November 27, 2014  

Thanksgiving Prayer

Happy Thanksgiving

William S Burroughs is about as American as you can get.  He was the grandson of the inventor of the adding machine (yes, that Burroughs) and an heir to that family’s fortune.  He turned from a life of corporate leadership to one of rebellion and creativity. He did live overseas when he was young (London, Paris, Tangier, Mexico City) but spent most of his years here and chose Lawrence, Kansas as his home in old age.  He adored guns and even used them in his artwork.  Also he shot his wife in the head drunkenly playing William Tell.  Fortunately for him this was in Mexico City so a good lawyer got him off.  He was a humorist of the darkest kind.  He was a Beatnik who looked like an accountant.
I’ve read almost everything he wrote and published and have recordings of his readings.  Some of you have told me I am too altruistic and see the world through rose-colored glasses.  I do have such a side which is how I have maintained a commitment to what in Judaism we call Tiqqun Olam (Fixing The World).  I also have a dark side having seen something of the evils I want to fix. I am in tune with dark satirists like Jonathan Swift, Kurt Vonnegut, Christipher Buckley, Lenny Bruce, and, of course, Mark Twain.  I am a child of the sixties but my mind and heart are much closer to the Beats than the Hippies.  In a sense I am the complete Tao being both the light Yang and the dark Yin each with a speck of the other color within.
                                                                                         Inline image 1

Love of country, like love of a person, should not be conditional.  As Shakespeare put it, “Love is not love when it alteration finds.” (Sonnet 116).  Or as Elie Wiesel put it,

“The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it’s indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it’s indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it’s indifference.”

It is safe to say Burroughs was not indifferent and neither am I.  Flag-waving is not necessarily love, especially if it tolerates no criticism or recognition of error or flaw in our nation.  I dislike much about the TEA Party but recognize and applaud the lack of indifference there.  Protest is as American as apple pie and motherhood.  Picket signs in Ferguson MO say, “This is what democracy looks like.”  I think protest of injustice is what love of country looks like.  The worst thing about American politics is not in those who stand up for their vision of America but in those who do not.  The worse harbinger of the future of America is not any political philosophy or party but that half of eligible voters do not vote.

William Burroughs’ “Thanksgiving Prayer” is satire.  Being satire some will laugh out loud and others will cringe or perhaps become angry.  If you know in advance that making fun of national symbols and patriotic rhetoric is offensive you probably should not open the link below.  If you can laugh at yourself, if you love our country despite its shortcomings, then, by all means, open it.

Happy Thanksgiving

August 20, 2014  

THE WORST, NOT THE BEST

If you think this country has the best health care system in the world, you’ve been played. In reality we have the worst system if you judge it by its effectiveness and efficiency. Ours is undoubtedly the most technologically advanced, but it is also the most expensive and the one under which millions of Americans have no insured access to health care. It is the only one that allows people to go bankrupt over medical expenses. It is the one that says, “Let those without coverage use emergency rooms and then force those with coverage to pay more to meet the expense.”

If you look at our national health vital statistics compared with those of other developed nations, you will find we are at the bottom of that list in terms of such basics as longevity, infant mortality, and much more. Forbes Magazine reported this last June. Our standing in the world is 37th among 190 nations according to the World Health Organization. That puts us just below Costa Rica and just above Slovenia.

We are the only developed country in the world without national health care. The national health care was created by that flaming liberal Otto von Bismarck back in 1873. He was absurdly accused by his political opponents of being a socialist. In fact he was in fact a practitioner of realpolitik, which means he did not use ideology or even ethics, but relied on practicality.

Our nation’s refusal to adopt national health care is based on an almost mystical belief that market forces and the profit motive are always the most efficient and fair system. There are a lot of reasons why that is not true for everything. At the top of that list is human nature. Where profit is the only motivator one sets oneself against everyone and everything else no matter the cost to the public interest. In the case of medicine add the economic principle of elasticity of price. That means that the market will set prices at the highest level that the public will spend on a good or service. It does not take a genius to figure out that people will pay anything they can for their health benefits.

Despite, not because of ACA, our system is getting even worse. My story tells you how. As I write this my primary care physician, who has treated me through very serious illnesses for the past nine years, was declared “out of network” by AARP’s United Health Care. They have a new policy under which they will cover only hospital-affiliated physicians. I do not understand how, but it seems most likely that this is a way for UHC to increase its bottom line and AARP is going along with it. Reportedly (Consumer Reports On Health newsletter) thousands of Americans are affected.

This is the insurance program advertised as the only one approved by AARP. In fact it seems that United Health Care and AARP are joined at the hip. This program continues to advertise in print and on TV that there are no networks and any physician who accepts Medicare patients is covered. These are obvious lies.
Ever since I was first informed that UHC had assigned me a new physician I have been trying to find a way to continue being covered by the physician who actually knows my case. It took me several weeks to find anyone at either AARP or UHC to discuss my case. Until then I was talking to people who were obviously reading from a script and had no authority to do anything and supposedly no phone number for me to call someone with some authority.

By this time I do have a couple of numbers to call, but call backs take a very long time.
Meanwhile the deadline has passed, my physician is no longer covered, they regard a doctor I do not know at all who is affiliated with a hospital I would never willingly go to is now my physician according to them, and, if I need hospital care, it will not be covered because my physician is not hospital affiliated.

This is the best system in the world? I don’t think so.

August 2, 2014  

Three Panels in August

Before listing the three panels I will shortly participate in, I would like to remind everyone who lives here in western North Carolina that this Monday afternoon at 5 PM Mountain Moral Monday 2 in Pack Square. If you are in Hendersonville, car-pooling is happening at GB Shoes at 3:30-4:00.

I seem to have become a specialist in panel programs. I am involved in three of these in the coming weeks.

Sunday, August 10 – An interfaith panel on the environment is taking place at First Congregational Church at the Laurel Park end of Fifth Avenue.
This discussion will be moderated by Rabbi Phil Bentley, and feature panelists
Byron Ballard on Wicca, Rabbi Phil Cohen on Judaism,
Hakim Ilyas Al-Kashani on Islam and John Snodgrass on Christianity.
Sunday, August 10th at 3pm
First Congregational Church
(1735 5th Ave West, Hendersonville)

Sunday, August 17 – Agudas Israel’s Sunday Seminar series will be about Vatican II, which took place half a century ago and revolutionized the Catholic Church and started a process of reconciliation with the Jewish people. Dorice Narins will speak about Pope John XXIII and I will speak about the role of Abraham Joshua Heschel. This will take place at the synagogue at 1 PM.

Wednesday, August 30 – I have been invited to participate in a panel program on Jewish traditions concerning the dying person. The panel will include a lawyer and a medical ethicist as well as me. My presentation will be based on a published paper. http://luc.edu/media/lucedu/law/students/publications/llj/pdfs/bentley.pdf
This program will be at 5:30 PM at 417 Biltmore Avenue (2 Doctors Park on the St. Joseph Hospital campus), Suite E

August 2, 2014  

No Winning Side

When considering a conflict most people find it is easier to pick a side than to really consider the causes of the conflict; the role of each side in the conflict; and the harm caused by each side to the other. It comes down to a sports metaphor – my team against some other team. This is true of politics; it is true of rights issues; and it is especially true of wars.
No one, except profiteers, wins war. Every war involves bloodshed, destruction, displacement, and, of course, lies. When one side defeats the other that usually leads to the start of a path to the next war. The only way to avoid that is to promote reconciliation between the combatants and to remove causes for a new war.
The best-known example is how the Allies won WWI and then, at Versailles, created the conditions that led to the next war only 20 years later. The Allies also won WWII but the US had the wisdom to create the Marshall Plan and the vision to organize the UN. But then the US and USSR created the next war, the so-called Cold War, which engendered over four decades of proxy wars all over the globe before it burned itself out.
In the case of Israel-Gaza, what I see is both sides starting and pursuing war because of political considerations to the great harm of everyone involved. I love Israel but the demonization of Hamas has made for really bad policies by Israel. Hamas started as a faith-based social services provider (Israel even helped out at its founding) that then pursued a violent policy on the basis of demonizing Israel.
I have long criticized and worked against human rights violations by Israel against Palestinians, but I have not hesitated to criticize Palestinians, some times to their faces, for their human rights violations, often against their own people.
No one is blameless here and both sides are victimized by the other.
What is the path to peace? The only way I can see is for leaders to arise on both sides to say “enough,” and to acknowledge that their side has wrontged the other side. For me the example is South Africa where Mandela and de Klerk worked together to end Apartheid and to bring reconciliation through the Truth and Reconciliations hearings. Neither wars nor diplomacy will resolve this conflict. It must happen at the grassroots level. Both the Palestinians and Israel need the kind of charismatic leaders that will work to truly end the conflict. Those leaders might or might not be government leaders. Gandhi, King, and Mandela achieved great things by making it possible for governments to do what was right. Of these Mandela only came to political power.
When you read news or opinion about the current war, or any war, remember always that there are two sides and both are losing.

May 2, 2014  

SELFIE

The Curmudgeons group has decided that each of us should post something about ourselves.  I think I probably went on far too long there, but I think my readers might want to know more about me.  This is a long one and not well-edited (as i usually try to do).  Just so you know in advance…  Also the CV referred to is on my home page if you want to see it.

For a general view of my life’s work and accomplishments I have attached the CV I used for job searches.  Over the past four decades I have trimmed this document.  A full list of my organizational activities and my published work would be very long.  This list is somewhat selective.  I’d have to dig deep in my files to find the items left out.  
 
My family came to this country long enough ago that I heard no foreign accents, let alone languages while growing up.  My forbears in Europe were not poor shtetl Jews.  My birth father’s parents came from families of professional musicians.  My mother’s father’s family was an interesting mix of wealth and poverty (one side property owners and entrepreneurs and the other side tanners).  My maternal grandmother’s family was descended from a long line of distinguished rabbis and owned a publishing house.  
 
My birth father was of no particular profession.  He was politically very conservative.  My mother divorced him when I was five and married again two years later.  My step-father was a physicist who had worked on the Manhattan Project and America’s earliest missile programs. We moved to Chicago, which is where most of my family lived, and then out to Skokie.  In Skokie many of my friends were the children of Holocaust survivors as was my Rabbi.  Skokie, before it became suburban, was largely a German community.  I faced anti-Semitism on a regular basis.  In addition I was that unathletic bookish kid who was subjected to frequent schoolyard hazing.  I tell you all of this because I believe that my passion for social justice and against bigotry in all forms comes from these childhood experiences.  Maybe my pacifism is also a product of that time.  
 
Today I would be identified as a nerd.  A lot of my friends were also what we would call nerds today.  With them I organized my first discussion group when we were high school freshmen (yes, we were all boys).  I have sought good conversation ever since, so Curmudgeons represents a continuation for me rather than something new.
 
At the age of 14 it was as if something in me woke up.  I started reading evderything about history and politics I could lay hands on.  Someone gave me a World Book encyclopedia for my birthday and I read it all.  At that age I stood on State Street and handed out Ban the Bomb flyers; at 15 I went to my first rally (anti-HUAC); and at 16 I volunteered in JFK’s campaign office.  I was involved in interfaith activities, protests against slum lords, and other causes before graduating high school.  
 
After high school I went to an unusual college during a remarkable period of its history. Shimer College is a Great Books school that was, at one time, a branch of the U of Chicago.  The purpose of our curriculum was to teach us critical thinking.  No one learned anything about how to earn a living there but we had the highest GRE scores in the country 18 years in a row.  Amazingly Shimer still exists today with few than 200 students and has the third best record of graduates going on for Ph.Ds (only MIT and Cal Tech do better).  
 
I once asked my mother if she knew what my IQ is and she told me I should not know because it might make me arrogant.  I think I am smart enough to know how little I actually know.  I try to apply critical thinking to myself.  If my mother was right I am a serious underachiever.
 
After college I was unsure of what to do with my life.  I had thought about becoming a rabbi since I was about 16 but in 1966 that just seemed way too establishment.  I wdent up to Winnipeg, Canada to study with a truly remarkable teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter (now Schachter-Shalomi).  It was a rich year both in learning ad experience.  Reb Zalman encouraged me to go to rabbinic school.  He said, “play the game and after ordination you can do it your way.”  Tat never really happened.  Most of my career was a rather conventional pulpit career, but I was really good at it. As for Zalman, he became famous.  Here’s his Wiki article.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zalman_Schachter-Shalomi and a page about him from the movement he founded.  https://www.aleph.org/zalman.htm  
 
I did not get into rabbinic school right away but found work as a social worker in a Jewish Community Center where I acquired more skills.  I also found Phyllis (or maybe she found me).  We married in 1968 and immediately moved to NYC where I began my rabbinic studies.  Academic standards there were very high (almost all my classmates had degrees from the Ivies) and I was happy to find I could keep up.  We had our older son, Shanan, in 1971 and our younger son, Josh just after my ordination in 1973.
 
During all this time after high school I remained very active in civil rights (including participating in the Selma march), peace, and the environment (more about that in a bit).  I also volunteered in political campaigns (Lindsay in 1969; Gerry Studds in 1972), but stopped those activities because I do not think it right for ordained clergy to be involved in partisan politics – I may revisit that issue this year).
 
While in rabbinic school I took on a project considering traditional Jewish literature on environmental ethics.  There were no secondary sources so this was truly original research.  Eventually I put that together in an academic paper which later became part of the basis for an article published in a journal that has since become a basic piece in that literature.  I have since published more articles on the environment and get invited to conferences on the subject.
 
My first pulpit was a student pulpit in New Bedford, MA.  I learned my profession there.  After ordination my first rabbinic position was as Jewish campus chaplain at Denver U. where I also had my first college teaching experiences.  Following that I took my first regular pulpit on the island of Curacao (oldest continuing synagogue in the hemisphere, founded in 1651).  Back in the States I found myself in the place I wanted to be the least, Long Island.  I served there for 13 years followed by several other pulpits which you can find in my attached resume.  I also worked as a dean at a small rabbinic school, a camp director, and adjunct professor.
 
Throughout this time I was active in interfaith activities and projects, human rights organizations, and labor issues.  I served for ten years as Chair of the Jewish Peace Fellowship which led to many exciting meetings and events.  I did a lot of issue lobbying in DC and organized conferences and meetings in a variety of venues.  Along the way I published a long list of articles ranging from ephemera to academic journal articles (including one in a university law review). 
 
I am still married to Phyllis (45 years and counting) and our two sons are both highly skilled professionals, married and doing well.
 
My interests include music (listening and playing), writing, rabbinic literature (especially Midrash and Kabbalah), reading (literature, history, economics, and much more), travel, drama and film.  I write a blog pearleafblog.com and have a personal website at pearleaf.org and, if you Google me you wil get a great many hits as every online petition I have ever signed seems to be there, along with several published article and the occasional flaming from the right.
 
If you are still reading this megillah (Yiddish term for a long discourse or story) I will add, at Tony’s kind suggestion, my post on “Why I Post.”  Here it is and then that is more than enough….
 
A few of you have told me you are uncomfortable with some of my posts.  I would like to say a little about who I am and what I try to do in some of these online discussions.
 
First of all I am only active in discussing issues that are important to me or on which I have a long-term interest.
 
Most of my social and political positions are progressive but this is not due to any adherence to an ideology.  In fact I distrust ideologies in general when they discourage thinking.  Anything or anyone claiming to have all the answers to all the questions is especially anathema to me.  That may sound strange coming from a member of the clergy.  For me faith should be liberating, not constricting.  Also my faith values argument.  We have no problem arguing with God or even putting God on trial.  The Talmud, the most important Jewish text after the TaNaKh (what Christians call the Old Testament) is the Talmud.  In the Talmud there are many discussions of legal issues with dissenting and discarded opinions preserved.  On one centuries-long set of disputes the Talmud concludes that one of the schools represents the law, but “both these and these are words of the living God.”  I have actually written a book (still working on it for more than 20 years) on that idea.
 
William James said that some people thik they are thinking when, in fact, they are only rearranging their prejudices.  That is my fear about myself.  I do not even trust myself to have all the answers, even where I have a strong opinion.  On this list I test my opinions against arguments against them.  When a discussion starts looking like a game of Pong (two sides batting one thing back and forth) I do my best to throw a spanner in the works to get the discussion opened up.  
 
I have long dealt with the problem of being an authority figure.  I am pulpit clergy; I have taugght every level from pre-K to post-graduate; I have a strong personal presence; i have very strong speaking and writing skills; and I have other personal assets based on experiences and acquired skills.  Nonetheless I have always made it clear from the pulpit and in the classroom that I welcome dissent and I do not want people to agree with me solely because I said or wrote something.  That I express myself and my opinions vigorously should not be mistaken for thinking I am certain I am right.  As Plato wrote, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
 
It should also be noted that many of my views on controversial issues are derived from my spiritual heritage in which spirituality is closely linked to ethics, including social ethics.  I am a religious pacifist; I believe in social justice as taught by the Biblical prophets; and I believe that humanity has the obligation to behave as the stewards of Creation rather than its owner or master.  I think all of these views can be expressed in politically conservative terms as well as progressive ones.  In my international work especially I have seen the truth of this.
 
I organized my first discussion group when I was fourteen and have sought or created places for thre exchange of ideas and opinions everywhere I could.  Here in Hendersonville I am part of three, including Curmudgeons, I helped create.  To know more about my thinking there are two articles in my blog you might check out.  The blog is at pearleafblog.com and the two posts I am recommending are “Truth” (12/12) and “Dialog: How to Talk” (1/13).  I post there around once a month more or less.  What I post is more carefully written and rewritten than what I post on our list.
 
I try very hard not to offend or attack personally anyone, much less members of this group.  I do not always succeed.  I do ask that you remember I usually talk about ideas and opinions, but I do attack some public or published figures.  Sometimes my passions get the better of me.
 
If you disagree with me I have no problem with that and welcome your arguments.  I do not like being pigeon-holed or stereotyped.  Each of us is unique.  I accept people as they are.  I do not expect to convert anyone away from their opinions, but I do hope for light to be shed on questions we discuss.  
 
L’shalom
Phil
 
PS I occasionally get two questions.  “Pearleaf” is an English translation of my father’s familiy’s name in Europe which was Barenblatt.  When I adopted this name there was an 8-letter limit on names.  I have found no other pearleafs and having a unique name can be very useful online.
“L’shalom” is Hebrew for “for peace.”  Shalom is not just peace in a social or political sense.  The word actually means perfection or completeness.
March 27, 2014  

Religious Liberty in a Free Society

The Hobby Lobby case is before the SCOTUS.  
 
Here is an editorial from the NNYTimes followed by my comments on the issue.
——————————————————————————————————————–

Crying Wolf on Religious Liberty

By THE EDITORIAL BOARDMARCH 22, 2014

This week, the owners of two secular, for-profit corporations will ask the Supreme Court to take a radical turn and allow them to impose their religious views on their employees — by refusing to permit them contraceptive coverage as required under the Affordable Care Act.

The Supreme Court has consistently resisted claims for religious exemptions from laws that are neutral and apply broadly when the exemptions would significantly harm other people, as this one would. To approve it would flout the First Amendment, which forbids government from favoring one religion over another — or over nonbelievers.

The showdown will take place Tuesday when the Supreme Court hears arguments on two consolidated challenges to the Affordable Care Act. The owners of Hobby Lobby, a chain of arts-and-crafts stores, and Conestoga Wood Specialties, a cabinetmaker, want to be exempted from the sound requirement that employer health plans cover without a co-payment all birth control methods and services approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

These companies are not religious organizations, nor are they affiliated with religious organizations. But the owners say they are victims of an assault on religious liberty because they personally disapprove of certain contraceptives. They are wrong, and the Supreme Court’s task is to issue a decisive ruling saying so. The real threat to religious liberty comes from the owners trying to impose their religious beliefs on thousands of employees.

The legal question is whether the contraception coverage rule violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which says government may not “substantially burden a person’s free exercise of religion” unless the burden is necessary to further a “compelling government interest” and does so by “the least restrictive means.”

There are several reasons why the court should find that the law does not apply, starting with the fact that secular, for-profit corporations are not “persons” capable of prayer or other religious behavior, which is a quintessentially human activity. Also, as an amicus brief filed by corporate law scholars persuasively argues, granting the religious exemption to the owners would mean allowing shareholders to pass their religious values to the corporation. The fundamental principle of corporate law is a corporation’s existence as a legal entity with rights and obligations separate from those of its shareholders.

 ————————————————————————————————————————————-

 
Here is my take on this issue.  In a modern free society no one gets to impose their religion on other people or on the public as a whole.  This is what some are trying to do right now under the false pretense of religious liberty.  
 
Here’s a bit of history.  In 1807 Napoleon convened what he called Le Grande Sanhedrin to establish the relationship of a religious minority, the Jews, with the state.  Years before, in 1789 (the year of the Revolution in case you do not remember it) a Deputy raised the issue of the rights of non-Catholics and others who had been denied civil rights under the Ancien Regime.  He said, ““there cannot be a nation within a nation”, so “the Jews should be denied everything as a nation but granted everything as individuals.”[  Keep this quote in mind.  I’ll be getting back to it.
 
The basic issue of the Grand Sanhedrin was whether the Jewish authorities would accept liberty if the condition was that French law would supersede Jewish law, especially on matters of marriage and divorce.  In other words would Jews accept the right of an individual Jew to marry a person who would not be permitted (such as a non-Jew) under Jewish law and would the Jews of France accept the right of individual Jews to divorce under French law without having to divorce under Jewish law.  A list of questions before this body are found in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Sanhedrin
 
The end result was that the Jewish notables, no doubt reluctantly, accepted the conditions.
 
The American and French revolutions both overturned the primacy of religious law in civil matters (despite the claims of some Evangelicals these days).  There is a long history of SCOTUS cases involving issues of religious liberty in the context of the Constitution and of American law in general.  There was Barnett v Bd. of Ed. of WV; the Two Guys case; the Smith case (about peyote use by Native Americans), and much, much more.  In every case that I can think of the court decided to limit the rights of religious individuals when they constituted an imposition on the rights and liberties of others.  “There cannot be a nation within a nation.”
 
These new cases are about the right of businesses to deny service or government-supplied benefits to people who they find objectionable (gays) or whose personal decisions (like birth control) are not compatible with the beliefs of the owners.  I can remember all too well that there were Jewish quotas and restrictions on Jews in housing, employment, and education until the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964.  It was never just about race.
 
I know that the lion’s share of my federal income tax payments go for an institution that I find utterly immoral – wars past, present, and future.  Nonetheless I pay that tax.  I even testified before a House committee saying so (hearings on the Peace Tax Bill – yes, I am in the Congressional Record).  I do not feel my rights are infringed because of that.  As a citizen I pay my share.
 
What we are seeing are attempts to go back before 1964 and, in some ways, before the Bill of Rights.  The owners of these businesses have the right to their beliefs.  They are not entitled to impose those beliefs on the rest of us, not even on their employees.  To allow this kind of reversal on religious liberty is to take a giant step backwards.

 

January 27, 2014  

Faith, Health and Peace

For the past few years I have served on the planning committee for a series of interfaith conferences on peace issues.  Past conferences have featured important and worthwhile speakers, panels, and workshops.  The conferences are well-run, inexpensive, and held in a really beautiful place.  We are trying now to spread our publicity to more people.  I would not be promoting these conferences or, for that matter, serve on the committee, if I did not think they were worth my time and effort.

The upcoming conference is on health issues as seen from a faith context and as peace issues.  We have speakers coming from Geneva and Cape Town; speakers and panelists who are Christian, Jewish Muslim, Christian Scientists, and from other spiritually-driven healing traditions.  Among our speakers, but not mentioned in the publicity materials I am posting here is Joshua Dubois who served in the first Obama administration  as head of the Office of Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships.  He was also a spiritual advisr to the President providing him with devotional readings each morning.

Here is the promotional material.

Peace Conference 2014

2014 Peace Conference explores health care

You can get information and register at http://www.lakejunaluska.com/peace

 

 

January 19, 2014  

The Power of Three: A Meditation on Martin Luther King Day

The number three has a kind of magic.  Perhaps that is because it is the lowest odd number or because it is the highest prime number before the first factorable number (4, which is two twos).    Three is also the smallest number for geometric stability.  The triangle is the plane geometry figure with the fewest sides.  The tetrahedron is a pyramid with three sides and is the geometric solid with the fewest possible sides.

Jewish tradition regards three as the number of completion or of reconciliation of opposites.  There are three daily prayers; three pilgrimage festivals (Pesah/Passover, Shavuot/Pentecost, and Sukkkot/Tabernacles); three meals on Shabbat; three sections of TaNaKh (Torah, Prophets, Writings); three divisions of the Jewish people (Kohen, Levi, Israel); three judges on a court and so forth with many more examples.

Christians regard God as being a trinity.

In Kabbalah the Tree of Life attributes of God (Sephirot) are set in triads.  One of these is Tzedek/Justice on the left and Rahamim/Mercy on the right with Tiferet/Beauty in the center.  Justice and Mercy are opposites that are reconciled in Beauty which is the Jewish people.  Kabbalists have the custom of mixing Kiddush wine (which is red and symbolizing justice) and water (which symbolizes mercy) on the Sabbath.  The Magen David (Star of David) consists of two equilateral triangles superimposed to indicate the union of opposite triads (male and female).

There is a story from our tradition about wonder-working Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa which makes this point beautifully.   He was very poor.   Hanina’s wife induced him to collect from heaven an advance portion of his future lot. Hanina complied with her request, and, in answer to his prayer, a golden table-leg was miraculously sent him. Husband and wife were happy; but that night the wife had a vision of heaven in which she saw the saints feasting at three-legged tables while her husband’s table had only two legs. She awoke full of regret at the importunity which had deprived his table of a leg, and insisted that he pray for the withdrawal of the treasure. This he did, and the golden leg disappeared. (Talmud: Ta’anit 24b)

What I really want to write about today, the eve of Martin Luther King Day, is Dr. King’s lists of three.  I’ll give them briefly here with links to longer explanations on the Web.

He listed 3 evils: racism, poverty, and militarism that are the source of violence.  When we fight one of these evils we are fighting against all of them.  http://www.thekingcenter.org/king-philosophy

He listed three responses to being oppressed: acceptance, violence, nonviolent resistance.   Some simply suffer and accommodate themselves to oppressions; some respond with violent revolt; but the best way is nonviolent activism.   http://gibbsmagazine.com/Ways%20to%20respond.htm

King wrote of three dimensions to a complete life.  Here is a quote from his sermon on the subject.

And there are three dimensions of any complete life to which we can fitly give the words of this text: length, breadth, and height. (Yes) Now the length of life as we shall use it here is the inward concern for one’s own welfare. (Yes) In other words, it is that inward concern that causes one to push forward, to achieve his own goals and ambitions. (All right) The breadth of life as we shall use it here is the outward concern for the welfare of others. (All right) And the height of life is the upward reach for God. (All right) Now you got to have all three of these to have a complete life.  http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/doc_the_three_dimensions_of_a_complete_life/

Also he spoke of three kinds of love.

“Eros..a romantic love for your mate. It’s inevitably a little selfish. You love your lover because there is something about your lover that moves you. It may be the way he talks or the way he walks or the personality or the physical beauty or the intellectual power– but it’s always based on that there’s something that attracts you.”

“Philia…intimate affection between personal friends. These are people you like. It’s reciprocal love. You love because you are loved. You love the people that you like. People that you like to sit down at the table and eat dinner with. People you dial the phone and talk to. People you go out with. This is friendship.”

“Agape…is more than romantic love… more than friendship…it’s understanding. It is creative and redeeming good will toward all men. It is the love of God operating in the human heart. It is the overflowing love which seeks nothing in return. And when you rise to love on this level, you love people who don’t move you. You love those that you don’t like. You love those whose ways are distasteful to you. You love every man because God loves him.”

The complete sermon on loving your enemies can be found at  http://www.ipoet.com/archive/beyond/King-Jr/Loving-Your-Enemies.html

Here you can also listen to a recording and learn why Dr. King is regarded as one of the greatest preachers this country ever produced.

In sum we should remember and honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as much more than a civil rights activist.  His vision, his words, and his actions were and are about much more than politics.  He never entered the political arena but faithfully played the role of one who speaks truth to power.  What truth is that?  All human beings are one, created by one God, whose love for us is unconditional and infinite.

December 13, 2013  

Sandy Hook Memorial

I have been invited to speak at a local Sandy Hook memorial program tomorrow on the anniversary of that horrible event. It looks like rain tomorrow is certain so I do not know if anyone will be there to hear me at this outdoor event, but I am planning for it anyway. Some of you who follow my blog may find my comments of interest. It includes a Christmas message so I wish all of us, Christian or not, a Merry Christmas because that holiday, especially stripped of its commercialism, has something good for all of us.
* * * * * * * * *
A few weeks ago I watched a documentary of Orson Wells’ famous “War of The Worlds” broadcast. I knew that my father was one of the millions taken in, thinking that the invasion from Mars was real. How were so many people taken in? This documentary told of a nation whose people were afraid. They had been suffering almost a decade of the Depression and it looked like war in Europe was imminent. We were still suffering from the Dust Bowl phenomenon and radical politics on both the left and the right were more powerful than ever. FDR had warned in 1933 against giving in to fear, but many Americans were afraid.

I say this now because I think that much of our response to the massacre at Sandy Hook has been based on fear. Our economy has suffered its worst crisis since the Great Depression and many Americans consider us under a terrorist threat. Nancy Lanza, the mother of the shooter, was a survivalist who was not only buying guns but stocking up on food and other essentials against what she felt was the imminent collapse of American society. She was hardly alone in having such fears. Our system of government seems to be failing. Predictions of apocalyptic doom are common in many of our media. We need to be reminded of the dangers of living in fear and that it is fear itself that we need to fear.

A lot of people say in response to Sandy Hook something has to be done about gun control or care for the mentally ill. I agree with that, but I also think that what caused Sandy Hook was the larger reality of fear. Our news media, political organizations, and popular culture seem to me to be actively promoting fear – fear of economic collapse, fear of Muslim terrorists, fear of a tyrannical takeover of our government, fear of…well, actually there’s a very long list. The reason for “If it bleeds, it leads” is that stories of violence are fascinating because they feed into our fears.

The Jewish people has been suffering 9-11s and worse for millennia.  Yesterday was the tenth day of Tevet when we remember the siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonians 26 centuries ago.  That siege led to the destruction of Solomon’s temple and the forced exile of most of our people, including all of its leadership.  Most nations who suffered such destruction and exile (and this was standard imperial procedure in those days) simply disappeared from history.  How did the Jewish people and tradition survive?  We know that there are two ways to respond to disasters.  One is to give in to fear and turn to aggression and anger.  The other is to mourn but to build for the future and make what changes seem necessary.  We Jews have had to do this over and over, even in the wake of the Holocaust.

About 200 years ago a young Hasidic master, Nahman of Breslov, said, “The whole world is a very narrow bridge and the main thing is not to be at all afraid.”  (SING Kol Ha-olam Kulo gesher tzar me’od.  V’ha-ikar lo l’faheyd k’lal)

In the days when Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth, Romans ruled over Judea and they were oppressive colonialists.  Those in power among Jews in Judea who colluded with the Romans, the Sadducees, were afraid of any challenge to Roman rule.  Their main opponents were the Pharisees who sought to reform Jewish law and remake Jewish tradition so that it could thrive outside of the homeland.  Some of them believed in an imminent apocalypse.  Then there were the Zealots, a revolutionary movement that started in the Galilee.  They promoted the idea of driving the Romans out.  Finally there were the Essenes who believed the end was soon and they separated themselves from society to prepare for it.  Historians debate on which of these parties Jesus represented, if any.  He seems to me to have been one of those Pharisees who believed the end was at hand and he proposed keeping the law (not one jot nor tittle shall pass away) but in an ethical and moral system of love, nonviolence, and the pursuit of peace.  It is this vision of a world where such a life is possible is what Christmas is all about – something we all still hope for.

When the Temple was destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE the Pharisaic movement became the first rabbis and they reinvented Judaism so that it could survive any catastrophe.  (The Dalai Lama studies Judaism and Jewish history to see how we did it because he knows that the Tibetan culture and tradition may need to achieve lasting survival outside of Tibet.)  The Saducees disappeared as did the Essenes.  The Zealots continued but were defeated finally at Masada and then again at Betar in 135 which ended Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel until 1948.  During the 18 intervening centuries the Jewish people have suffered massacres, expulsions, and all kinds of oppression.  How are we still here?

In 1492 Jews were expelled from Spain after more than a millennium of history there.  This was a huge traumatic shock to the Jewish people as a whole.  One of the exiles, Solomon Ibn Verga, wrote a book called Shevet Yehudah (The Rod of Judah) about how we endured.  Here is a famous story from that book.

I heard from the mouths of one of the elders who went out of Spain that in one ship they declared an epidemic of plague, and its captain threw the passengers onto the beach in an unpopulated area, where the majority of them died of hunger. Some decided to go on foot to find a settlement. One of those Jews, his wife, and their children decided to go; his wife, not accustomed to walking, grew weak and perished. The man and his two sons that he had with him also passed out from hunger and, when he regained consciousness, found his two sons dead….

“Master of the Universe, You do much to induce me to abandon my faith but know well that, notwithstanding the contrary designs of the Heavenly Host, I am a Jew and shall remain a Jew and nothing you have done or will do to me can prove otherwise.”

He gathered some earth and some grass and covered his sons and went off in search of human settlement.

So how should we remember and memorialize those killed a year ago today?  First of all it is important for us to remember.  What happened once can happen again and this has happened may more times than once.  I do think Sandy Hook is a warning to us to change the way we deal with mental health issues.  It is also a warning that we need to find a way to deal with the reality of availability of firearms to people who should not have them.  We need to find a way for our people to be less governed by fear.  Most of all we need to learn to respond to destruction and violence in a constructive way.  I find a hint of how to do this in a Yiddish theater song written in 1940 when we Jews faced great fear.  An English version of this song became very popular in the 60s.  I think we need to sing it now.

On a wagon bound for market
there`s a calf with a mournful eye.
High above him there`s a swallow,
winging swiftly through the sky.
How the winds are laughing, 
they laugh with all their might.
Laugh and laugh the whole day through, 
and half the summer`s night.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna; Donna, Donna, Donna, Don.
Donna, Donna, Donna, Donna; Donna, Donna, Donna, Don.
“Stop complaining!“ said the farmer,
Who told you a calf to be ?
Why don`t you have wings to fly with,
like the swallow so proud and free?“ + Chorus
Calves are easily bound and slaughtered,
never knowing the reason why.
But who ever treasures freedom,
like the swallow has learned to fly. + Chorus 

 

 

November 10, 2013  

LET’S BE MUGWUMPS

Last year I changed my voter registration from Democrat to Independent. There were two reasons. The first was in protest of a party that has lost its way and cannot effectively stand up to the other side. The other reason is that in North Carolina, where I live, Independents can vote in either primary. This means that I can vote in the GOP primary and choose the most moderate candidate.  Democrats never win where I live so participating in their primary is a waste of opportunity.

A couple of years ago there was a series of meetings that led to the establishment of Citizens Against Politics As Usual (CAPAU, pronounced Kapow!). It started as a few dozen people meeting in a restaurant and then went on to a few programs attended by hundreds of people ranging across the full political spectrum. What we all had in common was unhappiness with our political party system. CAPAU is at http://www.capau.org/p/home.html

Now that we have seen Congress at its lowest level of public approval ever; the partial shut-down of government; continuing brinksmanship over the debt ceiling; and a tsunami of far right legislation coming from Raleigh, a lot of voters are upset with the system. Here in North Carolina the GOP has a poor approval rating among Republicans (with 40% of them disapproving of the state legislature). It’s that bad.

So what can we do? The best answer I know comes from Mark Twain and a forgotten chapter of American political history. Let’s start with the history. The 1884 election saw a number of prominent Republicans switch allegiance from their party’s nominee James G. Blaine to the Democrat’s choice Grover Cleveland. Their main issue was the corrupt patronage system that had been overseen by GOP presidents. We can therefore understand the Mugwumps as political reformers. This was a close race resulting in the first President of the Democratic Party since the Civil War. The Mugwumps probably provided the Cleveland margin of victory. Noteworthy Mugwumps included mark Twain, Thomas Nast, Louis Brandeis (yes, that Louis Brandeis), Carl Schurz, and Henry Adams.

The term Mugwump is derived from an Algonquin word meaning “person of importance” and first came into use in American English around 1832 when it referred to people who felt too high-minded to debase themselves by being involved in party politics. After the 1884 election the term was also used to refer to fence-sitters or those who are politically unfaithful. I love Mark Twain’s definition taken from his autobiography.

MUGWUMP
I was a mugwump. We, the mugwumps, a little company made up of the unenslaved of both parties, the very best men to be found in the two great parties–that was our idea of it–voted sixty thousand strong for Mr. Cleveland in New York and elected him. Our principles were high, and very definite. We were not a party; we had no candidates; we had no axes to grind. Our vote laid upon the man we cast it for no obligation of any kind. By our rule we could not ask for office; we could not accept office. When voting, it was our duty to vote for the best man, regardless of his party name. We had no other creed. Vote for the best man–that was creed enough.
– Mark Twain’s Autobiography (North American Review, Dec. 21, 1906)

He wrote about Mugwumps also in his “The Gilded Age” which I have on my Kindle but have not read yet.
I found a website. http://www.mugwump.co/

I even found a recent political cartoon referring to Mugwumps.

Many pundits are comparing our times with the Gilded Age described by Mark Twain. I think that suggests we reconsider the Mugwump idea. When you go to the polls don’t blindly choose based on party or even ideology. Choose the best candidate, the one who knows how to do politics and is committed to serving those who voted as well as those who did not vote.

Let’s be Mugwumps.

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