rbarenblat – Jewcy

Allah is the Light: Prayer in Ramadan and Elul

rbarenblat — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 05:16:54 +0000

It is a sticky August evening in Garrison, New York. I’m sitting on a park bench at a retreat center with a woman I’ve only just met. I’m wearing capris, a tank top, and my rainbow kippah. She’s wearing a turtleneck and long dress with her hair tucked under a scarf. Our assignment is to teach each other a favorite text from our own holy scriptures. She is a Muslim and I am a Jew. I’ve chosen Psalm 27, since the month of Elul is fast approaching and it’s customary to read the psalm daily during that month of spiritual preparation. We read two English translations, one from JPS and the other from my rebbe, Reb Zalman Schachter-Shalomi. "Yah, You are my light," Reb Zalman begins. We talk about the psalms writ large and what it’s like to pray them. She opens her vinyl-covered pocket Qur’an to surat An-Nur, "The Light," and I open the translation I brought with me. "Allah is the Light of the heavens and of the earth," begins Fakhry’s translation. We talk about what each of us thinks it means to speak of God in these terms. The sky over the lake turns pink and then darkens. When we turn to go inside, the meadow is filled with fireflies. * There are eighteen participants in the first Retreat for Emerging Jewish and Muslim Religious Leaders, organized by the office of multifaith initiatives at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. We have been carefully hand-picked. The Jews present were recommended by the heads of our various rabbinic programs as people likely to find this kind of interfaith encounter fruitful. The Muslims present aren’t clergy students (since, it turns out, their clergy formation process doesn’t map neatly to ours) but scholars, academics, community leaders, lay leaders. Many of them are Muslim Leaders of Tomorrow. The formal structure for our time together revolves around studying one of the stories our two traditions hold in common: not the Abraham/Ibrahim, Isaac and Ishmael tale around which most Abrahamic initiatives are based, but the story of Joseph/Yusuf. Two Jewish scholars and two Muslim scholars will delve deep into the story and its commentaries over the course of our week together. We read Tanakh and Qur’an, midrash and tafsir. Each of our teachers illuminates a different facet of this shared story. Raquel Ukeles teaches us about intertextuality in the Joseph narratives, Sherman Jackson provides a Blackamerican Muslim perspective on the ambiguity of love in the twin Joseph stories, Rabbi Or Rose offers Hasidic teachings on the Joseph cycle as a spiritual journey, and Mahmoud Ayoub teaches us about the Yusuf story as a lesson in repentance, love, and forgiveness. If this were the entirety of the retreat experience, dayenu: it would have been enough. * Four small subgroups are formed within our larger cohort, each tasked with a project. The first group organizes a storytelling circle: one night we sit on floor pillows and pass a microphone around. We’re invited to share love stories, then to share grandparent stories, which turn into immigration stories and then freeform stories about who we are and where we’re coming from. The first couple of tales are tentative, but then we start to loosen up. It’s the "grandparent" theme that really gets us going. Despite our considerable differences, we all had beloved grandparents and we all want to share something of how they made us who we are. One of the retreat organizers tiptoes out and returns with milk and cookies. We tell stories and we nosh. By the end of the evening, I’m starting to feel less like I need to be on my best behavior, and more like I can let some of my personality shine through. The second group project is a session of intrafaith dialogue, e.g. dialogue within (rather than between) our religious-community groups. The Jews gather in the Jewish prayer space, the Muslims gather in the Muslim prayer space, and each group takes half an hour to talk about what the retreat has been like for us so far, what we’re learning, what’s been good, what’s been hard. Not for the first time I’m amazed by the simple fact of sitting in a circle with rabbinic students from Reform, Conservative, Reconstructionist and Orthodox seminaries (plus the other two transdenominational seminaries besides my own.) I say something about that, and everyone laughs a little. And then I say the thing that’s been bothering me all week: I know how different we are from one another. But I don’t know enough about the Muslim cohort to know what their differences are. I don’t even know what questions to ask. We all know the terms Sunni and Shia, but what do they mean in practice? I can see variations of dress in the Muslim students, but what do those imply? What do I not even realize that I don’t know? When the two groups reconvene, the students in charge of the session take a new tack. They invite us to take turns, one Muslim speaking and then one Jew speaking, asking questions of one another. We come up with an incisive list of the things we don’t know about each other but wish we did. This is the first time that I hear someone outwardly name the elephant in the room, the issue of Israel and Palestine, and it feels to me as though the room breathes a collective sigh of relief. On the first night of the retreat, the subject of travel in Israel came up at the dinner table. (Of course all of the rabbinic students have spent time there; our perspectives differ, but it’s a natural area of conversational common ground for us.) I felt awkward, worried that the Muslims at our table might feel alienated but unsure how to ask them what the conversation was like for them. Now, a few days in to our learning together, one of the Muslim professors asks a question about how Jews perceive Israel and the energy in the room shifts. One of our potential points of contention has been raised and the sky hasn’t fallen. I feel as though an invisible weight has been lifted. * My small group gets the privilege of leading the session entitled "difficult conversations." When we meet early in the retreat to begin planning, we begin cautiously by asking each other what we think the difficult conversations are. Slowly we shift into talking about the stereotypes that each group holds of the other. Often the same stereotypes cut in both directions. Each of our communities has a tendency to feel that the other is more powerful. The Jews say: but there are so many of you; Israel is surrounded by hostile nations! And the Muslims say: but you are so disproportionately powerful given your small numbers! As we share with each other what we’ve heard in our communities, we wear the same chagrined expressions. We decide to begin our session with a roleplay. I will announce that we are on flight such-and-such from JFK to Heathrow and that I am our flight attendant. Then I will walk over to my two fellow retreatants, seated on chairs in the middle of the circle, and say, "I have a halal meal and a kosher meal…?" and pantomime handing one to each. In the ensuing conversation, my two classmates will aim to work in as many obnoxious stereotypes as possible. We decide to do a trial run, so I pretend to hand the meals to them and then I sit back to see what they will do. "Give me that," the Muslim says. "You took the wrong meal." Then he mutters, "Just like a Jew — taking what doesn’t belong to her!" It’s an appalling remark, and yet in this moment it’s hilarious; I have to fight back a giggle. His Jewish counterpart doesn’t miss a beat: "Excuse me? I’m offended! Are you talking about my homeland, the land of Israel?" And they’re off. A few minutes later we notice that one of our fellow retreatants is standing near us, eyes wide as saucers. "We’re practicing a roleplay," one of my cohorts says hastily. The retreatant who overheard the conversation bursts into relieved laughter. We tweak her about it for the rest of the retreat — "you didn’t honestly think that was real, did you?" But of course it could have been. Each group harbors fears of the other. Maybe what’s most miraculous about this retreat is that we’re beginning to name those fears, and to hear each other naming them…and then we sit down to eat and talk about life and work, parents and children. Not ignoring the tough stuff, but not allowing it to define us, either. We grow bolder. One of my colleagues asks me about my kippah: what does it mean, why am I the only woman wearing one, what do the colors signify? In return I learn about the Ismaili tradition of which she is a part, where in smaller communities women may serve as lay leaders and pastoral counselors. I know that there are divides within each group which remain hidden. That African-American Muslims, Arab Muslims, and South Asian Muslims have different experiences and priorities doesn’t come up until the "difficult conversations" session, when one South Asian Muslim notes that the Israel/Palestine issue isn’t a central issue for her as it is for some of her colleagues. By the same token, the Jewish participants generally don’t raise the places where we diverge, issues of sexuality and LGBT ordination and who counts in a minyan. But even with these issues largely unspoken, we’re still learning about each others’ communities, and everything we learn nuances our understanding. At lunch, a Muslim participant asks how long women have been writing midrash, crafting Torah commentary, ordained as rabbis. She seems galvanized by our response. We talk about Amina Wadud, who has been leading mixed-gender Muslim prayer since 2005. What was once inconceivable is already a reality, even if it’s not yet comfortable or mainstream. What else which once seemed impossible is within our grasp? * As the week ends, the Jews are on the cusp of the month of Elul, a month of prayer and contemplation and the inner work of teshuvah (repentance/return.) The Muslims are on the cusp of Ramadan, which could be described in much the same way. We hug and shake hands, we agree to meet on the internet. We brainstorm a list of ways we can continue to work together. What would it be like to bring each other to events in our own communities? Can we teach together? Can we write together? How can we ensure that the fragile friendships we’re beginning to build outlast our visit to the Garrison Center? And, most importantly, how can we share some of this sense of transformed relationship with the people in our communities who aren’t here? On Shabbat, at the kiddush after morning services, I tell a group of people where I’ve been all week. "Why don’t we ever hear about Muslim clergy denouncing violence?" one of the congregants at my shul asks. There is a note of gotcha! in his voice. "Because our media doesn’t report it," I say. "Or because it’s being said in a foreign language and we don’t understand it. Or because it’s not news. Or because we’re not listening. But it’s not because they’re not saying it." He looks startled, but apparently decides to take my word for it. I wonder how many of my new Muslim friends found themselves in a similar position at the masjid when they got home — when they said they’d spent several days studying texts and forming connections with Jews, what push-back did they encounter? The family of Abraham has long been at loggerheads, but this retreat shows me that we can do better. (I would argue that we must.) Both of our traditions name us as spiritual cousins. Being related doesn’t necessarily mean that we always like everything about each other-anyone with an extended family knows that. But I’d rather be on speaking terms, even though our family tree is sometimes warped by our history. ** Islamic theology forbids images. The calligraphy that opens this piece is from Muslim-canada.org and by the artist Yusuf Ali. It is from the verses on Light and can be translated to mean:

Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth. The Parable of Hs Light is as if there were a Niche and within it a Lamp: the Lamp [is] enclosed in Glass: the glass [is] as it were a brilliant star: lit from a blessed Tree, an Olive, neither of the East nor of the West, whose oil is well nigh luminous, though fire scarce touched it: Light upon Light! Allah doth guide whom He will to His Light: Allah doth set forth Parables for men and Allah doth know all things. Qur’an 24:35

The post Allah is the Light: Prayer in Ramadan and Elul appeared first on Jewcy.

Hearing the Call: Rabbi Arthur Waskow

rbarenblat — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 18:14:18 +0000

Rabbi Arthur Waskow turns 75 this month. In honor of that milestone, we sat down over Skype to talk. I first met Arthur in 2002 when I attended a week-long class on tikkun olam which he was teaching at the old Elat Chayyim retreat center in Accord, New York. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was a terrific introduction to his life and work. Arthur’s made a career of highlighting Judaism’s prophetic tradition and its call for social justice. That call transformed him, a staunchly secular civil rights and anti-war activist, into one of the Left’s most outspoken rabbis. Social justice has always been central; his doctoral dissertation focused on the 1919 race riots. In his early political career he co-wrote a bill to create a National Peace Agency, and served as senior staff at the Peace Research Institute (later the Institute for Policy Studies.)

The post Hearing the Call: Rabbi Arthur Waskow appeared first on Jewcy.

Dreaming with Rodger Kamenetz

rbarenblat — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:59:00 +0000

"A dream provides an exact tincture of the soul…to wake us from a faint-hearted life." So writes Rodger Kamenetz in The History of Last Night’s Dream.

Kamenetz is probably best known as the poet who accompanied a diverse group of rabbis to Dharamsala to meet with the Dalai Lama. He chronicled that journey in The Jew in the Lotus (1994), which both confirmed and strengthened the emerging communal crossover between Judaism and Buddhism. (Full disclosure: that book set me on my path toward the rabbinate.) Since then he’s written other books exploring Judaism in a variety of ways, but nothing as groundbreaking as The Jew in the Lotus –until now.

Kamenetz is a professor of philosophy and religious studies at Louisiana State University, where he also founded the MFA in creative writing program. He’s also a poet and, now, a dream therapist. His latest book is simultaneously as thoughtful and cogent as one would expect from a college professor–and as far-out as one would expect from a mystic and a poet. This book challenges the reader not only to think about dreams in a new way, but in so doing to relate to her- or himself anew.

For Kamenetz, dreams are a point of connection with the Infinite. Jewish tradition has mistrusted them, sought to pin them down and diminish their uncanny power, since antiquity. But if we can find a new way of relating to our dreams, he says, they may offer us a direct connection with God.-Rachel Barenblat

ZEEK: I imagine since The History of Last Night’s Dream came out, you’ve had many opportunities to distill the book in words. How do you describe this latest addition to your oeuvre?

KAMENETZ: I see it as an attempt to understand the role of imagination in religious life. An exploration of how powerful the dream is for religious experience and a lament over the loss of that power in our contemporary religious life.

ZEEK: What’s the trajectory that brought you to this work?

KAMENETZ: I’ve always been interested in dreams, as a poet and as a writer. Dreams played an important role in my life–I discovered my voice as a Jewish poet through my connection with my gradfather, and after his death he appeared to me in a dream, which turned into a poem called "Curve of the Earth." In retrospect, that dream seems to confirm that I was on the right track.

And then "Terra Infirma" is built around a dream I had after my mother’s death. In both of those cases–in the case of "Curve of the Earth" and the sense of connection beyond this life that that implies, and in terms of "Terra Infirma"–dreams have been important to me. If dreams of the dead are such powerful experiences for us–and they’re very difficult to dismiss–there must be something to dreams.

ZEEK: "Curve of the Earth" feels so real to me. There’s something in that experience [dreams of the dead] that I think we can all relate to.

KAMENETZ: There was an actual dream; there’s no art to it whatsoever! Being lazy, I thought the idea that you could get a poem from a dream seemed like a great possibility.

ZEEK: I think there’s a deep connection between poems and dreams. We relate to both of them in a way that’s not purely intellectual.

KAMENETZ: We’ve lost an understanding of something people once knew: if we’re talking about the human soul, what are we talking about if not imagination? So when we’re talking about people who write or paint, creative thinkers who we call inspired, we’re talking about the realm of the soul. And the unconscious, the psyche, dreams. Our religious discourse is so impoverished if people don’t refer to the imagination, it’s all intellect, it’s all in a book.

ZEEK: You write that "[t]o the mystics, the Torah is a dream and every character in it is you." What a beautiful way to bring this way of relating to images into the way we relate to our central text.

KAMENETZ: I would say that the authors of the Zohar clearly had a huge experience in the imaginal realm through dreaming or active imagination. They didn’t read Torah as stories or laws; they understood that those were the outer garment. But the naked body of Torah was something underneath which they found in the text through using imagination. Their experience of dreams informed their reading.

And on the other hand, if we don’t have a rich or deep experience of dreams, then our reading of Torah will be superficial. It’s like eating the bread wrapper instead of the bread.

In Zohar it says, you could just eat grains of wheat if you want to nourish yourself! But wouldn’t a fine pastry be a little better? There’s also a Torah that’s more like a rich pastry.

ZEEK: And the pastry’s made out of the same raw ingredients! That’s what makes the metaphor great.

KAMENETZ: Right! If it’s just wheat, why not nibble on raw kernels —

ZEEK: Because you’re missing something.

KAMENETZ: You’re missing the soulfulness of it. We explore dreams to explore the soul.

ZEEK: I heard you speak about this material a few years ago, and one of the questions you asked was, "How could the tradition that gave us the dream of the ladder end up essentially ‘phobic’ about the revelation dream?" Can you recap your answer for Zeek?

KAMENETZ: The Joseph sequence [in Genesis] tells us that dreams provoke a reaction. Joseph dreams, and his brothers and father have a strong angry reaction. Why do people get angry in that story? Because they’re afraid. And we see that later on too, that the butler and the baker are terribly anxious and afraid when they dream. And we see Pharaoh anxious, too. So dreams provoke different emotions, and fear underlies them all. The history of that fear is intertwined with the history of interpretation. And that’s a thread that’s run through the history of dream interpretation.

In the case of the rabbis, speaking broadly–in Brakhot 55b there are many opinions, but the takeaway is that the main focus is on dream amelioration. We have that ceremony of hatavat chalom, "making the dream good," which is still practiced by some. That tells me that the concern there is not with the revelation power of the dream but with the anxiety provoked by the dream.

ZEEK: There’s kind of a band-aid impulse here, not wanting to look at what’s behind the fear.

KAMENETZ: I have empathy for the rabbis who promoted this. They’re concerned for ordinary people, who they may have felt couldn’t handle a psychic exploration. But we live in a time where perhaps that approach could be revisited, because people are more sophisticated psychologically and more able to handle these explorations. We’re exposed to so much more in the way of information and imagery. Of course, the concern is that people will go nuts.

ZEEK. It’s a kind of shvirat ha-kelim, in the Lurianic sense–a breaking of the vessels.

KAMENETZ: Of course, the vessel includes the psyche and the mind. Luria was such an incredible dreamer. It’s said that every night he visited the heavenly academy and received Torah there. He was familiar with this process. And I think the account of his dreaming informed his books.

ZEEK: You write, of Marc Bregman, "I wanted to know and he wanted me to feel." I suspect that’s a familiar tension for many of us, maybe especially within Judaism, which is so deeply a tradition of the book. Intellect is comfortable, but that’s not where he wanted you to be.

KAMENETZ: For someone like me, so oriented toward explanation–he showed me I wasn’t really ready for the journey. I wasn’t ready to risk changing my consciousness. I wanted it all explained. I was like the baker or the butler in prison [in the Joseph story]. "Tell me what it means!" But I think the dream comes to get you out of prison.

ZEEK: It’s a real leap of faith, to listen to the call that says (in Rilke’s words) "you must change your life."

KAMENETZ: It requires the ability to be disgusted with yourself. If you’re always satisfied, then there’s no reason to change. Dreams have a way of pointing to the cracks, the places in you that are not well put together. That’s the source of the fear and anxiety. The exposure. The initial news from dreams for most people is not good.

ZEEK: Even if you know the cracks are "where the light gets in," if you will, it’s hard to be okay with that.

KAMENETZ: Right, and we tend to paper over with our pieties. We jump back to the light without experiencing the terror of the crack. We don’t want to face our fear. That’s the issue. The most terrifying dream that I can remember–one of them, anyway–was simply being in a room and looking for the door out and not seeing a door. Going with my hands over the walls, around the room, knowing there must be a door, and not being able to find one. It was a simple dream! But the depth of terror was huge.

ZEEK: For me it’s always that I can’t see. I’ve become blind.

KAMENETZ: If dreams can show you fears, then they can teach you courage. I work with dream clients now, and for many people the scary dream is simply that someone else is driving the car. For some people they’re in the backseat and no one’s driving the car! But if you can reach the point where you’re in the backseat and no one’s driving and you’re okay with that, then you’re really getting somewhere.

ZEEK: Suddenly the whole road opens up!

KAMENETZ: And then you understand that God’s driving the car. We talk a good game, but what does it really feel like to really live that? To say, it’s not up to me?

ZEEK: We need a practice of perennially reminding ourselves. Because we forget. That we’re not driving the car.

KAMENETZ: Absolutely. This is mostly what Marc Bregman calls first-stage work, but eventually people do have these very powerful experiences with the archetypes that he takes and I take to be partzufim. Not precisely in the Lurianic sense, but–not dissimilar. These are faces of God, and we encounter images that are relationships. Which I think is really important.

This goes back to a teaching of Reb Zalman’s which I cite early in the book [that many people conceptualize God as an oblong blur]–how do you pray to an oblong blur? How do you have an emotional connection to God if all imagery is banished? Or if all imagery is contested. It’s almost become politically incorrect to talk about God the father–we feel we have to immediately add "and also God the mother," there’s a kind of politics to the nomenclature, which–as is typical to political correctness–overlooks the actual emotional experience of people in their inner lives.

ZEEK: I think of the prayer "Avinu Malkeinu," and my own journey from saying it without thinking, to pushing back aainst it, to reintegrating the father and king imagery into my understanding of God.

KAMENETZ: What the dreamwork seems to point to is, if a problem in your relationship to your mother or to your father is the primary manifestation of your pathology, you’re not going to get anywhere on a spiritual level until you work through the problem at the psychological level. Instead of running away from Avinu Malkeinu because it’s seen as a patriarchal imposition and political statement, both men and women need to work through their feelings about their fathers.

ZEEK: I’d like to dip into The Jew in the Lotus. In chapter 7 of that book, Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi talks with the Dalai Lama about angels. It seems to me that the reactions of the various rabbis in the room speak volumes about the range of ways in which we’ve responded to images and metaphors, which are very much the language of dreams. Are you getting the same range of responses to the dream work Zalman got to the dream work?

RK: I don’t think that book would exist if it weren’t for that moment. In that one moment we peeked into the power of yetzirah, before moving back into assiyah, where I usually live. [That’s a reference to a kabbalistic understanding of reality. – RB]

ZEEK: Where we all usually live!

RK: I thought of it then in terms of poetry; yetzirah is the realm of poetry and of angels. The higher world gets reflected into our imagination and then down into the sensual world. So absolutely, that moment–yes, that was pivotal.

How this book’s been received…there are some people in the Jewish world who’ve been very moved by it, and others I think have not engaged. I have a feeling the book will slowly creep up on people over time. But I do think the book calls for a re-examination of Judaism in terms of the role of the imagination and the role of dreams, and people are responding to that.

We need to take our dreams seriously as part of the life of the soul. The very word "soul"–I was challenged on that by one interviewer who said, "you talk about God the Father, isn’t that Christian?" I said, "I have two words for you: ‘avinu malkeinu!’" But his point is, most Jews don’t have an experience of God the Father per se. Maybe they see the words in the prayerbook, but it’s not real relationship. Whereas if you look back in Talmud, it was commonplace. It comes from a deep experience. To exile it and say it only belongs to Christianity–something’s gone wrong here.

ZEEK: I continue to hope that this is a time when we’re opening doors we weren’t ready to open before.

KAMENETZ: Raba said, in the time of the hiding of God’s face–what Nachman calls the double hiding–maybe God will speak to us in dreams. It’s a minority opinion, but it’s there.

The post Dreaming with Rodger Kamenetz appeared first on Jewcy.

Three Poems from The Brakhot Cycle

rbarenblat — Thu, 29 May 2008 04:39:52 +0000

From The Brakhot Cycle

One whose dead lies before him

May be in no position to pray or to converse comfortably or even to make plans for the funeral, reschedule his haircut, inform the book group or the bowling league. No matter the circumstance (even if the death was long in coming, if everyone saw that angel peeking through the bedroom keyhole)

it's a slap in the face, a splash of cold water that leaves the mourners gasping. Don't expect the behavior the movies have led you to imagine.

Bring him simple food -lentils and hard-boiled eggs are customary- and let him grieve. If he tries to offer blessing

hush him gently. There's time enough for praise in the infinite stretch of time remaining in the world now lacking one more familiar soul.

*

What blessing does one make over fruit?

"Who creates the fruit of the tree," recognizing the wild Kyrgyz ancestry of the Jonagold, the Macintosh, the Empire, how trunks twisted and gnarled bear something wondrous and strange. "Who encases our tough hearts,"

palming a mango, tight skin almost bursting over the flamboyant and succulent flesh and the pit with its sharp edges. "Who ripens holiness in its time," as berries ripen by ones or twos or sevens, each cluster

the lifecycle in microcosm, from pale green to the red of bitten lips, wanton and inviting. Some say, "Who gives us diverse appetites," thinking breadfruit and carambola and durian. Some say "Who helps us remember Eden."

*

Three who have eaten

Are obligated to look across the table and see one another as facets of the Holy Blessed One. To offer thanks for companionship. To notice too

the cook, and thank him. If in a restaurant, to greet the waiter and the busboy, even if he has dark skin and speaks no English.

Three who have eaten food grown in the soil, or in coconut shavings or even in air should note the source and be thankful for it. Should

sing the praises of the factory that milled the flour to bake the bread, the truckers who carried lettuce all the way from Argentina.

Some say "May all be fed, may all be nourished." Some say "For this table and all who are seated around it." Some say "Bring us peace, speedily."

The post Three Poems from The Brakhot Cycle appeared first on Jewcy.

Roundtable: The Synagogue/ Israeli Politics Mash-Up

rbarenblat — Thu, 08 May 2008 01:15:00 +0000

Zeek Contributing Editor (and Velveteen Rabbi) Rachel Barenblat asked Rabbis Camille Angel (Reform), Lynn Gottlieb (Renewal), Fred Guttman (Reform), and Meyer Schiller (Orthodox/Hasidic) to discuss the impact of the Israeli state and its politics on their rabbinate.

Zeek: Thank you all for joining us. The central issue I want to look at is how we relate to Israel as American Jews, in American communities and congregations and schools. The first question I want to throw out is, do any of you have experiences working in a community where your own relationship with Israel isn't mirrored by those you're working with?

Schiller: I teach in a Modern Orthodox high school. The mood there is decidedly in line with the Israeli right, and has been since '67 war. My own perspective, favoring a two-state solution, is not that of the community in which I teach. The community in which I live, the Haredi community, is largely indifferent to these issues except to the degree that they share deep fear of Palestinians and of the gentile world in general.

The right of Orthodoxy and the Modern Orthodox share a certain fear and demonization of the Other. It's difficult to offer a different perspective than that of the comunities in which I live. I try, but by the time I come in contact with students, attitudes are already set. It's very difficult to move people from a sense of victimhood, from a sense that there's one side to the conflict and the failure of the world to recognize that is an indication of the world's persistent antisemitism.

Zeek: Do you think there's a sense in which your own background, coming originally from a secular family and choosing Orthodoxy as a pre-teen, has an impact on how you approach this?

Schiller: Absolutely. Because I went to public school; my parents shared a sense that the non-Jews amongst whom we lived were people like ourselves in many ways! It's always been difficult for me to make my peace with those who don't view the world that way.

There are inklings of an alternative perspective within Orthodoxy. I think the German Orthodox experience of the nineteenth century was different. There are individuals in Israel like Eliyahu MacLean who are active in reconciliation efforts. There are echoes within Orthodoxy, but it is lonely.

Gottlieb: Camille [Rabbi Angel] and I were both laughing, not because this is funny but because this is so difficult; we share with Rabbi Schiller across the spectrum how difficult it is to help people overcome their fear of Palestinians. Which of course is necessary for us to build the kind of peace we hope for.

Angel: My experience is in some ways similar to Rabbi Schiller's, although from the other side. I'm in the Bay Area in San Francisco; this is the first time in my life I've been surrounded by so many Jews who developed a Jewish identity post-'67. By and large they're from secular backgrounds; they've felt marginalized by the mainstream for all sorts of reasons, and are deeply suspicious of mainstream ideas–and being pro-Israel is largely a mainstream idea.

When I went to Israel as a high school student, I believed — hook, line, and sinker! — that Israel was defending itself appropriately in every way. I have a cousin by marriage who told me that Israel committed human rights atrocities, and I thought she was from Mars!

Over the years I've been here, I've worked to bring people to Israel in order to begin to get a clearer idea of what Israel is. In turn, our visits have involved me going on trips into the occupied territories, being with Israelis and Palestinians who can help me to see how deeply complicated and pained both sides are.

Guttman: I'm pretty much a centrist on Israel and Israeli politics, and my community for the most part shares my perspectives. I do try to help our congregation learn to love Israel; the land, the people and the country. Naturally there are those to the right and left of me.

I also try to help our congregation understand the existential difference between being here and being there. I may have feelings about what the government of Israel should do on a particular issue, but the ultimate responsibility for the implementation of those policies will fall upon the people of Israel and not their supporters in the United States. Having served extensively in the IDF and in the West Bank when I lived in Israel, I can fully appreciate the difference between living here and living there.

Zeek: Rabbi Guttman, you've used the phrase "administered territories." Say more about that?

Guttman: That's the nom de jure that the Israeli government uses, that these are "administered" territories. This has been the term used since shortly following the Six Day War. "Liberated" would have implied no intention to ever give these territories back. "Occupied" might imply the intention to give all of the territories back. However, the interpretation of Resolution 242 by the governments of the United States and Israel for the past forty years has been that in return for peace and security, Israel will return territories occupied in 1967.

The feeling then, and now, as reflected in the Geneva Accords, is that there will need to be some sort of territorial adjustments made to the 1967 borders. The word "administered" implies that Israel is controlling these territories until an agreement for peace (God willing!) can be reached. The recent events in Gaza sadly seem to make such an agreement more unlikely in the near future.

Angel: "Occupied Territories" is a term I use now that I wouldn't have used before. I also use "Disputed Territories." It depends on the audience. I want my congregation to try and understand multiple perspectives, just as they have helped me to broaden mine.

Gottlieb: I want to offer some strategies for coping with this. I've been involved in Palestinian-Jewish reconciliation since 1966, when I met Atallah Mansour, the first Palestinian journalist for Ha'aretz. He told me the story of the Naqba, their term for their experience of 1948, and I realized there were at least two competing narratives. And how tragic the situation was and is.

Guttman: But the conflict didn't commence in 1948 with what the Palestinians call the Naqba. Jews were already being murdered in Palestine half a century earlier. Most Israelis believe that the Palestinians have the right to an independent state of their own. Unfortunately, that view is not shared mutually by the Palestinians, who have yet to recognize our legitimate rights (remember, I hold dual citizenship!)

The Jewish belief that the land was given to us by God from the Nile to the Euphrates is not mainstream. But it is mainstream in the Arab world to believe that Jews have no right to their own state in the Middle East. The Palestinians have been offered a partition of the land so many times and have always turned it down. Understanding the Palestinian narrative requires us to recognize that there is, among many in the Arab and the Palestinian world, no room for Israel on the world map.

Gottlieb: My strategy has been to be in partnership with Palestinians, so we have a mutual opportunity to meet. And of course I've worked with those who, like me, are interested in peaceful resolutions. Lately I've tried to focus attention on those who, like Yehuda Stolov of Interfaith Encounter, are working with Palestinians in partnership and mutuality to build institutions in civil society. We need to figure out how to… nurture young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move toward the future.

Whether it's "administrative oversight" or "occupation," anyone who's… watched olive trees by the thousands be pulled up from the earth, sat for hours at a checkpoint, or seen tanks in the streets — you realize that no matter what you call it, Palestinians are feeling very helpless as they witness the loss of land and livelihood. As of 2007, 50% of the West Bank was off limits to Palestinians. This is part of the reality of life on the ground that is necessary for people to understand.

Zeek: It's interesting to me that you mention nurturing young men and women to form the connections that are needed to move forward, especially given what Rabbi Schiller was saying about working with teenaged boys at YUHS. Do you have thoughts on how to bring this to American teens in a way that they'll be able to hear?

Schiller: My experience has been that if you focus on conflict elsewhere, Northern Ireland or the Balkans, and you present the histories of the rival peoples there, it's a good starting point. They don't have as much at stake; they can see that there are places in the world where territory is disputed, similar to Israel and Palestine.

I like to start from a perspective of: one's heart has to become a different kind of heart. It has to be a heart in which love and charity are essential ingredients of one's whole human and religious perspective. Going from there: okay, now we know this is how God wants us to be. Fair, compassionate and just. Now what do we do when we move that into the reality of the situation?

Gottlieb: I like to work with theatre games. When you bring people into a theatrical conflict, you can then apply that to different situations. You get a more firsthand experience, you see what works and what doesn't work in conflict transformation.

For me, building understanding in the American Jewish Community has set me on the road to the Muslim community. I've been involved in the Muslim-Jewish Peace Walk, which I co-created with Abdul Rauf Campos Marquetti. It's based on a model of bringing people together in pilgrimage to each others' holy sites. We nurture relationships around which people can build coalitions of shared concerns, which inevitably involve the safety of their youth and the health of their communities.

Zeek: I'm going to pull us in a different direction for a moment. How do you navigate the need to direct time and energy toward Israel, with the need to direct time and energy toward what's happening in our Diaspora communities? Is that a tension any of you want to speak to?

Guttman: It's not necessarily an "either/or" type of situation. I view Israel as an incredible educational resource for adults and teens. In our congregation, we make a concerted effort to raise the necessary funds to help our teens go to Israel. The percentage of our students who have visited Israel before high school graduation has been as high as 70%. This is very important to us because recent studies of college-age youth show a marked decrease in their feelings of connection to Israel.

But our Jewish communal leadership hasn't come to terms fully with two basic facts. The first is that Israel is no longer a third world country and therefore less of our philanthropic dollars need to go there. More of these dollars should go to the JDC and should stay here in the United States. Second, our Jewish communal leadership has yet to fully comprehend how underfunded Jewish education in the United States is and how devastating the consequences for such underfunding can be in the next twenty years for the American Jewish community and for the support of Israel from the United States.

Zeek: Has support for Israel always been a strong part of your congregation, or is that something you've stewarded during your time there?

Guttman: Support for Israel has always been there, but has increased during my time. This is especially true of teen trips to Israel, which were kind of non existent prior to my arrival thirteen years ago. But, these trips could not have been done without the support of lay leadership, generous donors and the Greensboro Jewish Federation.

Angel: When I first came to my congregation there was a veil of silence that the leadership and the congregation had consciously and unconsciously colluded in establishing, so that Israel was just not talked-about. The Israeli flag had been taken out of the sanctuary, Hatikva had been taken out of the siddur. There was no reference to Israel in the curriculum for our school; no one talked about Israel from the bimah in divrei Torah.

Part of my work has been to find organic ways to bring Israel back into the full life of everything we do. In the same way that we work to make sure God and Torah are part of the life of the congregation, we're trying to strengthen the pillar of Israel in various dimensions.

Zeek: Has your community been receptive to that?

Angel: Yes, mostly! Now it seems hard to believe there was a time when it was such a lightning rod. Now we're trying to make annual congregational pilgrimages to Israel. We have Israel in the curriculum. We have a whole continuum of dialogue in the life of the congregation. That's healthy.

Of course there was an Exodus of people who wrote in that they were quitting the synagogue because of our Israel politics–on one side or the other. We're too this, or we're too that. Even though now what we aim to be is dynamic.

Gottlieb: I can relate. On both sides. How painful it is to be the messenger of difficult news. I've led delegations to Israel and Palestine and when I've come back people wanted me to speak from the pulpit, and it's a very painful reality to convey.

People are looking for a ready-made solution. As Jews we're used to thinking in long periods of time, but nonetheless there's so much anxiety about the ambiguous and unresolved nature of the situation, especially on the heels of such terrible trauma and tragedy (the Shoah is still very much with us.)

Zeek: You mentioned working with Palestinians who are working toward peace. How has your community responded to that? Have you and your community always been aligned on the need to "live in the ambiguities," or has that posed a challenge? And on a related note, (how) do you think your geographic location shapes your community's response to these issues?

Gottlieb: My community is committed, but it's a burden to bear in relationship to the rest of the Jewish community. Since I've left my congregation, the desire to connect with the rest of the Jewish community has dampened their willingness to reach out to Palestinians who are critical of Israel's policies related to occupation. Geography can impact this situation; communities in more isolated areas feel vulnerable to lack of connection with the rest of the Jewish community.

Every year or so in my community we have what we call Council; we pass the proverbial talking stick or shofar around, and each person speaks about how they're feeling about Israel. We have different feelings, different experiences; we can cultivate this talmudic idea that "these and those are the words of the living God." If we can't do that in our own communities, how are we going to find common ground with the Palestinians?

Zeek: I'm delighted that you mention the talmudic idea that we're a multi-perspective people; that enshrined in our texts is a sense that disagreement can be productive. I'd love to look at how our relationship with our texts shapes this whole set of questions for us.

Schiller: The solution to part of the struggle, the political part, is ultimately in God's hands. As it says in Avos [Pirke Avot], "lo alecha hamlecha ligmor," the work is not upon us to conclude. We have to bear witness, we have to create acts of kindness on the ground. How the political struggle will play itself out, from this vantage point is difficult to see. But it's not just about the political solution; it's about the 101 day-to-day acts of conversation and kindness, which in a mystical sense are adding to the spiritual balance of existence.

In hockey when two players fight, the officials let them fight until they're exhausted and then separate them. It's possible that we are, tragically, not yet at the point in history when these two peoples are exhausted. But if other models are being created through acts of kindness, by moral spiritual warfare, then at the point when the combatants are exhausted there will be an alternative model on the ground. The things we do in relation to Israeli-Palestinian conflict and our own spiritual development can't be divided.

Gottlieb: How we respond to the Palestinians is core to our spiritual development as a people. What we're watching happen to the Palestinian people is partly in our hands because of the balance of power in that relationship. We're called to rise to the occasion. And in order to do that, we have to address healing from cultural trauma and then understand what that means for the Palestinians as well.

Angel: There's a certain willingness, in a large part of my community, to only be learning about the Palestinians' cultural experience. We need to start with an appreciation for Jewish history and the miracle that Israel is. I want us to form an attachment to our Jewish homeland, our Jewish family and origins before working on behalf of the family of humanity.

Gottlieb: I'm into that. In the non-Orthodox world we're often challenged to carve out a space for Jewish cultural identity. I teach in a program called Interfaith Inventions, which brings Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and Native American kids together. They explain their traditions to each other, and we've found that both their self-pride and their self-knowledge increased, as well as their respect for others.

Schiller: Amongst the Orthodox I find a tremendous need to teach that there is a version of Zionism that is not a rightist type of Zionism. I speak to them about the original Brit Shalom, the Ichud movement, Ernst Simon who was an Orthodox Jew in the 1930s and 40s. There is an opportunity to be a Zionist with a humanistic strain. I trace that history for my students, because I'm always afraid they think they're going to forfeit their Zionist credentials if they appear even-handed.

In the Haredi world, it's very important to show sources in Talmud and Shulchan Aruch that embrace a humanistic vision of Judaism. And to deal with sources that seem antithetical to that, which also certainly exist. One must dialogue with those sources, and cite alternate sources, amongst the Orthodox. There's a lot of work to be done within the Torah experience itself, to show people they need not embrace the endless dialectic of victimhood and hate.

Gottlieb: I remember sitting in Kiryat Arba in the home of a man who had settled there with his wife. And I asked, can you show me where it's a mitzvah to live in the Land? He pulled a text out and started quoting from Ramban instead of Rambam. At that moment he realized that, in fact, there were alternative perspectives — it was like Coyote had entered the room and made him point to the wrong text! By the end of our conversation, talking about the idea that we as children of Abraham should be known for our compassion was a source of opening for him.

If you have an angry heart, you'll end up with an angry Torah. A fearful heart, you'll end up with a fearful Torah. A compassionate heart will lead you to a compassionate Torah.

RB: Maybe that's a good place for us to end. Thank you all.

Rabbi Camille Angel was ordained through the Reform movement in 1995. "One of the most primary influences in my life was my father, who was ordained Reform in 1934 and whose letters I found this year from his travels through Palestine. Unlike many classmates in '34, he was very much a Zionist.

Today I serve Sha'ar Zahav in San Francisco, primarily a congregation that serves GLBT Jews — though we have an increasing population of straight folks, and a religious school of 160 kids."

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb is a sixth generation American Jew of German Jewish descent. "My grandfather, Morritz Gottlieb, founded the National Jewish Welfare Board. He was active during the Second World War, and after, in supporting the birth of the state of Israel. My family has pictures of him with Ben Gurion and Aba Eben.

My first year with Temple Beth Or of the Deaf, also kind of an unusual pulpit to begin with, was 1973. I had the unfortunate task of announcing the beginning of the Yom Kippur war in sign language to my congregation. I have a long history with Israel; I was an exchange student there, went to college there, and have gone back numerous times, most lately leading delegations for the Fellowship of Reconciliation."

Rabbi Fred Guttman lived in Israel from 1979–1991. "I served in the Israeli Army as a reserve soldier in a combat artillery brigade and served extensively in the administered territories from 1984–1990. Since 1995 I've served as the senior Rabbi of Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, North Carolina.

I'm an AIPAC activist and I've lobbied extensively in Congress on issues affecting Israel. I've been a member of the UJA/UJC Rabbinic Cabinet since 1993, and I serve on the Commission of Social Action of Reform Judaism, where for two years I was chair of the Israel/Foreign Affairs Task Force. I've also been very involved with the March of the Living."

Rabbi Meyer Schiller teaches Talmud at Yeshiva University High School for boys in Manhattan. "I've been teaching Talmud to Modern Orthodox high school youth for thirty-one years. I've written several books and articles on political and religious matters. I was raised in a secular or perhaps one might say Reform-oriented home in the 1950s, and opted for Orthodoxy in seventh grade.

My ties are in the Hasidic community though I teach in the Modern Orthodox community. I'm very much taken by notions of seeking to create a broad-based humanistic vision for Orthodoxy which would embrace the sufferings of all of mankind and the narratives and experiences of all peoples."

The post Roundtable: The Synagogue/ Israeli Politics Mash-Up appeared first on Jewcy.