December 26, 2011 | 7:06 pm

A Tale of Two Corporate Hanukkah Displays

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

The bank manager at Citibank ran over to me when I came by this week to show-off the company menorah. Each branch received a menorah. Well, they actually were sent two. What had happened? My friend the manager explained. The first one arrived with only one on-off switch to control all the lights. That was replaced a week later by a new menorah that had one on-off switche for each light. While there we noinstructions included, the bank must be relying on the wisdom of the employees to know what to do.

The entire episode prompted another great conversation with my banker. (As one of the only customers at that branch who is a rabbi, we end up discussing every holiday as they arrive in some detail.) When he was early in his career as a banker, he brought in an electric menorah himself to display at the bank. In his native Russia, the thought that you could even have a menorah in a public place was unthinkable. He proceeded to light all the lights at once for the holiday to really promote Hanukkah and his menorah.

The next thing he knew, a Jewish customer approached and castigated him for not lighting them one at a time. This Russian Jewish immigrant, a junior banker trying to make a difference, was being given lessons in menorah lighting at the bank. Yes, we sometimes overlook the good that people are trying to do. Instead we make sure they are doing things the way we want them, ignoring or forgetting to thank them for trying in the first place.

Later in the day I had to go into an adjacent Wells Fargo branch. The Wells Fargo Christmas Tree dwarfed the 4-footer at the Citibank. It was festooned with a myriad of ornaments and candy canes. Arranged around the base were presents, a stuffed fake reindeer and snow, making a real Christmas diorama. I searched for a menorah and didn’t see one. I asked a banker walking by, “Excuse me, is there a menorah too?” She looked around and said they didn’t have one. To which I replied, “well you better catch up with your competition — Citibank has one!”

At Citibank, while the menorah was small, understated, and directionless, it still fared better than Wells Fargo. There may be other branches of Wells Fargo that are doing things differently in Jewish areas. But Citibank made the effort to ship these menorahs to EVERY branch. It didn’t matter if they were in an area with Jewish clients.

I sometimes wonder if my shopping, banking, or car repairing will depend on a company’s decision of how to celebrate the holidays with their customers. Is there some subliminal or outright conscious decision that I make which determines my behavior toward one bank or another? Can a holiday decoration turn me from being a customer to being critic?

Honestly I don’t expect, nor would I want to see, a 7 foot high menorah with golden inflatable driedels — though that could look kind of cool. But I think in this day and age we can expect some kind of token concession to Hanukkah.

Maybe I’ll just leave it to the expensive consultants to offer suggestions to corporate America to tell them if a menorah is a good idea or not.

Or they can take the advice from a Rabbi for free: a menorah of any size or shape is greatly appreciated.

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Rabbi Yonah answers your questions on Twitter.com/rabbiyonah. Rabbi Yonah is Director of Jewlicious Festivals, and blogs on JewishJournal.com, Huffingtonpost.com and Jewlicious.com.

December 13, 2011 | 9:02 pm

Matisyahu’s Beard Goes Missing, Jewish World in a Panic

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

Matisyahu posted this picture on Twitter. It swept throughout the world and made headlines in major news outlets.

The Jewish world is in spasms over Matisyahu’s facial hair. Even before I awoke in Los Angeles, text messages were lining up like Chanukah cards from the East Coast, asking “Is it true?” As my witty blogging friend Esther Kustanowitz put it, this was “the beard heard round the world.”

Never before in the history of our ancient people has one man’s beard caused so much commotion. In fact, I am not sure if in the history of beards, one beard has earned so much talk. 

In our world obsessed with looks and stardom, Matisyahu’s decision to go beardless now warrants news alerts.

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency alert yesterday was “Gingrich sticks by Palestinian comment, draws GOP rebukes.”

Today the alert is about our beloved singer’s decision to shave off his signature bristles, “Matisyahu Shaves off Beard.”

Tens of thousands of people have looked at the photos on Twitter, thousands are commenting on his Web site and Facebook. Even mainstream gossip media sites are chiming in with their own opinions. But all one needs to do is look at what Matisyahu wrote on his blog:

“No more Chasidic reggae superstar. Sorry folks, all you get is me … no alias. … And for those concerned with my naked face, don’t worry … you haven’t seen the last of my facial hair.”

It seems that his own words were not enough. Everyone has an opinion. Rushing to judgment is a national pastime.

There is no obligation in Judaism to wear a beard. It’s not a mitzvah. Facial hair is meant to be an adornment for the face, say the rabbis. The Torah instructs us how to cut the beard — no razors allowed, leave the upper part of the sideburns — but doesn’t require a man to have a beard. While some associate taking off the beard with a lapse in religious observance, that is simply not the case.

Historically, Jews have gone without beards before. Over the ages, Jewish men have used depilatory creams and powders made from nasty stuff that took off the beard. At the most famous yeshiva in pre-war Europe, most men studied bare-faced. The invention of the electric shaver created the opportunity for observant Jewish men to go beardless without killing their faces.

I remember when I started growing my beard 16 years ago, much to the surprise of my fiancee. It had everything to do with my displeasure at shaving, and nothing to do with a fashion or religious statement. My skin is super sensitive, and no matter what kind of electric shaver, creams or treatments I used, my skin could not bear it. With my marital future in place, I took the risk and grew one leading up to my wedding. My grandmother, of blessed memory, was distraught that all the wedding pictures would have me in a beard.

A beard does not make a man. I am sure some famous bard centuries ago wrote something along those lines. Matisyahu’s talent as a singer and performer have little to do with what clothes he wears and what kind of facial hair he prefers. While it might have been his signature look for part of his career, it isn’t any longer.

Rabbi Yonah Bookstein is the executive director of JConnect and the director and founder of Jewlicious Festivals.

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November 25, 2011 | 6:07 pm

Don’t be Afraid of People in Tents, Learn From Them, The Legacy of #OccupyLA

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

Photo by Yonah Bookstein

The city will dismantle Occupy LA Monday at 12AM, by force if necessary.

The encampment, now deemed illegal by city authorities but a legitimate exercise of rights protected under the first amendment by the protesters, is the last major tent protest in the country. Soon Occupy LA will face the same fate of other tent protests across our land from New York’s Wall Street to the city parks of Oakland. The city is offering the inhabitants 10,000 sq. feet of office space, some urban farmland, and other incentives in exchange for removing their tent city.

Occupy LA is impressive. Five hundred tents form a self-governed community, guided by systems of mutual responsibility and respect, environmental awareness and commitment to non-violence. Solar power provides an alternative source of electricity to the media tent. Clean-up crews constantly patrol looking for refuse to put in the city provided dumpsters. Makeshift showers and city port-o-johns keep things sanitary. Security patrols ensure peaceful relations and protection from outside agitators.

But all this may come to an end by Friday of this week.

The city’s confrontation with Occupy LA’s tent encampment brings to mind the biblical saga of Abraham and Sarah pitching their tent in the fields in order to spread their teachings of loving-kindness.

Abraham and Sarah’s hospitality was their own “protest” against the pervasive selfishness of the privileged of their time.  As the Biblical story describes,  wealthy city dwellers would take advantage of strangers through theft and trickery, shunning the needy and abusing them.  As a result of this bitter selfishness their cities were destroyed as a divine comment on their twisted values of avarice and greed. 

By contrast Abraham and Sarah, who likewise had wealth and resources, did not fear the stranger and the poor. They did not hold resources in a tight fist, instead they opened their hands to those in need, and were blessed.

Abraham and Sarah represent God-serving universal benevolence, wrote the 19th century thinker Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch. Their tent represented a community of universal charity, where open hearts, open homes, open hands and a readiness for sacrifice of time and energy and money for the general good is required.

It is fitting that the Occupy movement has at its center the tent as a symbol and a reality.  The tents remind us of the wisdom and spiritual revolution of our ancestors.  Abraham and Sarah’s tent was open on all sides, welcoming strangers with food, kind words grounded in spirituality, and ultimately the basis for a community of shared values and ethics. What is required of us now is that the spark of these teachings catch fire.

The economic realities of our time require a level of loving-kindness beyond anything that we have achieved before. Occupy LA’s tents are a call to that human spirit, which stands so much in contrast to the cut-throat world around us. It will be a shame on the city and the Mayor’s office to silence that call.

The message of Abraham and Sarah to the world over 3000 years ago provided a radical shift in focus. It moved humanity towards a spirituality where seeing and meeting another person’s physical needs became a spiritual injunction, a spiritual necessity.

If the protest is moved to an office building, the tents will not be in front of city leaders on a daily basis reminding them and us of our shared humanity: the teaching of Abraham and Sarah that blessing comes when we share resources, and care for each other and for the stranger.

We have nothing to fear from people in tents, we have much to learn from them.

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October 25, 2011 | 4:30 pm

Not Human Enough to Live: The Murder of Kelly Thomas and Effort to Bring his Murderers to Justice

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

Kelley Thomas

The facts are horrific. Video capture the brutal attack on the side of a busy street. Onlookers and passerby don’t come to the victims aid. Eventually, the bruised, bleeding half-dead body is attended to by medical personal, but it is all but too late. The victim dies.

No, I am not talking about the tragic hit and run of a two year-old Chinese girl - I am writing about the death of Kelly Thomas of Fullerton, California.

Kelly Thomas, a 37-year-old mentally ill homeless man, was brutally beaten by six Fullerton police officers on July 5. Yes, on-duty police. They then tried to cover up the murder. Thomas was beloved, not abandoned, but mental illness kept him on the streets.

Kelly’s beating at a bus stop was done in public. No one came to his aid. Cars and passersby watched. The investigators interviewed 151 witnesses — yes, that is 151 people stared, watched and did nothing — viewed seven surveillance videos and two videos recorded by witnesses on their cellphones. In addition, a recording device attached to leader of the assualt, which all Fullerton officers wear, recorded the murder in vivid detail. Two officers are being charged in his death, four others that took part have not.

Ron Thomas, Kelly’s father, is waging a relentless battle to raise awareness about Kelly’s murder, the police cover-up, and ultimately about the fate of the mentally ill on our streets. And it’s working. Residents of Fullerton are taking their city council to task and the FBI is now investigating the crime. Fullerton just set up a task force in the wake of the murder to look for ways to improve the plight of the homeless in Fullerton.

Paul Orloff, a Fullerton resident, has launched a Change.org campaign to bring the four Fullerton police officers who have yet to be charged in the Kelly Thomas murder case to justice. In just a few days, more that 14,000 people signed a petition for justice in the murder of Kelly Thomas. 

While the world gasped in horror at the death of the Chinese girl, in America we walk by the legions of homeless who lie motionless on the side of the street every day.

We are numb to the facts: hundreds of thousands of them call the streets their home every night. They sleep over subway grates, in alleyways and doorways. As the economy worsens, the numbers on the street are increasing.

Those who call the street home are mostly ignored as if they do not exist. From time to time a passerby will show compassion, offering food, money, a kind word. Yet, most of us find ways to harden our hearts to their plight. We dismiss them as junkies, bums, beggars, or mentally-ill. Cities create laws to banish them from our sight. Yet, each homeless person, no matter their mental, physical, or hygienic condition, is a human being endowed with the same soul as anyone else.

In addition to their plight living on the streets of America, literally under our feet, the homeless are also targets of random murders across the country. Kelly Thomas’s murder is just the latest to make the papers. Just in the last week, these cases made the news:

On October 23rd, Allen Harrell Hunter, from West Palm Beach man was arrested for the 2008 murder of a homeless man David Roland Ulmer

On Oct. 19th, in Butte, Montanta, Shane Hans, 35, was charged with deliberate homicide in the killing of a homeless man, Teddy James Hildebrant, in Butte overnight Tuesday. 

On October 13th, Casey Daniel Brown was sentenced Wednesday by Sacramento County Superior Court for the second-degree murder of 68-year-old Bernice Nickson, a homeless woman who approached him at a bus stop.

Why are homeless people targeted for such random killing? Often because they are regarded them as less than human, murderers wrongly believed no one would miss these creatures of the streets. Some of the murderers have ready admitted that they calculated that no one would miss these people.

Kelly Thomas’s tragic life and death are causing one city to move forward and continue the soul-searching needed to work on the issue of homeless on their streets. Hopefully it will not take more grizzly videos of a homeless person being bludgeoned, run-over, or stabbed and left to die by the side of the road for America to start taking notice.

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October 25, 2011 | 4:20 pm

Occupy Genesis

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

Based on the Torah Portion Parashat Bereshit (Genesis 1:1-6:8)

The story of creation begins again this week in synagogues around the world. The Jewish people make a global reset and roll-back our Torah scrolls. Fresh and new, our world is set in motion with organic divine harmony, only to be disrupted by human folly. 

This annual cosmic rewind and the rereading of Genesis gives each of us a chance to deepen our thinking about the stories we heard as children about the dangers of snakes and fruit trees, about curiosity and sibling rivalry. The sages enjoined us to reread the Torah and look at it with fresh eyes in every generation, freeing us to be creative while demanding our direct engagement with the text.
This year, what comes to my mind after a successful and inspiring Jewlicious Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Days of Awesome experience is how much those involved with the Jewish community, and those on the periphery, want to connect to something enduring in the face of an uncertain economic future. I see young Jews more willing to revisit ageless questions about the meaning of life, and less satisfied with traditional ways of experiencing our highest holy days.

With this in mind, I opened the Torah to reflect upon the connection of Genesis, a new year, the Arab spring, European summer and the growing season of discontent branded an American autumn. What I found in this fresh reading of Genesis is the far-reaching effects of personal and collective responsibility.

When confronted with the result of our actions in Eden, and even afterward, humanity quickly began pointing fingers. No one wanted to accept responsibility for breaking the matrix that kept the world in a state of harmony. Not Adam. Not Eve. Not Cain. No one would own up to their lust for personal gain - even at the expense of others.

Instead, we are introduced to how humanity upset God’s perfect world with dishonesty, withholding information, jealousy and accusations. 

Jewish tradition teaches that God created the world to infuse it with goodness. However, this stands in contrast to the world we see. Even with the rose-colored glasses of privilege and faith in humankind, we have to admit that the world is full of misery and suffering. Finding God in this mess becomes difficult, if not impossible, for many of us.

The Jewish mission of repairing the world, tikkun olam, uncovers the goodness God uses to sustain the world. Healing wrongs, promoting justice, equality and sustainability becomes a process of repairing creation. Tikkun olam taps into a deep-seated yearning for a revealed world of goodness, a return to Eden, and why so many of my tribe are drawn to movements for social change.
These latest movements for vast social change on the left and right can learn an important lesson from this week’s portion. They can learn that a critical mistake for which humanity was expelled from Eden in the first place, and one of the ills that affects our collective future, is a failure to accept personal responsibility for our actions.

What I see in the latest activist movement, Occupy Wall Street, is in some way a manifestation of a primal yearning for a world in balance that we see at the start of Genesis. The economic disparity and disillusionment that seems to be at the heart of this social upheaval is led by young people who yearn for myriad causes, some contradictory and some difficult to ascertain. Yet at the core is a yearning for an “Eden” world, a world that is healed and at peace. It’s a beautiful mission that hearkens to our yearning for redemption. Therefore, I hesitate to dismiss the eruption of protests across the United States and now in Europe as a pointless exercise in anarchy, hypocrisy, or a new call to eat the rich.

Occupy Wall Street understands that this millennial generation is not responsible for the mess we are in. This generation knows they are not responsible for setting up the systems that are broken. Yet they feel compelled to do something about it.

Yet I also hear the message from some Occupy folks as recognizing that they, like most of us, are marked by the faults of this generation. Facing the reality that they too have been complicit in the errors of this generation - such as vanity, apathy, materialism and a lack of acceptance of responsibility.

Genesis falls on the heels of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. These Days of Awe are a process of owning up to our communal shortcomings and asking God’s assistance in helping fix them. It requires us to accept responsibility for our own mistakes, and the mistakes of our entire community and the world. Only then can we begin to start over.

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October 12, 2011 | 10:01 am

Sukkot Humbles The Rich, Comforts the Poor, Good Timing for #OccupyAmerica

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

As the sun sets on Wednesday, October 12th, the Jewish community begins the Festival of Sukkot, a spiritual harvest festival commemorating the historic journey of the ancient Hebrews across the desert, the bounty of the fall harvest, and our reliance on God. However, Sukkot is much more than a way to commemorate this ancient journey, it evens the playing field between rich and poor.

Firstly, why do Jews rough it in the Sukkah for the Festival? Wouldn’t it make more sense to celebrate in a pub, club, or frat house?

On Sukkot there is a special mitzvah, an obligation, to rejoice and be happy. What makes me truly happy? Is it a new car, season premiers or the iPhone 4S? Sukkot is a remedy for my faith in possessions to make me happy. Surrounded by the walls of our temporary dwelling place, I remind myself that focusing on our friends, family and relationship with God can sustain my happiness.

More recently, as Jewish communities do not feel the constant threat of tyrants and anti-Semitism, Sukkot encourages me to help the many people who live on a constant basis without permanent shelter.

Another deeper lesson of Sukkot can best be understood by another name of the Festival. The holiday of Sukkot is also called the Festival of the Harvest - commemorating the time when we gather our crops and fill our storehouses.

If one has been blessed — our profits outweigh our expenditures, our portfolio has grown and our wine cellars are full and satisfaction and trust fill our soul — it is at that moment that the Torah tells us to leave our home and dwell in a Sukkah. The frail booth teaches us that neither wealth, good investments, IRA’s or even real-estate are life’s safeguards. It is God who sustains us all, those in palaces and those in tents. Any glory or wealth we posses came to us from God, and will endure so long as it is God’s will.

And if our toil has not resulted in great blessing — our investments went south, we lost our job and nest-egg, our cellars are empty, and we face the approaching winter with mounting debt and bills, living off credit from month to month, forlorn and fearful for how we will survive— then as we enter the sukkah we find rest for our troubled soul. Divine providence is more reliable than worldly wealth which can vanish in an instant. The sukkah will renew our strength and courage, and teach and inspire us with joy and perseverance even in the face of affliction and hardship.

Sukkot humbles the rich, for it can vanish in an instant. Comforts the Poor, a week to enjoy the embrace of the sukkah.

Sukkot hit at an interesting time, just as #OccupyAmerica is gaining steam.
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October 7, 2011 | 12:49 pm

A Yom Kippur Primer - Forgive and be Forgiven

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

The shofar on a stand in front of an ark containing the torahs at B'Nai Israel synagogue in High Point N.C (Don Davis, Jr. - AP)

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October 6, 2011 | 10:50 am

20 Lessons For Non-Violent Protest You Can RT #occupywallstreet

Posted by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein

Protestors in New York City, October 5th, 2011.

I must admit, I was skeptical that the rag-tag protests that started in NYC would spread as fast as they have. But as we saw with 1968, and now in 2011, protests in one country can easily spill over to other countries. Now protests in one city, have spread around the country.

Led by idealistic young people intent on changing the status quo we are on the cusp of nationwide upheaval. Lack of jobs, corporate greed and government corruption are at the top of the lists of complaints.

As the protests intensify, I have compiled these 20 tweetable lessons from my years in non-violent protests and movements. Please feel free to tweet and Facebook these.

1) The police are not an enemy, treat them like friends, they are just doing their job #occupywallstreet

2) Non-violence means non-violence. Never use violence, even when treated with violence. No broken windows! #occupywallstreet

3) NEVER resist arrest. Just go limp. #occupywallstreet

4) Plane arrests to happen on your terms. #occupywallstreet

5) Singing is always heard louder than shouting #occupywallstreet

6) Treat each other with love and respect, even when you have disagreements on tactics #occupywallstreet

7) Change takes time and patience, one march cannot change the world, but 1,000 will. #occupywallstreet

8) Appoint spokespeople for media, and don’t claim to speak for everyone unless you do. #occupywallstreet

9) VERY important - you need marked peacekeepers to intervene btw cops and protestors #occupywallstreet

10) Handout rules of non-violence to everyone, tweet them, text them, live them #occupywallstreet

11) Don’t dehumanize your opponents, teach them #occupywallstreet

12) Don’t demonize the media, get them on your side. #occupywallstreet

13) Keep your eye on the prize, don’t be distracted by counter-protestors #occupywallstreet

14) Never give over to hate and anger, love looks better on TV #occupywallstreet

15) Be considerate of everyones personal space, including guys in suits. #occupywallstreet

16) Signs work. Signs that can be read from far away work really well. #occupywallstreet

17) Don’t make it “us against them.” We all need to find a way in this world together. #occupywallstreet

18) Encourage clergy to join you by being peaceful. People will notice. (think MLK) #occupywallstreet

19) Act righteously if your cause is righteous #occupywallstreet

20) 450,000 Israelis marched peacefully. Learn from them. #occupywallstreet

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