A man broiling with lifelong hatred, like sludge oil within an overheated engine, wedged his way into Overland Park hunting Jews so he could release his pent up, liquid rage. Only his hatred matters. His name should disappear, like biblical Amalek. By pure chance he murdered, not killed as is often reported, three innocent, God revering Christians whose names should be listed among the martyrs: Dr. William Lewis Corporon, his 14-year-old grandson, Reat Griffin Underwood, and Terri LaManno.

The bullets flew precisely where aimed and missed their target, demonstrating the oft taught but rarely learned truth that once bullets fly they or their leaden siblings may strike anywhere. They murdered three, but penetrated all of our hearts.

Whose lives were altered forever?

1.    The murdered:  I will not even attempt to eulogize the talented young man, friend and singer, lauded by his school principal as a standout talent; the altruistic doctor, who gave up his life-giving practice to love his grandchildren in Overland Park; the daughter and energetic community volunteer who, by her very being, energized those privileged to be around her.

2.    Those in the Jewish Community Campus and Village Shalom: whose psychological armor protecting them from the possibility of flying bullets launched by murderous hatred was pierced and has yet to fully heal, or even scar over.

3.    The relatives of those so proximate to the murder in physical space that, in their mind’s eye, their loved ones were imagined as the flesh and blood bodies in the parking that sunny Sunday.

4.    The Overland Park population who suddenly witnessed the horror: the terror aimed at their anonymous neighbors but instead striking their friends, members of their church, people with whom they worked and prayed and played.

The murderer tore away the psychological pretense, the protective fiction afforded by such suburban fantasies that others are targets and victims of hate. Suddenly we all became Gabby Gifford with a target on our backs, as we too felt as though our flesh were penetrated and torn. Because the murdered lay dead in parking lots, we, too, no longer held shields against random hatred. It might have been us.

What have we learned?

An inchoate, internal sense that something eminently real but as yet unnamed has been altered forever within us. We witnessed random, yet purposeful and directed violence. Each person who self-selected as a witness made him/herself vulnerable to the same unspeakable violability. Whether we take the next step to turn our vulnerability into constructive action is what faces us now.

What will we do?

Curiously, we instinctively turned toward one another to share the moment, and then to mourn together. We did not isolate ourselves into separate camps, but came together as a cross-political-border/state line/inter-faith/interracial community to share our common experience. I believe this to be a new reaction in our metro-area. Our humanity united us as neither State Line nor Troost Avenue divided us. Instinctively we talked and listened to whomever felt compelled to share our human terror and disgust. We instinctively started the process.

Where will we take this process?

It is important to state that it has begun. But now, to whom shall we turn? Which thoughtful leaders will help this newborn community to take it’s first childlike steps toward a new understanding of what it means to be a citizen of a loving community, created in the image of God?

If we stop where we are, we will fail to honor the dead.  If we do not move forward, we shall fail the hope-filled path just being forged in a wounded community. Admitting our common vulnerability, might we together construct a path beyond hate-filled destruction to a newly realized unity of spirit? God could well be present in this moment, if we could build upon our discovered common humanity to create a lasting civic peace.

Creating Sacred in the Moment
Have you noticed people in a better mood with the arrival of better weather? We suffered a long, cold winter with plenty of snow, and by the end of it I know many people were not only tired of the darkness and cold but their moods were affected. Environment matters. It twists both how we feel, and as a result, how we act toward others.
The end of Leviticus 22 that we read this week contains some really interesting commandments. First a general principle: “You shall not profane my holy name, that I may be sanctified in the midst of the Israelite people.” (v. 32) What’s the general principle? “That I may be sanctified in the midst of the people.”
In the real world, dealing with our daily lives, how do you do that? Why would I do that? Well, some of the answers appear right here within a few verses, so perhaps we’ll find enough examples to understand what and why.
In the very next chapter, just 2 verses after the command to sanctify our lives, we discover the most obvious and the most observed of holiness for American Jews: sacred times. Leviticus 23 lists the biblical holidays. “These are my fixed times of the Lord, which you will proclaim as sacred occasions.”
We American Jews at least superficially understand holy times. Shabbat, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, Passover and finally Shavuot. We get it. We’re assigned to do things we think of as holy, like pray, or maybe have a special meal with the family. We get it.
Add to that personal holy times: Births, brises, bar and bat mitzvahs, weddings, funerals: we get it. These times are special, and to mark them we need to do something extraordinary. We change our routine. We mark the occasion, and hopefully we enable ourselves to experience the sacred presence in the moment. It’s pretty easy to do that when a healthy baby is just born. The miracle of life somehow inspires awe in us. When we lose someone to death the sacred in the moment is more difficult to bring to the surface. But interestingly, and many say this, the mystery of life is present also at the moment of death, not just the moment of birth. At such times, the manifestation of something “other,” something beyond our grasp, presents itself in such a way that demands our affirmation and yet we cannot put it into words. So we use symbols and ceremonies to capture, explain and enhance such moments.
Judaism attempts to attach us to sacred in good and bad moments. That’s the reason that Pirkei Avot says that an ignorant person cannot be pious. It’s tough discovering and extracting the holy in trying times, like when you feel horrible. I fail daily; but I also succeed daily. So, for instance, this chapter in Leviticus (v. 28) demands that no ox, sheep or goat should be slaughtered on the same day as its mother. Well, why? The obvious answer: compassion for animals. Does an ox recognize its offspring? I don’t actually know. But our guts are churned by slaughter. That’s why we stay so far away from the processing of the meat we eat. We limit our exposure. Jews separate out the blood, because the blood symbolizes the life, and we don’t want to take the life but we must in order to survive many would say. God is “rachum” in Exodus 34’s 13 attributes of God, and so we must be compassionate as well. Creating compassion within calms our nerves, settles our churning stomachs upset by what we feel we must do, or by what we must do to satisfy appetites.
You see how this works? God is available in every circumstance and every moment. But just as it’s easier to be happy in spring weather for some people, it’s easier to feel the sacred in the birth of a child than in a moment of slaughter or frustration. The Jewish ideal is to live in holiness all of the time. Study trains us to both find what is holy in this moment, and then actually do it, not just talk about it.
In Lev. 18:4 Torah commands us to live by the commandments. During the Maccabean wars, two millennia ago, a Jewish town was besieged by Syrians. They held out until Shabbat, when, interpreting the Torah to mean that they could not fight on Shabbat, they lay down their weapons and were slaughtered. Our Rabbis thereafter interpreted Leviticus 18 to mean, “You shall live by the Torah laws and not die by them.” So, since that time a coerced Jew may break any but 3 laws rather than give us his/her life for being Jewish.
Now, thank God, we do not live in a place or time in which Jews are told, “Eat pork or I’ll kill you.” But it’s interesting to know what those 3 things are for which a Jew must die rather than transgress. We may not murder another person to save ourselves, commit a sex crime to save ourselves, or publicly practice idolatry to save ourselves. For the first two that means: your life is of equal importance to others, but not more important. Loving your neighbor does not mean giving that neighbor the water that will save your life. You are commanded to live. But we may not take another’s life to save ourselves.
How might this apply today? It will be interesting to watch the research about fracking as it develops. If it turns out that fracking is destroying lives in order to make the United States oil independent, or lower the cost of fuel, or make life more convenient: which is the path of holiness? May a Jew compromise another person’s life to improve his own? Is that holy?
I am painfully aware that I have not always been able to live in this fashion. My fear of hypocrisy is nearly as bad as my fear of being wrong. So I want to tell you a story:
The Dubner Maggid, a Hasidic rebbe and story teller, was a friend of the great 17th and 18th century rabbinic genius, the Vilna Gaon. It is said that the Vilna Gaon asked of the Dubner Maggid one day, “Preach musar to me.” Now musar is everyday moral teaching. It’s not fancy university stuff. It's how to live a moral life. The Dubner Maggid refused, “How can I teach anything to the great Vilna Gaon?” And indeed on a certain level, the Maggid was right. The Vilna Gaon knew every Jewish text, and was very worldly besides, having mastered both philosophy and mathematics as well as Jewish law and kabbalah. But the Vilna Gaon insisted. “Preach musar to me.”
Said the Dubner Maggid, “You teach how Jews should live their day to day lives, but you sit and study and teach all day. Come down here and live with the people, and then you tell them how to live.”
It’s a great insight. I see, I watch, I listen to how the pressures of the day to day world press people to do things and live in ways they would not choose to live. My own father was told one day, in a business for which he kept the books, “We need to lose $50,000 on the books, Bob.” Dad knew it was a bribe to a New Jersey union. He also knew he needed a job and had a wife to support and a son in college. But within weeks my dad quit his job, and without having found another job, moved to a new state. He never told me that was the reason. I just surmised. He did what the job required, and then quit and left.
Living with religious theory is one thing. Living with the pressures of daily realities may be another. But let me conclude with this: Living attached to God yields great satisfaction of the spirit. Compromise does not. I have witnessed great people who live as a blessing, have little material wealth, and thank God every day for God’s nearness. God has given us this gift of the spirit. The Torah and all of Jewish writings try to help us to figure how we live our particular lives in holiness. There are only two judges of your life that truly matter: God above, and God within. Be true to them, and God’s holiness is yours.

A spiritual God placed us in a physical world and gave us the possibility to live lives of the soul. This week's Torah portion begins, "You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy." How do we achieve holiness?
Jews create and live in sacred dramas. We have just been through one: the seder, in which we enact our exodus from Egypt, the root experience of the Jewish people, until we fulfill th...e commandment, "In each generation each person is obligated to see him/herself as though s/he came out of Egypt."
Each time we remove the Torah from the ark, we participate in a sacred drama reenacting the revelation on Sinai, in which the lectern is Mt. Sinai, the reader is Moshe Rabbeinu, and the Torah is revelation.
Why these sacred dramas? In order to structure our lives to fulfill this week's portion: being holy, the ultimate purpose of human life. If we simply indulge in the physical world, we will lead purely physical lives. But if we set aside time, called Shabbat, to dedicate to sacred living; if we dedicate a portion of our work for the altruistic act of selfless giving, tzedakah; if we behave morally with others even to our physical detriment (e.g. - do not put a stumbling block before the blind, love your neighbor as yourself) then we transform the physical earth into a spiritual abode and transcend time. Sacred drama enables us to transform our beings by sculpting our actions to fit God's design.
Shabbat shalom.

We were all assaulted last week. For the first time many Jews felt the visceral experience of being the hunted.

The murderer who killed 3 innocent souls at the Jewish Community Campus and Village Shalom had his shotgun aimed at you and me in his mind, and we know that very clearly now. Deadly anti-Semitism is no longer a theory. For many, particularly those who were at the Campus or nearby, but really all of us, it broke through our psychological defense, and theory became emotional reality. It’s difficult to be so hated that someone wants you dead.

It’s easy to claim that the murderer was a madman.  By some definition I suppose he is. But he was not insane. He lived among us, a 3-hour drive away, and everyone tolerated his anti-Semitic anti-minority hatred because nothing legally could be done about his venom. Until last week, it appears he never hurt anyone. Now 3 innocent and kind people are dead because nothing can be done about blatant hatred until a corpse lies on the ground.

Everything in our being strives not to be that corpse. For the first time many in our community feel themselves in the gun sights of a murderer, and the reality is unnerving.

But consider: so has it always been, just ask a Holocaust survivor. We are given an opportunity to deal with the real world. There are those who hate us despite all that Jews contribute to civilization. So then, how do we cope?

Let us not bottle up our fears.  Be aware of those around you, family members or other loved ones, particularly those who were near the line of fire, who have perhaps even dissociated this experience, put it in a bubble separate from themselves and are not willing to deal with it.  Encourage them to talk until they have worked through the trauma.  Validate their feelings by listening and affirming how their emotions. Check in to hear and see how they are progressing. Please do not deny or contradict their feelings, or belittle their fear. It’s very real to many among us. Some people may want a couple of conversations with a psychologist to get past their trauma.  But what about the rest of us?

We live in dangerous world. Most of Johnson County culture has been cultivated to make it seem that the world is not dangerous at all. We avoid infirmity and those who are ill. Some live in gated communities. We drive large cars to protect our bodies, our families and often our egos from harm. All of this seems to keep the jungle at bay, until the unthinkable happens.  So now what?  Now that we see the brutal reality of the jungle where animals are prey, how do we cope?

First, let us admit that we are frightened, and that we do need to take reasonable measures to protect ourselves.  But let us not react as our nation did after 9/11 by exaggerating the threat.

Next, let us keep an eye out for one another in this jungle called life.  So many around us have their lives threatened daily, and you don’t have to motor across State Line to see it. So many suffer life-threatening illnesses and need the help of friends and community to support them in their hour of need. I just met with a man who is all alone and suffering terribly. It was driving him out of his mind until he had a caring person to share his thoughts and fears. Let us watch out for one another, and reach out to help with a kind thought, a listening ear, transportation to a doctor, watching after children, buying groceries for a neighbor, mowing a yard.  So much can be done to show support and make a threatened life easier to bear.

Finally, let us remember that none will escape this world without trials. Let us thank God for our lives, the lives of those we love, and a community that supports us. Rather than searching for where our enemies may be hiding, let us reach out to the friends who are newly awakened to the threat to all of our lives, and together build a new community with a new heart. This will not be organized by clergy, or church and synagogue boards. It can only be brought to fruition by good people who realize now, together, today, that only we and our neighbors united in commitment, those with whom we share our lives daily, can tame this jungle we call home. Bullets flew and found targets, humans died without distinction of race, religion, color, sexuality, age or national origin.  The murderer had targets in mind. He did not succeed in his goal because human beings are all the same in the final analysis.  Maybe we can finally learn this from these deaths. As Benjamin Franklin first wrote, “If we don’t all hang together, we shall all hang separately.” The best solution to violence is for all of us to accept that “there but for the grace of God go I,” and to accept responsibility for the welfare of our neighbors. That means watching out for their children, taking care of them in illness, and caring about their welfare. We will live together as a community, or perish together as fools: class war, racial tensions, right against left and vice versa, religion against religion, whatever division we choose to distinguish ourselves from our neighbors.  The choice is ours. Once the bullets fly, we are all endangered. But a community of creatures in God’s image cannot be destroyed by terror.  Let us live together like aspen trees live in groves: individual trees standing strong, but all connected together at the root. As goes one, so go we all.

I awoke this morning feeling sad about those poor souls murdered last week at the Jewish Community Campus and Village Shalom:  Dr. Bill Corporon, Reat Underwood, and Terri Lamanno, religious Christians all. I can only imagine the tragic emotions of their families, and my heart goes out to them.

We emotionally attach ourselves to those we love.  In our grief we struggle to hold on to many of those invisible lines of connection.  The pain of loss throbs within not only because we lack their presence, but also because we desire to maintain every possible link in order to avoid abandoning their place in our lives. The irony is that so often people feel disloyal to the deceased if, as mourners, we attempt to find happiness.  We feel that not only are we deserting what they meant to us, but that somehow we ought never be blissful without their companionship.

The kaddish prayer addresses that internal instinct of disloyalty. By reciting kaddish from the grave forward, tradition insists that even though we resist, we are commanded to go on and strive for full lives without those who lie in the grave. It’s not disloyal to work towards enjoying life even though our loved one has died.  By tradition we return slowly to normalcy: giving up entertainment for at least the first month, avoiding certain pleasures.  I have often told people it’s because we feel these activities are not appropriate in the light of our loss and death itself. And that’s true. But there’s this other aspect: “You are no longer alive, but I will not abandon my love of you in death.  You are not alone in the grave.” We are not abandoning our loved ones who have died.  It’s not disloyal to enjoy life to the fullest, insofar as that is possible, even though they no longer walk by our side.

When I first studied the Talmudic text that men may not wear a tallit in the cemetery because the dead will be jealous, I thought it was ridiculous.  Now I understand its logic.  “How can I gain pleasure from life when the person I loved has suffered and can no longer have the same pleasure I enjoy, in this case: fulfilling the mitzvot?”  It’s totally natural to feel that way, but, nonetheless, tradition demands that from the cemetery forward we begin the journey that returns us to the world of living rather than attempting to keep one leg in the grave with our beloved.

Jewish tradition is ever so wise, and tuned in to the actual lives we lead. I pray for healing for all those who have lost family or friends in this tragedy. May we all restore ourselves to health and strength, wiser and closer to one another because even in tragedy there are lessons to be learned about life’s beauty.

To The Honorable Eric Holder, Attorney General of the United States
Dear Mr. Attorney General:

We are honored that you will address our community on Thursday morning regarding the tragic hate-crime murders this past Sunday at the Jewish Community Campus and the Shalom Geriatric Center in Overland Park.

Mr. Attorney General, these events have focused the attention of our community in a fashion I have not seen in my four decades in the rabbinate. The overwhelming impact of the murder of 3 wonderful, accomplished, giving, religious, caring and outstanding Christians as a hate-crime against Jews cannot be overstated. Our community is dumbfounded. We need your voice.
We all understand that you will not be able to solve this problem on Thursday. Indeed, the truth is, you cannot even begin to solve the problem striking at the heart of this community. But you have the unique ability and opportunity to start us in the right direction.
MR. ATTORNEY GENERAL, I ASK YOU TO ASK US TO LOOK AT ONE ANOTHER UNTIL WE TRULY SEE ONE ANOTHER. NOTHING WILL BE ACCOMPLISHED UNTIL THAT OCCURS.

Anti-semitism occurs in our region, but it is not overwhelming. Jews are seen on a continuum between outsider and beloved friend. But few of our neighbors truly understand us or our religion, neither do they desire to. We are largely strangers to one another.

Racism provides us with our primary bigotry. A color line still exists in Kansas City, Missouri along Troost Avenue. But our racism is more subtle. It's embedded in our neighborhoods, in our schools, in our dating patterns, in our hiring practices and in our interpersonal assumptions. It's also in our guardedness in the presence of other races; and when we allow ourselves the comfort of assuming a pose as though we are not racist, and then go on our merry way harboring unspoken prejudices. It's in our courts, and in our fears of others. We see more interracial couples in greater Kansas City than ever before, but it's still a rarity. Not much has changed in the last 30 years.

Religious superiority exists throughout our region. It is the assumption that somehow our personal religion is chosen, that our group is preferred by God, that our very being is better than our neighbors'. The murders unexpectedly attacked this intrinsic prejudice against the other because it exposed our mutual vulnerability. But we need you, Mr. Attorney General, to point us in the right direction, to instruct us that we cannot allow these innocent and righteous people to have died in vain, and that we must now assume the responsibility to truly understand our neighbors.

Had these murders occurred as black on black crime east of Troost Avenue you would not be here, and this community would not gather, even if it were called a hate-crime. You must help us to see ourselves for the people we are, or nothing will ever change, and our dead will be buried and mourned and we will go on with our lives.

There is a single villain here, a murderer, and he must be brought to justice. But I am asking you to plead with us to put on trial the assumptions that tolerated his existence among us. I believe now is the time; we have the opportunity; and you are the man for the job.

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing you speak to our community so confounded by our grief, but uncommonly willing to break down barriers to move forward together.

Sincerely,

Rabbi Mark H. Levin

13

The Myth of the Exodus

People in Shabbat class have been asking me about Richard Elliott Friedman's article in Reform Judaism Magazine contending that the Levites lived in and left Egypt. The article bears the unfortunate title "The Exodus is Not Fiction." Friedman proves no such thing, and his proffered information is not new. He contends, and he certainly could be correct, that the Bible's levitical names reflect an Egyptian origin, and that the tribal history of the Levites was adopted as the collective history of Am Yisrael. I do not disagree. But that's far from verifying the historical Exodus.
The Exodus narrative holds that the entire people escaped Egyptian servitude as a direct result of divine intervention through miracles and God's servant sent as Redeemer. The people not only flee slavery to Pharaoh, but voluntarily accept servitude to God at God's own mountain: Sinai. That is the Exodus myth. To contend that the core of that myth had historical origins with a single tribe is like saying discovering a 5,000 year old garden in Iraq proves the Garden of Eden. It may hint at the Garden of Eden, but it's no proof. To say that the myth of Hebrew origins in slavery had an historic core is nothing new and no surprise, but it proves nothing about the true meaning of the Exodus. That we will have to leave to the sphere of faith.