Les Mis and mussar

Last week we saw the movie “Les Miserables,” and this week I’m reading Parashat Shemot, the first chapters of Exodus. They both shed light on the practice of order, which is one of the middot, or attributes, of mussar, Jewish ethical development (see rivertonmussar.org).

The liberation of the Hebrew slaves is going to disrupt the order of Egypt and Moses’ first actions in this drama bring disorder. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and strikes him dead on the spot, hiding his body in the sand. The next day he tries to make peace between two Hebrew slaves and gets rebuffed by one of them. Apparently the Egyptian status quo includes the sort of pecking order that is typical among those in bondage, and the dominant slave wants to maintain it. But of course as we read the whole story we realize that Moses isn’t the source of disorder, but of a better order than Egypt’s status quo, as he tries to bring justice into the picture.

This story reminds us that the pursuit of order can degenerate into a defense of the status quo. We can become too intent on maintaining order and miss God’s higher order, his justice, altogether. In “Les Miserables,” what has stuck with me the most over the years (and I first read the book in high school) is the story of the bishop’s candlesticks. The protagonist, Jean Valjean, has just been released from prison and the bishop takes him in on a cold night. Valjean gets up in the middle of the night, steals some of the bishop’s silver, and runs off. The police stop Valjean, recognize the silver, and drag him back to the bishop’s house. But the bishop says, “I gave him the silver; you can let him go.” Then he turns to Valjean and says, “My friend, you left so suddenly that I didn’t have time to give you the best part, my silver candlesticks.” He sends him off saying, “Do not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming an honest man.” The incident changes Valjean’s life, and sets up the rest of the story. What struck me when I saw the movie was the chutzpah of the bishop. He acted boldly to secure and define Valjean’s freedom. He trumped law and order with the higher order of mercy and forgiveness.

Order normally means maintaining a balanced, livable status quo. But when the status quo is unlivable—as when the Hebrews cried out to Hashem in their affliction—God’s order means taking a stand against the status quo. Like the bishop, Moses demonstrates that this stand takes chutzpah, when he challenges the status quo of Egyptian slavery, and soon after when he defends the daughters of Reuel against the bullying shepherds. For those who want to work on the practice of order, the point is clear. Sometimes pursuing God’s order will take the sort of chutzpah that the status quo never demands of us.

The incidental Palestinian

This week’s Torah portion, Emor (Lev. 21:1–24:23), includes instructions about the mo‘adim or times of meeting between Israel and the Lord.

The word mo‘adim first appears in Genesis 1:14: “Then God said, ‘Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs and seasons [mo‘adim].’” The Lord ordained the holy times from the beginning to remind all the generations to come of the original wholeness of the creation and God’s promise to renew it. Thus, Shabbat opens the list of mo‘adim in Leviticus 23, because it is a memorial of creation (Exod. 31:17), which anticipates “the time to come . . . the day that will be all Shabbat and rest for everlasting life” (b.Tamid 33b), when the goodness of creation will be restored at last.

Every festival partakes of this prophetic quality of Shabbat. The instructions for Shavuot include, “When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not wholly reap the corners of your field when you reap, nor shall you gather any gleaning from your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the stranger: I am the Lord your God” (Leviticus 23:21–22).

Moses had already told the Israelites to leave the gleanings for the poor a few chapters earlier (Lev 19:9–10), so why does he repeat it here? Because Shavuot is the festival of the grain harvest, and for the harvest to be holy, it has to be conducted with regard for the poor and the stranger. The poor have a rightful share in the harvest, even though they don’t own any land of their own, because they too are created in God’s image. The Israelites might be tempted to think that the festival is all about pilgrimage and worship, a day to forget everything else and bring the offering to God—a day when those who don’t have anything to offer are incidental to the real action. But no, Shavuot anticipates the conditions of olam ha-ba, the age to come, when there won’t be any more hunger or poverty, and no one will be incidental.

This principle applies not only to the festivals, but throughout our lives. We’re to remember the outsider, the one we might consider incidental, especially at the joyous times when we’re most likely to forget about them, but also throughout our everyday lives as well.

The Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai brings this principle to life:

Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David’s Tower. I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide and I became their target marker.

“You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there’s an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head.”

“But he’s moving, he’s moving!” I said to myself: Redemption will come only if their guide tells them, “You see that arch from the Roman period? It’s not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who’s bought fruit and vegetables for his family.” (cited in Israel: A Spiritual Travel Guide, by R. Lawrence Hoffman)

Perhaps Amichai overstates the case, as poets are entitled to do. The arch from the Roman period does have some importance, but he’s right to point out the living human being resting up from his heavy load. It’s wrong to make this man incidental. This is a principle deeply imbedded in Jewish ethical thinking, and especially in the example of Messiah himself, who spent so much of his time around the incidental people of his day, like sinners and tax collectors.

As I’ve been writing statements and blogs in support of Israel, I’ve been aware of how easy it is to make Palestinians incidental to the whole story. We can get so focused on the “Roman arch” of Israelas the fulfillment of biblical promises and as the legitimate Jewish state, that we forget all about the Palestinian guy sitting there with his heavy load. I know, the load is largely imposed by his own misguided leaders, and yes, Israelis have their own loads to bear too. But innocent Palestinians are suffering from the heavy security measures and endless complications of life in the West Bank. I’m not sure what do do with this yet, but real, biblically-inspired advocacy for Israel has to include concern for justice for all parties. “Zion shall be redeemed with justice . . .”  (Isa 1:27).

Methodists, divestment, and Tutu

On May 2, delegates at the United Methodist Church general assembly voted against two proposals to withdraw church investments from companies doing business with Israel. These divestment proposals were intended as a way to pressure Israel to withdraw its military presence from all areas that most of the world considers to be Palestinian territory, which includes parts of Jerusalem itself, as well as most of ancient Judea and Samaria.

The UMJC had joined with three other international Messianic Jewish organizations to warn the Methodists against divestment (http://imja.org/address-to-umc/), so we’re thankful that the church made the right decision. But the battle is hardly over. The Presbyterian Church (USA) votes on virtually the same proposal in July, and other mainline Protestant denominations will keep on considering similar moves. In addition, the Methodists did pass “a strongly worded resolution denouncing the Israeli occupation and the settlements, and calling for ‘all nations to prohibit the import of products made by companies in Israeli settlements on Palestinian land.’” (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/03/us/methodists-vote-against-ending-investments-tied-to-israel.html?_r=2&ref=us)

Now,  ”prohibit[ing] the import of products” means a boycott, and that’s part of the anti-Israel strategy: to employ the same means–boycotts, divestment, and sanctions–that helped overturn the apartheid regime in South Africa. So anti-Israel advocates are determined to stick the apartheid label on Israel. Just before the Methodist vote, South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu made this strategy explicit in an op-ed piece in the Tampa Bay Times (the Methodists were meeting in Tampa), claiming “that Israel becoming an apartheid state or like South Africa in its denial of equal rights is not a future danger . . .  but a present-day reality,” and speaking of the “colonization,”  ”occupation and subjugation of Palestinians.” (http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/justice-requires-action-to-stop-subjugation-of-palestinians/1227722.)

Now arguing that Israel is NOT an apartheid state is like responding to the question, “have you stopped beating your wife yet?” Furthermore, Israel’s critics systematically set two other rhetorical traps: 1) they describe Israeli policies in Judea and Samaria as expressions of Israeli racism rather than as conditions within a complex military-political deadlock; 2) they never deal with the history of the deadlock. In other words, why does Israel maintain a military presence in these Arab-majority population areas? Israel’s opponents think that simply by labeling this as “the occupation,” they’ve proven that it must be ended immediately, regardless of history and context–and regardless of the fact that it’s from the unilaterally unoccupied Gaza Strip that Israel endures an endless barrage of rocket fire aimed at its civilian population.

So, rather than argue against details of the “apartheid” and “occupation” accusations, I’ll simply suggest that Rev. Tutu is ignoring history. I can’t really engage his criticism because it begins with a false premise. The white presence in South Africa resulted from a colonial incursion; the Jewish presence in the Eretz Yisrael resulted from a return to an ancient homeland. The increasing waves of Jewish returnees in the late 19th-early 2oth centuries joined a Jewish remnant in the ancestral homeland that had been there all along, and that was growing steadily since the 1500s. Furthermore, these returnees didn’t seize land by conquest, but by purchase and legal settlement.

Tutu and his ilk claim that Israel has blocked a two-state agreement with the Palestinians and must be pressured back to the negotiating table through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions. Again, this view ignores history. After WWII, the world community recognized that the Jewish settlement in pre-state Israel had as much claim to the land as its Arab inhabitants (which had significantly increased  since the expansion of the Jewish population). That’s why the UN voted to partition the land into a Jewish-majority area and an Arab-majority area, with Jerusalem (and its Jewish-majority population) left as an international zone. The Jews reluctantly accepted this two-state solution and the Arabs rejected it, attacking Israel and losing a chunk of territory in the process. Likewise, after the 1967 war, when Israel took control of areas of Judea and Samaria formerly held by Egypt and Jordan, the Arab nations declared regarding Israel, “no negotiations, no peace, no recognition,” effectively rejecting a two-state solution again. Finally, at what should have been the culmination of the 1993 Oslo process, Yassir Arafat walked away from an once-in-a-lifetime offer for Palestinian statehood by Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.

I, for one, see the status quo between Israel and the Palestinians as a tragic deadlock, unsustainable, and bad for both Israelis and Palestinians. But there’s no silver bullet to fix it, and I suspect those who are promoting the silver bullet of boycotts, divestment, and sanctions have an unspoken agenda that does not include recognition of Israel as the legitimate homeland of the Jewish people.

Tear down the wall . . . metaphor

Last week I had an opportunity to put feet to some of my pro-Israel advocacy, and it centered on the “wall,” the Israeli security barrier, which has become an icon for everything wrong with Israel among those who can’t remember what everyone was complaining about before the barrier was built.

The University of New Mexico (my alma mater, by the way, so I’m not an outside agitator) was the scene of a “Mock Wall Campaign,” hosted by Students for Justice in Palestine and a bunch of other campus groups, which employs a model of an ugly wall to promote “building bridges by tearing down walls.” Of course, the wall metaphor turns out to be mostly about Israel and its security barrier–along with everything else they can toss in  that’s wrong about Israel.

So, on the day before Yom Hashoah, I decided to join with the UNM Israel Alliance and help man the counter demonstration, a “Wall of Truth” that lists ten myths about Israel that are widely accepted on college campuses like UNM around the world. You can read the list at http://www.wall-of-truth.org/myths/.

Soon after I arrived, a bunch of students gathered in front of our Wall of Truth banner and spent a good amount of time reading  and commenting–in Arabic! They didn’t seem convinced, but some of them did seem pretty thoughtful.

A little later, I had the chance to engage with a guy who said Israel just kept building this wall so it could steal Palestinian land, like it had been doing for decades. He retreated as soon as I mentioned that the wall was only started in 2003 and was already finished.

Then another man came along, a more sophisticated guy who had traveled extensively in the Middle East, had first-hand experience, and was troubled by things he’d actually seen in the West Bank.

A no to divestment

Over the past couple of months I’ve gotten drawn into the battle a lot of advocacy for Israel and the Jewish people. I helped draft and disseminate a statement on the crazy Ralph Messer-Eddie Long Torah ceremony that went viral on You Tube back in January, and a couple of statements concerning the “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference in March, with its underlying agenda of replacement theology. Now we’ve just issued a statement warning the United Methodist Church of the ramifications of their potential decision to divest from some companies doing business with Israel. You can read the background and download the statement here: http://umjc.org/home-mainmenu-1/advocacy/765-introducing-the-advocacy-blog. 

Resurrection and redemption

“On that night we were redeemed, and on that night we shall be redeemed.”

The Passover Seder is made up of two halves, roughly divided by the festive meal itself. The first part commemorates the redemption from Egypt as we retell the whole story of the departure from Egypt, starting with “Avadim hayinu, we were slaves to Pharaoh in Egypt, and Hashem our God took us out from there with a strong hand and an outstretched arm.” The second half concludes with the famous line, “Next year in Jerusalem!” our declaration of hope for the final redemption, when Jerusalem will be restored as the holy city and the source of Torah for all the nations.

According to Rabbi Yitzchak Sender in The Commentators’ Haggadah, the second half of the Seder begins after the meal and the third cup of wine, when we pour another cup for Elijah the Prophet, and open the door to see if he’s arrived yet. (There’s lots of additional explanations for opening the door at this point, of course.)

Remember his death–the Last Supper

Whenever I read Rav Shaul’s account of Messiah’s last Seder, I always wonder at his concluding phrase: “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (1 Cor. 11:26). Why “the Lord’s death”? Don’t we celebrate Messiah’s resurrection and his life among us when we partake of the Lord’s Seder? Yes, but apparently we need the reminder to pay full attention to his death at the beginning of Passover before we come to the resurrection on the third day.

What stands out the most about Messiah’s death as he describes it at his last Passover is that it’s for us: “This is my body that is for you. . . . This cup is the new covenant in my blood” (1 Cor. 11: 24–25). Yeshua gives his body for us; he sheds his blood to bring us into covenant. That’s what we are to remember when we eat of the Lord’s Seder. (There’s a whole discussion about whether we share this remembrance meal only at Passover or throughout the year, which I’m not getting into here. Paul tells the Corinthians, “as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death,” and that should cover all cases.) In the context of 1 Corinthians. Paul is contrasting the right kind of Lord’s Supper with the Corinthians’ supper, which is clearly a matter of eating for self, with factions, social hierarchy, greed, and impatience.

Passover: Insiders and Outsiders

The tenth day of Nisan has just ended, four days before Passover, which is the day on which the Torah commanded every household to select a lamb to be sacrificed four days later on Passover. It’s also the day that Yeshua entered Jerusalem during his last Passover, riding on a donkey to fulfill the words of Zechariah the prophet: “Tell the daughter of Zion, ‘Behold, your King is coming to you, lowly, and sitting on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey.’”

Yeshua was making it clear what king he was. It’s often said that the Jews of his day rejected this kind of king, but there’s a crowd of Jews welcoming him on the 10^th of Nisan:

And a very great crowd spread their clothes on the road; others cut down branches from the trees and spread them on the road. Then the crowds who went before and those who followed cried out, saying: “Hosanna to the Son of David! ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the LORD!’ Hosanna in the highest!”

And when he had come into Jerusalem, all the city was moved, saying, “Who is this?”

So the crowds said, “This is Yeshua, the prophet from Nazareth of Galilee.” (Matt. 21:8-11)

Matthew uses the word crowd(s) three times in this brief passage, and it will appear again later.

Boycott the Checkpoint?

Our UMJC rabbis were discussing whether it was a good idea for Messianic Jewish leaders to attend the recent “Christ at the Checkpoint” conference, which was clearly anti-Zionist and anti-Israel in its orientation. I posted this response, which I’d like to share here:

My view is that some may be genuinely called to attend, being wise as serpents and innocent as doves, but it’s a really complex issue with several important components:

1. There’s a public relations battle, in which we need to clearly and forcefully confront replacement theology and anti-Zionism. I’d say that having some MJ attendees could help with this if these attendees continue to confront these false theologies before, during, and after the conference, and to show how the conference supports them. The CATC local committee set up their PR to stigmatize people who refused to attend and we don’t want to play into that entirely. At the same time we need to recognize that public support for their anti-Zionist agenda is probably their highest priority, and be careful not to be used.
2. Having said this, I personally would not attend a conference entitled “Christ at the Checkpoint,” especially with its claim to bring “Hope in the Midst of Conflict.” Despite their protestations to the contrary, the organizers set up the conference to undermine Christian support for Israel as the Jewish state, and packaged it as a conference on peace and reconciliation. It’s the mixture of those two themes that I find so offensive, as if the obstacle to Christian hope is the Israeli checkpoint.
3. Years ago, when I led a local congregation, I was approached by a man who was helping organize a visit to Albuquerque by Billy Graham. I like Billy Graham and his ministry, but I said that as a Jew I couldn’t publicly support any effort that billed itself as a “Crusade.” It was just too offensive and insensitive to Jewish history, and really to the nature of the Crusades themselves. How much more do I feel like I need to distance myself from a conference whose central image is Christ confronting, or being confronted by, the Israeli presence in Eretz Yisrael.
4. But there’s another struggle, which is for reconciliation with fellow Yeshua believers among the Palestinians, and that’s worth fighting for too. I do not want us to fall into the radical and even racist sort of response to Palestinians that is common among Christian Zionists, and I’m afraid, Messianic Jews. And I don’t want to draw a hard line between Arab Christians who support Israel and those who don’t. I’m going to be closer to the former, but still need to reach out to the latter. Furthermore, I don’t find it shocking that most Arab Christians hold to replacement theology—so do most Western Christians! I’d like to find ways for genuine dialogue even with that starting point, and hope that we might influence them to reconsider, even as our community needs to reconsider some of its attitudes toward Arabs in general.

Justice and the wall

The Israeli security fence and checkpoints are often invoked as symbols of the “occupation” and Israel’s oppressive policies. But is this a fair portrayal? How should we assess this structure from the perspective of justice?

I’ve seen the security fence and it is indeed a wall, monstrous, ugly and heartbreaking. I’ve stood at its base outside Bethlehem and felt its hulk towering over me. I’ve seen it at a distance from the lovely balcony of a friend’s home in Mevaseret Zion, and even further off from a car window on the highway headed north from Tel Aviv. It’s a scar upon the landscape of Eretz Yisrael. The suffering and indignities the wall imposes on Palestinians are heartbreaking too. I’ve heard people say, “What are they complaining about? I have to go through a TSA security check every time I get on a plane.” But, of course, that’s an unfair comparison. The Israeli checkpoints can hold you up for hours, not minutes, and you’re not going to be greeted with a nod or “have a nice day” as you go through. Not that you’ll necessarily get that from the TSA either, but for Palestinians, the IDF soldiers manning the wall represent the “occupation” and a steady reminder of the broken and humiliating condition of their daily lives.