Rabbi Ballaban’s Column

Rabbi Ballaban’s Monthly Column

Investing In The Future Of Judaism

September 4, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column •

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In Kallah Rabbati (2:13), an early medieval rabbinic text, we read the following story about the great Rabbis Akiva and Tarfon:

It was said about Rabbi Tarfon that he was a greatly wealthy man, but he did not donate much to the poor. Once, Rabbi Akiva said to him: “Would you like me to buy you a city or two [using your money]?” He replied “yes”—Rabbi Tarfon went and brought Rabbi Akiva four thousand golden dinars.  Rabbi Akiva went and gave the money to the poor. Some time later, Rabbi Tarfon found Rabbi Akiva and said to him: “Where are the cities that you bought me?” Rabbi Akiva took him by the hand, walked him to the house of study, and brought over a child who had in his hand the book of Psalms. The boy read, continuing on until he reached this verse: “[Blessed are those who fear the Lord…] they have freely scattered their gifts to the poor.” (Ps 112:1, 9)

What an incredible—if fanciful—tale! What’s more, though the reaction of Rabbi Tarfon isn’t recorded here, a slightly different version of the story is found in the related Tractate Kallah (5:1), which ends with Rabbi Akiva proclaiming to Rabbi Tarfon, referring to the house of study, that “this is the city that I bought you!” According to this alternative version of the legend, Rabbi Tarfon responds by kissing Rabbi Akiva, giving him more money to donate to the poor, and declaring “my master, chief are you in wisdom and chief are you in good acts!”

Now…I find it highly doubtful that Rabbi Tarfon would truly have been quite as thrilled as described, seeing that the equivalent of thousands upon thousands of his dollars were used for reasons he had not approved. Nevertheless, the lesson of the story is quite telling. Rabbi Akiva, one of the most revered Sages of our tradition, is lauded for his behavior. Why so? Not to teach that improper use of funds is praiseworthy; but, instead, to underscore just how important it is to give tzedakah to support students.

At Temple Beth Or, we take this matter as seriously as any other. A reason for us to have great pride is that our community makes sure not to deny any child the opportunity to study at Makor on account of financial need. The primary mechanism we use to make this happen is the Nelson Burstein Educational Scholarship Fund—i.e., the Saba Fund. This fund, which has been around for nearly ten years now, is earmarked specifically to help families who want to provide their children with a Jewish education but who would find the tuition of Makor prohibitive or overly burdensome.

The Saba fund is a great asset and helps us—in Rabbi Akiva’s words— to sustain our “city.” However, the money within Saba fund is dwindling, and that should be jarring not just to those who might be in need of it—those with tight finances and school-aged children—but to everyone in our community. Anyone invested in the future of Judaism is effected by the next generation’s ability to access Jewish education.

At Temple Beth Or, we all should be (and I suspect are!) invested in the future of Judaism—it’s why we’re here in the first place. Nevertheless, if you have been searching for a mitzvah to fulfill, look no further: make a gift to the Saba fund and do your part to strengthen the next generation of Judaism. Help us to make sure that your “synagogue city” is healthy and vibrant for many more years to come!

Shanah  tova,

Rabbi Ari Ballaban

Remembering Our Obligation to Refugees

July 30, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column •

Remembering Our Obligation to Refugees

In the realm of Jewish law and morality, there are those who compare the act of accepting refugees to the mitzvah of redeeming captives—pidyon sh’vuyim. In contrast to the aphorism that “one shouldn’t negotiate with kidnappers,” halakhah actually requires (in most cases) that Jewish communities pay any reasonable ransom to ensure the freeing of a captive.

When he wrote on the topic in hilkhot matnot aniyim 8:10 of his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides expressed his view not only that “redeeming captives takes precedence over feeding and clothing the poor,” but, more so, that “there is no commandment as great as redeeming captives, for a captive is among the hungry, thirsty, naked, and is in mortal danger.” In this passage, he goes on to explain that whosoever “averts one eye” from redeeming a captive violates at least the following commandments:

1.You shall not harden your heart, and you shall not shut your hand (Deuteronomy 15:7);

2. Do not stand by your brother’s blood (Leviticus 19:16);

3. You shall not work him with hard labor before your eyes (Leviticus 25:53);

4. You shall surely open your hand to him (Deuteronomy 15:8, 11);

5. And your brother shall live with you (Leviticus 25:36);

6. And you shall love your neighbor as yourself (Leviticus 19:18); and

7. Save those who are taken to death (Proverbs 24:11).

Suffice to say, Maimonides considered this obligation of unusually high import.

The comparison of pidyon sh’vuyim to the acceptance of refugees seems, to me, apt. If we extend to all people the labels “neighbor” and “brother,” then all seven of these biblical commandments apply to people who seek asylum. Beyond this, Jews throughout history have known that paying ransom for captives can come with some real, material drawbacks…and yet, the halakhic conclusion is that there are some risks we simply must take. So too should it be with accepting refugees at our southern border. Certainly, there are risks involved…and yet, our moral obligation remains.

We might draw some further wisdom from Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Chief Rabbi of the UK from 1991-2013. Opining on the effect of the Syrian refugee crisis on Europe, he wrote:

“I used to think that the most important line in the Bible was ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ Then I realized that it is easy to love your neighbor because he or she is usually quite like yourself. What is hard is to love the stranger, one whose color, culture or creed is different from yours. That is why the command, ‘Love the stranger because you were once strangers,’ resonates so often throughout the Bible. It is summoning us now.”

Rabbi Sacks’ sentiment is remarkably insightful. If there is anything that Jewish morality makes perfectly clear, it is that we have an obligation to care for those who are in need, such as the poor, the sick, and the orphan. And, in contemporary society, few people are as much in need as refugees.

There has been ample documentation (including by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security) clarifying that our nation’s Customs and Border Protection agency has been enforcing policies that have caused atrocities to take place: children being separated from their parents; children being forced to live in conditions that, quite literally, would be criminal if imposed on animals; and adults being physically abused, psychologically tormented, and made to endure legal malfeasances. All of these are things that our nation doesn’t impose even on lawbreakers. To think that refugees suffer them—in our name, in the name of every citizen of the United States, in the name of all American Jews—is a shanda.

Alas, this shanda is a reality. Because the United States is a representative democracy, the mistreatment of migrants at our country’s southern border, a group that includes refugees, does take place in our names. That is a major problem, and we each should be doing everything in our power to fight against it. We should spread the word about the issue to those we know, particularly sharing how we experience it as those connected to the Jewish community, with our unique history and culture; we should be donating to organizations such as the ACLU or KIND (Kids in Need of Defense) that combat the detainment camps and work to protect migrants; and, of course, we should be contacting our federal elected representatives (Senator Sherrod Brown at 202-224-2315, Senator Rob Portman at 202-224-3353, and Representative Michael Turner at 202-225-6465).

As I have reflected on this topic in recent weeks, I have considered how, throughout my life, I have had a fluctuating position on history’s bystanders. At times, I have felt that while such people obviously weren’t moral exempla, it might only be through the convenient lens of hindsight that someone like me can judge them for their inaction. Perhaps, I have sometimes thought, it could be that evidence of injustice only becomes fully apparent in retrospect.

Today my thinking couldn’t be any more different. Here and now, the injustice is already quite clear and our tradition calls upon us to act: we cannot be bystanders. As members of a people of chronic refugees, perpetually seeking new homes as strangers in new lands, we must identify with refugees, we mustn’t let atrocities take place in our names, and we must push back and speak out. We shouldn’t require the lens of hindsight to see that.

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Making Order of Our World’s Chaos

June 4, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column •

Making Order of Our World's Chaos by Rabbi Ari Ballaban

On Sunday mornings, I often like to drop in on Rabbi Chessin’s advanced Hebrew classes. In re-cent weeks, she and her class have been working through the very start of the Torah, from the words which are classically translated as “in the beginning.” It feels serendipitous, then, that a monumental new translation of the Hebrew Bible recently was published, written by the respected Bible scholar Robert Alter. Among other things, Alter set out to create a more accurate and critical translation of the Tanakh. His many departures from other classic translations begin, literally, “in the beginning.”

Many of us are familiar with those all-too-well-known first words, from the King James translation of the Bible: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep.” In his new translation, Alter works to stay closer to the real grammar of the Hebrew text, and he offers us something more precise: “When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth was welter and waste and darkness [was] over the deep…”

Besides Alter’s shift in diction—“welter and waste” supplants “without form and void” in a nod to the Hebrew’s more poetic tohu va’vohu—he also opts to up-date the English in a way few contemporary Bible scholars would today dispute: he shifts the text’s mood. The historic King James translation makes it seem almost as though God created the chaos of the early world. In contrast, Alter’s translation captures what the Hebrew text actually means, that God comes to creation on the scene of an already-existing, chaotic world. According to the actual Hebrew of the Bible, God doesn’t intentionally create this “formless void”; God encounters it, and creates everything in existence despite it.

Though I don’t take the Bible’s account of creation literally—recognizing biblical metaphors for the literary flourishes they are is a Jewish tradition dating back centuries—I’d have to be a fool to miss the beau-ty of this story, which can be uncovered by accurately understanding the story as it was meant to be read. The Genesis story isn’t supposed to tell us that God made everything in the world on God’s own terms and that every piece of creation went “according to plan.” Instead, it suggests that even God, doing the most “basic,” Godly act—creating—faced obstacles. Our world wasn’t a tabula rasa, ready for God to project everything onto it. Instead, God had to take the mess that filled our plane of existence and turn it into something resembling order.

I like this version of creation much better than its alternative. I can’t really relate with an all-powerful God who gets to shape existence according to Divine whims. On the other hand, I can relate with the idea that we have to make the best of whatever reality we are given. None of us arrives into life, a job, a family or friendship, or any other situation with a blank slate awaiting our presence, ready for us to make an impact, with all conditions being perfect. Instead, we arrive to a broken world, with humanly flawed friends and family, without any control whatsoever over what took place before we were born, and with only a small modicum of control over what will take place in the future. Nevertheless, we are responsible for improving the world. We are obligated to try to make our present existence into something better.

At times, our world can feel very much like it is filled with “welter and waste.” Nevertheless, when we encounter things like a KKK demonstration in our streets or the devastation of natural disasters, the lesson of Genesis—revealed by Alter’s translation—is that we have the potential within us to overcome the world’s shortcomings. Even in the act of creation, not even God, it seems, was dealt the best of hands. As we work to create a more just society, we too must play whichever hand we are dealt. Sometimes that hand will be better, sometimes worse; however, no matter our cards, we must stay at the table. The Jewish moral imperative incumbent upon all of us is to find and transform the world’s chaos into the ever-burgeoning beauty of creation.

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Protest

Fighting Hate at Home

May 1, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: , , •

Fighting Hate at Home By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

On May 25th, our community will be tested: a group of demonstrators from an Indiana-based affiliate of the KKK will be holding a rally downtown at Courthouse Square. From what I’ve seen and heard, people are planning to respond on that day in one of three main ways.

   First, there are those who are choosing to avoid the rally entirely. The thinking behind this approach is that since the KKK-group is looking for a confrontation, we’d be wise not to engage with them. In other words, if we engage, we give them precisely what they want.

   Second, there are those who intend to respond in an opposite manner—to directly confront the KKK. As I’ve heard it enunciated, the idea is that it doesn’t matter whatsoever if we give the KKK what they want…what matters is fighting injustice when we see it, and the Ku Klux Klan is injustice personified.

   Third, there are those staking out a middle path, opting not to ignore the KKK, but also not to directly confront them. Led by the NAACP, these are groups who are planning “positive alternative programming,” a peaceful celebration of our local diversity, in the hopes of denying the KKK the opportunity to frame Dayton’s story on the 25th as one of hate and division.

   So, what to do? I would be lying were I to say that I don’t have a preference amongst these three options. All of them reflect our legitimate, emotionally sensitive impulses to respond to a real crisis. In their effects, though, they are not all equal nor necessarily advisable.

   In some other world, the second approach—directly confronting the KKK at Courthouse Square—might make sense or be praiseworthy. However, as of now, it isn’t wise to follow it. Courthouse Square will be a powder keg on the 25th. Not only will the KKK be present, but there will likely be thousands of angry counter-protestors there, many bused in from around the region. I trust our local police to ensure Dayton not become the next Charlottesville, but I still wouldn’t recommend someone I loved place themselves in such a situation.

   The first approach also may appear attractive, and it is, for what it’s worth, infinitely safer than direct confrontation. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone the choice to stay home when a hate group is in town rallying. However, it is worth asking: If the KKK demonstrators will be at Courthouse Square, and if it is unavoidable that large numbers of counter-protestors will be directly confronting them (and such people will be there), then does our choice to stay home actually help us to protect or improve our town?

   I think the third approach is the best option we have available to us at this time. If you do not plan to stay home on the 25th and feel like you should be “doing something,” then you should be at the NAACP-led program at McIntosh Park. This program has the support of more than two dozen community partners, including the local government (Mayor Whaley’s office), the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Department, YWCA Dayton, and the Jewish Community Relations Council. It is worth mentioning, too, that my concerns about safety for this program have been allayed in multiple conversations with local police leadership. I have been assured that law enforcement is monitoring the situation and feels prepared to keep everything safe at McIntosh Park.

   However we each choose to respond to the KKK’s visit, this experience certainly constitutes a test of ourselves and our community. It is imperative that we make careful choices to keep ourselves safe; Judaism values the preservation of life above almost anything else. Simultaneously, though, this is a rare moment when our actions and choices very clearly lay bare our values. It is important that we show the world that the KKK may have chosen us, but we would never choose them.

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We Must Remember Their Names

April 1, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: , , •

We Must Remember Their Names By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

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The Israeli poet “Zelda” Schneurson Mishkovsky wrote the following well-known poem:

 

Each of us has a name given by God

and given by our parents

 

Each of us has a name

given by our stature and our smile

and given by what we wear

 

Each of us has a name

given by the mountains

and given by our walls

 

Each of us has a name

given by the stars

and given by our neighbors

 

Each of us has a name

given by our sins

and given by our longing

 

Each of us has a name

given by our enemies

and given by our love

 

Each of us has a name

given by our celebrations

and given by our work

 

Each of us has a name

given by the seasons

and given by our blindness

 

Each of us has a name

given by the sea

and given by

our death.

 

   It is important that we take time to know the names of those whose lives are taken from us—the names of the people who are not amongst us because of a world so often lacking in justice. It, of course, isn’t enough to “just” remember a name. Our consciences demand that we do more. Nevertheless, as our Kaddish prayer evidences, remembering the name of the deceased is an important part of what we, as Jews, do to mourn the dead.

   I remain as devastated as ever as I grapple with the fact that dozens of innocent men, women, and children were needlessly slaughtered last month as they prayed in a mosque. Despite this massacre having happened on the other side of the world, there is a real pain that we all experience in our own homes here in Dayton. My heart still hurts, and I am still at a loss about how to respond. I know, though, that at the least, we must remember.

   I encourage you to take a moment to do precisely that-to read one by one through the names of the people our world so recently lost for no reason other than the fact that hate, and racism, and bigotry still exist. There is something both powerful and intimate in uttering a person’s name; I encourage you to breathe new life into these human memories, vocalizing their names in a private moment.

 

Rabbi Ari Ballaban

 

These we remember:

Husna Ahmad, 47

Areeb Ahmed, 27

Farhaj Ahsan, 30

Ashraf Ali, 61

Syed Jahandad Ali, 34

Ansi Alibava, 25

Linda Armstrong, 64

Muse Nur Awale, 77

Zakaria Bhuiya, 33

Kamel Darwish, 38

Atta Elayyan, 33

Ali Elmadani, 65

Abdukadir Elmi, 78

Mohammed Omar Faruk, 36

Ahmed Abdel Ghani, 68

Amjad Hamid, 57

Lilik Abdul Hamid, 58

Mohsin Al Harbi, 63

Mojammel Hoq, 30

Mucad Ibrahim, 3

Junaid Ismail, 36

Ozair Kadir, 25

Mohammed Imran Khan, 47

Maheboob Khokhar, 65

Osama Adnan Youssef Kwaik, 37

Haroon Mahmood, 40

Ashraf al-Masri

Salwa Mirwan Mohamad

Sayyad Milne, 14

Hamza Mustafa, 16, and Khaled Mustafa, 44: father and son

Hussein Moustafa, 70

Haji Daoud al-Nabi, 71

Tariq Omar, 24

Musa Vali Suleman Patel, 60

Abdelfattah Qasem, 60

Naeem Rashid, 50, and Talha Rashid, 21: father and son.

Mounir Soliman, 68

Shahid Suhail, 35

Zeeshan Raza, 38, Ghulam

Hussain, 66, Karam Bibi, 63: Husband, wife, and son

Ashraf Ali Razat, 58

Mathullah Safi, 55

Muhammed Abdusi Samad, 66

Hussein Al-Umari, 35

Asif Vora, 58, and Ramiz Vora, 28: father and son.

 

 

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Our Differences Are Our Strengths

March 1, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column •

Our Differences Are Our Strengths By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

   Then Haman said to Ahasuerus, “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate…”

It was with these words, according to Megillat Esther, that Haman began his explanation to King Ahasuerus of why the King should not tolerate the Jews. This was far from the last time that we as Jews would experience such an attack; throughout history, we have been accused of being clannish, overly tribal, separatist…often worse. Beyond this, even when we have been able to assimilate into the prevailing non-Jewish culture of a given historical milieu—the majority culture—there always have been people unwilling to tolerate us merely because we were Jewish.

To many, the Jews’ choice to retain any amount of authentic, Jewish identity was itself a sign that Jews were culturally stubborn. To those who saw only the worst in us, our mere self-definition as being Jewish was too much. That, of course, was central to Haman’s complaint: the Jews were different from other Persians, dangerous because we were culturally and religiously distinct.

Even though antisemitism has risen dramatically in recent years, we as Jews in the United States in a way are lucky; we benefit from circumstances more hospitable to Jews than most of our forebears. Thankfully, though it doesn’t always do so perfectly, America values pluralism and defends the rights of religionists. Our laws and culture consider faith the province of individual consciences, free from governmental imposition or popular tyranny.

As Jews, we should be grateful for this aspect of American culture; it has allowed us to prosper and succeed more in our larger national, American, context than at almost any other time in Jewish history. However, in 2019, we now also must recognize and grapple with the fact that the boogeyman of “Jewish clannishness” does still exist; it has only donned new clothes.

Sadly, Jewish-Americans are not the only people facing this new specter of hate. It is much too easy to think of examples of people in our society who denigrate other “hyphenated-Americans” for failing to be “American enough.”

Have any of us not encountered someone espousing vicarious anger over a minority group for not acting or looking like “normal” Americans? Have any of us not heard someone complain about Asian-Americans’ choice to live in Chinatowns or K-Towns? Or someone complain about Latin-Americans’ use of Spanish? Or about particular linguistic habits, Ebonics and naming-customs, of many in the black community? Or about the clothing choices and head coverings of American Sikhs and Muslims?

We should hear Haman’s voice in all such complaints: “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples who keep themselves separate.” Just as we literally scream and shout “boo!” at Haman because of the way he leveled Jewish identity against the Jews, we have a moral obligation to raise our voices when we see other peoples similarly slandered and denigrated.

There is nothing wrong with a people holding to the aspects of its identity that make it unique and that it cherishes; that is as true of Jews’ choice—and it is a choice—to remain Jewish over the millennia as it is today of other immigrant and minority groups in America who work hard to keep their cultures alive.

Though Purim is a holiday mostly concerned with fun and games, there no doubt is an important message in the Megillah. It’s important that we don’t miss this holiday’s profound meaning just because it wears merriment as a disguise.

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Whimsical Weather in the Ancient World and Today

February 1, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column •

Whimsical Weather in the Ancient World and Today Rabbi Ari Ballaban

Whimsical Weather in the Ancient World and Today

In light of this year’s ongoing and unpredictable winter weather, I cannot help but think of one of my favorite, quirky talmudic stories.

   The Babylonian Talmud tells of an especially troubling time of drought in Jerusalem. The Rabbis had been unsuccessful in praying for rain, so they sent for a man who was known to have special powers, Honi ha-Me’aggel, “Honi the Circle-Drawer.”

   The scene begins when they first ask Honi to pray for rain. Quite confident in his abilities, he tells them to bring their belongings inside lest they be ruined in what he assures them will be a torrential downpour. Then, he prayed for rain; however, none came.

   Subsequently, Honi drew a circle on the ground and stood inside it and said to God: “Master of the Universe, Your children turned their faces to me for help, as I am like a member of Your house. I swear an oath by Your great name that I will not move from inside this circle until You have mercy upon Your children and cause it to rain.” A very light rain then began to trickle down.

   Honi said: “I did not ask for this, but instead for rain that will fill the cisterns, ditches, and caves with enough water to last for the entire year!” A violent rain then began to fall.

   He said: “I did not ask for this damaging rain either, but for rain of benevolence, blessing, and generosity!” At last, the rains fell in their standard manner; however, they continued so long without stopping that they filled Jerusalem with enough water that the Jews were forced to leave their homes and seek shelter at the city’s high point, the Temple Mount.

   Shimon ben Shetakh, the president of the Sanhedrin at the time, then said to Honi: “Were you not Honi, I would have decreed that you be excommunicated…but what can I do to you? You nag God, and God does your bidding, like a son who throws a tantrum, and his father then does what he, the son, asked!”

   One of the things that so interests me in this story is that it doesn’t have a clear moral. On the one hand, the Rabbis don’t appear to think that what Honi did was entirely appropriate: after all, he brought so much rain that it was destructive, and the Rabbis bemoan that they can’t punish him. More than that, Honi really does act like a petulant child! One can almost hear him whining “but God, that’s not what I wanted…” each time he tells God that the miracle he received wasn’t quite right. On the other hand, though, the Rabbis are the ones who sought this man out at the start of the tale, and it seems they did so for a good reason. The Jews had been desperate for rain, and God apparently was only willing to listen to Honi. What was so special about this man that made God listen? Alas, the narrative does not provide us with a clear answer.

   What we see in this story is that Honi and his gift are part blessing and part curse, and, yet, I still sometimes wish we had access to someone like him today at Temple Beth Or. It would save a lot of time and energy if we had our own Honi ha-Me’aggel and could predict—or, perhaps better, control—when the rain, snow, and ice would come. For want of such powers, we’ll do our best to keep an eye on the weather, ensure that the parking lot is clear of snow, and to let you know of any cancellations as promptly as we’re able…The only help we ask in return is that if you see any men named Honi drawing circles on the ground, please do send them our way!

 

 

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Lessons of the Liminal: Focusing on the Journey, not the Destination

January 1, 2019 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: , , , , •

Lessons of the Liminal: Focusing on the Journey, not the Destination By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

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Liminality—though some consider this word needless jargon, I suspect it nevertheless is a favorite of many rabbis (though Rabbi Chessin prefers “bifurcation!”) This densely descriptive term is one that people who study religion love to love, because it enables them to name an important type of experience that crosses boundaries of culture, time, and place. But what does it mean, and what is it all about? Perhaps more i importantly, allow me to answer: Why should you care about noticing the liminal? 

Though he didn’t coin the term (that distinction goes to Arnold van Gennep), Victor Turner, a famous 20th-century  anthropologist, was instrumental in developing the idea behind it. He used it in studies of communal rites of passage. As he observed, there are particularly fraught times in most cultures when people transition from one part of their lives to another. These marginal moments in life define us; if we want to use the technical term for them, we call them liminal.

Even if people in a culture aren’t explicitly conscious of experiencing something liminal, they (the moments) tend to be precarious for those who navigate them. When we traverse a liminal juncture, we cross a threshold from one part of our lives into another. When boys and girls have b’nai mitzvah, they start the process as children and finish it as adults. When adults get married, they start their wedding ceremonies as unmarried individuals and finish as newly wed unions.

Focusing on liminality leads us to ask: What happens in between the beginning and the end of processes like these? What happens, for instance, if a ceremony or rite of passage somehow goes awry or isn’t completed…does the child technically not become an adult? Do the adults not become married? Liminality is about transitions, and studying it reminds us that our lives in many ways are more affected by the processes of the transformations we undergo than by any longer term status a transition is meant to enact.

If we look around us in the world, we can see the liminal everywhere, both inside and outside of the realm of religion. As we begin 2019, we may notice an extra measure of liminality around us. The new class of congress? The way they settle into their new roles—whether, for those that are returning, into a new status quo, or, for those that are newly elected, into an entirely new reality—will set the tone for many coming years of  politics. A new tax year? At this time, in this transitional moment, we make choices that are likely to affect us long into the future.

The importance of the liminal is even apparent in the general spirit of how we mark a “new year” in Western culture. As many of us set New Year’s resolutions, we simultaneously confront the progress (or the lack thereof) that we made on self-imposed vows in the past year and, likewise, ponder how  we might strive to change course in the year to come. These experiences are nothing if not liminal; by virtue of their boundary-crossing nature, they are both precarious and potent.

As you begin 2019, I encourage you to take time to think not just about what you hope to become in the coming year, but to consider how you hope to get there. Remember that the part of life that makes our stories most rich is not that which describes what we are—professional titles, family roles, ranks or social status—but the trajectory our lives take in attaining such distinctions. As the new year progresses and you make decisions for the future about what to do and who to be, be mindful of the liminal; it will help you set the tone for a good year to come!

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Hanukkah Can Help with Crisis of Faith

December 1, 2018 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: , , , , •

Hanukkah Can Help with Crisis of Faith By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

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Like many Jews, I have a little bit of family in Israel. My Israeli relatives (cousins, aunts and uncles) moved there in the wake of the Holocaust; the rest of my family chose to come to America.

One might expect the Israeli side of my family to be, in some fashion, “more Jewish” (whatever that means!) than that which settled in the US—he or she would be mistaken. In fact, while my American relatives are active and practicing Jews, those who are in Israel, like many Israelis, tend toward secularism and struggle with anything in Judaism they consider “religious.”

On multiple occasions, my Israeli relatives and I have debated how one can believe in God in a post-Holocaust world. As far as they are concerned, any God who would allow the Holocaust to occur is no God worth believing in. Best cast scenario, they would suggest, is that no God exists at all.

Hanukkah is, at its core, a Jewish attempt to reconcile theological crises like this.

 

At the conclusion of the Maccabean Revolt, during which a Jewish family led a rebellion to gain freedom from the rule of the Hellenistic, Seleucid empire, the Jews of 2nd-century BCE were faced with their own crisis of faith: how to revitalize their people’s religiosity after the recent, wholesale destruction of Jewish culture. The question that underlied the Maccabees’ task echoes what many Jews have wondered lately: What do we do, first, when it seems like our God has abdicated the role a beneficent Sovereign ought to play? Second, what do we do when we begin to experience doubts about the meaningfulness of belief in God at all?

Thence comes the significance of Hanukkah, the holiday of rededication.

The root Ḥet, Nun, Kaf, from which Hanukkah’s name comes, is precisely about the reaffirmation of that in our world which, though originally sacred, has been sullied. According to Jewish lore, the Hanukkah miracle of 164 BCE marks the time when our ancestors decided that they would not let Syrian-Greeks—and the calamities they inflicted upon us, our holy places, and our sense of the Sacred—dictate the innermost essence of our religion or faith.

Antiochus IV Epiphanes, the Seleucid’s Syrian-Greek leader during Maccabean Revolt, sought to make the practice of Judaism burdensome. As an imposition to the Judeans, he also attempted to turn the Second Temple into a shrine for Pagan gods like Zeus. Hanukkah—the coda to the Maccabean Revolt, the Hasmoneans’ victory lap—was an inflection point in the Jews’ response to that crisis. It marks the precise moment when the Jews, miraculously having won a war and survived yet another oppressive regime, showed the world that neither persecution nor violence would stop them from following their ancestral religion as they saw fit.

Unfortunately, Hanukkah—especially as it is often celebrated in 21st-century America, as a wintertime, Christmas look-alike—risks becoming spiritually irrelevant to American Jewry’s religious praxis. There may be nothing wrong with the inevitable cultural interchange that occurs when Jews are in societal dialogue with those of other faiths; however, it is essential that Jews maintain the core integrity of their holidays’ meaning. Hanukkah, minor festival though it may be, has the potential to hold major religious significance, especially in times when Jews experience strife.

This holiday, being born of Jews’ confrontation with an often-inhospitable world, deserves to be recognized for what it is: a statement by Jews that their history, religion, and culture cannot be destroyed. In it, we find the strident spirit of rebellion on which Jews have relied for millennia. In our world today, there are many who would all too happily gloat if Jews were to surrender their religion in response to violence, if we were to decide that our religion lacks meaning in light of the iniquities and indignities we still face.

Surprising though it may be, the 2nd-century BCE rededication of our ancient Temple should be quite relevant to 21st-century CE Jews. The debate in which I will undoubtedly continue to participate with my family (or with others who feel, given our history, that God has abandoned the Jews) is legitimate. Nevertheless, I am confident asserting that Hanukkah provides us with a model for an authentic Jewish commitment that, regardless of what happens to us, we as Jews will survive the tribulations of our times; we will come out, at the other end of our difficulties, stronger for the experience. Ultimately, I have no doubt, we will turn our weaknesses into strengths and our suffering into celebration.

Chag Hanukkah sameach, may we all rededicate ourselves and our faiths to the cause of goodness and light,

Rabbi Ari Ballaban

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Jewish Tradition Confronts Power with Truth

November 1, 2018 by • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: , , , , •

Jewish Tradition Confronts Power with Truth By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

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In the wake of the national spectacle that was last month’s confirmation process of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, there have been many people around the country who have wondered if the #metoo movement should now be considered dead.

This emotionally charged question is liable to come from people on both ends of the American political spectrum. On the one hand, those who consider themselves conservative might ask whether the apparent use of an alleged sexual assault as a political weapon signals that #metoo’s demise is, if not already here, just around the corner.

On the other hand, those who consider themselves liberal may be inclined to ask, among other things, whether the Senate’s failure to rebuff a political appointee who was credibly accused of sexual violence means that any momentum #metoo once had either has fizzled out or has, at least, led to little real-world change.

 

If this is the conclusion of a movement that has so thoroughly impacted our nation’s discourse on gender, sex, violence, and women’s experiences, then it is rather anti-climactic. However, it isn’t so clear that we should see it as such. Even if we can’t divine whether or not #metoo remains relevant from the tea leaves of American current events, members of the Jewish community should still see themselves as ethically mandated standard-bearers of #metoo on the basis of our Jewish heritage.

Of course, there are aspects of our tradition which are admittedly less than admirable in how they approach women’s empowerment. For instance, the idea that women cannot initiate a divorce—an unfortunate consequence of certain interpretations of halakhah—leaves much to be desired from the standpoint of equality. Nevertheless, the broader view of Jewish history and heritage demonstrates and demands that every person should listen to (and take the concerns of) women seriously.

To that end, one major goal of the #metoo movement has been to work toward ensuring that even the most powerful men in our society face consequences if they engage in sexual violence. As Jews, we ought to take note of at least one clear precursor to this principle in the Tanakh’s strong critique of King David.

David, whom our tradition typically portrays as one of the Bible’s main heroes, is not immune from rebuke when he acts in a sexually abusive way with Bathsheba. When Nathan, the prophet, confronts him with the gravity of his sins, David poignantly acknowledges the destructive nature of what he has done and cries out: chatati l’adonai, “I have sinned against God!”

While 21st-century readers might wish that David had been punished with permanent loss of his lofty status, it’s hard to deny that the tale has some significant resonance in the era of #metoo. Certainly some would say David’s punishment was too mild since he remained on the throne.
Others, also, might point out that Bathsheba’s point of view is completely absent in the story (a result of the fact that much of the Bible is framed from a male-only perspective.) The greatest difference between David’s story and today, though, may actually be the fact that God is the stimulus that forces David to reckon with his misdeeds.

If we want truly to claim the mantle of #metoo by making claim to our Jewish tradition—and we should—then we need to remind ourselves that our path to sex- and gender-related justice will not come through divine decree. We do not live in ancient Jerusalem and we cannot expect those who harm women to be confronted with stark truth by some prophet who offers them a convenient, understandable allegory.
Instead, it is up to us to push for justice in our society, and it is our obligation to confront and grapple with the nuanced, complex circumstances necessary to fight for those in our society who have been victimized. As the biblical tradition makes clear, to be a Jewish proponent of #metoo means being ready to confront even the most powerful men in our society with the truth, in the words of the prophet Nathan, that atah ha-ish, that “[they] are the men” whose behavior makes the world less safe for women.

For women and men both, and our religion as well, it is imperative that we ensure that the essence of #metoo remain vital and potent as ever.

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