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Parashat Shmot: On the Plus Side of Otherness

December is the month of difference for Jews.  We usually deal with it by talking about respect for differences, and appreciation of diversity.

This year Parashat Shmot falls right exactly on Christmas Day.  The opening of the book of Exodus tells for sure a story about "difference" between the Egyptians and the Israelite nation who live as guests there.

You could read Parashat Shmot and focus on the terrible consequences of difference -- intolerance, xenophobia, genocide.  No question that's the screaming message.  In Egypt, the Israelites were not simply different.  They were other, foreign, frightening, unknown.

But there is also another side of the story, which I'm titling here the "plus side of otherness."  You see it in the characters of the midwives who refuse to kill Israelite newborns, in Pharaoh's daughter who rescues the Hebrew boy from the Nile, and in Moshe himself.

Which midwives did Pharoah order to carry out the terrible order against the baby boys?  Depending on how you "vowel" the Hebrew consonants, they were either "Hebrew midwives" or "midwives of the Hebrews."  When Moshe went out as a young man and saw the Egyptian taskmaster beating the slave, did he know he was "going out to his brothers?"  The narrator lets us know, but at know point does Moshe or anyone else identify him as a Hebrew.

The text's ambiguity suggests that the midwives and Moshe understand themselves as outsiders in a power structure.  Or perhaps as both inside and outside, as majority and "other."  This is probably why the midrash names Pharaoh's own daughter -- nameless in the Torah -- "Batya", or "daughter of Adonai."  Somehow she too was an outsider, even in the palace.

These characters who are outside or other are the ones who can step outside, or to the side, and see things without being blinded by their group identity.  And from seeing, they act.  They aren't wholly defined by any group, so the midwives and Moshe and "Batya" can act in solidarity with any group.

To me, one of the best parts of being an American Jew is being other, being inside-outside.  Yes, it is also dangerous to be other.  But we also have the privilege of a different vantage point.  We participate in American life, but have a built-in sensitivity for any group that is being oppressed.  We participate in the economy and the culture, but we can take a stand against the excesses of materialism, worship of things, celebrity, and narcissism.

So being different at this time of year can be a great gift.  The perspective we can have as partial outsiders is not just a difference to be appreciated or "respected."  It can be edgy and subversive, and make others uncomfortable.  Embrace it, and don't give it up.

Heschel This Week -- More on Justice

What we encounter in the world is not neutral, impersonal being, things, forces, forms colors.  What we encounter is full of God's kindness, justice, and righteousness.  "The earth is full of the kindness (chesed) of the Lord" (Psalms 33:5)...Kindness, justice, and righteousness are heaven's part in life.  Its perception is the prophet's daily experience and the spring of joy. 

What the prophets proclaim is God's intimate relatedness to man...It is a thought staggering and hardly compatible with any rational approach to the understanding of God, that the Creator of heaven and earth should care about how an obscure individual man behaves toward poor widows and orphans.

God's concern for justice grows out of His compassion for man.  The prophets do not speak of a divine relationship to an absolute principle or idea, called justice.  They are intoxicated with the awareness of God's relationship to His people and to all men.

Heschel This Week -- Justice

In honor a group of teens from Temple Beth Abraham who took off part of two days of spring break to do volunteer service and learn about poverty in our community.

The prophet is a man who feels fiercely. God has thrust a burden upon his soul, and he is bowed and stunned at man's fierce greed.  Frightful is the agony of man; no human voice can convey its full terror.  Prophecy is the voice that God has lent to the silent agony, a voice to the plundered poor, to the profaned riches of the world.  It is a form of living, a crossing point of God and man.  God is raging in the prophet's words.

Why should religion, the essence of which is worship of God, put such stress on justice for man?  Does not the preoccupation with morality tend to divest religion of immediate devotion to God?...Perhaps the answer lies here:  righteousness is not just a value; it is God's part of human life, God's stake in human history.

Food Links

What I mentioned in my Torah introduction a couple weeks ago:

• KOL Foods -- Kosher, organic, pastured/grass-fed beef, lamb, and poultry available for shipping to New Hampshire and Massachusetts (among other places)
• LoKo -- Local kosher, free-range chicken from a farm in Massachusetts -- fresh, you put in some time on the farm (we've got a group from the synagogue working on setting up a time to go together)
• Tav Hayosher -- ethical certification of kosher restaurants, mostly in New York, some in Chicago, Philadelphia, and at University of Maryland, through the Orthodox group Uri L'Tzedek
• Magen Tzedek -- new Conservative movement initiative to offer certification that kosher food providers meet high standards in workplace environment, health, environmental impact, corporate governance
  

Health Care Reform

As the health care debate reaches yet another crescendo, here are some interesting things:

• Statistics from Dr. Ken Dolkart's presentation at Temple Beth Abraham on January 31, 2010.  One of the most interesting was how much the growth in people working in medicine-related administration (offices, insurance companies, hospitals, etc.) has outpaced the growth in the number of physicians starting in the mid-1980s.
  
  
• The famous article by Dr. Atul Gawande about how Medicare dollars are spent so differently in two different places, and the lessons that might be drawn.
  
  
• An interesting and entertaining (!) overview of the American health care system and its costs by Uwe Reinhardt of Princeton, one of the country's leading health care economists.
  
  
• The Rabbinical Assembly, the organization of Conservative rabbis, is a member of Faithful Reform in Health Care, an interfaith coalition.

For Martin Luther King Day 2010

Some of the most important passages, in my mind, from Dr. King's "Letter from Birmingham Jail" (1963), which I take as one of the most important religious texts of our time.  Substitute synagogue for church, etc., and you'll get a flavor for how prophecy might sound to us in our day.

In the midst of a mighty struggle to rid our nation of racial and economic injustice, I have heard many ministers say: "Those are social issues, with which the gospel has no real concern." And I have watched many churches commit themselves to a completely other worldly religion which makes a strange, on Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.

I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I have looked at the South's beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious-education buildings. Over and over I have found myself asking: "What kind of people worship here? Who is their God? …. Where were their voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?".

There was a time when the church was very powerful in the time when the early Christians rejoiced at being deemed worthy to suffer for what they believed. In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society.

Things are different now. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often even vocal sanction of things as they are.

But the judgment of God is upon the church as never before. If today's church does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authenticity, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century. Every day I meet young people whose disappointment with the church has turned into outright disgust.

Is organized religion too inextricably bound to the status quo to save our nation and the world? Perhaps I must turn my faith to the inner spiritual church, the church within the church, as the true ekklesia and the hope of the world. But again I am thankful to God that some noble souls from the ranks of organized religion have broken loose from the paralyzing chains of conformity and joined us as active partners in the struggle for freedom, They have left their secure congregations and walked the streets of Albany, Georgia, with us. They have gone down the highways of the South on tortuous rides for freedom. … Their witness has been the spiritual salt that has preserved the true meaning of the gospel in these troubled times. They have carved a tunnel of hope through the dark mountain of disappointment.

Heschel This Week on Race and Justice

Twenty-seven people so far signed up in our congregation to receive a weekly quote from Heschel!  To subscribe to this by e-mail, send a note to me with "Heschel" as the subject or the text.

In honor of Martin Luther King Day:  From a speech on "Religion and Race" (1963)

Friends, at the first conference on religion and race, the main participants were Pharaoh and Moses.    Moses' words were, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go" -- while Pharaoh retorted, "Who is the Lord that I should heed his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord. I will not let Israel go." The outcome of that summit meeting has not come to an end. Pharaoh is not ready to capitulate. The Exodus began but is far from having been completed.

Humanity can thrive only when challenged, when called upon to answer new demands, to reach out for new heights.  Religion is a demand, God is a challenge, speaking to us in the language of human situations....Righteousness is not a trickle; it is God's power in the world, a torrent, an impetuous drive, full of grandeur and majesty.  In the eyes of the prophets, justice is more than an idea or a norm; justice is charged with the omnipotence of God.  What ought to be, shall be!

Last Day of Chanuka: Dimensions of 8

This last day's focus on Jewish dedication is centered on the number 8 itself.  Eight is a significant Jewish number.  A bris takes place on the eighth day of a boy's life.  Eight is associated with the ancient Temple in Jerusalem -- King Shlomo dedicated the first Temple on Sukkot, the eight-day fall festival.  In the Torah, the portable Mishkan began to operate at the end of an eight-day ritual.

Eight, in other words, is the number that represents covenant.  Seven is nature, and eight is something extra.  What God adds, what we bring -- eight is the partnership between human beings and God in this world.

There are, according to Rabbi Moses Maimonides, eight levels of tzedakah.  The highest level is a gift, loan, or partnership that helps a poor person become self-sufficient.  Leading in the Jewish community in this commitment is the Jewish Funds for Justice TZEDEC program, which I have written about before and can't ever resist boosting again.  TZEDEC pools capital from Jewish institutions and individuals, and invests in loan funds that support economic and community development in low-income areas.  Their newest intiative is called, aptly enough, 8thDegree.  It makes microloans to support small businesses in New Orleans, which is still rebuilding slowly after Hurricane Katrina.  TZEDEC and 8thDegree flow from Jewish teachings but support the wider community.

Shabbat Shalom, Chodesh Tov (it's the beginning of the new month of Tevet), and for a final time this year, Chag Urim Sameach!

Chanuka -- Fifth Candle

This afternoon a group of seven of us went to the Pheasant Lane Mall.  Last week one of the young Israelis working there called after me -- she saw my kippah -- and I found out she was from Modi'in, home of the Maccabees.  They come for the holiday season and work very late, no time to come out into the community to celebrate Chanuka.  So we went with sufganyot and songs, and surprised them!

Here's are pictures:

Today's profile in Jewish dedication:  MAZON:  A Jewish Response to Hunger.  This organization has, since 1985, given out over $50 million in the Jewish community's name to fight hunger particularly in the U.S., mostly through support of direct provision of food but also by standing behind local organizations that work on the causes of hunger in an abundant society.  In many places it has become the norm for Jews celebrating a simcha to donate 3% of the cost of the celebration to MAZON. 

Chanuka -- Fourth Candle

I'm catching up from Shabbat and the weekend...

For some adult-level thinking about Chanuka, I recommend David Brooks's op-ed last week in the New York Times, and also my podcast.

Another profile in Jewish dedication:  The American Jewish World Service is the major Jewish organization working on the ground in the developing world.  They are the lead Jewish organization in the coalition to "Save Darfur", they provide grants as well as expert assistance to on-the-ground organizations doing economic development, education, and women's empowerment in developing countries.  If you have relevant expertise, they arrange for long-term Peace Corps-style volunteering overseas.  They also take groups on shorter experiences working for a week and reflecting from a Jewish angle on what people see there.  Consider a year-end gift, or getting on their e-mail contact list -- when issues come up before the Congress or administration about justice or development they reach out and mobilize.