Spread Light Throughout Our World

December 1, 2018 by tbo5275 • Rabbi Chessin's Column, Uncategorized • Tags: discrimination, Hanukkah, hate speech, Jewish History, Rabbi Judy Chessin •

Spread Light Throughout Our World By Rabbi Judy Chessin

As we kindle our Hanukkah menorahs, only a month after the horrifying “Tree of Life Synagogue” shooting in Pittsburgh, we might be reminded of this season in years past in Billings, Montana.

Twenty-five years ago, in 1993, white supremacists in Billings broke windows of Jewish homes which displayed menorahs. In a sign of solidarity, thousands of non-Jewish families and businesses placed Hanukkah menorahs or pictures in their own windows! That story exemplified America at its best. It reminded our nation that when there are prejudice and bigotry against any race, religion or nationality, we are all victims of hate.

A quarter of a century later, as our Jewish community was rocked yet again by hatred, we were likewise also overwhelmed by outpourings of love and solidarity. After the events in Pittsburgh last month, friends and neighbors from all walks of life held out their hands in love and support to our Jewish community. Temple Beth Or received cards, letters, flowers, calls, and offers of help. We heard from our Muslim neighbors and from churches from all around Ohio. People of all faiths came to our services of healing to express their solidarity and support and to offer hugs or simply stand by us in silent witness.

I was immeasurably touched to receive a large packet of letters from an entire public school high school class to whom I had spoken earlier in the season. All students expressed sorrow that the Jewish people were suffering and condemned the hatred and violence which is becoming more and more common-place in their world.

Hanukkah is the festival of military victory but it is also a festival of miracles. A rabbi was asked why we celebrate Hanukkah for eight days and not seven. After all, what kind of a miracle was the first day of Temple dedication, since presumably the single jar of oil should have burned at least a day? And the rabbis answered that the very fact that our ancestors lit the first lamp in spite of having had to fight, in spite of their losses, in spite of their pain – that the Jews had enough faith to kindle the menorah at all was the first miracle.

Hanukkah teaches us that we will probably always have to battle to combat oppression and tyranny. But it also teaches that we must remain hopefully optimistic and join hands with good people everywhere, who join us in the healing task of repairing our broken world, Tikkun Olam. No other festival reminds us as vividly that we cannot drive out darkness with more darkness, but rather by having the faith and courage to spread the light.

Chag Urim Sameach,

Happy Festival of Lights.

Rabbi Judy Chessin

Jews Obligated to Stand Against Discrimination

April 1, 2018 by tbo5275 • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: discrimination, hate speech, mosques, Muslims, Rabbi Ari Ballaban, temples •

Jews Obligated to Stand Against Discrimination By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

While out to dinner a few weeks ago, I had an unusual conversation with a stranger. During it, I glimpsed something discomfiting about the Jewish duty to stand in solidarity with those of other minority faiths.

When I meet people outside of my normal circles (who don’t know me from either Temple Beth Or or my doctoral program), it is fairly common for them to be curious and to ask me questions related to my being Jewish; this is especially true of those who have not interacted much with Jews before. That is how this encounter began. The stranger with whom I was speaking informed me that he was Christian, I told him that I was Jewish, and he happily peppered me with questions about Judaism.

Our conversation was completely pleasant…until it wasn’t. It went awry when he (proudly!) informed me, in what I experienced as an attempt to show his own solidarity with Jews, that: “I’ve seen a few synagogues before; I’m always happy to see them. What I don’t like seeing are mosques.” This comment was, obviously, a showstopper. After rebuffing his sentiment, I reluctantly continued in a polite-but-terse discussion with him, and I was only too eager to finish talking and say goodbye. I do really mean it when I say that this conversation had been quite pleasant. However, my perception of him—and the situation I was in—had greatly changed.

For days after this conversation, I wondered about this man’s motivation in sharing such a repulsive, bigoted sentiment with me—me myself being someone of a minority faith, someone whom he had just met, no less! All I could imagine was that he had internalized from the general American ether that Jews dislike Muslims, and that, as such, I would be encouraged to hear that he too harbored such intolerance.

The more I thought about this encounter, the more I reawakened to one of the realities of discrimination that makes it such an insidious issue: In the real world, very few of those who harm others, those whom we would like to call “villains,” stand around twirling a mustache.

So, let us be fair to this man. It is not as though it is unfathomable how a person in the United States would think such a thing. We live in a post-1948 world, 70 years after the creation of the modern State of Israel, where the conflict between Israel and her neighbors—most of whom are majority-Muslim—has been acrimonious and public. The bitter fruit of this decades-long, bloody conflict has been the deterioration of a once-healthy relationship between Muslims and Jews.

Leaving aside the political realities of Israeli peace plan politics (the minutiae of which I can’t meaningfully discuss here), we ought to recognize how sad and problematic it is that Jewish-Muslim relations (interfaith matters) have been a casualty of this longstanding political dispute. Even though we may have political disagreements (and exceptionally heated ones at that) with regard to Israel, we should work to ensure that a long history of Jewish-Muslim fellowship not be abrogated without a second thought.

In that vein, after further reflection, it might be true that my non-mustachioed interlocutor may have been less heinously villainous than my initial gut-instinct indicated. Nevertheless, we can’t, as Jews, become inured to the denigration of the “other.” It remains our ethical obligation to stand up and to control the discourse on Jewish-Muslim relationships in our time. So long as there are those who imagine that Jews would be sympathetic to any notion of discrimination, we still have work to do.

Rabbi Ari Ballaban

Photo by Juan Camilo Guarin P on Unsplash

Coming Together Can Be Miraculous

February 1, 2018 by tbo5275 • Rabbi Ballaban's Column • Tags: discrimination, Hockey, North Korea, Olympics, Rabbi Ari Ballaban, social action, South Korea •

Coming Together Can Be Miraculous By Rabbi Ari Ballaban

With the PyeonChang Olympics approaching, a certain element of this year’s lead-up to the Games has me thinking of a major highlight from the 1980 Winter Olympics: The so-called Miracle on Ice.

In that year’s Olympics, the US men’s ice hockey team staged an impossibly-unlikely upset against the Soviet team on their way to winning a gold medal. This match was an extraordinary moment in sports history, and in 2008 the International Ice Hockey Federation even went so far as to name it the top international hockey story of the preceding century.

2018 may be the year of a second, reconstituted miracle on ice. In an exceptionally controversial move, the president of South Korea, Moon Jae-in, reached an agreement with the leadership of North Korea that will accomplish two significant things. First, this agreement will let many North Korean athletes come to South Korea to compete under their own flag at the upcoming competitions. However, perhaps more importantly, it will also establish a joint North and South Korean ice hockey team that will compete this year at the Games. If we can call this, in fact, a second “miracle on ice,” it is clear that unlike the 1980 Miracle—which was about an improbable victory and a team’s triumph over a bitter rival—the spirit of this contemporary miracle is rapprochement

By the time you read this article, the facts may have changed dramatically. Nevertheless, we should reflect on what this agreement could represent. Of course, there are those around the world (including analysts from both the United States and South Korea) who reasonably view this development negatively, and my Jewish read on the situation is not meant to rebut their legitimate concerns. Instead, it is meant to prompt us to appreciate the very real good attained simply by people coming together.

It is no accident that we often begin our services with the words of Psalm 133: הִנֵּה מַה-טּוֹב וּמַה-נָּאִים, שֶׁבֶת אַחִים גַּם-יָחַד, Behold how good and pleasant it is when brothers sit together!

Focusing more on this line, it is worth noting a significant, but often-overlooked nuance in the phrase שֶׁבֶת אַחִים (“shevet achim”). While I translate it above as “when brothers sit together” (and other translators stretch the Hebrew even further, rendering it “that brothers sit together”), the words are actually best understood as (the admittedly inelegant): “Behold how good and pleasant is the sitting-together of brothers.” The idea of this verse is not that it is lovely that brothers sit together; we know, of course, that they often choose not to! Even “when brothers sit together” is a bit of a stretch: In plenty of sibling relationships, the question about their sitting-together isn’t about a “when,” but an “if.” Perhaps this is why this psalm instructs us as it does, simply to recognize the objective beauty in an ideal of brothers being together.

The 18^th century Torah commentator David Altshuler, in his commentary Metzudat David, reflected on the last words of this verse in light of historical divisions among the Jewish people. Like today’s Koreans, Jews were once been divided into rival kingdoms: Israel in the north and Judah in the south. Altshuler expressed his wish, prompted by the words גַּם-יָחַד, that: “ויהיו גם יחד במלכות אחת ולא יחצו לשתי ממלכות עוד,” “That they [the Israelites] should be together under a single kingship and not be divided into two kingdoms again.”

I think Altshuler’s sentiment transfers to the modern spirit quite well. As we watch the Olympic Games unfold, I think we can be fairly realistic about the immediate, larger political outcomes we can expect. However, perhaps we can set our sights a little lower: For there to be a miracle on ice again this year, the being-together of two peoples may, actually, be enough. If we agree with Psalm 133, we might see this joint team as something of beauty, something “good and pleasant,” something miraculous.

Rabbi Ari Ballaban

discrimination