"NO JEWS OR DOGS ALLOWED." That sign kept my father out of the public swimming pool where I as a child swam 30 years later.  My father was routinely called a Christ-killer; only one anonymous phone-caller ever dared call me "a f**king Jew." Between dad's childhood and mine came the Nazi murder of millions of Jews, gays, lesbians, and Roma.  American soldiers fought the Nazis. The Nazis murdered Jews.  Therefore suddenly in the public mind Jew-hater meant Nazi.  Auschwitz killed the Nazi brand because it taught where hatred leads.

In my father's childhood, businesses discriminated by religious belief.  In Johnson County the City of Leawood excluded Jewish and black home ownership. Blacks could not swim in my childhood pool in Baltimore because they were considered inferior to whites. All this murder and hatred was religiously justified.

Fashions change. Hatred remains. The Nazis made hating Jews unfashionable, at least overtly in polite society.  Some still hate us and call us Christ-killers:  think of Mel Gibson. But the law forbids Americans to turn their religious hatred into refusal to do business.  Society demands that if you are open for business to anyone you are open for business to everyone.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 legally ended discrimination in public accommodations against racial, ethnic, national and religious minorities, and women.  Restaurants had to serve blacks, no matter how much a religion justified hatred.  But now, some Kansans again seek to get the law to permit their religious hatred of other Americans. We've walked this path before.

Christians and Jews both believe in a God of love.  Genesis 5:1 teaches that all humans are created in God's own image. If you believe that there is to be divine punishment of actions you consider to be a sin, then let God take care of it. We humans are commanded to love the image of God.

The front page of the Kansas City Star this morning, February 16th, erroneously lumped together two types of discrimination that are not the same although both are based on so-called religious convictions. JE Dunn Construction opposes "[p]roviding insurance coverage for any birth control method that induces an abortion..." Last week in the Kansas Legislature they "debated a measure ... intended to ensure that business owners who morally object to same-sex marriage won't be punished if they refuse to serve gay couples." In recent history in the United States we do not allow discrimination against those who have a different racial or religious identity, things that cannot be readily changed. The state cannot coerce or expect me to alter who I am, and therefore businesses cannot discriminate according to my birth status or belief system. But protecting an action is not the same thing as protecting a status. I am personally in favor of the legislation requiring coverage for birth control. But it's protecting access to a type of health care, not preventing discrimination according to a state of being. The two are not the same. To allow discrimination against people by virtue of who they are opens the door to every religion accepting socially only their own members, an impossibility for a social fabric. If businesses can discriminate against gays because of supposed biblical prohibitions against homosexuality, why would they not be allowed to discriminate against those they believe to reject their Lord and Savior? The beliefs of Jews are surely more objectionable than the actions of homosexuals because Jews reject the core of Christian belief while gays and lesbians have different attitudes toward one aspect of life. The state has a compelling interest in protecting religious belief, and forbids discrimination on the basis of belief or sexual orientation. Equality may demand equal access to health care, but it's not the same argument as protecting gays and lesbians from discrimination.

Purim's coming: Saturday night March 15th and Sunday March 16th. It's going to be a blast of a party, which is a little weird. Why? Because there are 3 parties in the Book of Esther, and someone gets done in in each of them. 

The Book of Esther is like a modern sitcom -- all the men are fools except for the conniving Jew, Mordecai. In chapter 1 King Ahasuerus throws a 180 day drunken bash for his friends, lustilly calls for his curvaceous wife Vashti to come dance (some would say wearing only the royal diadem); and when she refuses, banishes her. The king's adviser, Memucan, pronounces that Vashti offended not only the king, but, megalomaniacally, "all the officials and against all of the peoples in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus." Why you ask? Because if the queen can refuse the king, every woman can refuse her husband's irrational, drunken demands, and then where would we be (think Florida here)? So Vashti is banished from the royal precincts (the midrash says she was killed) and the king searches for a new bride.

Chapter 2 begins with the king's remorse about what he had done in his stupor. Rashi comments that he was sad in remembering Vashti's beauty. Wow! Sounds like a frat party gone bad! After choosing Esther as his bride, the king feasts again (it's good to be king), and this time Mordecai overhears two of the king's eunuchs, Bigthan and Teresh, plotting against their boss. The eunuchs suffer an impaling experience, and Mordecai earned points with His Highness.

In chapter 7, Esther uses a party to undo Haman, the sycophantic, murderous enemy of the Jews. As a result of the party, Haman, too, ends up on the pointy end of a stake, hoisted on his own petard, and so the book ends triumphantly for the Jews, with so much blood that few can stomach the picture.

So the question: what do you imagine the book thinks of parties? Why, when there's lots of alcohol being consumed, does someone always end up dead? And why in the world do we Jews throw a party while listening to the Megillah?

What's your opinion?

JUDAISM TEACHES THAT ALL LIFE IS PRECIOUS.  It's a radical concept, revolutionary really.  Most of us don't actually believe it; or perhaps more correctly put, we don't act on that belief.  Interestingly, it's the hallmark of Judaism. It's a religious syllogism:

1.    When God created mankind, He made him in the likeness of God; male and female He created them. (Genesis 5:1-2)

2.    You shall be holy for I, the Lord your God, am holy. (Lev. 19:2)

3.    Therefore, all humans are holy.

That which is holy is precious. All life is precious.

If we believe all life is precious, in practical terms, it means:

1.    We'd provide health care for all citizens in life threatening situations;

2.    We'd provide basic food, clothing and shelter to all citizens who are incapable to provide for themselves;

3.    We'd provide equal access to justice to all citizens;

4.    We'd tax ourselves equitably to protect the preciousness of life.

This is not politics.  This is principled religion.  Politics is preferring a particular political party or program to achieve these ends. The ends are religious practice that logically flow from the belief that we are all created equally in God's image. All life is precious.  But many religious people espouse religion more than practicing it.

A man was murdered in a parking lot in Florida because the music in his car was too loud.  Someone in the car turned it down.  He turned it back up. The man in another car who had asked for the music to be lowered shot the man playing the music multiple times.  Apparently neither thought to move either car to a different spot in the parking lot. 

If it had been me playing the music too loudly, no one would believe that I should have been killed for that offense. But it was a middle aged white man accusing a teenage black man in Florida.  Therefore, some people think it's plausible, without a shred of evidence other than the testimony of the accused, that the black man had a shotgun and threatened the white man.  But if we believed life is precious there'd be no reasonable defense for killing a man in cold blood.  "Hey, mister, why didn't you just move your car if you didn't like the music in the parking spot?"  Instead he chose, "Stand your ground." And a man, a human being created in God's own image, is dead.

What does it mean to be religious? Does it mean Shabbat candles and High Holy Day repentance? Does it mean eating the right foods and fasting on Yom Kippur?  It can.  But principally it means acting upon the dictum that all life is precious. The rest follows from that ideal.

Some years ago during January I was preparing to serve a Sunday afternoon meal at the reStart Shelter. The kitchen managers were always either current or former residents of the shelter, and therefore were intimately familiar with homelessness.  I said to the kitchen manager, "I feel bad for the people who are here because of bad luck."  The manager looked at me and said, "Mister, there ain't nobody here who isn't here because of some bad choice they made."  I was shocked.  If it's their bad choices, why am I helping them out?

Philip Seymour Hoffman made some bad choices as a result of a past addiction and the recent need for painkillers.  All of America grieved the loss of a great actor.  But he died because of his bad choices.  In the aftermath, an MIT professor, Seth Mnookin, publically wrote of his own struggle with addiction and the bad choices he made in his life, and how he must counter them even now.  As it happens, I knew Mr. Mnookin's grandparents.  I buried his grandfather.  He was a wonderful man.  And I feel sympathy as a result for Mr. Mnookin the grandson, who will be challenged perhaps everyday of his life for as long as he lives by past bad choices.  And I have made a few bad choices myself in my own time. I would like the forgiveness of others, and perhaps their acceptance that I have done my best.  Maybe they could even accept me into their lives with all of my bad choices.  Then how, if I would like their mercy, would I believe that anyone else's life is less precious than my own?  How can I condemn a person, born with fewer privileges and acquiring less education, to live without the fundamentals in life?  Is not his/her life as precious as my own, or Mr. Mnookin's, whose righteous grandfather I knew and therefore feel sympathy for the plight of the grandson?

I believe in a spiritual life.  I believe in afterlife, and the one God of Israel, and the mitzvot given to the Jewish people.  I am a Jew.  But I know that first and foremost, God requires that, regardless of my beliefs, I act like a Jew.  Jews believe that life is precious and act accordingly.

At Beth Torah we don't judge anyone but ourselves, and our own actions.  I want to live as though your life is as precious to me as it is to you.  Judaism is a revolutionary religion.  God requires no less.

Ground Hog's Day 2014

Ground Hog's Day marks the middle day of winter, "The Dead of Winter," after the dying season of autumn and prior to the "rebirth of spring." Death only appears to rule in these dark days. In just 6 weeks new sap will rise in old trees, and life will again reinvigorate itself. New innovations emerge; new energy flows into old limbs. Wintry death is an illusion, masking re-creation beneath the frozen ground. This season should be called "transformation," because new green shoots will soon emerge from the soil, giving birth to new flowers, scents and unimagined renewal. Winter is not the time of despair; it's the time of expectation for rebirth. Just 6 more weeks until life sprouts both reborn and yet different. Such is the way of the world.

Parashat T'rumah

Intentionally Encountering the Spiritual

January 31, 2014

Rabbi Mark H. Levin, DHL

This week's Torah portion famously states: "Let them build for me a sanctuary, that I may live within them."  God chose Moses for Moses' humility, according to the Torah.  (Number 12:3)  It's Judaism's way of telling us that ego is the enemy of spirituality. As Thomas Merton wrote, "Humility contains in itself the answer to all the great problems of the life of the soul.”

Judaism developed ways to experience God's presence.  Direct revelation is not possible.  But we long for God.  The soul thirsts for God's assuring and emotional companionship within, without being scorched like Aaron's sons ministering at God's altar.

So we arrive at Exodus 25, this week's portion of Torah after revelation on Sinai:  the building of God's earthly home, the tabernacle, God's indwelling presence on earth. I don't know that this structure actually existed.  I believe it's a metaphor for a necessary fact:  God must be found in the world.

Nineteenth century commentator, the Malbim, gets it exactly right when he says, "That each one [of us] will build a holy place in the rooms of his heart and prepare an altar to raise up all of the parts of his soul to God..." 

So how do we build that holy place in the heart?

The Talmud makes a very interesting comment  on the phrase, "Let them make for me a sanctuary..."  It says, "The holy things used in making repairs to the Temple may be used to pay the artisans who make the repairs.  As Rabbi Elazar said, 'Scripture says, Make for me a sanctuary, for me, from that which is mine.'"

Now think about this.  What are they discussing?  A Jew dedicates an animal, something he has raised but which is property, the work of his own hands, and contributes that animal to the support the sanctuary.  Normally that animal would go to pay the priests for their service.  But the Talmud teaches that those dedications may be used to pay the workers who use their skills to repair the sanctuary itself.  An animal, or anything dedicated to the sanctuary, goes from being secular to becoming holy.  And the production, from the raising of the animal to building of a piece of furniture for the sanctuary, becomes a mitzvah:  something commanded by God.  And what transforms it from the secular to the holy?  The intention of the donor to use it for holy purposes.  Then, even though this animal has been dedicated to be given to God and therefore assumes the holiness of the sanctuary, it can be used instead to keep the Tabernacle or sanctuary in working order and can become payment for the workers, who will then transform it back into food for their families.  The entire matter rests upon the intention to dedicate something to God and thereby, because of human intention, make it holy and a piece of God and God's work. 

The Talmud is telling us that once it is donated to be used in the sanctuary and for God it is God's property and therefore God-like.  Once dedicated, it no longer belongs to the owner, even if it has not yet been transferred to the Tabernacle or the Temple.  It assumes a different quality, the quality of God's property, partaking in God's holiness.  In other words: it no longer adds to the glory of the person who raised the animal or constructed the article given to God. It is now for God's glory, not the person's ego.

But this transformation requires work.  On this point, the book Avot d'Rabbi Natan, a parallel book to Pirkei Avot, explains, "Rabbi Tarfon says, 'Work is great, for even the Holy One did not spread his presence over Israel until they did some work [building the Tabernacle]...'"  In other words, the creation of holiness and bringing that holiness into our lives has several steps:  1) Physically creating something that requires our work; 2) Mentally transferring ownership of that something to a higher calling, to support that which we call holy, connected to God, and 3) Sacrificing that which we have created in order to support our personal lives to be used instead for God's benefit, no matter when that may occur and no matter what the ultimate use of that object or animal may be.  It's dedicating our work and the product of our hands to a higher calling. 

Our first midrash instructed that we are taking our stuff to give to God as a form of sacrifice.  But this begs a question. Doesn't the Bible say in many places, "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, the world and they who dwell therein?"  (Psalm 24:1)  Doesn't God already own it?  Rashi, the most famous biblical and talmudic commentator, therefore understands the words in our parashah, "Make for me a sanctuary," not as the Talmud says, "from my stuff," but instead, "For the sake of my name." But I would like to combine the two interpretations:  make a sanctuary for me from my stuff and for the sake of my name." 

Why, because when we make stuff:  grow it, manufacture it, whatever, we are dedicating them to our own purposes. Work rightfully gives ego satisfaction. We grow things to eat. We build homes to live in. We work to purchase all of those things today. And we tend to make ourselves the center of the world we construct with our own hands and minds.

But holiness requires something else: the humility of a contrite spirit. So again we turn to the Malbim and to psalms.  The ashes of the personal sacrifices we make are strewn over the altar of the contrite heart, as portrayed in Psalm 51:  "(Adonai s'fatai tiftach u'fi yagid t'hilatecha) O Lord, open my lips, that my mouth may declare your praise.  You do not want me to bring sacrifices; You do not desire burn offerings; True sacrifice to God is a contrite spirit; God, You will not despise a contrite and crushed heart."

Malbim portrays this wilderness sanctuary as existing within each of us, if we construct it in the heart.  How do we do that?  We must transform that which places us in the center of our own lives, the things we produce, into that which places God in the center of our lives. We do that by taking that which is most precious and dedicating it to God, a real sacrifice, a real giving up.  When we truly say to God, "This for which I worked and which I intended for myself, I give to you and your purposes," then we empty ourselves to allow God to fill the sanctuary of the soul, God's true tabernacle on earth.  That's the reason the true spiritual journey is quiet: it's just between you and God, the dedication of self to a higher existence, to furthering God's purpose for our lives.  As this week's Torah says to us, "Let them build for me a sanctuary, that I may live within them."

New York Times, September 16, 2013: WASHINGTON — A former Navy reservist killed at least 12 people on Monday in a mass shooting at a secure military facility …

In response to the news of the shooting, University of Kansas Journalism professor David Guth tweeted:

The blood is on the hands of the NRA. Next time, let it be YOUR sons and daughters. Shame on you. May God damn you.

Professor Guth issued a statement Thursday evening, October 24, 2013 apologizing for his tweet that "caused a great deal of pain for many people," according to the Huff Post, College:

“Some interpreted my tweet differently than it was intended," Guth wrote. "I don't want anyone's children hurt. The fact my words were misconstrued is my fault."

Guth said that he was a professional communicator but didn't do a good job of explaining his position.

Inadvertently, Professor Guth’s comments contrast the attitudes in Kansas regarding the first two amendments to the United States Constitution. 

The First Amendment states in part: 

Congress shall make no law …   abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press ....

The Second Amendment states: 

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

May a university professor freely and openly state his personal opinion regarding the application of the Second Amendment, if he does not threaten any individual or infringe on others' rights?

Professor Guth, in an emotional outburst most would expect to be protected by the First Amendment, articulated the frustration of multitudes of Americans at how the Second Amendment is applied in the United States today, and his perception of the consequences of current policies.  He expressed his fervent and gut-wrenching wish that the members of the NRA, the leading advocate for the uncontrolled gun sales that result from the current interpretation of the Second Amendment, might in the future personally experience the horror of the choices they foist upon others.  He was not hoping for further tragedy.  Any literate person could see that the professor gave full voice to those who wish the consequences of unbridled access to arms could be born by those who support those policies.

The University of Kansas has chosen to curtail free speech when normative application of the First Amendment is viewed as threatening current interpretation of the Second Amendment.  Thus, the University of Kansas, when the Second Amendment is viewed as being threatened by the First Amendment, has preferred the Second Amendment over the First.

It's an astonishing thought: that we have reached that point in Kansas in which the Right to Bear Arms is more precious than the Right to Free Speech.  I ask: which is a greater threat to democracy: curtailment of free speech or curbs on the right to bear firearms?

For myself, I have no doubt:  the University of Kansas has chosen the Second Amendment over the First, and endangered our democracy with their error.