9 Av

This year I find that my fast has been easy so far, with three hours left to go.  Not that that's the point of Tisha b'Av, but it's noteworthy.  I feel appropriately in touch with brokenness and conscious that our world remains unredeemed. But Tisha b'Av as mourning doesn't feel meaningful, maybe because I'm already mourning.  In addition to the loss of Mr. Boy, this year Tisha b'Av is my grandpa's yahrzeit.  The metaphor of a bottom speaks much more to me this year.  It feels like the world, the people Israel (not to mention the land), and my life have all hit bottom.  I wish I could write more on this, but now is not the time.

Anyway, some 9 Av meditations if you are in need.  Not standard ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRPwFAoQwxc

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/20/sayed-kashua-why-i-have-to-leave-israel

Peace is a Radical Pursuit: A Poem for Shabbat Jazon

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not the desire of polite society

To avoid the drama and chaos

Of conflicting human instinct

The pundits cry out for the moderates

"Where are the reasonable voices?"

They ask for the confrontation-averse

They call for the champions

Of maintaining the status quo

The wise who would rather

Continue to live in a world

Of unchallenged hypocrisy

Where occupation is sustainable

And terrorism acceptable - for now -

As long as it doesn't flood

The news feed or clog

The air waves or clutter

The rabbi's disagreeable sermon

The pundits cry out for the peacemakers

"Where are the reasonable voices?"

They ask for the confrontation-averse

They call for the champions

Of maintaining the status quo

The wise who would rather

Continue to live in a world

Of unchallenged hypocrisy

Where occupation is sustainable

And terrorism acceptable - for now -

As long as it doesn't flood

The news feed or clog

The air waves or inflame

The imam who is a foreigner

Anyway - from the Bronx

How exotic - And always

Jews first and Muslims after

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not meant for civility

Peace is not easy or quiet

It does not make way

For celebrity gossip

Or whatever it is that

Normal people care about

Peace is abnormal, anomalous

A miracle, I say, all say

Peace means I must care 

About your happiness

As much as I care about mine

It means I must hurt about your pain

As much as I hurt about mine

Peace means that I know

That the word naqba

Emotionally translates to galut

That it is real and

That it will be felt

Statehood or not

For the rest of forever

Until mashiaj comes

To be a Jew means that I believe

With perfect faith that she is on her way

Already, though she delays

To be a Jew means to believe

In the radical notion

That peace is possible

Even now, especially now

Achieving peace as a Jew

Means I must be like the disciples

Of Aaron - loving peace and pursuing it

To be a Jew is to be a storyteller

Of exile - of survival

That inspires the Dalai Lama

To be a Jew is to respond

To the most heated argument

With the affirmation

That these and these are

The words of a living God

The merciful, the compassionate

In which I may not believe

To be a Jew means

To not oppress others

Because I know oppression

To be a Jew means I must beat

My swords into plowshares

And my spears into pruning hooks

And then I must beat my plowshares

Into trumpets and my pruning hooks

Into guitars - to be the folk song army

To be a Jew is to turn

To turn my song into prayer

To be a Jew is to end

All my prayers with prayers for peace

And to pray not only with my words

But also with my feet

Peace is a radical pursuit

Not for those who justify any

Violence against tunnelers

Who are obviously up

To no good at all

Not for those who try

To figure out who

Has the moral high ground

Peace does not blame or shame

Peace is not the absence of violence

It is the hurling of understanding

Against hatred, of love

Against fear, of kindness

Against all types of aggression

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is the humble admission

That I don't know
What it's like to be you

That I will never know

What it's like to be you

But that I wish for you

To have everything that I want

And everything that you want

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is the acknowledgement

of guilt and pain and sorrow

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is an offering

Of the broken self

To experience 

Further vulnerability

Peace is a radical pursuit

Peace is not the prophet's vision

Peace is not the musician's hope

Peace is not the artist's aspiration

Peace is not the poet's dream

It is her job

Peace is as close to us

As the air we breathe

And as perplexing

As that breath we spend

So many hours trying to find

Welcome to the world's

Most hazardous occupation

Peace is a radical pursuit

It is not standing with anyone

It is sitting with everyone

It is for the brave-hearted

It is for the strong-willed

It is for the faithful

Peace is the proclamation

That in the face of every

Unimaginable provocation

As well as the expected ones

We will not feed the trolls

Except at the dinner table

Where they should eat more

Moderation perpetuates

Hatred and violence

It exacerbates

The pain of the status quo

Moderation is unreasonable

Peace is the reasonable alternative

Peace is a radical pursuit

Impatient, chutzpadik, a loud

Call to prayer at sunrise

Peace is a pundit

Demanding that we abandon

Being perpetrators and being victims

Peace is an activist

Fighting for its presence

Peace is an organizer

Asking you: Are you radical enough?

How The Religious Institute Aims to Improve the Lives of Religious Bisexuals

In my life, I have been seen by others as a straight woman, a lesbian, a gay man, and even a straight man (which still baffles me).  Once people get to know me, they learn that I say I have attractions to people of multiple genders, but they don't often believe me.  When I started dating Mr. Boy, many of my friends who met me after my previous relationship with a man were shocked.  Even though I had stated my bisexuality (for lack of a more convenient term), my friends assumed that was talk and I was really only attracted to women.

In religious contexts in particular, even in otherwise queer-friendly spaces, this invisibility is worse and I have often encountered outright biphobia.  I think part of the reason bisexual invisibility is increased in religious spaces is the focus on finding one person to share your life with (I say one here because religious groups, as a whole, have not caught up to ideas of non-monogamy).  When people are in a relationship, this is praised in religious communities to an extent that erases sexual orientation.  This is particularly true in liberal Jewish communities where the reaction to someone saying they have a partner of the same gender is to ask if that partner is Jewish (another conversation for another time).

The Religious Institute today releases a book-length guide which will improve the experience of bisexual folk in religious communities.  The first resource of its kind, Bisexuality: Making the Invisible Visible in Faith Communities, is a comprehensive guide for religious communities to welcoming and inclusion people who have attractions to more than one gender whether or not they identify as bisexual.  The book asks the reader to consider whether the B in LGBT actually gets heard at her congregation.  Parts 1 and 2 of the book present an overview: Part 1 focuses on what bisexuality is and how people experience it and Part 2 on the justifications for inclusion of bisexuality on religious grounds from a variety of religious perspectives.  Part 2 also contains a brief contextualization of the "problematic" passages about LGBT folks from Tanakh and the New Testament.  The third part of the book outlines how to create a "bisexually healthy" religious community.  And the last part of the book outlines additional resources.  In short, the book attempts to address the issue Emily Alpert Reyes describes in her column "Why Bisexuals Stay in the Closet", which, incidentally, gets quoted in the book (props to friend and fellow University of Chicago Alum).

Suggestions in the book range from the often-overlooked-but-easily-implemented (writing out lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender so that the B isn't functionally silent) to the takes-specific-training-and-is-hard-to-implement, like the model of pastoral care it advocates.  That and the background information in Parts 1 and 2 enable this guide to be used by clergy and lay leaders regardless of prior familiarity with the issue, but also allow those with much experience to go even deeper.  The beginning of the introduction best describes the intricate issues examined in the book:

Imagine the following situations in your faith community:

• A congregant comes to you for pastoral counseling. He is excited, yet distressed that 

although he has always identified as straight, he has fallen in love with someone 

of the same sex.

• You are on the search committee for a new pastor in your community. One of the 

applicant’s profiles states that she identifies as bisexual. 

• A married woman in your congregation finds explicit homoerotic websites on her 

husband’s computer and comes to you for advice.

• A person everyone believes to be gay comes to a congregation party holding hands 

with a person of another sex.

• Two middle school students in the youth group announce that they are bisexual. 

Is your faith community prepared for these situations? Is your faith community open to 

people whose sexuality does not fit into the categories of gay/lesbian or straight? Does 

your faith community have access to resources about bisexuality and bisexual people? 

Even if you think you are good at theses issues, I encourage you to read through this book to see if your practices fall into some of the pitfalls the Religious Institute has identified.  I was surprised that some behaviors I thought were inclusive (hello big many-gender-loving trans guy here) could actually be detrimental.

Things the book does really well:

* Casts a wide net on what constitutes bisexuality that is well-explained.  The authors explicitly state who the guide is intended to help include, even, and perhaps especially people that don't use the term bisexual to describe themselves but experience same and other gender attractions on at least one dimension of sexuality.

* Combats the gender binary by using terms like "another gender" and "another sex" instead of "opposite sex" or "opposite gender".

* Talks about the ways in which bisexuals contribute specially to religious life and spiritual awareness.

* Presents nuanced and well-informed definition of sexuality and accounts of bisexual experience. I love the multiplicity of bisexual narratives in the book.

* Breaks down suggestions in a way that any congregation can start to implement immediately.

Things I don't like about the book:

* The phrase "bisexually healthy".  I assume it is meant to parallel the organization's use of the term "sexually healthy", but I don't think the usage is parallel and I think the term is confusing, even after it is defined.  I would advocate the words "friendly" and "safe" for bisexuals instead.

* The book is extremely monogamy-normative and does not address the issue of how to include and pastor to bisexuals who are not monogamous.  I personally think that the attitudes can exhibit the same poly shaming that is normative in many religious communities.  As a poly ally, this rubbed me the wrong way.

* Christian buzz-word terminology.  Uses of the terms "welcoming and affirming" and "faith communities" that originate or were popularized in Christian contexts present a barrier to non-Christians reading the book.  We would use "inclusive" and "religious communities."

Things that should be improved for the next edition:

* Better representation (particularly resource-wise) of religious traditions other than progressive Christian denominations.  In one resource list, Christian resources are divided by denomination, but no Jewish movement resources are listed.  Instead, there is one sub-header "Jewish" that lists Keshet and Nehirim.  This sort of listing, combined with the Christian-centric terminology

* More testimonials, with special effort to include testimonials of folks who are partnered to someone of the same gender.  Where partners are discussed in personal narratives, they are always of another gender than the writer of the narrative.

* A consistent use of gender instead of sex when the authors do not mean to focus on phenotypic, genotypic, or legal sex.

* Expansion to non-Abrahamic traditions - the book as it is now relies on the shared context for expression of values of Abrahamic faiths and the shared values of the Abrahamic religions.  Many other religious traditions are sexually healthy and would like to be safer, inclusive spaces for bisexual folks, and this guide would not be useful for them.  The authors state that it is intended for Christians, Jews, Muslims, and Unitarians.  But this sort of inclusion is necessary in all religious spaces.

In all, this is an incredibly practical and useful resource, and every religious (or faith, I suppose) leader should invest.  Good work, Religious Institute!

Nuanced Perspectives, Digital Media, and Human Beings

After a deliberate absence from digital media following the death of Mr. Boy, I have been re-immersing myself in digital content lately, returning to getting my news online, keeping up with my twitter feed, and catching up on my webcomics, fanfiction serials, and blogs.  Facebook still remains elusive, as any time I log on, somebody is still congratulating me on my marriage, and I don't yet have the strength to change my relationship status.  While on my calculated hiatus, I read the news in the local paper and also the New York times, and kindly bowed out of any discussions regarding new developments on the interwebs.  Returning, I have a new perspective on the way media is produced and reacted to online.

We make big controversies over things that are trivial and minimize or sideline those things that terrify us.  Fierce debate can occur about what really happened in the elevator with Jay-Z and Solange, what should have happened, and how all the players in that situation should act following the incident.  Since none of us have power over what happens in the Carter-Knowles family, we could speculate without consequence.

But when Elliot Rodger killed 6 people and injured 13 others because he felt entitled to have women who rejected him, the internet quickly broke into 3 camps that did not converse with each other.  I'll call the first camp the extremist camp.  This is the camp of people who believe Rodger was justified in doing what he did, or at least that he wouldn't have done it if women had been more reasonable.  Some members of this camp have since been arrested.  The second camp was the feminist camp, which saw Rodger's crime as part of a systematic hatred of women that should not be tolerated, exemplified here.  And the third camp is the isolated crazy person camp, which puts forward Rodger's history of mental illness as explanation of what happened.  After each camp responded, they moved on, focusing on other facets of existence.  They were able to do this by compartmentalizing the killings, either as part of their own crusade against uppity women or as an extreme case of a systemic societal problem (either as perpetrator or victim).  Although their voices on the internet are louder than proportional, advocates of mass murder are few, and the world treated the killings, if not the motivation behind them, as an isolated case.  We compartmentalize mass murder because to treat it as something that could happen to us or by us terrifies us and if we really stopped to consider how anyone could become or be a victim of mass murder, we would cease to be productive citizens.

Still, the approach of over-analyzing topics that we can wrap our heads around and not analyzing those we can't is extremely problematic, as Jonathan Z. Smith outlines in his essay about the White Night.  The essay, entitled "The Devil in Mr. Jones", counters the assertion that Jim Jones was an isolated case in religion and the best approach is to move one.  Smith argues that if we dismiss how the Peoples Temple was started, how it grew, how it developed into Jonestown, and how the White Night occurred as unrelated to the study of religion, we will not understand how Jones manipulated religious phenomena in a way that caused the deaths of over nine hundred people.  If we say that atrocities are only committed outside of a societal framework, we don't correct the societal framework in a way to reduce the occurrence of atrocities.

I've recently read some flame wars on the use of PrEP (a medical phrophylatic approach to reduce risk of contracting HIV).  A bit about the treatment: Truvada is administered to HIV-negative patients who are at high risk of contracting HIV, including men who have sex with men, sex workers, and injection drug users.  Early studies suggest that the prophylaxis is highly effective for males who are compliant with the protocol.  So the flame wars, instead of discussing how we can provide PrEP cheaply to those who may benefit, weigh the merits of advocating PrEP instead of condom use (as if we only have space to do one or the other), and whether we should even be trying to convince gay men that they should alter their behavior to avoid contraction of HIV.  People are arguing over how gay men act or think instead of how to allow this resource to be useful to as many people as possible.

As a Jew, it's been hard to escape the news about the recent kidnappings of students at Yeshivat Har Etzion.  Before going further, let me say the non-nuanced, unequivocal things I think about the situation.  First, these students are victims of a crime.  Second, it is the wish of any decent human being that they be returned safely as quickly as possible.  Third, I believe that the modern State of Israel has a right to exist and a right to govern the land it currently occupies.  Fourth, Palestinians are human beings and have a national identity and have a right to self-determination in their own land.  Fifth, a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the solution most likely to eventually achieve lasting peace and stability in the region, which should be a desired goal for the entire world.  I've followed reporting from various sources with various political inclinations regarding the kidnappings.  But the internet is in two camps: either Israel is at fault for its occupation or the Palestinians (as a whole) are at fault because Jewish teens were kidnapped..  There is no nuance to the argument.  Even Samuel Heilman's article urging a systemic look only advocates that Israel and its yeshivot do more to protect their students to prevent students in yeshivot from getting kidnapped in the first place.

In my own head, the argument is very nuanced.  It starts with compassion for the teenagers and worry about their lives and safety.  I am angry at the kidnappers, but am reserving judgment on whether they acted as a part of a larger organization.  Whenever conflict is at the brink of resolution, violence escalates.  And yes, while Heilman may not think it does much, I am reciting Psalms for the missing boys.  Then, my head goes to the point that Gush Etzion is in the West Bank, and in my mind it is immoral for Jews to occupy the area, and I don't understand any Jew who lives, studies, or sends their children to the area.  And I also know about the four villages in Gush Etzion that existed prior to Israeli Independence that were destroyed by the Arab forces in 1948 and their predecessor Migdal Eder.  And I know the land they were built on at that time was formally purchased despite the fact that it fell on the Arab side of the Partition Plan.  And I know that K'far Etzion was founded in 1968 in part by the families of people who had lived in Gush Etzion prior to 1948.  But, in my view times have changed, politics have changed, and the best way to have avoided the kidnappings in the first place is for Jews to withdraw to Partition Plan borders, or for Jews who do not want to to live under the authority of a Palestinian state.  Currently though, Jews, particularly those involved in perpetuating and expanding formal Jewish structures, living on Palestinian land are part of the problems of occupation.  Yet I know the reality of moving an established yeshiva is not simple.  And I know those kids.  Well, not Naftali Frenkel, Gilad Shaer, or Eyal Yifrah, but those like them.  They are reasonable men who took gap years, or occasionally grew up in Israel and studied at the yeshivot in Gush Etzion, some of which were prestigious.  The range of their politics about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict mirrors that of the Jewish community as a whole: from staunchly anti-Zionist to extremely pro-Israel.  They are, on the whole, nice Jewish boys, who taught me how to identify which yeshiva someone had attended by the specific type of kippah srugah he wore.  And the ones I lived near in college opened their homes to me, a non-observant (by their standards, at least) queer Jew because that was how they wanted to celebrate Shabbat.  And when I married the Catholic Mr. Boy, they sent us the well-wishes of mazel tov and sheva brachos [sic] because they wanted to be a part of our happy occasion.  They are the fiercest pronoun police and can't stand it when anybody does it wrong for me.  And they have taken down mechitzot so I may pray with them.  So, when I hear the developing news and I watch the minutes tick by, I don't see Naftali, Gilad, and Eyal.  I see Yoni, Rafi, and Zach*.  I see Asher, Avi, and Daniel*.

I don't have a way to reconcile my image of settlers helping perpetuate a system of apartheid with the providers of shabbes tisches and blessings for my big gay interfaith wedding.  And absorption in the internet's way of forming camps doesn't help.  But people do.  Being open to making friends with people I never thought I'd interact with, both online and in person, allows me to see the nuance in situations.  It allows me to know that unless someone can have access to a stable living environment and follow up care, he is not likely to be compliant with a PrEP regimen.  It allows me to recognize that Palestinians and settlers are human beings, both when they are living well and when they are choosing poorly.  And it allows me to admit that the stuff that horrifies me horrifies me because it is horrifying, whether it be the mass suicide of an entire religious movement or the kidnapping of boys, and I need to try to understand it rather than compartmentalizing it.

*Names changed to protect identities.

How the URJ Biennial exacerbated my pet peeves with the Reform Movement

I did not attend the URJ Biennial in San Diego.  My parents did, and I watched videos, though not live broadcasts, as I was busy during the days it occurred.  I was impressed with several of the pieces that are now available on the URJ's YouTube channel including R' Rick Jacobs' keynote, the women clergy (many of whom I learned from at camp and in NFTY) talking about how important NFTY was to their own experience, and R' David Ellenson's d'var torah and blessing of R' Aaron Panken.  I enjoyed learning about the work of the Ruderman Foundation, and fun facts about the progressive nature of the Women of Reform Judaism.  Neshama Carlebach explained how she was made to feel at home in the Reform Movement and is now choosing it for herself.  The cast of musicians was tremendous.  I experienced both naches and horror as current NFTYites cheered (naches because it's NFTY and horror because the cheer has changed in minor ways in the ten and a half years since I was a NFTYite).  I felt proud of the Movement in which I was raised.

Watching the videos from the Biennial also made me aware of the ideological distance between myself and the Reform Movement, even as there are more and more Reform Jews whose personal observance is traditionally radical rather than rebellious.  I felt alienated from the spectacle of pride in a Movement in various ways.

Ideologically, the movement is democratic and capitalist.  The Reform Movement is the movement most focused on inclusion of interfaith families, most talkative on issues of social justice, and claims it is the queer-friendliest (although it does not use that term).  These attributes were trotted out over and over to justify the Reform Movement's market share in America, propped up with unsurprising data from the Pew Research study on American Jewry.  As a socialist raised in the context of multiculturalism who has had the privilege of being a part of genuinely pluralistic Jewish spaces as well as post-denominational Jewish spaces, the competitive nature and liberal democratic values espoused to back it up were a turn-off.  I'm not interested in beating other groups of Jews (or anyone).  And, as my high school English teacher would say, show, don't tell me, that I should want to be a part of your organization.

The Reform Movement has what Rick Jacobs described as respectful differences with Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu.  Support for Israel as a political entity as the democratic and Jewish state was talked of the entire time, ignoring the socialist history of political Zionism, and almost entirely ignoring the injustice of occupation in favor of struggles within "Israeli" society for women's equality and religious (read Jewish religious) freedom (on which R' Rick Jacobs said the Movement and Bibi have respectful differences).  Furthermore, both Bibi and Vice President Joe Biden talked about the importance of keeping Iran from getting nuclear weapons.  Cue Tom Lehrer's "Who's Next?".  My thoughts on Israel, and on the relationship between Israel and American Jewry are quite complex.  Suffice it to say for this that I think the focus of American Jewish engagement with Israel should not be parroting support for injustice by buying into excuses.  The Reform Movement has a vested interest in Israeli politics, having programs and institutions there, and not having its rabbis recognized by the theocratic machine.  Therefore it should be outspoken on every issue that it cares about relating to Israel, and it should not describe any differences regarding subjugation of human beings as "respectful".  It should not stand by when Israel blames the failure of the Peace Process entirely on Palestinians.  As a well-organized body of progressive American Jews, the URJ should exercise its critical perspective on the ways in which Israel does not live up to Reform Jewish values, just as the Religious Action Center does the US government.

Lastly for the major issues, the Campaign for Youth Engagement grates my nerves.  Don't get me wrong; I support the involvement of young Jews in Jewish life.  I benefited tremendously from URJ camping (9 summers at OSRUI and one at Kutz), and my involvement in NFTY led me to feel like a part of the Jewish community rather than a token or an outsider.  The messaging of the Campaign for Youth Engagement is patronizing at best and selfish at worst.  Selfishly, it reads: the reason we should engage youth is that we need somebody to take over for us in 25 years.  The patronizing read is the message: youth are the future of our movement.  As a teenager, being called "the future" was one of the worst things you could say to me.  What I learned from being engaged as a kid and as a teen was that I did not have to wait to express my Judaism.  I was a Jew then, and I could live Jewishly.  My thoughts, insights, learning, and actions as a Jew mattered, even my first summer at camp when I was nine.  As I grew up in the realm of informal Refom Jewish education, I found support for my deepening religious observance in the youth movement and in the professionals who served it.  I found a camp counselor who was extremely traditionally observant.  I found the first person I called my rabbi (who is not ordained as such) in my teacher and mentor Danny Maseng, who implanted within me not only a love for Jewish music but the seeds of the spirituality I am currently building for myself.  I found the first rabbi I would call my rabbi in NFTY in the form of R' Arnold Jacob Wolf, z"l, who knew how to criticize my point of view and point me in the right direction while taking my angry rebellious teenage self absolutely seriously.

A URJ cynic would look at my life and say I am not a success story of Reform Jewish youth engagement. My primary Jewish involvement is not through a Reform congregation, but rather an independent Jewish community called Mishkan run by Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann (ordained at the Ziegler School at American Jewish University, which is affiliated with the Conservative movement) who was also taught by Rabbi Wolf. Since June, for the first time in my life, I do not belong to a URJ congregation.  (Two of the congregations I'm looking at joining happen to be URJ congregations, and one is more traditionally observant than most URJ congregations.)  I married a non-Jew, who, if he survived, would have made the most fabulous rebbetzin [sic].  I am looking toward becoming a rabbi and HUC-JIR is not even on the list of schools I'm considering.  After my first year as a camp counselor, I did not stay involved with OSRUI.  I am far to the left of the Reform Movement politically.  While I consider social justice to be of paramount concern for any Jew, my personal Jewish focus has turned more and more to tikkun middot (which I first learned about at sija in the Bayit at camp).  My theological views include a God that still actively performs miracles.  I can read resurrection of the dead and praying for the coming of the Messiah in metaphorical ways, although I generally prefer to talk of geulah rather than goel whenever possible.  I don't pray for a return of the beit hamikdash, but I do mourn its loss. I believe that we do not have to discard halaja to come up with ethical Judaism.  My political Zionism and my religious Zionism are separate. I don't feel there are any areas of Judaism that are not deserving of questioning.  I feel that there need to be ritual boundaries between what Jews are able to do and what non-Jews are able to do.  This perspective is particularly informed by my growing up with one Jewish and one non-Jewish parent and that non-Jewish parent later converting.  I don't believe that saying we are welcoming makes us so.  And I believe that talking about gender equality as women being equal to men enforces a binary that we should not be enforcing.  So, I'm in no way, the married-to-someone-I-met-in-Tzofim-become-Rosh-Eidah-go-to-HUC-JIR-or-law-school-or-med-school-join-a-Reform-Temple-20s-and-30s-group-future-URJ-board-member success story that the Campaign for Youth Engagement means to create.

However, without Reform Jewish informal education, I would have maxed out the Jewish knowledge of my congregation at an early age.  Without Danny's presence, Judaism would seem entirely intellectual to me.  Without Rabbi Wolf, Judaism would have become a boring set of rules that I didn't even follow.  I would not have developed a daily prayer practice and a reverence for Shabbat.  My parents would not attend synagogue on a weekly basis, and my dad has told me it was my passion for Judaism developed at camp that brought him into the Jewish community as a Jew and not just as related to us.  My partner would not have been enthralled by the rhythms and ethos of Jewish life. We would not have lived in the rhythm of the Jewish week.  And the thought of becoming a rabbi most certainly would not have occurred to me if I had not decided it was the best way to keep coming back to camp every summer for the rest of my life at age nine.  My Judaism might look like my brother's.  My brother had sporadic engagement with Judaism as a youth including a trip to Israel for the Eisendrath International Exchange, had a minor in Jewish studies at San Francisco State mostly because of the rampant anti-Semitism on that campus, and now his Jewish observance is mostly driven by his devout Catholic wife saying "don't you guys do this" and "shouldn't we...".  Judaism for him is at worst something he's stuck with and at best a peripheral connection to the rest of his family.  But then again, he and his wife belong to a Reform synagogue.  There's another possibility for what my Judaism might look like.  I might have gone what R' Benay Lappe calls "Option 2" and thrown out the baby with the bathwater, becoming an atheist who was raised as a Jew or identifying as "spiritual, but not religious".  I might have considered myself too good, too evolved, and too enlightened to practice ancient tribal customs.  My only engagement with Judaism might be seder at my parents' house.  Surely, if somebody had dismissed a teenage me as merely "the future" of Judaism instead of recognized me as a part of its present, I would have been dismissive in return.  Instead, camp and NFTY created places where I could be taken seriously where I was, where I developed the passion which led Judaism to be a central aspect of my life, and where my critiques of current Jewish practice started.  I don't need to feel a part of the Reform Movement, but I do need to feel a part of the Jewish people.  And I didn't feel an emphasis on that from the Biennial.

One Jew's Praise of Halloween Customs

in memory of Bob and with all the love in the world for Bud and both of their families

I've seen many treatments recently of whether Jews should celebrate Halloween.  On a simple halakhic level, the practice of participating in rituals for another religion is forbidden.  Halakhah was not a big concern to me growing up, and still isn't.  The following is not an argument for why Jews should participate in American Halloween customs, but rather an outline of the benefits and Jewish values I received in my own life through having a rich experience of Halloween as a child.

My partner lives in Boystown, and gay men take Halloween quite seriously.  But the parades and costumes and frivolity of Halloween in the gayborhood doesn't compare to Halloween the way I remember it.  The Halloween I remember had no religious overtones, even in South Bend, where most folks are Catholic.  It wasn't until I studied French culture that I learned Halloween started as a religious holiday.

I lived in a neighborhood in South Bend that was the envy of other neighborhoods when it came to Halloween.  Kids would come to my neighborhood for the king size candy bars those in the mansions would hand out, and, of course, there was the haunted house my "behind" neighbors put together.  The best friends, Bob and Bud, who lived next door to each other, used their front yards as a spooky playground, and, I found out when I was older, their homes for the adult party.

As a small child, there was nothing so exciting as the fear that grips you when a hand grabs you in a candy bowl with false bottom.  Usually, my parents let my brother and I go trick-or-treating in a modest fashion.  The highlight was always the haunted house, whether the candy haul was great or sub-standard.

The haunted house brought the community together, and remains one of my best experiences of maintaining a yearly ritual that has the right intention and right actions - the haunted house captured both keva and kavanah of Halloween.  As I became an older child and knew that the hand in the cauldron was attached to a person, and even when I knew who it was under the table, it was still a frightful experience.  As I entered my years of being too cool to go trick-or-treating, as a neighborhood kid, I was put to work under that table with my hand in the candy cauldron or spraying silly string at kids from inside a coffin.  Becoming the man behind the curtain didn't take away the mystery or specialness of the haunted house experience; it added to it.  I was able to pass on the Halloween experience to those younger than me, and be responsible for helping my community.  And helping make Halloween happen helped me stay engaged with the tradition when otherwise it would have been uncool to participate.

When I was in high school, tragedy struck, and Bob was killed in a workplace shooting.  Bud, a fire chief, was one of the first responders at the scene.  After Bob died, Bud didn't feel much like throwing a haunted house and party without his best friends.  Bud put up a plaque explaining the absence of the community event.  The first year without the haunted house seemed empty.   The next year, the neighborhood community organization organized a day-time Halloween gathering in the park in the North Shore Triangle.  Halloween, after all, was a time that our neighborhood coalesced around, and we mourned Bob's absence but came together as a community to have Halloween without Bob, but for Bob and Bud.  Bud couldn't bear to celebrate by himself, and he didn't have to.

In college, my dorm organized a haunted house and brought people in to trick-or-treat, and as I became involved in the queer scene, many people my age do the costume thing and have celebrations, but there's not a proper ruach Halloween outside of my neighborhood in South Bend.

For me, Halloween is not about who has the cleverest, coolest, or sexiest costume.  It is not about how drunk one gets or who has the best drag act.  It is not about how much candy you collect or how scary you are or how scared you get.  It's not about the decorations or even about great death and ghost puns.  Halloween is about community, it's about support, it's about building things together.  It's about letting other people enjoy themselves and doing the work to make it happen.  It's about hospitality - having way more Halloween candy ready than necessary because you never know who will come to your door.  It's about remembering the amazing antics from last year or five years ago, and telling and retelling those stories.  And most of all, it's about the power of emanating kindness from the fast friendship of two men.

From Halloween, I learned values of tradition, kindness, what it means to be a part of a community, how to be there for those grieving, how to pass on my love for something to the next generation.  And I learned it better and clearer from a haunted house than from my synagogue.

Zman simjateinu

Sukkot is upon us.  For eight days, we are commanded to be happy.  I've always rebelled against this notion.  How can you legislate a feeling?

If Tisha b'Av falls on Rosh Jodesh, do you fast?

The title of the above refers to a trivia question I once answered.  It's a trick question, because Tisha b'Av means the ninth day of the month of av, so it can never fall on Rosh Jodesh, which is the first day of the month.  That said, if Tisha b'Av falls on Shabbat, you commemorate it the next day instead.

Last night, I attended Mishkan's Tisha b'Av observance, which included Ma'ariv, Reading of Eicha (the Book of Lamentations), and a conversation about our sadness and love when it comes to Israel.  As a Tisha b'Av observance, it was the closest I have come to my Tisha b'Av experiences at OSRUI - meaningful, hot, and at some points frustrating.  The pain in the room was real and the mood somber, but somehow, in leaving with the brokenness of the day, I came out more whole.

I did not grow up with a Tisha b'Av observance in my family.  As someone with staunch Reform upbringing, Tisha b'Av was (for those who knew about it) considered an inappropriate holiday to commemorate because the Reform Movement does not believe the destruction of the Temple to be a bad thing, and therefore does not mourn the event.  However, Tisha b'Av was commemorated at my summer camp, in a beautiful fashion that bestowed the day with contemporary meaning for this mourning.  We talked about sinat jinam, the senseless hatred that Jews see as our part in the destruction of the Temple.  But more than that, the ritual was well-crafted to imbue the day with sorrow and with connection to the history of the Jewish people: tragedies and persecution included.  Living in a time of relative peace and privilege for Jews, this connection was new for me.  I am here because my ancestors responded to persecution by making themselves stronger, because the response to the question eicha has been that part is under our control.  We find things we could have done better even when we recognize that others are responsible for inflicting violence, persecution, and genocide on us.  We could sit in our hatred of them or of God, but instead we reflect on what it is about us and the way we live that exacerbates the damage done to us by others.

I remember that unit heads carried the Torah from our units to Port Hall as the rest of us joined hands and walked singing Don McLean's "By the Waters of Babylon."  We entered Port Hall where we snaked around and joined hands with other units as well until everyone had entered and we sat on the ground.  Passages of Eicha were chanted in Hebrew and read in English, and the list of tragedies that ostensibly occurred on Tisha b'Av was read: destruction of the first Temple, destruction of the second Temple, the start of the first crusade, expulsion of the Jews from England, expulsion of the Jews from France, expulsion of the Jews from Spain, declaration of the Final solution, and the beginning of the deportations from the Warsaw ghetto (not to mention the Toraitic events that the rabbis associated with the day).  The history of how each Torah came to be at camp was recounted, with background information of situations of persecution and how Torahs were rescued if that was the case.  Esa einai was often sung, and we walked back after in silence, which was not a common sensory experience at camp.  The next day (Jewish days start at sundown and go to sundown) we would bury religious texts that were no longer usable in the camp genizah.  I don't know how the custom of adding to a genizah became associated with Tisha b'Av, but my conjecture is that Jews find the loss of text to be of similar importance to the crash of an entire way of life.  I carry nostalgia for that Tisha b'Av experience: the sense of connection to my people when all seems lost, and of being able to take concrete action to mourn the past but also of being able to take concrete action to build a better future.

The observance last night included "By the Waters of Babylon" and traditional kinot.  It included chanting of Eicha and reading it in English.  We sat on a hard floor in the summer heat, and although candles burned, we started before sundown and the effect was not one of darkness.  And we had a "conversation" about Israel, which is a topic that many in the Jewish world see as so divisive that we only talk with like-minded folks.  I put conversation in quotes because it wasn't a conversation in the usual sense. We were first asked to consider where our love comes from when it comes to Israel and where our sadness comes from when it comes from Israel.  We were given paper and pens to write our thoughts and some time (although not enough) to consider.  Then we were asked to listen to those who volunteered to share.  This was an exercise in "vulnerable listening," we were told, which apparently means being attentive and nonjudgmental toward the speaker, but also not to display any emotional reaction you may be having.  Sharers were to take no more than three minutes each and were instructed to give their names at the beginning of what they said, speak in "I language," and say "Thank you for listening" at the end, to which the response from the community was "Thank you." These stipulations led one person to comment that it felt like a "Jews Anonymous" meeting.  I think these regulations were necessary for people to feel safe sharing about a sensitive subject, but by no means did they engender conversation.  Sharers could only focus their comments on their own experiences and feelings, which prevented anything I would call conversation (questions asked an answered, deeper thoughts provoked, progression of ideas possible) from taking place.  It was uncomfortable to listen to people vent their frustrations about Israel.  It was hard to maintain a non-emotional face listening as things I disagreed with or agreed with whole-heartedly were said, and especially as others bared their souls, it was hard to resist impulses to comfort.  The discomfort and pain were fitting for the day.  After the discussion and the reading, we had more space for singing and meditating on loss.  Then we had Ma'ariv (no, not traditional, but again, we started before sundown).  We spoke Ma'ariv, which gives an eerie quality to prayer, and is traditional, as music might increase the enjoyment of the experience, and the idea is that one is praying out of spite because one is in too much pain to do otherwise, and we left, only speaking what was necessary to clean up the space after use.  I walked to the Red Line in silence and rode home, also in silence.  To allow ourselves time to process pain and grow from it is extremely powerful.

A Prayer for Queer Folk

אב הרחמים, gender-fuck father whose compassion cradles us like a mother cares for a newborn, we appealed to you in our darkest moments of internalizing the pain the world directs at us.  We cried out to you during beatings in alleys, with our heads in toilets, when our partners and friends died of AIDS, and, of course, when we finally let ourselves be free to enjoy the sex we wanted to have.  We asked you to put an end to our suffering, sometimes by ending our own lives.  We created communities of our own to let your love in when the world told us we were hated.

From the depths of the gutters we slept in when we were kicked out of our parents' homes, we called out to you and you answered us with the great expanse of a friendly drag queen's heel and her hand extended to pull us up and sit us down on the nearest bar stool.  You answered us in the still small voice of a goth girl techie who taught us oh those many uses for gaffer's tape.  You comforted us with show tunes, Gloria Gaynor, and the Indigo Girls.  You gave us the strength of each other which led us to have the courage not only to come into our own but to come out to the world.  You marched with us on Christopher Street and Folsom Street.  You cried with us as we lost amazing women to transphobia, and you learned with us as we developed and refined queer theory.

Some of us had faith in You from the beginning, and some of us still don't have faith in You.  Some of us rejected You when others told us You hated us, and some of us only found You when humanity abandoned us.  You are invoked all around us, but we lost hope in Your deliverance.  We lost hope when people made in Your image killed our brother Matthew Shepard and our sister Rita Hester.  Some of us lost faith but all of us lost hope.  We lost hope when we woke up with survivor's guilt when we survived the AIDS crisis.  We lost hope when kids continued to kill themselves even after Elton John and Ellen DeGeneres came out and so many others followed.  We lost hope when Mark Carson was killed in our safehaven of Greenwich Village.  We no longer knew how to call out to You.  The arc of progress seemed grayscale rather than rainbow. We convinced ourselves You weren't listening, that we just had to wait for humanity to catch up to Your justice and love.  And humanity wasn't looking too friendly.

Our Rock and our Redeemer, you sent us allies, who took up the torch we left at the door of the nightclub.  To us, some of them seemed like strange bedfellows.  However, when we cried that the country was burning they saw that it was not being consumed.  They fought when we were tired, and we took strength from them.  We were devastated when the US Supreme Court destroyed the Voting Rights Act and when they restricted the ability of employees to claim harassment against their employers, and we got angry at people, but not at You because we lost hope when, despite the illusions of progress, we were not safe in our own neighborhoods.  We called on You to guard our comings and our goings, but You seemed to be asleep on the job as our siblings, especially those of color continue to be attacked for walking down the street.

Our Strength and our Salvation, You nevertheless renewed our resolve as we held Pride Parades, Dyke Marches, and Trans Days of Action in our cities.  You allowed us to broadcast that it can be fun, invigorating, and complicated to be queer, but that coming out of the closet allows a person to be surrounded with complex and jovial folk.  As we lamented that Pride has become a spectacle that straight people come to gawk at and a forum for pandering to gay [sic] constituents, we became grateful that we have the privilege to feel that way.

מודים אנחנו לך, grateful are we for You, in the midst of all of this.  We are grateful for how far we have come.  We are grateful that there is more work to do because we have been struggling so long we don't know how else to live.  We are grateful every time we say the words "I love you," every time we see a rainbow - natural or manmade, every time we pass a single-user gender neutral restroom, every time we recognize what someone wants by a handkerchief, and every time we arrive home safely.  We are grateful for the opportunity to remember how grateful we are.

We pray that we may be cognizant of our gratitude constantly.  Knowing dark hours will still come, we pray that we may recognize the joy of Pride Month 2013 when we are enveloped.  We pray that we remain cognizant of our privilege, and that having more equal rights does not cause us to lose our focus on the marginalized members of society.  Appreciating the support we have been offered, we pray for the will to continue to form chosen families and mentorships as the world accepts our presence in more spaces.  We pray for the ability to show others that difference is positive.  We pray to stay queer.

נברך את מעין חיינו חי העולמים שומעת תפילה

Tzom Qasheh

The Seventeenth of Tammuz is a minor fast day in Jewish tradition which commemorates the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem in 70 CE.  Being a post-biblical minor fast, I did not observe it from the age of thirteen.  The day starts a three-week mourning period between it and Tisha B'av, the day the Second Temple was destroyed.  Tisha B'av is the saddest day of the Jewish year, and many other national tragedies are also commemorated on that day.  I started observing it at Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute, which was one of the first observances that made me more frum than my parents.  However, previous to this year, I had never observed Tzom Tammuz or the three-week period called bein hameitzarim (between the narrow places).

Last year, one of the women I am blessed to call "my rabbi" framed bein hameitzarim as the beginning of the trajectory to the High Holy Days.  We hit a communal rock bottom which allows us to do the spiritual work of t'shuvah and reconcile with God during yamim noraim.  So this year, I decided to try fasting for Tzom Tammuz.  Minor fasts are observed from sunup to sundown, and the timing of Tzom Tammuz made it a fast between about 5:15 AM and 9:15 PM.  But due to poor planning, I ended up accidentally fasting for about 28 hours.  Jewish law permits self-care exemptions to fasting, so I did take my medicine.

I wasn't feeling well the day of Tzom Tammuz and stayed home from work.  I spent a large part of the day, lying down, wishing the pain I was feeling would go away, and not really being able to eat even if I had wanted to.  It felt like the world was breaking, which, I suppose is the point.  When the day was over, a neighbor who is a good friend offered to feed me, which was good, because I wasn't sure if I could stand up for long enough to cook something.

As far as how the three weeks are going, I haven't felt too much in a mournful mood.  Although certain things in my life are not desirable (my significant other is very ill), I feel like the events of the week are those of celebration for the most part.  I don't mean to slight to the damage that repealing part of the Voting Rights Act or the limiting of what constitutes a supervisor for harassment cases does to society.  These are unfortunate losses in the fight for equal dignity.  But the Supreme Court asserted that people in same-sex relationships are human.  I didn't need a court to tell me this, but it sure helps that they did.  I feel grateful and victorious, not mournful and sad.  And the coincidence with Pride celebrations just added to my internalization of the collective effervescence.  Additionally, this year, Canada Day, American Independence Day, and Bastille Day all fall during the Three Weeks.  My love's yahrzeit will fall in the Three Weeks this year, but even that does not make me feel spiritually low.  I feel b'midbar, in the wilderness on the slow and steady march to Freedom Land.  We may not be there yet, but we can see it from the mountain top.  That makes me feel spiritually elevated.  I know that I am on the right path, and my community is too.  But then again, perhaps that was my rabbi's point anyway.

Secular Jews and Religious Jews - Critique of Rabbi Eric Yoffie's Huffington Post Article

I was going to excoriate Rabbi Eric Yoffie for his comments about secular Jews in the attached article, but I won't.  Inspired by my friend Chana, who writes at The Merely Real, I am making an effort not to participate in a call-out culture that is fundamentally counterproductive to the projects of humanity and understanding.  Instead, in an effort to steel-man R' Yoffie's argument, I have tried to understand him to be calling for solidarity among progressive Jews.  R' Yoffie is the former head of the Union for Reform Judaism, and is invested in securing the Jewish future, and securing the voice of progressive Jews as a part of Jewish continuity.

NB: I do not subscribe to the binary of secular vs. religious.  Nor do I subscribe to the binary of atheist vs. religious.  In order to simplify my take on R' Yoffie's position and cultivate a charitable attitude toward his arguments, I am borrowing the binary of secular vs. religious for the sake of the below alone.  There are plenty of people who consider themselves secular who have deep religious sensibilities and vice versa.  Please also note that R' Yoffie equates atheism with secularism in his article.  Although I find that a much more problematic standpoint, I use the term secular below to denote secular atheist when not obvious from the context.

On the face of it, R' Yoffie argues that community involvement and cultural identification are tantamount to believing in God.  Perhaps he just didn't have the benefit of a great class on Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life like I did, because he confuses what is holy with what is sacred.  Read the book for the background; I promise it's worth it.  Religious folks can learn much from the way secular folks and atheists revere religious spaces as sacred in the Durkheimian sense.  Secular folks view religious practices as set apart, or sacred.  They view cultural and national identities as important, like most people.  And they know that part of identity is not determined by them, but by the society around them.  Rather than fight against a Jewish identity, secular Jews claim the term Jew, almost better than their religious counterparts, because they choose to maintain a problematic, persecuted identity without believing that Mr. Deity will have their back.  Many secular Jews not only participate in Judaism through national, ethnic, and cultural identity but also through the system of ethics that comes out of what religious Jews see as religious Judaisms.  Of course, there are secular Jews who are assholes, but there are also religious Jews who are assholes.  R' Yoffie sees identification with the Jewish people as a form of belief in God because it takes strength and a belief that maintaining that identification, especially in the face of persecution, is important and more beneficial in the future.  But that belief is not equivalent to believing in a supreme being.  It is rather akin to the belief that the high probability that the earth will keep revolving around the sun and not spin off its orbit can be translated effectively to an always.  However, I digress.  And to get distracted by R' Yoffie's conflation of the two ideas is to miss the good point he could have made if he weren't so distracted by theology.

Judaism and Jewish culture are meant to be progressive.  If you don't believe me, ask my teacher, Rabbi Benay Lappe, who will gladly explain how radical the early rabbinic tradition was.  The ultra-orthodox voice in Judaism has a voice much bigger than its market share in America and Israel, the biggest centers of Jewish life.  Progressive religious Jews and progressive secular Jews should not see themselves as opposed but rather as a joint force against the coopting of a radically interpretive tradition by those who would like to see it stay static and oppressive.  R' Yoffie is right that secular Jews and progressive religious Jews aren't so different, but it isn't because secular Jews actually believe in God like religious Jews do.  It's because secular Jews act similarly and care about similar things as do progressive Jews.  The common view of mentschlichkeit and of viewing Judaism as valuable and meaningful beyond an all-or-nothing list of rules including not mixing wool and linen is something that progressive Jews, religious or secular, should unite in promoting.  Then will we be able to put our actions where our mouths are in terms of pluralism.

So, Rabbi Yoffie, if you were intending to deride the practice of secular Jews as inconsistent, recognize that inconsistency is part of the human condition.  But if your aim was to say that we need to talk about Judaism in all the ways it manifests, then I join you in saying:

יש יותר מדרך אחד להיות יהודי

Reform Judaism and Obligation(s)

The Reform Movement in Judaism has wonderful discourse about a variety of topics, and fantastic justified pride in its discourse about some.  Reform Jews are great at discussing ethics, meaning, freedom, choice, and equality.  Reform Judaism has been involved in larger discussions of racism, sexism, and homophobia.  Reform congregations talk a good game about inclusion and welcoming interfaith families, Jews-by-choice, and same-gender couples.  But we do a horrible job about discussing personal and communal religious practice and obligations.

I grew up steeped in Reform Movement formal and informal education.  I learned that Reform Judaism is not bound by halakhah the way Orthodox and Conservative Judaisms are.  I learned that I get to choose my own religious observance level based on intellectual and emotional meaning in particular observance.  I learned that if I don't find a practice meaningful, I don't have to do it.  And I learned that this process is called "choice through knowledge."  This child-friendly naming of something I've since recognized as informed consent is a great slogan and gets people to learn about religious ritual and ideas in a way they would not experience otherwise.  However, this policy unchecked allows for moral relativism in a way that most Reform Jews would abhor.

I believe Reform Judaism as a whole and Reform Jews individually have a concept of right action.  I know I do, and sometimes I do things that are not personally meaningful or fulfilling because they are right or obligated.  And these may not have been things that I have chosen to do for myself through research and trial in previous situation.  And my religion on which I base my actions has no way of talking about that.

I call my parents once a week before Shabbat.  Sometimes, I want to talk to them, but mostly, I feel obligated to tell them once a week that I'm alive and not dead and listen to what's going on in their lives.  I wish them Shabbat Shalom, and I feel yotzei on the mitzvah of honoring my father and mother even when I don't find the practice meaningful or fulfilling.  By a rubric of informed consent, I know that talking to my parents, most of the time, will frustrate me.  But I do it anyway.  And the Reform Jewish framework has no term for this, even though the experience is a common one.

We need to be comfortable talking about obligation and obligations and being obligated even outside of a halakhicly-binding framework.  We cannot resign ourselves to be so morally relativistic we have no ground to stand on.  We need to be able to speak about actions that compel us to do them as well as actions we find compelling, and we need to have a philosophical viewpoint that means something other than hedonism.

Anyway, rant over.

Tisha B'av

Perhaps it is problematic that I associate Tisha B'av with haunting music and books - two of my favorite things.  But Eichah trope and other reflective music moves me.  At camp, we used the occasion of Tisha B'av to bury old unusable books with the tetragrammaton in a genizah.  The reverence for books in the Jewish tradition is one that my nerdy self also loves.  The pain of needing to dispose of a book as national pain was a wonderful lesson to learn as a child. Books are powerful and words have the capability to kill or to save lives.

On Tisha B'av, both Temples were destroyed.  Jews were expelled from England, France, Spain, and Portugal on the date.  World War I started on the date.  The rounding up of Jews into ghettos in Poland started on the date, and the deportation from the Warsaw ghetto also happened.  Whether some of these dates were actually on Tisha B'av is unknown, but the commemoration becomes a container for our anguish.

This Tisha B'av, I'm trying to recognize national and personal pain and also the hope of leaving that pain behind.  Tisha B'av starts a season of reflection, self-improvement, and t'shuvah, and we read at the end of Eicha a prayer for God to facilitate our process of t'shuvah.  I'm grateful that in the depths of our sadness, we have hope of a better world.

Update about an Alexander week

This past week has been difficult for me.  I was confronted with open unapologetic transphobia and the lack of ability of some I considered friends to check it.  I also had to face my inability to speak up for myself when hate was directed at me.  I had a strong ally who spoke for in that situation, but I worried that these friends were complicit in the hate.  The conversation was painful for both of us.

This week as well, I've seen people from within and without the queer community dismiss a friend's queer identity as invalid or at best a choice.  And I have seen this friend's pain because of that and I am angry on her behalf.

I also had a moment yesterday where I realized I was taking a paskn from Rabbi Arnold Jacob Wolf in order to be an ally and as weird as it was to be cognizant of living Reform Jewish law, it was powerful for me to live into that experience.  Reform Jews are so good about talking about choice and occasionally good about talking about ethical sensibility, but we are horrible at talking about laws and obligations.  Sometimes we not only find actions compelling, but we are compelled to certain action.  I hope to be able to devote a post to this soon.

Sukkot

Sukkot and Simchat Torah are now over, at least for me.  The holidays are not widely observed, at least not in more than a token fashion, by Reform Jews in America.  Somehow the time of Sukkot, the Season of Our Joy, makes me feel at home in ways I haven't yet been able to describe.

It's odd: Sukkot is a time where Jews set up a transitory space in which to live.  And it is in this temporary shelter that I find not only the Jewish community but myself alive with purpose.  I don't know whether it is the commandment to be happy or the sense of community that the holiday cultivates, but something makes me appreciate life in a new way during Sukkot, and it's not because of an increased appreciation of inside space.

Home for the Holidays

I'm living in Chicago which is a short train ride away from where my parents live.  It's too close to try to stay in my adopted home for the holidays when my parents extend an invitation to their home.  While my broader synagogue family in South Bend is warm and loving and it's good to see people, going home, especially for a major holiday has its disadvantages.  It's not an appropriate time to come out to people, in large part, though a member of the synagogue once came out publicly on Yom Kippur afternoon.  I have an established rule that if I don't ask people to change which name or pronouns they use for me, then I don't take offense if they use the "wrong" ones.  Of course, it's still stressful and somewhat foreign by now to spend a lot of time being addressed by a name I haven't used in years over and over.

Three cases, three responses

I want to talk about cases of three different prisoners.  Sorry, in the time since I first conceived of this post, the opening has to be amended.  I want to talk about two prisoners and one man who was executed.  The three people are Jonathan Pollard, Alan Gross, and Troy Davis, may he rest in peace.

First, I'll review of the cases.  Troy Davis was executed at 11:08 local time in Georgia last night.  Troy Davis was accused and convicted of killing Mark MacPhail, a police officer from Savannah, on the basis of eyewitness testimony from 9 people.  No physical evidence was produced at the time of his trial or since.  No DNA evidence has been produced to support his conviction.  Since his trial in 1991, seven of the nine witnesses have recanted their testimony, several citing police pressure to testify originally.  Davis's lawyers pursued his case to higher courts asking for stays and a chance to prove his innocence.  Many pushed for him to be granted clemency due to the doubt surrounding his guilt.  But, the judicial branch of the government sentenced him to death and the US government murdered him.

Alan Gross has been convicted of subversion in Cuba for smuggling phone equipment to Jewish groups in the country.  Cuba has sentenced him to fifteen years in prison.  The United States has requested release and sent dignitaries to negotiate it.  Gross has lost approximately 100 lbs in prison in Cuba in the last year and a half.  There is currently a push to release him from prison on humanitarian grounds.  Only the severity of the punishment is at issue in this case, not Gross's guilt according to Cuban law.

Jonathan Pollard was convicted of espionage for an allied country without intent to harm the United States.  He passed intelligence information to Israel while serving as a US intelligence officer.  He pled guilty to the crime and is serving (contrary to his plea agreement) a life sentence without parole for his crime.  It is the longest sentence anyone has served for espionage for a US ally.  His health been failing, and none of his requests for parole have been granted despite his long sentence, his good behavior as an inmate, and assurances that he can never pass such secrets again.

I do not think any of these sentences are deserved for the crimes in question, but I must say it is rather hypocritical for the US to call other justice systems oppressive and unjust given its current state.

Jew Cool, Politics, and Eric Cantor

I don't know when it started to be cool to be Jewish.  But somehow, the stereotype of the Jewish comedian has morphed from the nebbish Woody Allen to the cool Jon Stewart and Sarah Silverman.  Jews have gone mainstream.  This is progress.  No longer sidelined as much, maligned by the mainstream, or ridiculed, Jews have the opportunity in modern America to be cool. (Just ask Drake if you don't believe me.)

Growing up as this transition was happening, I was taught to appreciate the successes of fellow members of the tribe.  Most notably, this appreciation is codified in Adam Sandler's Chanukah Song, but it extends to other industries as well.  When a Jew gets a promotion or gets elected, I am supposed to be proud, simply because I am also a Jew.

However, this acceptance of Jews into the mainstream allows Jews to feel a part of that mainstream.  Which means?  Jewish Republicans.  And I am supposed to be proud that a Jew is House Majority Leader.  I am supposed to say "look at our progress" when a Jew is on the frontline of the fight to deny Americans basic rights?  I'm sorry, but I can't feel proud of that.  It's a shonde.

Amy Winehouse

Sorry this post is so late.  I don't often post about random popular culture, but here goes.  In the hours following the death of musician Amy Winehouse, the media frenzy went forward on two fronts.  The first question they examined was whether the singer had overdosed, and the second question they examined was  whether the singer's family's desire to have a Jewish funeral for their daughter was appropriate.

Amy Winehouse is the Jewish girl that gave Jewish girls the ability to not be so nice.  She was always open about her background and never apologetic that her life was not beholden to halachah.  Adherence to Jewish law is not the only factor that makes a Jew, and Winehouse's parents and family should have been free to bury her in a fashion they saw fit (assuming she had no documentation indicating otherwise) without question.  In Judaism, caring for the dead is considered the highest mitzvah because the deceased cannot bury themselves.  And whether the person in question followed the commandments is not at issue.  The burial does not become more or less kosher based on the actions of the deceased.

Not all Jews are observant, and not all who are not Orthodox lack all observance.  So someone who was not a nice Jewish girl can be buried as soon as possible according to Jewish custom without a contradiction.

Glenn Beck and Jews

In July, Glenn Beck gave a speech in which he asserted that if Israel is threatened or Jews are being killed, the perpetrators of violence should count him a Jew and come for him first. The statement was somewhat of a political success for Beck, who has been criticized by many for his comments comparing Reform rabbis to Islamist extremists.

I have news for Glenn Beck. If you want to show solidarity with Jews, you cannot pick and choose which Jews you support. Judaism is not a religion of convenience, and the Jewish people are not a nation of convenience. So, let me introduce myself:

I am a liberal, transmasculine Jew, who is attracted to people of a variety of genders. I identify as queer. I was raised in the Reform Movement and still find my Jewish home in a Reform synagogue. I am young, Zionist, and a harsh critic of Israeli policy. I am for peace and Palestinian statehood, not necessarily in that order. I am not traditionally observant, but I am deeply religious. I believe in equal marriage, a woman's right make choices regarding her body, and big government. I believe that Israel needs to obey international law, and I personally hold Israel to a different standard with regard to its politics, policies, and international relations, but mine is a higher standard, not exemptions. I have no plans to move to Israel and no plans to start observing Shabbat in a tradtional way or plans to keep kosher. I have no plans to serve as anyone's token Jew. In my Judaism, recognizing the godliness in every human being is my paramount value. I believe in the separation of church and state in the United States, and I believe I should be able to walk down the street and not be harassed based on my gender expression, sexuality, or religion.

So, Glenn Beck, I ask you, if they come for me first, will you stand up for me? Will you say, count me in community with Kythe because he's a Jew? Or will you say "Kythe is not really a Jew, because good Jews aren't like Kythe?" The difference between you and me, Glenn Beck, is that you can choose in which contexts you affiliate with Jews. I can't.

I am a Jew always, not only when upstanding communiy members are under attack, but also when Jews murder young boys. I am not only a Jew in my synagogue or in interfaith dialogues, but I am a Jew when I am amidst groups of transgender folk, lesbians, gay men, bisexual people, genderqueer persons, and other people who have been systematically dehumanized by religious people and instituitons, including Jewish ones. Judaism is not a hat I take on and put off as it suits me.

I am glad that you were moved about persecution by your experience visiting Auschwitz-Birkenau. But I ask you, will you stick up for all those oppressed, or just those you approve of already?

Also, how will you stick up for others if they come for you first? You are a straight white man of considerable wealth. Using that advantage to end persecution is much better than using it to fall on a sword.

Say publicly that you'll stand up for people like me and I might take your commitment to be counted among Jews seriously. Until then, it's all enunciated hot air.