ON SIGNS, SLOGANS & HOW WE MAKE FOR NUANCE

“Rabbi, the message is not getting through.” Sitting with one of the more deeply involved Oheb Shalom members, I was surprised and not surprised. With so much information (and misinformation) overload, it’s hard for most messages to get through. 

What message was he talking about? The message I’ve been hoping to share loud and wide and clearly, which is that in the turmoil of what it feels like and means to be part of the Jewish community since October 7, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. That Oheb Shalom is a pluralistic, diverse community which holds Zionism as a core value and also wrestles with how to hold that value, what it looks like and means. This was true during peacetime, and it is all the more true during war.  

We seem, though, to have gotten stuck. We seem to be caught in a binary sense of our commitments. Not just at Oheb, but in the broader community and world. But the truth is: most of the congregation just doesn’t relate to that.  

In speaking with so many of you these past 72 days, the message is this: we are diverse. Some people feel totally sure of their convictions. Others are unsure, disoriented, wrestling with conflicting ideas and feelings. Many are mourning loved ones in Israel, or are worrying about loved ones serving in the IDF.  Many are also unsure what to do with the images and reports from Gaza. These categorizations are not mutually exclusive. It needs to be said: Most people who support Israel also care about Palestinian civilians. It is not binary. It is complex and nuanced. And so are we. 

Layered on top of all of that is the sense of total disorientation by many whose core identity as Jews is bound up with the fight for social justice. Suddenly, caring about Israel has cast us as outcasts in the progressive circles many proudly worked to build. Add to the mix as well that many of us have never lived through a time when anti-Semitism was front-page news for weeks on end, and we are reeling and anxious, unsure how to hold it all with any coherence.  

Even as I write this, I know: there will be some who will read this and think: wait, she got it all wrong, that doesn’t capture me at all. Yes, I suppose that is my point. We can’t all be characterized in any one way. It’s much too complex for that. We are much too complex for that. 

I’m writing this now because after much deliberation, we will be mounting new banners outside of the Oheb Shalom building. Some congregants advocated loudly for signs that read We Stand with Israel. Others advocated loudly that such signs would not capture the nuance of what they are feeling right now; that standing with Israel’s right to exist is perhaps different than standing behind every aspect of the Israeli government’s actions. What slogan could possibly capture that? Some argued for no signs at all; some took umbrage at the lack of a sign. Some congregants are committed more than anything to peace-making; others felt that signs calling for peace were premature until the hostages come home. I fantasized that we might find a way for every one of us to write our own sign and hang that up outside – to show the world our nuance, our pluralism, that there is no one way to feel or think right now at Oheb Shalom or in the broader Jewish world. To help everyone in the congregation have a voice. It turned out to be impractical. Too bad.  

In the end, we settled on the following: an Israeli flag and an American flag. Also, two signs. One that reads: Bring Them Home Now. And one that offers up nothing more or less than our name: Oheb Shalom. Love. Peace.* **

I love that we have four signs. I love that we don’t pretend that we can – collectively or individually – be reduced down to just one slogan or idea. The war in Israel and Gaza is so much more complex than that. Who we are as a Jewish community is so much more nuanced and diverse. Who we are at Oheb is, too. 

Rabbi Yosi bar Hanina taught:  God’s word comes to each person according to their uniqueness. Don’t be surprised about this! When the manna fell, it tasted differently to everyone. (Pesikta d’Rav Kahana 12:25; 5th-6th century AD, Israel) 

The flags and the signs will mean something different to each of us, and to each person who drives or walks by. Collectively, I hope they tell the story of a congregation holding on to our ideals as Americans and as a Jewish community. We hang the flags not because our countries are perfect, but as a sign of loyal commitment to bringing them closer to the ideals on which they were founded. We post flags and banners because we want to contribute to the broader community conversation, and help us all get unstuck from feeling we have to be defined as being just “one thing.”  

The manna tasted differently to everyone because we are each unique, and to each and every one of you wondering “wait, is Oheb the place for me? I think they’re too [fill in the blank]…” The message I’m trying convey is this: you belong here. Whatever you hold in your heart and head about this war, about the intersection of what’s happening with Israel and anti-Semitism, about Jews and political ideology… if you are someone who believes in diversity, in pluralism, in nuance; in coming together with people who think and feel differently than you do; in coming together with open-hearted, kind people, who wrestle with ideas but also walk gently through the world so everyone involved feels less alone, and want to do all of that through the lens of Torah and Jewish culture: you belong here.  

My door is open to all who wish to be in conversation about this (or anything else). In January we will be sharing a lineup of programming around Israel; ideas are welcome and can be directed to our program chairs, Doug Magid and Leo Gordon. We will hold another Listening Circle, which – for those who weren’t able to join the last one – is a heart-centered way of gathering and talking across difference. And we will continue to gather, pray, share meals and sacred space, having nothing to do with politics or Israel or any of this, but just because that’s we do as a Jewish community, week in and week out. 

Am Yisrael Chai – may the Jewish people live on in and through each and all of us. 

DAYS OF REMEMBRANCE

We Jews have so many holidays and days of remembrance. From Nissan 1, the first day of Passover, marking the beginning of the year (Yes, Nissan actually is the first month of the Hebrew calendar) through Purim in the month of Adar, there are scores of holidays — and four new years. Then there is the weekly Shabbat celebration. I’d estimate that at least 100 days are marked in some special way.

There are also the days that cross over between secular and Jewish-not days that have some ritual such as Tu B’shevat which is celebrated on January 25/15 Shevat.

But this is not about Tu B’Shevat. It’s about Holocaust commemorations.

The Jewish holiday calendar marks the Holocaust on the 27th of Nissan midway between Passover and Israeli Independence Day. The State of Israel first  commemorated  the Holocaust in 1949; the day was marked by the burial of thousands of remains from the Flossenberg concentration camp.

By 1959, Yom Hashoah was commemorated largely as it is today with a period of silence and certain businesses closing.

In addition, many Jewish communities remember Kristallnacht on November 9 or 10 when in 1938 a coordinated night of destruction rained down on Jewish businesses and synagogues.

Much of the world marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day on January 27, established by the U.N. in 2005. It was on that day in 1945 that the Soviets liberated Auschwitz.

However, throughout the year materials on the Holocaust appear. The question of “Holocaust fatigue” has arisen over the last years. Is there too much Holocaust material? Should there be humor found in the Holocaust? How can the material engage today’s population, especially young people, two thirds of whom are unaware of that 6  million Jews were killed  or have never even heard of the Holocaust? Some people even believe that Jews should be blamed for the Holocaust.

All this is prelude to a fascinating piece of filmmaking, shortlisted for the 2024 Oscar. The brief dark comedy  The Anne Frank Gift Shop portrays a marketing meeting about how to reimagine the gift shop in Amsterdam’s Anne Frank House. This article  explains the genesis of the filmmaker’s idea when he was shocked at exiting the exhibits and finding himself in the gift shop. There is also  a link to the film.

I have watched this film twice — the first time partially in shock at the black humor and the seemingly tasteless jokes. I didn’t want to laugh. It seemed insensitive to laugh. I didn’t want to disrespect Anne Frank or the other victims.

But the film is funny and poignant and ultimately even a little hopeful. It is also exceedingly contemporary and its message about meeting people where they are has a lot of truth to it.

Additional background material on the film, the outstanding cast, and Reboot, which made the film, can be found here.

So writers continue to write historical fiction about the Holocaust, sometimes  with humor, but more often with romance, mystery or adventure. And film makers continue to make Holocaust themed movies, not all of which are tearjerkers.

Humor can be a powerful entry into a serious topic and needs to be judged on its own merits.

***********************

In tribute to TuB’Shevat the library features:

Gottesfeld, Jeff. The Tree in the Courtyard. The story of the famous tree that stood outside the Secret Annex where Anne and her family hid. In 2005, the tree was diagnosed as having a fungus and chestnuts from it were gathered and germinated. In 2010, despite the best care and metal supports, the tree blew over in a storm. Seedlings from Anne’s tree, which was at least 170 years old, have been planted around the world.

Recent Holocaust themed additions to the library:

Berest, Anne. The Postcard. This history mystery is the lightly fictionalized story of a mysterious postcard listing the names of the author’s aunts and uncles who disappeared in the Holocaust. (FIC)

Harmel, Kristin.  The Book of Lost Names. An elderly Holocaust survivor unravels the mystery of a book containing code names of hidden children — a book for which she was responsible. (FIC)

Horowitz, Richard. In the Garden of the Righteous: The Heroes Who Risked Their Lives to Save Jews During the Holocaust(NF)

Krimstein, Ken. When I Grow Up. Graphic narrative based on newly discovered autobiographies of Jewish teens on the brink of WWII. (YANF)

Ragen, Naomi.  The Enemy Beside Me. Milia Gottstein, director of the Survivor’s campaign, is obsessed with forcing Lithuania take responsibility for its role in the Holocaust. Reluctantly she finds herself at a Holocaust Conference in Lithuania where her life is challenged and changed. A good dose of history mixed with romance. (FIC)

Sarid, Yishay The Memory Monster.  A harrowing short novel about an all-consuming interest in the Holocaust. (FIC)

Sis, Peter. Nicky & Vera. The story of Nicholas Winton who saved almost 700 Czechoslovakian children from death. (JNF)

Stetson, Caren.  Stars of the Night. True story of the Czech Kindertransport which rescued 669 children on the eve of WW II.(JNF)

Stiefel, Chana. The Tower of Life. The story of the permanent photograph exhibit of Yaffa Eliach’s hometown mounted in  Washington’s Holocaust Museum.(JNF)

Wiemer, Liza. The Assignment. A contemporary story of about 2  high school students who challenge a school assignment about the Holocaust.  Based on a real incident. (YAFIC)

SERMON, SAT MORNING, DEC 2, 2023

STRETCHING OUR HEARTS AS BIG AS THEY WILL GO

As many of you know, I served at a congregation in Ohio as an interim rabbi the year prior to joining Oheb Shalom. There I met Diana and Romi and their 12-year-old daughter. This was during the height of COVID, and I only met them once in person. Not because they were COVID-cautious, but because they did not believe it was real. In their objection to their sense of government interference with personal liberty, they also therefore refused to attend zoom programming and had pulled their daughter from school. Romi hung out in QAnon circles. You get the picture. Despite their political differences from the rest of the congregation, they were beloved and had many close friendships in the generally blue-leaning, progressive community.

Halfway through my time there, Diana was diagnosed with Stage 4 ovarian cancer. They did not trust the medical establishment and so treated her at home with herbal remedies. In the days and weeks that followed, one thing became super clear: no matter what, Romi and their daughter needed a community and they needed a rabbi. They needed me to show up and not care about their politics or ideas about medicine. The only thing that mattered was that Diana was dying. Romi and I spoke daily after Diana passed. As he worked through his grief, much of our conversations involved QAnon and other political ideas I did not share. It didn’t matter; Romi needed to talk, and my role was not his political advisor but his rabbi. Just a few months later, Romi died of a sudden heart attack. Because I’d stuck around, this suddenly orphaned 12-year-old had a rabbi, too. Her first zoom was the congregational shiva visit we organized for her to dial into, from her uncle’s home in another state. Her new life began surrounded by the community that loved her no matter what her parents’ politics had been.

Over the past weeks, since war broke out on October 7, my job has completely shifted. The pastoral care that had been focused entirely on people’s personal needs has become infused with anguish over what is going on now at the peoplehood level. For some, the anguish is about the hostages, the terror attack by Hamas, the IDF soldiers risking their lives to defend Israel. For others, the anguish is about the suffering in Gaza, the war being waged there, and a sense of rage and betrayal that Israel would cause such suffering. The overlay of the 400% rise in antisemitic attacks here in the US over the past five weeks – including a friend being shoved last night in a nearby town and called “f-ing Jew” – has many on edge, or over the edge. Our hearts hurt, our heads spin, many are anxious and afraid, and many don’t know what to do or think.

My job is not to judge anyone as right or wrong in our ideas about Israel or anything else. My job is to hold all of us in community and love. My sense of responsibility as a leader of the Jewish community does mean I stand publicly with Israel, where half of the world’s Jewish population lives, and a spot on earth that has been part of the Jewish story since the first chapters of Genesis. It does not mean, though, that my heart is closed. The images of the suffering and destruction in Gaza touch the deepest parts of our humanity and it is hard to know how to hold both – caring for Israel and caring for Palestinian life – in a way that has intellectual cogency. I’ve sat with many of you who are confused how to hold it all, how to care for Jews and Palestinians, how to get through the day without this taking over, how to feel and function.

For me, the work feels like it is about learning to hold multiple truths. Truths that are complete opposites, truths that don’t work together and logically can’t all be true. That is a feature of deep truth, that something and its opposite can both be true. For me, the work right now feels like it is about stretching my heart as big as it will go. I leave the political solution-izing to others.

We are a diverse group with lots of different ideas and feelings about Israel, as with everything else in Jewish life (and life life). We seem to love our pluralism in other areas – some of us keep kosher, some don’t; some pray every day, some don’t. We treasure our diversity in gender expression and sexuality, in the colors of our skin, in our marital statuses and neurotypes and in so many other ways. I hope we can treasure our political differences, too. I hope we are able to hold pluralism here with as much love as we do in other areas of our communal life. I hope that our sense of commitment to Jewish life and community trumps our need to feel right and to be with only people who agree with us. I hope we can create safe space for all of us to show up and feel that we all belong here at Oheb and in Jewish community. Because we do.

On Sunday morning, December 3, at 9:30 am, I will host a Listening Circle on Israel. This program, which will take the place of my regularly scheduled Sunday morning class,  will be a highly structured, facilitated gathering, designed to support participants in sharing from the heart, and will be appropriate for teens and adults. The goal is not to work towards common ground or any particular outcome, but rather to share, honor and listen to the authentic multiplicity of views that make up our community.

With a big heart, prayers for peace, and much love for all of us whose hearts are hurting and heads are spinning,

T-DAY TRIVIA

Did you know that the Hebrew word hodu means both turkey and give thanks? So hodu for hodu.

In Yiddish, the word for turkey is indik which is related to India — perhaps because the explorers thought that they had reached the East Indies.

Many of the Jewish immigrants from Europe at the end of the 19th century, and into the 20th century, were reluctant to celebrate Thanksgiving with its strange foods (like turkey) and semi-Christian origins. They often consulted with their rabbis to get permission to celebrate the holiday but still served traditional Jewish celebratory side dishes like kugel.

According to Molly’s Pilgrim by New Jersey author Barbara Cohen, the Pilgrims based their celebration of Thanksgiving on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot. An award-winning short novel set in the early 1900s, Molly’s Pilgrim tells the story of Molly and her Russian immigrant family. With contemporary themes such as immigration, bullying, mean girls, and acceptance, the book is a good choice for elementary school readers. There is also a video adaptation of the story in which the setting is the 1970s during the beginning of the modern Russian migration to the United States.

A final thought for the day: as Molly’s mother says in Molly’s Pilgrim, we — or our ancestors — are all Pilgrims, people who have left another place to seek freedom.