For Lance Corporal Jeremy Kane, z"l, let's serve the country

Lance Corporal Jeremy Kane, a US marine, was killed last week while on patrol in Afghanistan. He grew up and had his bar mitzvah at M’kor Shalom Reform Temple in Cherry Hill. His funeral was there today. I sent a contribution in his memory to the JWB Jewish Chaplains Council from “The members of Monmouth Reform.” The Jewish community has not been touched so often or so directly by military casualties since 9-11. But that is not because Jews have not been killed or don’t serve proudly and with distinction in our military. Lance Corporal Kane’s death is a close reminder of the price we all pay for freedom and security. His life should inspire us to find ways to serve ourselves. Let’s not put that off any longer; but make that happen this year.

Please read this letter from Anat Hoffman (director of IRAC, the Israel Religious Action Center) about religious freedom and women's rights in Israel...

Dear Friends of IRAC,
When I was on the Jerusalem city council, I gave a lot of thought to earthquakes. The seismologists had figured out that every eighty years an earthquake strikes Israel, and since the last major earthquake occurred in 1927, we are due for another one soon. Many things have not changed since my city council days – Israel was and is not prepared to deal with an earthquake and its aftermath. Only in 1980 did Israel start building according to earthquake safety codes. We are better prepared for biological or chemical warfare than we are for natural disaster.

The fault line runs from the Dead Sea, and into Jerusalem; it passes under Al-Aqsa Mosque, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and the Kotel. Some of the holiest structures in the world could be gone in one morning. And while my interrogation two weeks ago certainly rocked the Jewish world, it is nothing compared to what an earthquake could do.

I believe the greater tragedy would not be the destruction of holy structures, but the destruction of holy human life. The terrible earthquake in Haiti reminded me that too often we think about the stones of these structures, animating them with our thoughts, but forget about the lives being lived around them, and the individual spirits that fill them with prayer.

Women who pray out loud at the Kotel are told that their voices offend the very stones of the Wall – no mention that in the name of protecting the feelings of these sacred stones, a living woman can be made to feel marginalized and humiliated. Too often we forget about each other, we forget we’re each alive.

This past week I’ve been moved in so many ways – by the heroic efforts of the Israeli emergency responders and by international aid relief efforts in Haiti, and more personally, by the outpouring of support we’ve received from around the world for Women of the Wall and religious pluralism.

From one of my favorite passages in Isaiah: “for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples” (Isaiah 56:1). The walls of the house can be built of anything, anywhere; it is the people who dwell there that count.

L’shalom,
Anat Hoffman

P.S. If you have not done so already, please send the following letter of support to your country’s Israeli ambassador.

Dear _____,

On behalf of the Jewish people fighting for religious pluralism in Israel, I am outraged that one of our leaders, Anat Hoffman, was interrogated and fingerprinted by Jerusalem police on January 5th, 2010. Police told Hoffman, Executive Director of the Israel Religious Action Center and leader of Women of the Wall, that she may be charged with a felony for violating the rules of conduct at what many consider to be Judaism’s most sacred site.
Hoffman’s interrogation came less than two months after the November 18th, 2009 arrest of the Women of the Wall member Nofrat Frankel for wearing a talit and holding a sefer Torah.

We will not tolerate this discrimination and abuse to continue among our own people. Women are treated as second-class citizens at a holy and historic place that has great symbolic importance for all Jews.

We are shocked by the brutal and callous insults to which Women of the Wall have been subjected. Many of these curses cannot be repeated in polite company. Israeli police have seen fit to arrest women who go to the wall for peaceful prayer, and make no attempt to reprimand those who spit and curse at them, a stark reminder of the power enjoyed by the Israeli ultra-Orthodox, and their success in forcing their religious practices on an entire nation.
If this were to happen in any other country in the world, the Jewish community would be up in arms. Israel is the rare democracy today that tolerates and even endorses religious discrimination against Jews.

Make no mistake: What appears to be a growing religious crisis in Israel is as much a threat to Israel's survival as are the external threats, and perhaps more so. Israel has shown that she can protect herself from armies and terrorists. Protecting herself from religious extremism may be Israel's biggest challenge--a challenge that cannot and must not be ignored by those who care about Israel’s soul.
We cannot allow this discrimination to continue any further. We must protect our religious rights in Israel.
Pass on our message to the Israeli government: the Kotel is the beating heart center for the whole of the Jewish people, and not an Ultra-Orthodox synagogue. The arrest and intimidation of women praying at the Wall must stop. The Wall must become a place where all Jews can pray and connect spiritually to Israel.
Israeli Ambassador to the United States:

Michael Oren
Embassy of Israel
3514 International Dr. N.W.
Washington DC 20008

Haiti Earthquake: Help provide relief and support

Yesterday's earthquake in Haiti requires a quick and massive response. There are few things that you and I can do directly to help the people of Haiti in this time of desperate need other than give financial support for supplies and recovery efforts. We are blessed with safety, security and material abundance (yes, even in this time of our own economic struggle, the earthquake surely reminds us how fortunate we are). The Union for Reform Judaism is collecting funds for Haiti's recovery and relief needs. I just gave. Will you join me? Donate Here Now

I also encourage you to make time for prayer in response to this tragic disaster. Offer prayers of gratitude for your own well-being, prayers for the strength and welfare of those hurt and displaced by the earthquake, and prayer for the dead and their families. We will, of course, include prayers for Haiti in our upcoming Shabbat services.

Make Hummus, Not War

Linda Gradstein reports from Abu Ghosh, just outside Jerusalem (those who came on MRT's last Israel trip, we had our farewell dinner there):

Israel fired a new salvo at its northern neighbor Lebanon in what has been
dubbed the "hummus war" by retaking the world record for the largest dish ever
of the chickpea paste that is a staple of the Middle Eastern diet.... (read the
entire article)

Maybe the Israelis are on to something. This war may have the same cycle of one-upsmanship as more violent conflicts, but nobody dies and the more the "war" rages, the more people get to eat. So go ahead, Lebanon, bring your best next shot. And somebody pass me a fresh pita.

Somebody close the door, it's getting cold in here

In doing research for tonight’s sermon, “The Jewishness of Janus,” I learned that we are not the first “superpower” to find ourselves in a state that feels like – if not truly is – perpetual war.

According to a Wikipedia article on Janus: Numa Pompilius, the second ruler of Rome (after Romulus), introduced the Ianus geminus (also called Janus Bifrons, Janus Quirinus or Portae Belli), a passage ritually opened at times of war and shut again when Roman arms rested. It formed a walled enclosure with gates at each end situated in the Roman Forum. In the course of wars, the gates of the Janus were opened, and in its interior sacrifices were held to forecast the outcome of military events. The doors were closed only during peacetime, an extremely rare event. The Roman historian Livy (who lived at the turn of the common era) wrote in his definitive history of the empire, Ab urbe condita, that the doors of the temple had only been closed twice since the reign of Numa: first in 235 B.C.E. after the first Punic war and second after the battle of Actium in 31 B.C.E.

While one could argue that America has not been “at war” throughout our history, it must also be acknowledged that the past 100 years (or more) have not been so peaceful as some would like to imagine. The “Cold War” and the current state – whether one calls it “the War on Terror” or as Melanie Phillips recently called it, a “global religious war against the free world” – remind us that “war” is not just “hot” engagement with the enemy on a traditional (Yorktown, Waterloo, Bulge) battlefield. Maybe that chill you feel won't be solved by green technology and Energy Star. Maybe we should start with somebody trying to close that door that's been left open.