True Ancestor

It's raining, it's pouring ...

When I come to Florida on business now, I like to fly in late on a Sunday, have two full days of work, and then hang out with the aged and revered parents on a Wednesday morning before flying home.

On this particular trip I couldn't swing the Sunday flight, but it's Wednesday morning, and instead of working, I'm sitting in this beach house, about 26 miles from my nonprofit's flagship property, and I'm looking out a window at the Gulf of Mexico, which seems to be thinking about tropical storms.

The beach is covered with mounds of scallop shells, which seem to have been killed off by some infestation or parasite or other emblem of the imbalanced ecosystem. It almost looks, from a distance, like the beach is covered with snowdrifts. When you get down onto the beach, you see that the snowdrifts are mounds of white shells.

Then the smell confirms what you're eyes had just begun to understand.

Even so, everything here is somehow reassuring: the asthmatic coffee pot, the sigh of traffic going by on the island's main road, giant, cockeyed propane tanks that stand beneath the stairs like tubby night-watchmen.

Last night, my Old Lady fell asleep in front of the Democratic debate (which was neither), while the Ancient Mariner chortled at Joe Biden's wit and marveled at the inanity of the "debate" format.

This morning, the Old Lady is on a walk. The Ancient Mariner sleeps in. The house is full of mnemonics that I take for granted.

Work is bruising. This place, after 48 years, is still comforting.

--T.A.

The Return of Middle Daughter -- Part I

Middle Daughter returned Saturday from her 6-week volunteer stint in Costa Rica. She was as I remembered her: exuberant, sarcastic and yet somehow winsome, thrilled with life, full of stories.

She regaled me all the way home from the airport with stories of the children she worked with each day, the day- and weekend-trips she took, the sleep she was looking forward to getting. She plunged back into connected life, texting, e-mailing and calling friends, sleeping late, marveling at the luxuries of Americna life -- and jumping in to help with Sunday's mountain of chores with a no-nonsense attitude I don't recall seeing before.

Yesterday she took Gabe out to breakfast and a movie, then spoke with him about his homework anxieties. She has a credibility with him in these matters that no fully adult human being can achieve.

Middle Daughter has six weeks before her next, longer jaunt, which will include six to eight weeks each in India, Israel and Tanzania. In the meantime, she'll come back to work for me.

One aspect of life in Costa Rica that struck her was the number of expatriate Israelis that have taken up residence there. Israelis typically travel for a year or so after the en dof their compulsory military service; many never go back. They're sprinkled all through the beach towns of Asia and Latin America, fleeing theism and the relentless pressures of mandatory holiness that pulsate from the stones of Jerusalem.

I know several Americans who have chosen to make aliyah (the daughter of a close friend is going through basic training in the Israeli army as this is written), but they include two families who couldn't sustain their mental or economic well-being in Israel and came home. I know many more Israelis who have chosen to live elsewhere.

Middle Daughter will meet them wherever she goes. But her Tia, the woman in whose home/daycare center she worked in Costa Rica, introduced Middle Daughter to what will likely be a far more common experience: this woman had never met a Jew before, and wasn't even sure what a Jew is. Middle Daughter said her biggest challenge in using her elementary but rapidly improving Spanish was to try to explain Judaism to someone who had never even heard of it.

More grand and colorful challenges lie ahead; may they all be as loving and welcoming, and peaceful, as Costa Rica.

--T.A.

It's cool to be Jewish -- but only if you're young and hip

Two former employees of Temple Emanu-el in New York are suing the Temple for firing them for being too old and 'unhip.'

The member-run "Re-Visioning Committee" of the 5th Avenue Temple, described in this New York Post article as "the world's largest Jewish house of worship and the chicest synagogue in Manhattan,"  thought the Temple needed to spruce up its image in order to attract more young members. Around that time, older clerical workers and librarians were let go and replaced with younger "models," if you'll pardon the expression.

Welcome to yet another example of the misguided marketing of Judaism to the marketing-weary masses. It seems as though it's getting harder and harder to create a genuine spiritual community without resorting to the same kinds of disingenuous techniques that profit-driven enterprises rely on. Maybe this isn't a bad thing. On the other hand, how can you have a real  community if it's devoid of people who are anything other than young and comely?

I, of course, have a solution.

If synagogues really want to attract the young and the hip, while avoiding age-discrimination lawsuits, all they need is an employee health plan that covers cosmetic surgery. If older workers can keep that fresh, hip look, well into middle age and beyond, they'll age just like their congregants -- continuing to look fabulous while slowly losing all facial expression and ability to enunciate.

Now that's Jewish!

Shabbat Shalom.

--T.A.

The Book of Ruth: Why Converts are Essential to Judaism

(Cross-posted on Jews By Choice)

The Wexner Heritage Program keeps trotting out one phenomenal teacher after another. Our latest treat is Arna Poupko Fisher, a dynamic, funny and in-your-face Jewish scholar, and mother of eight. She has no trouble keeping the group of 20 Chicago Wexner participants in line.

Last night, we learned about the tradition of Levirate marriage as not only one of the foundational aspects of the Jewish people but as the root of the Messiah's family tree: Ruth, the grandmother of David, from whose line it's said the Messiah will come, was a Moabite.

And this is part of what makes Judaism remarkable: converts are not only welcome, they're essential. Or, as Prof. Fisher said, "We're willing to let a foreigner be queen of our nation, if she's a good person."

Judaism, Prof. Fisher said, is among the most universalistic of all religions, because it acknowledges that "we don't own the truth. We don't proselytize because we don't believe everyone needs to be a Jew to be righteous and pure and have all the blessings of Heaven and Earth."

The story of Ruth is not only the story of the centrality of familial relationships, nor only of remarkable women, but of the absolutely essential strands of our DNA, the strand of the Jew By Choice being one of them. Ruth acts courageously, even radically by choosing to stay with her mother-in-law Naomi, and explicitly also choosing Naomi's family, people and God over her own. And Boaz, Ruth's "redeemer" (see the definition of Levirate marriage for the meaning), acknowledges the radical goodness of her person and her acts as the reason for his kindness back toward her.

The tragedy is that some strands of contemporary Judaism have chosen to recoil into clannishness, explicitly contradicting this message from the Book of Ruth. The rejection of converts, the shaming of fellow Jews, the hand-wringing over why people are leaving when there is no acknowledgement or embrace of the Other so essential to Judaism, are all cause for concern and bewilderment. Or, as Prof. Fisher again so wonderfully put it, "Why would you want to be a member of this club? We have to be spectacular enough to be worthy of interest!"

One way to attain that level of spectacularity (?!) is to understand that our very identity as a people is built on the convert; that our very redemption comes from the line that is intertwined with the stranger's, and warped (and ultimately strengthened) by loss and pain; and that what is good in others can make them every bit as holy as we might ever hope to be.

What makes Judaism an ohr la goyim (light to the nations) is not what happened to us, not who we descended from, so much as what and whom we value. The Book of Ruth is the manual, and the seed, of a people who recognize deeds as the highest expression of devotion, and radical goodness as the route toward relationship with our highest aspect.

--T.A.

Shoaib Choudhury: Muslim Zionist, Modest Hero

I attended an unusual briefing in Congressman Mark Kirk's office this afternoon. My sister-in-law and I were seated around a U-shaped table with a passel of high school students. We were given a briefing about a human rights case (complete with a map so that'd we have some sense of the region in which the case originated), and the background to this man's case. We were told this man might be the only person in the world to describe himself as a "Muslim Zionist" -- a position that garnered him the unenviable attention of the Bangladeshi authorities, and that caused his case to come to the attention of Congressman Kirk, and the man's local champion, Dr. Richard Benkin.

Then we met the man himself: Shoaib Choudhury , Muslim Zionist, modest hero, strode into the room wearing an almond-colored suit and dark glasses, looking for all the world like a man energized by a mission. You can read more about him here, but suffice it to say that when he used his paper, the Weekly Blitz, to advocate the establishment of formal relations between Bangladesh and Israel, and followed that with an attempt to travel to Israel, he travelled down a perilous road whose end he has not yet reached.

Choudhury was sprung from his prison thanks to pressure that originated principally with Dr. Benkin and Rep. Kirk. He still faces a capital trial on charges of treason, sedition and blasphemy. He has been offered political asylum, but he doesn't want it. "These people who call for change from their comfortable homes in the West," he said, are not taken seriously. He has endured beatings and bomb threats to make his point: that Israel was one of the first countries to recognize Bangladesh upon its establishment in 1971, and is a country that has offered hospitality and expertise to Bangladeshi professionals trained in Israel. In short, what has Israel ever done to Bangladesh? And what promise has gone unrealized through this one-way snub?

(There is some murmuring on the Wikipedia entry's talk page about whether there is another side of Choudhury's story, with anonymous posts darkly insinuating Zionist infiltration of some kind.)

Choudhury spent an hour telling the dozen or so high school students about the threat that silence posed to their generation -- silence that would only embolden radical Islamists.

"Islam is not a bad religion," Choudhury said, "but it is now in the hands of criminals and terrorists." And silence, he said -- silence from the West -- is what they want. Silence about the 9,000 kindergarten Madrassas in Bangladesh that include paramilitary training in their curriculum. About the 64,000 Koranic madrassas, heavily funded by Saudi Arabia, that are not accountable to authorities, where hatred for Israel, Jews and Christians is built into the school day; about the way the most beautiful young women are selected, educated, trained, given every advantage -- then sent to the West, as terrorists, to await their orders to act.

Choudhury spoke quickly and with conviction about what we in the West can do: speak. Listen. Establish relationships. And pressure our government to press Muslim nations and foundations to cease funding the Koranic Madrassas that are turning out terrorists who, within five years, will make Ahmedinejad look positively quaint.

And he spoke about his ordeal: 17 months in prison, vicious beatings, two bombings of his newspaper's offices, and an uncertain future. He did so plainly, with conviction but no rancor, and with a smile that, like the rest of him, defies the odds.

When asked about Iraq, Choudhury was characteristically frank: "Whatever the reasons that your country is there," he said, "must be made plainly known. Even our information from the West is corrupted. Do more to let people in the Muslim world know why you are there. And do not retreat. Do not say, 'We must get out immediately,' or 'We must get out in six months.'  Retreat to our enemies means surrender."

Dr. Benkin described his trip to Bangladesh to work for Choudhury's freedom and to work gently toward deconstructing the mythologized evil of Israel and Jews. He met with a representative from the Bangladesh Khalafat Andolan (BKA), a prominent Bangladeshi Islamist political party. After letting the BKA representative describe his reasons for hatred of Jews and Israel, Dr. Benkin said, "Now permit me to tell you why we Jews love Islam," and proceeded to display his ecumenical prowess in a monologue that resulted in incremental change: the BKA reversed its position endorsing the ban on travel to Israel.

Mark Kirk, for his part, encouraged the high school students in attendance -- all but one of whom had not known where Bangladesh is, or what a Madrassa is -- to find, adopt and pursue human rights causes of their own. Kirk said it was a way for the American championing of universal human rights and respect for all peoples to become known.

"You will learn so much about everything," Kirk said. "About how countries work, about what the prisons are, who the wardens are, how to communicate with them, how to work for the freedom of an individual. It's extremely hard work, but it's not rocket science: call Amnesty International, call Human Rights watch, get a list, and make a stink."

Kirk explained that he went to Bangladesh on Choudhury's behalf. Kirk was greeted and treated with great decorum, but he cut to the chase.

"They asked me if I would be the Republican co-chair of the Bangladeshi Caucus in Congress. I said, 'Release Choudhury, and we'll make things happen.'" Kirk is the Republican co-chair of the Bangladeshi Caucus; Bangladesh currently gets $64 million a year in aid from the U.S.

I asked Choudhury about his trial -- what his prospects were, and what we in the West could do both for him and for the cause of releasing the Muslim world from the grip of Islamist terror.

"It's very simple," he said, with a broad smile. "Tell one more person. Let one more person know. You know, it's harder for them now, thanks to Your Excellency" -- this is how Choudhoury referred to Rep. Kirk -- "because if not for him, I would be under the ground now in a Bangladeshi cemetery."

Read more by and about this remarkable man, and help make sure that men and women of conscience can speak their minds on behalf of peace.

How can help in this seemingly hopeless cause?

By telling one more person.

--T.A.

Rabbi Nina Mizrahi on Lech Lecha and Spiritual Intelligence (cross-posted on JewsbyChoice.org)

Rabbi Nina Mizrahi, director of the Pritzker Center for Jewish Education of the JCC of Chicago, wrote this beautiful piece on Abraham -- the subject of this week's Torah portion, the first person in recorded history to be an "Ivri," one who crosses over. She gave me permission to share it with you -- so here it is.

Shabbat Shalom

--T.A.

In Parashat Lech Lecha (Genesis 12:1 - 17:27), Abraham is portrayed as the first “Ivri,”   the one who “crosses over. Abraham is the first to cross over from the pagan world to the monotheistic world.  Spiritually, Abraham crosses the sea of faith to create a new religion and way of looking at the

world just as he crosses over from the familiar (his “land,” his “community of birth,” and his “ancestral house”) to a new life in Canaan.

Many  scholars  have questioned the redundant working in the command, “lech lecha,” or “to out; take yourself out.” “You” is implicit in a command’ why add  the  second  “lecha?”   Rashi  feels  that “lecha” indicates Abraham’s leaving  as being for personal benefit and advantage.  Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch  explains  that  when  a  community  supports  the “truly sacred and sublime,”  an  individual  should  ally  him/herself  with  this community. However,  as  in the case of Abraham, his pagan community was not a fertile moral ground through which to support his faith.  Hirsch translates “lecha” as  “go  for  yourself.”   Abraham, in questioning the belief system within which  he  was  raised,  and subsequently in rejecting it, becomes isolated from  his  birth  community.   It  can  no  longer support him spiritually. Abraham leaves to find himself. The quest for spirituality and “spiritual direction” is becoming part of more and more people’s lives, especially in the face of recent natural and

“man-made” traumas.

Perhaps you are wondering what spirituality is, or even how spirituality differs from religion. Religion is the service and worship of God or the supernatural; it involves a commitment or devotion to religious faith or observance.  Religion is connected to an institutionalized system of religious attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. Spirituality is a sensitivity or attachment to religious values. Spirituality transforms rote ritual practice into something which deepens our grasp of what we might call a meaningful existence.  It transcends specific religious movements or denomination, which lay out expected beliefs, behaviors and observances.

Most of us are familiar with “IQ” – the realm of intellectual, rational, logical, rule-bound thinking which psychologists began to measure in the 20th century.  IQ has also been defined as “Material Capital.”

Some of us may even have heard of “EQ” –associative, habit-bound, pattern recognizing emotive thinking.  Emotional Intelligence was documented in the mid-1990’s by Daniel Goleman, through his research in neuroscience and psychology. 

“EQ” makes us aware of our feelings and those of others. It gives empathy, motivation, compassion and an ability to respond skillfully to pleasure and pain.  Goleman argued that EQ was a basic requirement for the use of IQ.  If the areas of our brain that feel are damaged, our ability to think effectively is diminished.  EQ has also been defined as “Social Capital.” Danah Zohar, a physicist, philosopher and management thought leader, and Dr. Ian Jung Marshall, a Jungian-oriented psychiatrist and psychotherapist, are doing ground-breaking work in the area of “SQ” – spiritual intelligence. Six years ago, Zohar and Marshall’s reach led them to define SQ as the ultimate intelligence, or “Spiritual Capital.”  SQ is the intelligence used to solve problems of meaning and value – personally, communally and even in the workplace.  For example, we might ask, “Is my job giving me the fulfillment I seek? “  “Am I relating to people in my life in a way that contributes to their happiness and mine?”  Answers to these questions determine whether we will find happiness or not.

 

IQ and EQ are inadequate in such issues. In the 1990’s research by a neuropsychologist (Michael Persinger) and a neurologist (V.S. Ramachandran) at the University of California led to an identification of a “God-Spot” in the human brain.  This area is located among neural connections in the temporal lobes of the brain.  During scans with positive emission topography, these neural areas light up whenever research subjects are exposed to discussion of spiritual topics.   While the God-spot does not prove the existence of God, it does indicate that the brain is programmed to ask ultimate questions.

Spiritual intelligence is used to transform ourselves and others, heal relationships, cope with grief, and move beyond conditioned habits of the past.  I believe the development of SQ, within individuals and within a community is vital.  In this way, we can develop deeper access to the joys and responsibilities of our rich Jewish heritage, and bring meaning to the day-to-day experience of life.

May your journey fill you with awareness, compassion, forgiveness and empathy, moving you to inner peace, wisdom and liberation from all that holds you back.  Helping ourselves and each other along this journey, may we, together, relieve suffering, awaken new perceptions of what life might become, encourage self-realization, enlightenment and a strengthened connection between thought, feeling and action.

Happiness buys money -- but not the other way around

This according to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert. In his book Stumbling on Happiness, Gilbert notes that "wealth increases human happiness when it lifts people out of abject poverty and into the middle class but that it does little to increase happiness thereafter."

The Gross Domestic Product in the U.S. has nearly tripled since World War II, according to the Newsweek article that dared tackle this topic -- but people's sense of well-being has stayed virtually unchanged. Economic indicators turn out not to be such good predictors of happiness.

Interestingly, young people who are happy go on to earn more throughout their lives than do their unhappier counterparts. No chicken-and-the-egg conundrum here: the chicken that is happiness lays the golden egg that is economic well-being.

The problem is that striving produces a healthy economy even as it erodes an individual's sense of well being. The rising tide that lifts all boats may just swamp yours. That tide can even erode physical health, as the rush to have more, do more and eat more overwhelms our bodies, made for simpler times.

That's why Ben Zoma's words in Pirkei Avot, call to us from across the millennia:

"Who is rich? He who is happy with his portion."

--T.A.

"I'd much rather take my family to Germany -- at least Germany has come to terms with its past."

This was the assertion of a friend of mine from high school, when asked if he had ever travelled, or would travel, to Israel. This friend -- Jewish, of course; an academic, of course -- teaches out West, and only comes to town, and gets in touch, when it's convenient (he was here not just for the reunion, but to peddle a new book). He was sitting at our kitchen table. The One True Wife's face turned to stone. The whole tenor of the evening changed.

I am couched in a very Jewish, very pro-Israel environment. As I ponder going back to school, I wonder how much of this I can stand -- this confident kind of pronouncement couched in not a scintilla of first-hand experience.

It's not that I don't understand my friend's point. It's that he doesn't have any experience from which to speak. He has never been to Israel. He doesn't know any Israelis. He has not seen, first-hand, how they struggle on a daily basis to come to terms with an ancient enmity so complex, a coexistence with an adversary so interwoven into the "host" society, that no American can simply read about it and hope to understand it. It would be as if Indian reservations wound through your neighborhood; as if the Native Americans still wanted you dead, and had at their disposal the means to make that wish come true.

I'd say that Israel has come to terms with its past -- the bitter, wounded past of its people -- better than any nation on earth. It's the present that Israel struggles to come to terms with. The past is all too vivid, and too present. The ghosts fog up the windshield.

I have thought about this friend, and his assertion, and the glib, urbane way he uttered it, for months now. Should I say anything? Or should I let it go?

Why can't I let it go?

--T.A.

A Jew by choice, in perilous times, asks two favors of you

My good blog-friend Avi has started "Jews by Choice," a varied and interesting blog (to which I'm a contributor). I think he offered me the chance to contribute because, even though I'm a born Jew, I returned to it by choice (whose choice is a whole other story. The One True Wife likes to say that her sisters-in-law, who are converts, are "Jews by choice -- my mother's choice"). I hope you'll give Jews By Choice a regular visit. Lots of fascinating discussion and, true to Avi's style, tons of good links.

It's a tough time to live your Jewishness, or to proclaim it. It's becoming fashionable to think Israel's just a pain in the world's ass, a thorn in the side of the Middle East, and to say that Jews, who are just a little off, are the source of all that ails us. When Zionism and Judaism are conflated in the popular press, and when terrorists press the point that if Israel didn't exist we'd all be safer, the zeitgeist starts to change. It's all happened before.

So how much hate do you tolerate? How long can you look the other way? How far out do you stick your neck?

Start here: sign this petition to encourage Google to remove Jew Watch, a slanderous anti-Semitic web site, from their search engine. It's one of the first sites that come up if you search on the word "Jew." Petitioners are still about 11,000 signatures short of the 500,000 they say are needed to get Google to de-list it.

Even if they've already gotten their 500,000 signatures by the time you take a look, I hope you'll sign anyway. Please help push the petition over the top, and Jew Watch off the list (h/t: Me True Ann-Sister).

--T.A.

An Olive Branch -- extended by Muslims to Christians

I kept expecting this to be an Onion article in disguise, or the set-up for a Tom Lehrer song("Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics/And the Catholics hate the Protestants/And the Hindus hate the Muslims/And everybody hates the Jews!").

But apparently it's not: world Muslim leaders have penned and sent a letter to leaders of virtually all major Christian denominations, urging "every effort to make peace." Signed by 19 current and former muftis and grand ayatollahs, the letter is "laced with" Qur'anic and Biblical references (they make Scripture sound like arsenic) and appears to have stunned scholars, religious leaders and politicians alike.

But what does it really mean?

My mom sent me an e-mail recently in which she decried organized religion's propensity for "my way or else" thinking. I answered that the Buddhist monks of Myanmar were actually standing up to that kind of thinking, but there's no denying her point: religions foment conflict and corruption when they insist that theirs is the only way. When they insist on pluralism and ecumenical even-handedness, we tend to think of religious leaders as being heroic for simply recognizing the validity of what most of us have thought for a long time now.

Still, there's no denying the potential momentousness of this development. Is it a pseudo-ecumenical stalking horse, or does it offer genuine rapprochement? Is it significant or merely symbolic? And how to respond?

I imagine the muftis and the archbishops sitting down and saying, "Well, there's one thing we can all agree on: Those damn Jews..."

I hear you saying: "Oh, it's always about you, isn't it?"

Well -- isn't it?

--T.A.