Rabbi Birdie Becker
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MY TESTIMONY FOR COLORADO 3.9.2022                                                            RHEA – Reproductive Health Equity Act

3/23/2022

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I am Rabbi Birdie Becker and I sit on the Executive Board of the Rocky Mountain Rabbis and Cantors council. Prior to becoming clergy, I was a medical social worker and worked in the reproductive health field for nearly twelve years including as a visiting educator, head counselor, director of an outpatient surgical center and outreach lead for genetic testing and counseling centers. I was active in the field pre-Roe v. Wade and am therefore familiar with the legal restrictions around contraception for unmarried couples as well as the struggles, social, emotional, spiritual and legal, for access to abortion.

While in general it is safe to say that no one speaks for all Jews, it is also safe to say that in Judaism, life and birthing life is sacred. So much so that if a blind woman who is giving birth requests that a candle be lit on Shabbat, a clear prohibition of the Sabbath, one is nonetheless obligated to light that candle.

Laws around conception, life and birth endanger the separation of church and state by placing one religious belief ahead of others.  Jewish law says that life begins when the head appears or should it be a breach birth, when the majority of the fetus has emerged. Both the Torah and the Talmud tell us that a fetus is potential life but not a separate life from the mother.

Rashi, the pre-eminent Biblical commentator, (France 1050 CE, middle ages) goes so far as to say that a fetus is not nefesh, not a person. The Babylonian Talmud (Yevamot 69b) states that “the embryo is considered to be mere water until the fortieth day (after conception).” Thereafter the “fetus is as the thigh of its mother, i.e., it is deemed to be part and parcel of the pregnant woman’s body.”

This duality is easily expressed in the idea that if a pregnant woman converts to Judaism, her conversion applies to her fetus. That fetus is born a Jew because it was part of the woman carrying it. If it were a separate entity, it too, would need to undergo conversion upon birth.

The life that we know, takes precedent over potential life. The fully existent human life has control over her body. The fetus, is a rodef, a pursuer. In self-defense, the woman has the right to protect herself if the fetus places her life at risk. The Mishna describes the steps a woman endangered during childbirth is allowed to take in order to save her life.

In Mishneh Torah’s Laws of Mourning (1:6), Maimonides writes that “we do not mourn for fetuses, for anything which does not live for 30 days…” This is supported in the Shulchan Arukh, the compendium of everyday laws. (Yoreh De’ah 374:8)

The word halacha, Jewish law, comes from the word meaning to walk, to go. The sages of every era write responsum to bring the laws into a delicate balance of ethical teachings, historic and current values and current knowledge. Knowing what we know about pregnancy and childbirth, the halacha has not changed. Neither an embryo nor a fetus are recognized as fully formed human life. A woman, with the strength of family, medical assistance and her own spiritual counsel still controls her body. She has the right to weigh pregnancy against her physical, emotional, spiritual and economic concerns. She is the fully formed human being: the one to be protected. She is the sacred life around which decisions must be made.
"I'm proud to bring my faith into this important conversation." 
 
Rabbi/Cantor Birdie Becker
M.S.W., M.Ed., M.R.S., Ph.D.
Centennial/Pueblo CO 720-849-5270
www.rabbibirdiebecker.com 

Shalom Park, Rabbi, 
 https://shalompark.org
Certified Eden Associate

Temple Emanuel-Pueblo, Rabbi/Cantor Emerita, www.TempleEmanuelPueblo.net

Life Cycle Officiant, https://www.weddingwire.com/biz/rabbi-birdie-becker-englewood/d32f58f32e253da3.html

B'nai B'rith Colorado, Admin.  https://bnaibrithcolorado.org

 APPLES AND HONEY, violin-cello duo. HEAR US at
http://apples-and-honey.wixsite.com/music

Conversations at the Well: Where Modern Life and Ancient Stories Meet: available on KINDLE at: AMAZON/ paperback at www.rabbibirdiebecker.com
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Carefully Taught

6/1/2020

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Birdie Becker
June 1 at 9:17 AM
Anyone else reliving the 60s?
If you can be taught hate, you can learn love. One of my favorites from South Pacific.

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Women's March on Denver

1/16/2017

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   Are you planning to attend the January 21 Women’s March in Denver? Concerned citizens of the diverse communities of Colorado will come together to champion human rights and dignity, and to send a message to our elected leaders to act to protect the needs of women, their families and our society.         

In recognition that it is Shabbat, there will be a brief Shabbat service at 8:45 A.M. before the march begins. All are warmly welcome to come to share inspiration and hope. Meet at the First Baptist Church of Denver, 1373 Grant Street, downtown near the State Capitol. See more details at https://www.facebook.com/events/735818996567451/

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INCREASING THE LIGHT

12/12/2016

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By Rabbi Birdie Becker
 
There is an ancient debate between the houses of Shammai and Hillel regarding how to light the candelabra called a Chanukiah. The House of Shammai extracts from the biblical diminishing of bull sacrifices for the holiday of Sukkot, the concept of decreasing the lights to be symbolic of decreasing evil, corruption and negative forces in the world. When the dark is decreased the light will shine through. Therefore, he ruled we should begin with eight candles and light one less each night. Hillel, on the other hand, believes that the concept of Kedusha, sanctification, asks us to rise above our human nature; to gain a higher level of holiness by reaching to the image of God within to expand light. He ruled that we should begin with a single candle and add one each night until the eight lights are burning.
 
On the High Holidays, we read a section called the holiness code whereby each sentence calls upon us to act and then sanctifies the action by concluding, "ki kadosh ani Adonai Elohaychem", because I, Adonai your God, am holy. This Torah imperative to be kadosh, holy, is the impetus to reach in, to reach up, to rise above. Thus, Hillel instructs us that increasing light, Divine light, b’tzelem Elohim (in the image of God) in the world will overpower negative forces.
 
Focusing on the destructive force of burning flames and fire, Shammi’s reasoning is a hope that when the flame dwindles what remains will be strong enough to have the desired outcome. Hillel, on the other hand, sees victory as requiring actions which build upon one another to achieve enlightenment. One might say he is seeking a spiritual high.
 
We know that just as the burning flame can spread light, so too can it spread destruction. Jews have a long history of being thrown into political flames, all the way back to the midrash of Abraham avinu (our father) being thrown into the furnace by Nimrod. Our memories, to name a few, include the enslavement in Egypt despite the marriage between Joseph and Asenath, daughter of the Priest of Egypt, their two children and subsequent descendents. Then there is the first crusades which began 1095 CE at the bidding of Pope Urban II against the Muslim kingdom and of course the subsequent crusades (ending 1290s CE– some like to say the Spanish Armada of 1588 CE but this is not the traditional historian’s perspective), the Pograms (beginning in 1800s), and of course the Holocaust. These destructive flames include the holiday of Chanukah, 167-164 BCE, the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid Empire who attempted to impose Helenism on the Jews.
 
There is a reason Julius Rosenwald, Lillian Wald, and Rabbi Emil G. Hirsch were founding members of the NAACP and Jacob Schiff, Jacob Billikopf, and Rabbi Stephen Wise sat on their Board. There is a reason the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was drafted in the conference room of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism as was the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Expanding light is what we are called upon to do. Tikkun Olam (repair of the world) is a central piece of our tradition because we understand that all of humanity is interconnected and regardless of whether or not we seem to be directly effected, eventually, we are affected.

Like other holidays that are celebrated at this time of year, Chanukah is the light in the darkness. The word Chanukah means dedication. This year, Erev Chanukah falls on Christmas Eve. May our communities, as well as those observing other holidays, and those observing no holidays, be dedicated to bring a little light into the darkness that has played out in our country for many months. Which ever way you light your Chanukiah: may we never shy away from diminishing the darkness when we see it or hear it; may we garner the strength to increase light and enlightenment for the better of our world.
 
Blessings to you and yours for safe and joyous Holiday Season 

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YOM KIPPUR UNATANA TOKEF 2016

10/15/2016

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I read an article by a woman who wanted to be warned before the chanting of the Unatana Tokef so that she could walk out and not have to suffer from the images it evoked. On the one hand I thought, “Wow, a congregant who takes prayer seriously and knows what she is praying. This is wonderful!” On the other hand I wondered, “Isn’t this what prayer is supposed to do? Are we not supposed to wrestle with ourselves and yes, with God, too?”
 
Yisrael, God wrestler. That is what the word means. We are God wrestlers. We aren’t meant to leave the room when things get tough. We aren’t meant to be silent victims, either.  We are meant to wrestle, turning this way and that until we return to the text with new understanding. We return - T’Shuvah to Tefillah -prayer and with the hope it leads to tzedakah – good, charitable deeds. That’s what we say, T’shuvah, tefillah and tzedakah can amend the decree.
 
 
I remember as a child, all the children were sent from the sanctuary before yizkor, the memorial prayers were recited so as not to tempt the evil eye. I have often wondered if it was really to not see a lot of adults crying. Today, we don’t worry about that as much. About either – tempting the evil eye or adults crying. And, I don’t have a problem with making people uncomfortable with a prayer or at least having them wrestle with it.
 
Should we eliminate all the prayers and readings that might offend any sensibilities? Shall we preface each prayer with “you might wish to step out before we read this”? I have the feeling there would be  no prayers left and no one remaining to say those that were.
 
I have a friend who was raised as a Reconstructionist Jew. She recently changed congregations but didn’t want to take an aliyah because of the word differences. In Reconstructionism the aliyah blessing is changed from Bachar Banu mee kol ha’amim,
‘who choses us from all people’ to Kervanu l’avodato ‘draws us near to serve’. Both then continue, VeNatan Lanu et Torahto, ‘and gave to us his Torah. We discussed the differences and the interpretations held therein and afterward she was able to view the words of ‘chose us’ as an inference to being chosen to serve to present Torah to the world. When she finally took an aliyah, she said the words came easily. She had done the hard work, wrestling with the written words and the meaning, the spiritual intention and how they could speak to her.
 
Unantana Tokef is one of our more difficult prayers. For anyone who has experienced a recent loss, it often seems like a slap at this time of year when we are seeking solice. It doesn’t matter that Unatana Tokef was actually a poem probably written in 6th century Palestine and had nothing to do with the story we now read about the French rabbi being dismembered and burned. It doesn’t matter because we are to wrestle with the words of our prayers… just as we wrestle with Torah. We recite the words of this prayer because every year there ARE floods and fires, there ARE earthquakes and epidemics, there ARE famines and droughts. War has not ceased nor has poverty ended. People are afflicted by bullying, and teasing and domestic violence and chance violence. Corruption, rebellions, insurgencies and revolution happen around the circumference of the globe.  Although it is interesting to note that the Western hemisphere, is for the first time, without technical war, armed conflict between nations, although the final negotiations are back at the table in Columbia but there’s hope.
 
WE have a rather lengthy list of names…family and friends…for healing. Nearly every week, we have some catastrophe around the globe to add to our Mi Sheberach prayers. The spiritual, physical, emotional and mental welfare of community, country and world are constantly in need of abundant good wishes. Who are we to opt out when it strikes near? Shouldn’t that be a time to opt in? To lend our voice, in fact our entire being in support?
 
I hope it goes without saying that I am not indifferent to someone who has suffered and may feel deeply pained by the words we pray. I feel them, too. “Who shall live and who shall die? Who by fire and who by water?
 
It is just that our words tell our stories and our stories are what keeps us united as a people. Why else would we continue to read Torah without end - and I mean that literally; for no sooner do we finish Torah with the final verses than we begin again with the first verses of the scroll. Yes, why else read these stories without end? These thirty five hundred year old stories that we interpret and reinterpret and revisit and re-imagine. It doesn’t matter if they are scientifically accurate. It doesn’t matter if they are historically accurate. It doesn’t matter if they are a mix of Israel and Judaen stories. It matters only that they are OUR stories. So, too, it is with our prayers, with the Unatana Tokef prayer.

In this global world, we should all be suffering and this prayer should make every one of us ask, why anyone by hunger or thirst? Why are people in this country unable to drink the water that pours out of their own faucets? Not just Flint, MI. “The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG) tested municipal water in 42 states and detected … 141 unregulated chemicals for which public health officials have no safety standards, much less methods for removing them.” [1] And if you think that you can avoid the problem because you can afford to purchase bottle water, a Colorado proclivity, it is not a reasonable alternative since the source for many companies is “municipal” water, meaning you’re paying extra to drink bottled tap water.

Who by age and who not?” The tragedy of losing someone because they are an elder hurts no less even though the expectation rises for its eventuality. When illnesses and tragedies strike, we are all struck by the injustice held within the experience. When it occurs in violence, through bullying, hate mongering and categorizing the other, objectifying and enslaving a gender, we need to speak up and out. Half the world’s population is women, how many are lost through child marriage, sex trafficking or another form of emotional, mental or physical domination.

Why, let us ask, are so many still being driven out? Most by war but already many by environmental impact and that will only continue to escalate. And, I wrote this prior to Hurricane Matthew which has left beach erosion and coastal flooding in its wake taking with it things such as the eggs of this year’s Turtle Nests along with so many lives.

One of our incredible poetesses, Emma Lazarus, is memorialized on the Statue of Liberty, “Give me your Tired, Your Poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse or your teeming shores. Send these, the homeless tempest tossed to me. I lift my lamp beside the Golden Shore.”  Remember, it was not so long ago that we were the tempest tossed asking that quotas be lifted.

So let the awesome, sacred power of the day be proclaimed. Let it make us uncomfortable. If we remember our deeds, and we challenge ourselves, we can wrestle with prayers and …with God.


[1] How Safe Is Tap Water?, http://environment.about.com/od/healthenvironment/a/tap_water_safe.htm, Updated January 22, 2016.  This heartwarming yet chilling story was told by Rabbi Baruch Rabinovitch of Munkacs, father of the present Munkacser Rebbe, about his late father-in-law, Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira (1871-1937), known as the "Minchat Elazar."
 

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THE DANCE: Two step forward and three steps back

7/2/2016

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One Step Forward: Recently Israel, for the first time, took its place as Head of a Permanent UN Committee. Danny Danon, Israel’s envoy to the UN, will chair the UN’s Sixth Committee, which interprets legal questions in the General Assembly. Danon, appointed by Netanyahu, is opposed to a two-state solution. His election to the committee was opposed by the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) but supported by the Western European and Others regional (WEOG) group.

Second step forward: In 2018, for the first time, Israel will have the opportunity to run for a seat on the Security Council. This Council is obsessed with finding Israel as the world violator of human rights despite the multi-front wars occurring in nearby areas, and the devastation and expulsion or flight of millions of people who are now exiled and homeless. 

How can that possibly be? What creates the environment that allows an international community to agree to condemn Israel over other human rights violators? Wherever hate is unleashed, regardless of the perceived target, Jews have historically been, and will for the foreseeable future continue to be, recipients of the fallout of that hate.

One step back: In Brexit, the ‘other’ worker objected to were the Poles. Yet, swastikas are being found all over England. England was the voice of defense in the EU when issues of circumcision and kashrut arose. Who will speak up now in the EU? With the current sentiment against all foreigners, despite many living there for decades and generations, who will support the Jews in the UK? Jews had been expelled 200 years prior to Christopher Marlowe writing The Jew of Malta in 1594 and Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice two years later. Will living with Jews make it more difficult to turn against them?

Second step back: Jews live without fear in America. Unless you are attending a university where hate crimes are up according to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Contrary to popular belief, according to the FBI, 57% of religiously targeted hate crimes targeted Jews.

Are you on twitter? Have you seen or heard of the Jewish Cowbell? It looks like this:
((( NAME ))).

"The inner parenthesis represent the Jews' subversion of the home [and] destruction of the family through mass-media degeneracy. The next [parenthesis] represents the destruction of the nation through mass immigration, and the outer [parenthesis] represents international Jewry and world Zionism." 
http://www.slate.com/blogs/lexicon_valley/2016/06/02/the_jewish_cowbell_the_meaning_of_those_double_parentheses_beloved_by_trump.html

This internet meme began a few weeks ago as part of a response to a New York Times reporter, Jonathan Weisman’s tweet, regarding an essay by Robert Kagan on the emergence of fascism in the United States. Since then, I have had friends and colleagues report that they have been the victims of internet abuse and harassment. Many Jews are fighting back by encapsulating their own names in the triple parentheses announcing being a Jew is a source of pride. 

How is it then, that regardless of the fight, hate always exposes anti-Semitism?

Perhaps the answer is that being a Jew isn’t simple. It is not simply a religion although it revolves around a belief in an ethical monotheistic God. It is not a simple race since it is comprised of people of many races. Indeed, Israel may be the only country to fly people from other countries and of other races onto its land. It is not a simple culture since it draws from and blends with many cultures of the world. As Jews, we have lived in nearly every corner of the world.  While based on ancient texts, Judaism is ever evolving. Unless someone is keeping up, they will frequently make invalid suppositions. And,

Third step back: Scapegoating is a psychological defense mechanism that provides a sense of gratification or denial by targeting ‘others’ for justified aggression by projecting blame on them and convincing themselves (and often others) that negative occurrences are the scapegoat’s responsibility. In as much as the term scapegoat originated in the Torah, we have now completed the dance.

Nonetheless, if you saw the postings in Rabbis Against Gun Violence, they said, #DisarmHate. Our job as Jews is to keep looking to find the Divine in our fellow human beings, to view every human being b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God and to assist in ridding humanity of hate. Here’s a way to begin: attempt to go a week without using the word against, person, place or thing.

BTW: Ginger Rogers said her job was to do everything Fred Astaire did except in high heels and backwards. Sometimes, three steps back is the same dance as three steps forward.

Enjoy the balance of the summer.


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LET ALL WHO ARE HUNGRY, COME AND EAT

3/31/2015

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We uncover the three matzot on our seder table and announce, “Let all who are hungry, come and eat.” No sooner do we give credence to our bread of affliction than we turn our attention to those who may have even less. There are many still in affliction, who see no end to their enslavement. The matzah, which sits on our table, will be broken by us and hidden for the sake of games with our children. Our children will know it only as a bread of freedom.  However, there are many who cannot offer this hope for their future generations. For what do they hunger? Starvation is a prominent problem in the world. One in nine people on the planet go to bed hungry according to the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations. Poor nutrition causes death for 3.1 million children each year under five years old.

Now we may think that this all takes place in third world countries but Feeding America, a network of food banks across America whose mission is to eliminate hunger, provides service to 46.5 million people in need across the United States, including 12 million children and 7 million seniors. I was unable to obtain the statistic for veterans.

Still physical hunger is but the beginning of need. There is a hunger for safety. "In a world torn by violence and pain, a world far from wholeness and peace, give us the courage to say ...” (Mishkan Tefilah pg 157) you will be safe from my hand. Are we willing to stand for peace: in our homes, in our schools, in our lands, both America and Israel? We all know too well that America has a problem with gun violence, domestic violence and racial divide. War looms large in both countries and will likely not dissipate as ISIL spreads across the Arab lands and beyond with media influence.

There is a hunger for security. Thirty five million human beings were transported around the world in slave trade according to the 2015 Global Human Trafficking Conference. Yes, slavery still exists. Even in America, human trafficking is a big commodity.  

Then more deeply, there is the hunger for acceptance. The orange introduced to the seder plate in the 1980s by Susanna Heschel, daughter of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, represents the LGBTQ community who hunger for the right to love and to be accepted as they are. Perhaps we need to find a proper representation for the misattributed meaning of the orange, the struggle for women to be able to fulfill their potential; not part of the misattribution, but I would include, and manage their own bodies. Acceptance is a hunger for people whether they are different because of race, religion, sexual preference, disabilities, poverty or just a bit quirky. We all need to be accepted but we turn aside from the 'other' forgetting that 'others' need acceptance. 

Let all who are hungry come and eat. This year, as we begin our telling of the Passover story, let us not pass over those who are still hungry for their freedom. They are still trapped in Mitzrayim, in Egypt, in that narrow space. Ah, but we'll leave that to explore for another time.

Wishing you and yours a Hag Pesach Samayach


Rabbi Becker

 


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    Community educator, choreographer, composer, performer, Becker, M.S.W., M.Ed., M.R.S., Ph.D., serves as rabbi for Temple Emanuel-Pueblo, cellist for Apples and Honey and is a Storahtelling Maven.

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