May 7, 2012 | 6:55 am

Urgent Appeal on Behalf of Pluralism and Democracy in Israel

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

I happily pass this along to you and urge you to support the rights of the non-Orthodox in Israel. The following comes from Anat Hoffman, the head of the Israeli Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism in Israel, the leading advocacy group on behalf of pluralism and democracy in the Jewish State.

Rabbi Miri Gold needs our help, and so I ask you to send an email to Minister Yakov Margi from the Ultra-Orthodox Sephardic Shas party who has been stalling on passing along a living wage to Rabbi Gold because she is both a non-Orthodox Rabbi and a woman. We may like to see all government subsidies of religion cease, but until it does the Reform movement needs and is entitled to support. This is an important test case and it is critical that we win.

The following is an appeal from Anat Hoffman.

IRAC goes back to court

I know that when we walk into court on Wednesday, the strength of the thousands of voices will be behind us saying Miri Gold is our rabbi too.
L’shalom,
Anat

May 6, 2012 | 5:37 pm

Art and Healing Go Hand in Hand

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

After I posted this morning my piece, “Music and the Arts – A Spiritual Necessity” my cousins, Susan and Leonard Nimoy, passed along to me the following video link from CBS News on the extraordinary modern art collection hanging on the walls of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

In explaining the significance of art and medicine, one physician said that “artwork and doctor’s work complement each other.” Leonard remarked that a “hospital should be sterile physically, but not emotionally or intellectually.” And the piece ended with the reporter saying, “Even the walls are therapeutic!”

A terrific story once more emphasizing the importance of art as a necessity in life - http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7407646n&tag=stack

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May 6, 2012 | 8:23 am

Music and the Arts – A Spiritual Necessity

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

This address by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of the music division at The Boston Conservatory, though already 8 years old, came to me from a friend this week. I was so moved by it that I wanted to share it with you.

Paulnack says:

“I have come to understand that music is not part of ‘arts and entertainment’ as the newspaper section would have us believe. It’s not a luxury, a lavish thing that we fund from leftovers of our budgets, not a plaything or an amusement or a pass time. Music is a basic need of human survival. Music is one of the ways we make sense of our lives, one of the ways in which we express feelings when we have no words, a way for us to understand things with our hearts when we can’t with our minds.”

Mr. Paulnack concludes his address with these words:

You’re not here to become an entertainer, and you don’t have to sell yourself. The truth is you don’t have anything to sell; being a musician isn’t about dispensing a product, like selling used cars. I’m not an entertainer; I’m a lot closer to a paramedic, a firefighter, a rescue worker. You’re here to become a sort of therapist for the human soul, a spiritual version of a chiropractor, physical therapist, someone who works with our insides to see if they get things to line up, to see if we can come into harmony with ourselves and be healthy and happy and well.

Paulnack’s is a powerful statement of what music is and does in particular, and what the arts as a whole bring to the human condition. Parents, schools, politicians and government officials, budgets, philanthropists, and people of faith - take note!

My only problem with his address is his broadsided critique of religion as a vehicle of human wrath. That characterization is not religion. Rather, his is really a critique of human avarice, greed and ego. It its pure form, religion and the arts have the same spiritual goal – to bring us close to Oneness, to God, to our highest selves and that is healing not only of one’s particular tribe or community, but of all the world.

His address is worth reading.

http://greenroom.fromthetop.org/2009/03/11/karl-paulnack-to-the-boston-conservatory-freshman-class/

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May 3, 2012 | 11:29 am

“Yehudei America: Limdu ivrit!” (American Jews: Learn Hebrew!)

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

In a recent article published in the Jewish Forward (April 13, 2012), reflecting on the ever-widening cultural gulf between American Jewry and Israelis, the journalist and author David Hazony challenged the American Jew to learn Hebrew. Here is some of what he wrote:

“…there exists no greater threat to Jewish Peoplehood than the cultural disconnect between Israeli and American Jews. And unlike so many of our people’s other problems, this one actually is quite simple to solve – but only if American Jews decide they want to solve it… Growing up in American public schools, I studied French for six years. By 12th grade I’d read Moliere, Camus, Voltaire and Ionesco in the original. Later in life I was able to revive my French in a couple of months of a weekly conversation class, and after a number of brief visits to Paris I was getting by, or at least making a noble effort… such an education gave me something much deeper than just lingual training. It gave me an incredible amount of insight, appreciation, respect and fondness for French culture, French thinking, French joie de vivre…”

Then he says:

“American Jews have to learn Hebrew…there are at least two overwhelming reasons that they should. Leon Wieseltier covered one of them last year, in a jaw-dropping essay called ‘Language, Identity, and the Scandal of American Jewry,’ who said ‘American Jews…have inhumanely and un-Jewishly cut themselves off from the vast oceans of their own biblical and rabbinic past because they don’t bother to relate to Hebrew the way that Western countries until recently related to Greek and Latin – as a basic building block of cultural literacy. The assumption of American Jewry that it can do without a Jewish language is an arrogance without precedent in Jewish history. And this illiteracy, I suggest, will leave American Judaism and American Jewishness forever crippled and scandalously thin… Without Hebrew, the Jewish tradition will not disappear entirely in America, but most of it will certainly disappear.”

Hazony continues that

“…the time is coming very soon – if it has not already arrived – when one will not be able to fully participate in Jewish cultural life without knowing Hebrew. This is true in part because of the sheer quantity of cultural creativity, but also because of the trends: Israel is quickly growing in wealth, population and global influence, while American Jews are, in the optimistic view, marching in place. American Jews have much to contribute to Hebrew discourse and our collective Jewish future. Their tradition of tolerance and religious liberalism, their democratic experience and their philanthropic habits, to name just a few things. But they will do so only if they dispense with the ignorance-as-wisdom arrogance that locks them out of Hebrew-based culture.”

It is true that in the United States Jewish scholarship is available in English. It is true as well that English is spoken widely in Israel. Consequently, many American Jews have concluded that they do not need to speak or read Hebrew to get along. What is lost, however, is something deeper and more essential that goes to the heart of Jewish peoplehood.

The language of prayer and Jewish faith, of Torah, philosophy, mysticism, and literature, of Zionism and the Israeli experience is Hebrew – not English. If we American Jews are ever to be a part of the culture of the Jewish people, we must be able to converse in the language of our people.

David Hazony was spot on when he said, “Yehudei America: Limdu ivrit!” (American Jews: Learn Hebrew!) - one letter, one word, one phrase, one verse, one idea at a time!

Read the rest of Hazony’s article here.

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April 30, 2012 | 5:26 pm

In Memoriam - Howard Epstein - 20 Years Ago Today

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

The day after the Rodney King verdict twenty years ago I received a call from long-time Temple Israel members, Lillian and Marty Epstein, that their son Howard (who was about my age) was missing. As soon as the rioting had begun, Howard flew from Oakland Airport near his family home in Orinda to attend to his business located in South-Central Los Angeles. He had owned and operated a factory there for a number of years and employed 20 workers. These were people he knew and about whom he cared. He knew all their families, and so, when the riots erupted Howard felt it his duty to be with them.

He landed at LAX in the late afternoon, rented a car, and commenced his 15 minute drive to his place of business. Along the way somewhere he vanished. By evening no one had heard from him. Given the tumult in the city, his wife, Stephanie, and parents were worried.

The following day, exactly 20 years ago today, the police contacted Lillian and Marty with the news. At a stop light Howard was approached by two men who murdered him at point blank range and then took everything of value in his car. The police were able to identify Howard only by tracing the car to the rental agency.

Howard had deliberately moved a couple of years earlier with Stephanie and their two small children out of Los Angeles because he felt the city was no longer safe and he did not want to raise his children in this environment.

When the rioting stopped, we honored Howard’s memory in a memorial service in our synagogue Sanctuary where he had become bar mitzvah. His family and friends described Howard as among the most kind, community conscious and caring of men, a true rachaman ben rachmanim, a compassionate son of compassionate parents.

I remember Howard every year at this time, and especially today, 20 years and a day after his tragic death.

Zichrono livracha. May his memory be a blessing.

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April 26, 2012 | 6:50 am

Yehuda Amichai Poems on this Yom Haatzmaut

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

An Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion
An Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
and on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
both in their temporary failure.
Our two voices met above
the Sultan’s Pool in the valley between us.
Neither of us wants the boy or the goat
to get caught in the wheels
of the “Chad Gadya” machine.
Afterward we found them among the bushes,
and our voices came back inside us
laughing and crying.
Searching for a goat or for a child has always been
the beginning of a new religion in these mountains.

Jerusalem
On a roof in the Old City
laundry hanging in the late afternoon sunlight:
the white sheet of a woman who is my enemy,
the towel of a man who is my enemy,
to wipe off the sweat of his brow.

In the sky of the Old City
a kite.
At the other end of the string,
a child
I can’t see
because of the wall.

We have put up many flags,
they have put up many flags.
to make us think that they’re happy.
to make them think that we’re happy.

Wildpeace
Not the peace of a cease-fire,
not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb,
but rather
as in the heart when the excitement is over
and you can talk only about a great weariness.
I know that I know how to kill,
that makes me an adult.
And my son plays with a toy gun that knows
how to open and close its eyes and say Mama.
A peace
without the big noise of beating swords into ploughshares,
without words, without
the thud of the heavy rubber stamp: let it be
light, floating, like lazy white foam.
A little rest for the wounds –
Who speaks of healing?
(And the howl of the orphans is passed from one generation
to the next, as in a relay race:
the baton never falls.)

Let it come
like wildflowers,
suddenly, because the field
must have it: wildpeace.

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April 25, 2012 | 7:41 am

Myths and Facts – The Palestinian Christian Population – Background Paper

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

In September I posted on my personal blog a link to a background paper recently published on the Palestinian Christian population. This study was an eye-opener for me and I recommend it to you (see link below).

In my own journeys to the Israel and the West Bank I was left with the same impression reported on CBS 60 Minutes this past weekend, that over the past 100 years [1] that the Palestinian Christian population is dramatically shrinking, and [2] that it is shrinking because of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank on the one hand and Muslim extremism on the other.

After reading this excellent paper by Ethan Felson at the Jewish Council for Public Affairs (JCPA) – “JCPA Background Paper – The Palestinian Christian Population” I was surprised to learn that both impressions are substantial distortions of the truth.

This paper is a careful analysis of the demographics and politics around this controversial issue. It is well worth reading and sharing with any Christian Ministers, Priests and Christian friends you might know.

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April 24, 2012 | 8:00 am

Yom Haatzmaut – Reflections 2012

Posted by Rabbi John Rosove

Who could have imagined 64 years ago that Israel would become as economically viable, politically and militarily strong, technologically advanced, and creatively cutting-edge as it is today?

Who would have dreamed that Israel’s Jewish population would grow from 600,000 souls in 1948 to 5.5 million today?

Who would have thought that after having had to fight seven wars, endure two Intifadas and bear-up against ongoing terrorist attack that the Jewish state would remain democratic and free despite little peace with its neighbors and no resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

All told, even with her imperfections and challenges, Israel is a remarkable nation, testimony to the spirit, will, ingenuity, aspiration, creativity, and sacrifice of generations. Today Israel is like none other in the world, more culturally, linguistically, and religiously diverse, more intellectually and academically productive. The depth and breadth of her accomplishments are nothing shy of breath-taking.

On the occasion of Israel’s 64th Independence Day, Jews the world over are well to take stock, celebrate her accomplishments, mourn and honor her dead, and ask what unique place the Jewish state holds in the innermost heart, mind and soul of the Jewish people.

This is no easy task. Permit me to offer some thoughts as I reflect on Israel’s meaning:

Israel is far more than a political refuge as envisioned by political Zionists. It is more than the flowering of the Jewish spirit as dreamed about by cultural Zionists. It is more than the fulfillment of Jewish memory and religious longing. 

Israel starts with the land, with Jerusalem at its heart, for the land has been a key focus of Jewish consciousness for three millennia. The land of Israel is at the center of our history and is an essential element of our Jewish faith. But Israel is far more than land. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel put it this way in his moving volume Israel – An Echo of Eternity: “Israel reborn is an answer to the Lord of history who demands hope as well as action, who expects tenacity as well as imagination.” (p. 118) “The inspiration that goes out of Zion today is the repudiation of despair and the example of renewal.” (p. 134)

In this spirit the Zionists sought to create a new kind of a Jew, at home in the land, self-activated, self-realized, independent, creative, and free. They understood, however, the limitations of their state-building endeavor. Heschel said it this way: “The State of Israel is not the fulfillment of the Messianic promise, but it makes the Messianic promise plausible.” (Ibid. p. 223) In other words, the political state is not and cannot be regarded as an end in itself. Rather, the Jewish state represents a challenge and a promise that will rise or fall based on how our people and Israel’s government uses or misuses the power that comes with national sovereignty. With this in mind a Jewish state worthy of its mission must challenge our individual and communal ethics, our nationalism, our humanity, and our faith.

May Israel be an or lagoyim, a light to the nations, and may her citizens and all the inhabitants of the land know justice and peace.

[Yom Haatzmaut is celebrated on the 5th of Iyar which falls this year on Friday, April 27. We will celebrate at Temple Israel of Hollywood in Los Angeles during Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday evening beginning at 6:30 PM in song and poetry, led by our clergy, volunteer choir, quartet and instrumentalists. All are welcome.]

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