved me to tears and to delighted laughter too. Tears when he began with a passage from a poem/song by James Weldon Johnson, "Lift Every Voice and Sing," long known as the "Negro National Anthem." Not only the words of the song but its melody move back and forth from grief to hope, as they reflect on the past and future of black life in America.

I know the song and so do my adult children, who learned it in mostly black schools in the District of Columbia when they were growing up. Indeed, I sang it last Sunday morning when I preached on Martin Luther King and the American future at Old South Church in Boston, and the church leadership chose it from the hymnal of the United Church of Christ to end the service. I thought then, "Every Black church in America is also singing that song this very morning!" But it had not occurred to me that Rev. Lowery might use it.

I am sure that few American whites know it, or understood what Lowery was doing.- But practically every Black American did.I laughed out loud when Lowery then turned upside down the despairing and cynical old Black patter about "black, brown, yellow, red, white." Who could have imagined these in-group cultural artifacts, these nearly secret rituals of Black life, coming out of the closet in such a public way on this most broadly American occasion? As for President Obama himself, any God worth the salt that was spread upon the Temple offerings would have smiled benignly as he mentioned "Christians and Muslims, Jews and Hindus - and non-believers." Monotheists, polytheists, and atheists all included in our community. (Maybe Obama, like many Buddhists, sees Buddhism as a philosophy, not a religion.)

As for much of the content of Obama's speech - for example -- ''A nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous": it seemed secular on the surface but at least to my ears bespoke an implicitly religious sensibility. Some of the immediate post-ceremony TV commentary heard the speech as prose rather than poetry; but as I read it later, that line and others seemed to me to glow and chime as poetry. God shining through.

Shalom, salaam, shantih, namaste, peace.

- Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Parshat Chayai Sarai

This semester, I’m taking a course on poverty and social justice, and one of our units focused on land acquisition in the Bible. I’d like to share with you some of what I learned, since one of the more famous stories related to land acquisition is actually found in this week’s Torah portion, Chaye Sarai, the Life of Sarah.

Although called “The Life of Sarah,” our portion actually begins with Sarah’s death. Interestingly, she is not with Abraham when she dies, and once word reaches her husband, he begins negotiations to purchase a cave and its surrounding land not only for her burial place, but for the burial of his future progeny.

The story takes up the entire chapter, and I’d like to take a moment to go over the story together.

Genesis Chapter 23

And Sarah was a 127 years old; these were the years of the life of Sarah.
And Sarah died in Kiriath-Arba; which is Hebron in the land of Canaan; and Abraham came to mourn for Sarah, and to weep for her.
And Abraham stood up from before his dead, and spoke to the Hittites, saying,
“I am a stranger and a sojourner with you; give me possession of a burying place with you, that I may bury my dead out of my sight.”
And the Hittites answered Abraham, saying to him,
“Hear us, my lord; you are a mighty prince among us; in the choice of our tombs bury your dead; none of us shall withhold from you his tomb, that you may bury your dead.”
And Abraham stood up, and bowed to the people of the land, to the Hittites.
And he talked with them, saying, “If your mind is that I should bury my dead out of my sight; hear me, and entreat for me to Ephron the son of Zohar.
That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he has, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me as a possession of a burying place amongst you.”
And Ephron lived among the Hittites; and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the hearing of the Hittites, of all who went in at the gate of his city, saying,
“No, my lord, hear me; the field I give to you, and the cave that is in it, I give it to you; in the presence of the sons of my people I give it to you; bury your dead.”
And Abraham bowed down before the people of the land.
And he spoke to Ephron in the hearing of the people of the land, saying, “But if you will give it, I beg you, hear me; I will give you money for the field; take it from me, and I will bury my dead there.”
And Ephron answered Abraham, saying to him,
“My lord, listen to me; the land is worth 400 shekels of silver. What is that between you and me? Bury therefore your dead.”
And Abraham listened to Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the hearing of the Hittites, 400 shekels of silver, current money among the merchants.
And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was in it, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders around, were made over
To Abraham for a possession in the presence of the Hittites, before all who went in at the gate of his city.
And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre; the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan.
And the field, and the cave that is in it, were made over to Abraham for a possession of a burying place by the Hittites.

There are many striking elements of this story, and one mystery.

· First, the description of the negotiation is quite detailed, making this story actually longer than the Akeidah – the binding and near sacrifice of Isaac.

· Two, this is the only example of land purchase in the Bible that involves money. There is one other case of land purchase in the Bible, but there, the currency is in the form of sheep.

· The mystery involves the presence of the Hittites, who are associated with a region of modern day Turkey. The trouble is, there is no evidence that the Hittites ever lived this far south – so their presence in the story is puzzling. If this story was written in the late 8th century BCE, as many scholars surmise, it was the Assyrians who controlled the region. But even if it were written at another time, there was no time when the Hittites were in power here.

· Finally, regardless of that quixotic detail, it is clear that the author of this chapter is trying very hard to stress the legitimacy of the trade agreement. The Hittites offer to give the land to Abraham for free, and three times, the text tells us, Abraham pays 400 shekels for it and seven times, the text says, Abraham stated the contract in earshot of a group of Hittite witnesses. It is clear that there is a real emphasis on the sale’s validity.

What makes Abraham’s insistence on purchasing the land so interesting from a literary perspective is that up until this point, God has done nothing but tell Abraham that he is going to receive the land of Canaan as his inheritance.

In Genesis 12, Abraham is first told he will be given the land. In the next chapter, 13, God says to him: “As far as you can see, North, East, South and West, the land is for you and your offspring forever.” Then in Genesis 15, God tells Abraham that all of his offspring will get the land. Now, in Genesis 23, we learn that Abraham goes out and pays for a piece of it!

From a historical perspective, Abraham’s purchase raises some tantalizing questions. Was the emphasis on purchase and validity so strident because the author was trying to assert the right of the Israelites to live on land now being occupied by Assyria? And by naming the fictional Hittites, he avoided potentially enraging the ruling power?

Or is the land purchase story simply a later insertion by someone who just didn’t notice the incongruity of having Abraham purchase land that only a few chapters earlier had been promised to him by God.

Or, is the promise-purchase contradiction not a contradiction at all? God promised the land to the Israelites, but maybe that never was meant to mean we wouldn’t have to pay for it. Maybe it simply meant whomever we would buy it from would be amenable to selling – as the Hittites apparently were.

It’s a question we may never answer, but is fun to wrestle with.

This story of the purchase of the cave at Machpelah is the first story of land acquisition in the Bible, but it is far from the last. Our tradition gives us other, equally vexing stories that describe entirely different ways in which we acquired the land.

The books of Numbers and Judges describe a peaceful allotting of the lands by a Goral, or lottery, system. The Book of Joshua describes a bloody blitzkrieg series of battles in which the Israelites conquered the land in pockets, and decimated the local inhabitants.

There is, in other words, more than one version of the story. But those are other stories for another time.

The Binding of Isaac: a seven-minute d'var Torah

D'var Torah * The Binding of Isaac

Rosh Hashanah 2008

The Torah portion we study today is one of the most famous in the Bible. It is known as the Binding of Isaac. Our tale begins at Genesis 22, when Avraham is told by God to bring his son Isaac to a mountaintop to sacrifice him. Obediently, Avraham travels for three days, and once at the mountain’s peak, binds him down. Only after his knife is raised does an angel of God intervene and provide a ram in Isaac’s place. The angel says: “Now I know that you are God-fearing, and you did not withhold your son, your only one, from me.” (Bereishit, 22:12).

In virtually any contemporary discussion about the Akeidah, the feeling that often becomes central is our feelings of horror. What father would even consider sacrificing his child? And what kind of God would even ask such a thing?

These are troubling questions to us as modern Jews, and as American Jews the story upsets us on yet another level. How is it that our religion can glorify such an act of blind obedience? Blind faith is a repugnant notion to an audience like ours, steeped in Democratic values.

Acknowledging these feelings is important to do, but to dwell on them is, I believe, to miss the point. Of course notions like human sacrifice and blind obedience are troublesome to contemporary ears, but this story did not evolve in our contemporary world.

I would like to challenge you to image this story as if you were in the audience for whom it was originally intended. Imagine it is 2,500 years ago, and you are living in exile in Babylonia. The Temple, which now lies in ruins, was the focal point of your entire religious life – and you are now struggling to preserve your Jewish identity in a foreign land.

Animal sacrifice, of course, is no longer possible. Prayer services and Passover seders have not yet been created. But what you can do is listen to the stories of your people.

Biblical scholars believe that it was during our 50 years in Babylonian exile that many of the oral traditions that make up the five books of the Torah were finally committed to parchment. Writing them down was a way of ensuring our survival and preventing assimilation. To these people in exile, the story of the Akeidah gave three very important messages:

First, the depiction of Abraham as a man of unfailing obedience made him the perfect mythical ancestor. The patriarch of the Jewish people – the story proudly says – has so much strength and faith that he would actually kill his own son at God’s request. In a society where values like free thought had not evolved, and where men of military might and faith were ideolized, Abraham must have been a comforting hero to have.

Second, the use of a ram as a sacrifice would have been familiar to an audience who could no longer sacrifice rams at the Temple. It would have given them hope to think that just as they had sacrificed animals to God for ages – going way back to the days of Abraham – they will one day sacrifice them again. The exile will end, the Temple will be rebuilt, and life will return as it was.

Finally, even the notion of God’s request for human sacrifice would not have been so strange to the Jews in Babylonia. Up until this time, Jews had lived for hundreds of years surrounded by various pagan peoples, some of whom reputedly sacrificed children. Judaism, of course, rejected this, and what the Akeidah did was bring this difference to the forefront. In this way, the story became a statement of Jewish moral superiority and a strong incentive for Jews to stick to their own.

The challenge today, of course, is realizing that such a stark moral paradigm no longer exists between our religion and the religion of our neighbors. The Akeidah no longer survives as a rallying cry to embrace our faith and our people. The challenge then, becomes not What do we do with the Akeidah? But rather, What stories, what words do we need to tell our communities to inspire this kind of devotion?

It’s a challenge that faces each of us in this room – regardless of whether we are raising children or working in leadership in Jewish communities. By committing ourselves in the coming year to reaching out to each other, and creating spaces and moments that make our time together special, we are engaging in this holy work of strengthening our community.

Shana tova, u’metukah. May you have a healthy new year of prosperity, joy and friendship.

Artwork: http://www.nuchi.com/

Who needs Halloween when we’ve got Jewish magic?

One of my duties with my rabbinic internship at a Reform temple is to write a monthly column for the congregational newsletter. This is the second column, for the month of October.

After having taught at a good half-dozen religious school now – schools spanning the entire Reform/Conservative/Reconstructionist spectrum – I always find it interesting to see how congregations navigate the “Halloween dilemma.”

While on one hand few families I know seriously question whether they should allow their kids to dress up and go trick-or-treating, the religious schools that educate these kids often have very intense discussions about the holiday, especially when it lands on a school day. Should the kids be invited to come to school in a costume? How should teachers react if the kids aren’t invited to dress up, but show up in costumes anyway?

Most thorny of all: Should school be cancelled? On the one hand, if you cancel it, you’re basically sanctioning the observance of a pagan/Christian holiday. But if you don’t cancel it, half the kids will be absent! The most ingenious solution I once heard about was the congregation that scheduled a teacher’s meeting on Halloween. That way, the kids who wouldn’t have shown up anyway wouldn’t technically be absent, but the school wouldn’t technically be cancelled. Clever!

For my part, I love teaching religious school on Halloween because it gives me a chance to teach about one of my favorite topics: Judaism and magic. At first blush, people are often shocked to see these two words in the same subject line, but the truth is, our tradition has a long and rich magical tradition that began in the days of the Torah, became particularly rich in the middle ages, and in some communities, continues on even to this day! (Check out some practices found in certain Israeli Sephardic communities if you don’t believe me).

Jewish magic is mentioned as early as Deuteronomy 18, where various groups of diviners, astrologers and exorcists are named, and their ceremonies are prohibited as idolatrous. The fact these practices are derided so repeatedly in the biblical canon (Kings 21:6, II Chronicles 33:6, Micah 11, Jeremiah 26:9, and so on and so on) is evidence of just how widespread these practices actually were!

For all these instances of divination or magic being criticized, there are other instances in which similar-sounding acts are described as legitimate forms of worship, some even taking place in the Temple itself! The purifying ritual of the red heifer (Numbers 19) and the scapegoat ritual of Yom Kippur (Leviticus 16) depict what are essentially magical acts: the mysterious ability of ritual to effect change on a spiritual or cosmic plane. The Sotah ritual of a suspected adulteress in Numbers 5:11 is a particularly peculiar ritual in which a potion has the mysterious ability to reveal the truth – a soothsaying of sorts.

And let us not forget the very presence of the prophets themselves! While scripture goes to great lengths to admonish anyone who claims to predict or affect the future (“There shall not be found among you any one who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or who uses divination, or a soothsayer, or an enchanter, or a magician, or a charmer, or a medium or a necromancer. For all that do these things are an abomination to the Eternal!” Deut 18:10) – the entire second section of Tanakh is dedicated to the sermons of men doing precisely these things!

What is the difference between a prophet and a magician?

About the same difference as there is between an “environmentalist” and a “tree-hugger.” The truth is in the eye of the beholder. The person with the pen gets to decide which is a legitimate sign from God, and which is a divinatory act of “abomination.”

Not surprisingly, these lines are drawn in all the places you’d expect them to be. When the person doing the supernatural act is affiliated with the Temple cult or supports their agenda – they are receiving a sign from God. When the person engaging in divination is an outsider or even an opponent to the Temple-sanctioned polemic – it becomes magic.

I hope you enjoyed this short mini-lesson on magic and the Bible. The truth is, this only touches the tip of the textual iceberg! The Talmud, Apocryphal literature and medieval writings all reveal their own rich and fascinating versions of magic – and what better time of year to study some of these treasures than at Halloween!?

Is it possible to be a religious atheist?

Martin S. Jaffee offers the following definition of 'religion' in his book Early Judaism.

"Religion is an intense and sustained cultivation of a style of life that heightens awareness of morally binding connections between the self, the human community and the most essential structures of reality. Religions posit various orders of reality and help individuals and groups to negotiate their relations with those orders."

You may have noticed that this definition does not focus on beliefs or rituals. This may surprise you. Jaffee argues that the idea of religion as a collection of beliefs about divine beings expressed in moral behavior, prayers and various forms of communal worship is actually an idea that emerged out of Europe in the 16th century. It was advanced by philosophers, politicians and theologians struggling to define the role of the Church in the emerging national states of Europe.

For that time and place, that definition served a useful purpose: to create societies in which Church and State had separate and distinct spheres of life, enabling citizens of different religious beliefs to coexist as relative equals in society.

This particular definition of religion however, has not been reflective of the many ways in which non-European and non-Christian peoples have constructed their own conceptions of the role of holy communities and their institutions in the larger social and political order. Thus, he offered that alternate definition of religion, broad enough to explain human religious behavior across civilizations and millenia.

According to Jaffee, religious patterns of behavior encourage human beings to interpret themselves as moral beings whose destiny is bound with others in a project that brings them into relationship with the fundamental reality of things. In religious systems, the self identified through personal, autobiographical memory tends to be enlarged or enriched as it is interpreted in contexts well beyond personal experience. Personal identity includes a conception of how all these relationships are connected to generations of the distant past and the far-off future, as well as to the forces and powers that are held to account for the world as it is. (page 7)

Finally, while most religions have gods, not all of them do. (Certain types of Buddhism, and even, Judaism come to mind). What all religions share though is the desire to participate in the essential structures of the world -- to those spaces beyond our immediate world where "God" or "enlightenment" or "consciousness" reside. The means of transport and the conceptualizations of these alternate worlds differs from religion to religion, but constant is the tendency of religions to puncture the apparent solidity of mundane experience and to privilege intimations of other worlds at profounder levels of being.

I don't know about you, but I love this way of describing religion. Perhaps this is because these days, I can personally relate to it so much. So many times when I'm praying, the concept of "God," no matter how nonauthoritarian and nonpersonal I make it, simply doesn't work for me. I feel my consciousness strive and lift toward another dimension, to reach out toward some ineffable connection beyond my material world, but what is traditionally called theism doesn't enter the experience.

I wrote the title on this entry in jest, but it is not entirely a joke. It's answer all depends on your definitions.

Is it possible to be a religious atheist? Well, if you take Jaffe's definition of religion (above), and a fundamentalist definition of God (an omnipotent, authoritarian entity concerned with the daily affairs of humanity) -- then yes, I think you can be.

Jewish names for God

For a current project I'm working on, writing new berachot, I recently began looking for a list of alternate names for God derived from Jewish scripture. The Reconstructionist prayerbook series sometimes employes such alternatives for the words Adonai (my Lord) or Melech (king) used in the traditional introductory beracha formula of Baruch atah Adonai, eloheinu melech ha-olam, in order to avoid their patriarchial and hierarchical imagery.

I know for myself, I've always found those two words troublesome, and very far removed from my own personal theology.

It took awhile to assemble this list of alternatives, doing electronic word searches through the Tanach, so I thought I'd post them here, in the event they might save someone else some time!

Alternative names for God

Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, I will be what I will be — Exodus 3:14 *
E’in Sof, God the Infinite — a Kabbalistic name
El De’ot, God of Knowledge — 1 Samuel 2:3
El Echad, the One God — Malachi 2:10
El Elyon, God Most High — Psalm 57:3
El HaShamayim, God of the Heavens — Psalm 136:26
El Olam, God of Eternity — Genesis 21:33
El Rachum, God of Compassion — Psalm 86:15
El Roi, God Who Sees Me — Genesis 16:13
Elohim Chaiyim, Living God — Jer. 10:10
Elohay Kedem, God of the Beginning — Deut 33:27
Elohay Marom, God of Heights — Micah 6:6
Elohay Mauzi, God of my Strength — Psalm 43:2
Elohay Mikarov, God Who is Near — Jer. 23:23
Elohay Tehilati, God of my Praise — Psalm 109:1
HaMakom, the Place — a Kabbalistic name **
Immanu El, God Is With Us — Isaiah 7:14
YHVH Rapha, God Who Heals — Exodus 15:26
YHVH Yihre, God Will See — Genesis 22:14

* Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, “I will be what I will be” — One of the most famous verses in the Bible, this is the sole response Moses receives when he asks for God’s name in Exodus 3:14. It is generally interpreted to mean “I shall be what I shall be” or “I am that I am.” The Tetragrammaton may derive from the same verbal root.

** HaMakom, “the place” — A name of God used in rabbinic literature. In Jewish mysticism, tzimtzum refers to the kabbalistic theory of creation that God “contracted” its infinite light to allow for a “conceptual space” in which a finite, seemingly independent world could exist. This contraction is known as the tzimtzum. Because the tzimtzum results in the conceptual “space” in which the physical universe and free will can exist, God is referred to as HaMakom.

A lesson on Perek Shira

The following worksheet can be copy/pasted into a Word file, and used to facilitate any kind of environmental- or animal-related Jewish lesson plan. I used it as a great introduction to my congregation's volunteer day at an animal sanctuary.

***

Perek Shirah, literally A Chapter of Song, is an ancient text of unknown authorship, probably dating to the medieval period. It contains verses that are “sung” by 85 components of creation, including the heavenly bodies, and the earth with its mountains, oceans, plants, insects, fish, birds and animals.

The concept behind Perek Shirah is that everything in the natural world teaches us a lesson in philosophy or ethics, and the verse gives a clue as to what that lesson is. The result is the “song” of the natural world, the tapestry of spiritual lessons for life that the natural world is telling us.

Interestingly, Perek Shirah does not mention the song of the human being.

While its origins are mysterious, many commentaries have been written about this text in the past 500 years, attempting to explain the connection between the verse and the creature it is attributed to.

What connections do you see from these excerpts?
What message do they carry for us today?

From the introduction of Perek Shirah:
Our sages of blessed memory said of David, King of Israel, peace be upon him: When he completed the Book of Psalms, he felt proud and he said before the Holy One, “Have you created any creature in Your world that recites songs and praises more than me?” At that moment, a single frog encountered him and said: “David, do not feel pride, for I recite songs and praises more than you. Furthermore, 3,000 parables can be derived from every song I recite.”

From the text:
The Gazelle is saying, “I shall sing of Your strength. I shall rejoice in Your kindness in the morning, for You were a refuge to me, a hiding place on the day of my oppression.”
(Psalm 59:17)

The Bear is saying: “Let the wilderness and its cities lift up their voice, the village that Kedar inhabits. Let the inhabitants of the rocks sing. Let them shout from the peaks of the mountains. Let them give glory to God, and tell of God’s praise in the islands.” (Isaiah 42:11-12)

The Beast of Burden is saying: “When you eat the fruit of your labors, happy are you and good is your lot.” (Psalms 128:2)

The Fox is saying: “Woe to him who builds his house without justice, and his chambers without lawfulness, that uses his friend’s service without wages, and does not give him for his hire.” (Jeremiah 22:13)

The Cat is saying: “If you rise up like a vulture, and place your nest among the stars, from there I shall bring you down, says God.” (Obadiah 1:4)

The Mouse is saying, “I shall exalt You, God, for You have impoverished me, and You have not let my enemies rejoice over me.” (Psalms 30:2)

The Fig Tree says, “The protector of a fig tree will eat its fruit.” (Proverbs 28:18)

The Rooster says ... at the fifth call ... “How long will you recline, O sluggard? When will you arise from your sleep?” (Proverbs 6:9) At the sixth call, he says, “Do not love slumber lest you become impoverished. Open your eyes; you will be sated with food.” (Proverbs 20:13)

The Large Unkosher Animal says, “When you eat the labor of your hands, you are praiseworthy.” (Psalms 128:2)

Mordecai Kaplan's diaries

Jan. 15, 1931

I know very well what I mean by God. God to me is the process that makes for creativity, integration, love and justice. The function of prayer is to render us conscious to that process. I can react with a sense of holiness and momentousness to existence because it is continually being worked upon by this divine process.

I am not troubled in the least by the fact that God is not an identifiable being; for that matter neither is my ego an identifiable being. Nor am I troubled by the fact that God is not perfect. He [sic] would have to be static to be perfect. Nothing dynamic can be perfect since to be dynamic implies to be in the state of becoming.

-- Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan