Rabbi Birdie Becker
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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 but the 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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We Were Strangers

3/28/2013

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Rabbi Stephen Fox wrote, “Our core values push us to fight for the right of the immigrant to be treated fairly and justly. The Reform rabbinate has for years pushed for a comprehensive approach: improve border security and immigration law enforcement, provide for a just and fair path to citizenship for those in the country without legal documentation, provide basic protections for workers, and be inclusive of LGBT families.” Aside from the last piece being unrelated to immigration, Pesach is an appropriate time to remember that unless you are Native American, we are all immigrants Many of our ancestors were unwanted here, came in through back doors, with changed names and identities, attached to unrelated families.

When we left Egypt, Mitzriyim, meaning a narrow place, to explore who we would become in the openness of the desert, we left as a mixed multitude. There was to be one law for all among us, Israelite and Egyptian, tribesman and sojourner. As we continue to observe this holiday, which perhaps more than many, reminds us of what is like to be restricted, back in a narrow space, it is appropriate to think of the immigration issue. 


Together Colorado is a non-partisan, multi-racial, multi-faith community organization of clergy from Pueblo to Fort Collins, that has come together to find support around issues of the day. By going to their website, you will find information on immigration and an online card for your congressman. If you are comfortable doing so, sign it. You are being given the contact information. Write in opposition if you are so inclined. It is good for all voices to be heard. 

I hope your seders were meaningful. May your doors and hearts be open.
May the rest of the holiday be joyous.




 



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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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