of superheroes and soothsayers

December 13, 2015 by Leave a Comment

I gave this d’var Torah at Nehar Shalom Community Synagogue on December 11, 2015.

Over Thanksgiving I was able to go home, to Texas, where all of my family lives. The most precious time was with my two nephews and my niece. The day after Thanksgiving, Archer, the four-year-old, pulled me upstairs to play. He decided he wanted to wear his Halloween costume, and so he showed me the basket for his dress-up clothes. He begin pulling out his pink tutu, cowboy hat, green dress, etc. He finally got to his firefighter costume. He carefully donned the hat and coat and asked me what I thought. When I suggested he might need shoes to be a firefighter, he obligingly strapped on his pink sandals. Ready? I said. Not yet, he replied. He pulled out of the pocket of his coat a laminated card with four illustrations. Okay, he announced. This is what we have to do. These are the different things that can happen, he said, pointing to the card. And so we went from room to room, first putting out a house fire; then a forest fire that spread from a campfire; and finally a kitchen fire that started from a pot left on the stove. And then we rescued a cat in a tree. What else can we do?, I asked. That’s all there is, he replied. Let’s do them again!

My brother is an engineer — and my grandfather was an engineer — and Archer has certainly inherited their exactitude and penchant for following directions precisely. So I know that it’s not just a child’s assurance of safety that encompasses his approach to make-believe. For Archer, the card that comes with the jacket tells you what to do. These, and only these, are the threats that firefighters face. They are circumscribed, and they are predictable.

I came to Texas for Thanksgiving with the heavy weight of the brokenness of the world. I continue to be sickened by the terrorist attacks at home and abroad, whether by knife-wielders in Jerusalem — where many of my classmates are now studying — or gun-toters here. The sense of insecurity that I feel on a daily basis is profound, and as I took part in Archer’s highly circumscribed set of crises, I wondered whether I will be able to give him — and my other nephew and niece — anything other than a world of out-of-control unpredictability.

I felt this again on Wednesday night, when a small group of us from Nehar Shalom went together to the Boston Candlelight Vigil Against Gun Violence, part of a week of similar events nationwide. The event took place in what I assume was the small sanctuary of the very large First Church of Boston in Back Bay.

There was a modest crowd, at least in comparison to my expectations — which provided a marked contrast to the number of victims of gun violence who were remembered. A candle was lit for each of the victims of gun violence this year in the Boston area. And then attendees were invited to light candles for their own loved ones who had been victims of gun violence. And then the pastor lit a candle for each of the fifty states and the District of Columbia while the number of victims of gun violence in each place were read aloud. I worried we might burn the church down with all of that fire. (And this was not one of the scenarios on Archer’s card!) Even the presence of the large Boston police officer who spoke briefly was diminished in the shadow of the flames. Before and after the service, on a large screen at the front of the sanctuary, a tribute video played, with pictures of victims of gun violence — a name, date, and location with each. The dates ranged back as far as 1990, with the dead all over the country. The enormity of what we face overwhelmed me, and I felt helpless and scared. I don’t mean to criticize the organizers of this important event — I mean only to share my experience.

In that moment, sitting in a small chapel memorializing the victims of this seemingly unending, volatile scourge, what we call “Gun Violence in the United States,” I flashed to an episode of my favorite TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Yes, you can laugh. What, you thought I was going to say the parshah? Themes of Chanukah? Words from our venerable rabbinic tradition? In my world, there are at least two Torahs, and one of them is Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The show is about a superhero in Southern California who fights the forces of darkness — but on a metaphorical level, it’s also about what we do as human beings when the monsters come. In Buffy’s world, as in ours, the monsters always come. Of course, in Buffy’s case, it’s because the town of Sunnydale also happens to sit on the hellmouth.

The episode “The Wish” explores an alternate reality: What would the town be like if Buffy weren’t there? The vampires have taken over, but most of its human residents have adjusted to the constant fear. They have curfews, avoid the bright clothing that attracts vampires, and have weekly memorial services for the ever-accumulating dead. They can’t take on the vampires directly. Horrific death is a matter of when, not if. This is just how things are.

Throughout the episode, we see Buffy’s would-be mentor begin to realize that they’re living in an parallel universe. He came to the town to help Buffy, but she never showed up. And in the meantime, the town of Sunnydale surrendered to the darkness. He finally figures out that this reality is the result of a magical spell — and that he can break the spell by destroying the amulet that was used to cast it. As he prepares to smash it, the demon who cast the spell taunts him: How does he know the other world is any better than this one? “Because it has to be,” he says. With that leap of faith, he rights the world — monsters still exist, but does the person who fights those monsters.

Sitting in that sanctuary, I felt like the residents of Sunnydale. I don’t want for us Americans to accept gun violence as they do vampires — but we don’t have a superhero, and we don’t have a magic amulet. We do, however, have an example in the Jewish tradition. (Yes, now we’re getting to that Torah!)

Parshat Miketz also contains a looming menace that threatens death. In this part of Genesis we see the long-forgotten Yosef finally remembered by Paro’s cupbearer and called to interpret Paro’s dreams of fat and lean cows and of full and withered ears of grain. Like Archer’s firefighter card that precisely delineates scenarios, Yosef accurately predicts seven years of plenty followed by seven years of famine. And then he recommends preparation. The job is given to Yosef himself, who successfully executes his task — and then some, as he’s ultimately able during the famine to feed more than just the people of Egypt because of his careful planning.

As an activist, there is so much that I like about this story. I think we can see it as the beginning of community organizing in Jewish tradition. After the cosmology of the story of creation at the beginning of Genesis, the Torah focuses narrowly on family narrative: Avraham and Sarah, Yitzchak and Rivka, Ya’akov, Rachel, Leah. When Yosef’s brothers sell him into slavery down into Egypt, the scope begins to widen. With Yosef’s eventual rise to power, the actions of our ancestors begin to have national and historical implications. What we do matters to others.

Importantly, Yosef doesn’t just tell Paro what his dreams predict: He proposes a solution. And the solution, significantly, does not assume deliverance: Gd may have enabled Yosef to know what was coming, but Yosef suggests what to do about it.  The text attributes the idea for action to Yosef — not Gd. לֵאלֹהִים פִּתְרֹנִים, “interpretations belong to Gd,” Yosef says — but the story shows that action belongs to human beings.

I imagine that the prospect of famine, of the potential starvation of the people of Egypt, was quite frightening. Knowing the threat is coming doesn’t blunt fear. The famine looms, but Yosef isn’t cowered by it. He doesn’t accept it. He sees a different world, and he works to bring it into being.

Like Archer’s fires, and Buffy’s monsters, and Joseph’s famine, there are and will continue be destructive forces in the world. We create them in these fictional forms to manage our fear. We can also do it in this world. We can and we must end gun violence. Let’s change this era of daily gun deaths so radically as to make it seem like it was an alternate universe. I want our moral imagination in this area to be as vibrant as our creative imagination.

Like the Maccabees of old, who defied the culture of their time that said that destiny could not be changed and instead, jumped in to write a new story, my hope for us is that we dare to dream of a different world — and then work together to bring it about. It’s not a superhero or a soothsayer — we are the ones we’ve been waiting for.

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i treated her harshly

November 20, 2013 by Leave a Comment

I wrote this midrash (a story in the tradition of the rabbis, who used such tales to explain passages in the Tanakh) for an assignment in my class on Bereshit (Genesis). It’s based on some of the events in Genesis 12-16: Abraham’s passing Sarah off as his sister to Pharaoh, the covenant that G-d makes with Abraham, and Sarah’s giving Hagar to Abraham to bear her a son. It also assumes Rashi’s explanation that Hagar is Pharaoh’s daughter.

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I am barren. Fruitless. Unproductive.

It’s all that that anyone knows about me.

We went forth from Ur, but no one has come forth from me. When we were in Egypt, I managed to secure provisions for my husband, but I cannot provide him with the security of a son.

Egypt. Where I met her. Where the seed was planted and began to grow. Just as the extent of my identity is barren, hers is daughter. She came to me that first night; she’d heard about us, the sojourners from Canaan. You are beautiful, she said as she walked into the room, startling me. I hadn’t even seen her father yet. She wanted to know, so I told her about Ur, and Haran, and Schem, and Beth-el. I’ve never been anywhere, she sighed. I thought, did I ever know a time when I so misconceived of the known? I miss my family, the streets of Ur, the river. We’ve been wandering in the desert for a long time. The desert that reflects back my own aridness.

I wasn’t well guarded. She came to me one night: I know the plagues are because of you. I’ll tell my father if you’ll let me go with you and your husband. To her, the unknown was pregnant with possibility. We all left Egypt with more.

She wept with me as we watched Lot move eastward. I remember watching Haran die; I thought I might be watching his son die, too. We comforted each other when my husband went to his rescue. We made plans to return to her father’s household if they didn’t return to us. Sometimes I wonder if we would have been better off.

I definitely wondered that a few mornings after he returned. She startled me again, this time by shaking me awake. I followed her outside the camp, to a large clearing. I screamed. At the far end, he was lying on the ground, unconscious, pieces of animal carcass next to him, buzzards circling above. Smoke swirled up from a pile of wood and bricks nearby. I fell to my knees. She looked with fright at me, and then at him, and then back at me.

The truth is that my husband frequently feels that far away. I used to bring food to the idols in his father’s shop in Ur; now he builds altars at Beth-el and Hebron. He talks in his sleep. He prays to a god I don’t know. They’re both mysterious to me. A long time ago, I thought that a child would ground us; one day after she and I revived him in that field, he mumbled to himself, “Your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs.” Your seed, I repeated softly. That possibility had stopped for me.

It was her idea. She said she didn’t know why I hadn’t asked before. I didn’t want to tell her that while he didn’t have a son, I had her. Though we had tried to do otherwise, it turned out that I still saw her as daughter, and she still saw me as barren.

She saw it as another adventure. I probably should have known that ten years of the same would make her restless again.

She gave me the words to say, the language of his god. She was a quicker study than I. “Behold, now, the Lord has kept me from bearing.” In spite of myself, I began to hope. When I asked him, I allowed myself to imagine building a different future. And suddenly, the desert wasn’t so dry anymore.

Later, I soaked the bedclothes with tears. I blamed myself more than him, and him more than her. It was my wrong. I thought it would make them both happy. But separately. I underestimated her need for a new role and his need for a son. The future was now theirs.

I lashed out, and I hit him where it hurt. “The Lord judge between you and me.” His face became expressionless, like he was once again unconscious. He couldn’t see my pain in the midst of his own. “Do to her what seems appropriate in your eyes,” he replied stiffly. I know I had wounded him deeply, that he was able to let go of his son, his only son, the one whom he loved.

Her, too, I treated harshly. She was too brave not to run away, and so she did. I am childless.

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“yesterday we learned that it’s okay to kill a black kid”

July 14, 2013 by 7 Comments

Last night after dinner my husband and I walked to J.P. Licks — the local ice cream shop, about a mile away — and we were able to return from that outing to our home unaccosted. This is one of the many privileges we enjoy as white people.

I had just settled into a chair in the living room to read when my phone buzzed with an alert from The New York Times: “George Zimmerman acquitted in killing of Trayvon Martin.” I yelped. I read the alert to my husband, who sighed and said, “I’m not surprised.” I abandoned my book for the night and begin to watch reaction to the verdict unfold on social media. (I don’t have TV, so I wasn’t able to watch anything live.)

I wasn’t alone in being upset. I know there are plenty of people who exulted in last night’s verdict, but thanks to the wonder of feed curation, I don’t have to know anything about them (except when someone, say, makes the unfortunate decision to retweet Ann Coulter).

The eternal optimist in me was surprised at the verdict. And then just as quickly, the realist in me was not. Other people who have followed the case more closely than I have written — and will write — better analyses of the trial: Andrew Cohen, for one, and Ta-Nehisi Coates, for another. As far as I can tell, the verdict was proof that our criminal justice system works exactly as it is designed to do: Maintain white privilege, power, and control. Mission accomplished. (And if you’re not convinced that is what it is supposed to do, I beg you to read Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow.)

And from my limited perspective — and by the way, unless you were one of the six women on the jury, your perspective on this will always be limited — the verdict was probably basically right. Zimmerman was probably “not guilty” (in the strict legal sense) according to the law as written in Florida. And everything about that sucks.

Following are a few notes, in highly unparallel form, mostly directed at my fellow white people, based on the social media activity that I observed..

1. Yesterday was not “the day we all learned that it’s okay to kill a black kid” (or some variation on this melodramatic statement). Maybe yesterday was the day *you* learned that. But lots of folks, particularly people of color, already knew that. Have always known that. Because their lives have depended on their knowing that.

2. You are not Trayvon Martin. If you think that “we are all Trayvon Martin” — and you’re including white folks in that “we” — then you’re missing the point entirely. This situation does not happen to white kids.

2b. A corollary: Don’t wear a hoodie. Find another way to express solidarity. Start by calling people out on their racism. And when when you say something racist (and yes, you have and you will), own up to it without defensiveness, apologize for it, and work to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

3. This is not the time (and I actually think it’s never the time) to try to convince folks that not all white people are racist. That makes the conversation about you. It’s called derailing, and it is unhelpful. Destructive, even.

4. You don’t understand exactly what people of color are going through just because you’re Jewish, or disabled, or gay, or [insert minority to which you belong]. Nobody wins Oppression Olympics.

5. Banning Florida, and Texas, and North Carolina, and [state that has passed or upheld a law you find repugnant] is not the solution. You are sorely mistaken if you think that state-sanctioned racism doesn’t happen in blue states.

6. Vote in every election, advocate to change laws (and to prevent laws like Florida’s from being passed in your own state), and DON’T TRY TO GET OUT OF JURY DUTY.

As I went to bed last night — and slept fitfully — I wondered how Tracy Martin and Sybrina Fulton could bear this. But I quickly realized that I’m not able to go there, not least because I’m not a parent. Whatever children I might have won’t be at risk of being shot as they walk through whatever neighborhood we might live in.

As the brilliant Audre Lorde wrote in Age, Race, Class, and Sex: Women Redefining Difference (h/t Blue Milk):

Some problems we share as women, some we do not. You fear your children will grow up to join the patriarchy and testify against you; we fear our children will be dragged from a car and shot down in the street, and you will turn your backs on the reasons they are dying.

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a world apart

March 22, 2013 by 1 Comment

This week I was assigned Cristina Rathbone’s A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars as part of my Foundations of Prison Ministry class. I was only required to read parts, but I ended up tearing through the whole thing. It helped that I had a snow day on Tuesday.

The book hits close to home (it looks like I’m calling Boston home now!) because the author lives in Jamaica Plain, a neighborhood just a few miles away from mine. Plus, the subjects of the book are women incarcerated at nearby MCI-Framingham, a women’s prison, where I mentor an inmate who is in Boston University’s College Behind Bars program. I visit her as part of an interfaith initiative between Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological Seminary, the CIRCLE Prison Justice and Ministry Program.

Rathbone’s relationships with the five women whose stories constitute the majority of the book developed over five years — and were only the result of years of initial litigation for access to the prison. As she notes at the outset, she has just about only been in MCI-Framingham’s visiting room. But despite the considerable efforts of the powerful Massachusetts Department of Corrections to keep her out, Rathbone presents a comprehensive picture of life on the inside (in so far as any outsider can tell, I suppose).

The importance of the book lies in the fact that, Rathbone notes, “women behind bars are startlingly unlike their more violent male counterparts. Predominantly incarcerated for nonviolent, drug-related offenses, they are frequently mere accessories to their crimes: girlfriends, wives, or lovers of drug dealers, even leaseholders of apartments in which drugs are stashed. Almost all have serious drug problems themselves, and about half are victims of domestic abuse.” It stands to reason that life inside a women’s prison would be different, too.

If the stereotypical male experience in prison is working out, illegal procurement of weapons and drugs, physical violence, and trying to escape, the stereotypical female experience is eating junk food, illegal procurement of underwear and personal hygiene products, gossiping, and trying to see children. But sex is the great unifier: It turns out that almost everyone, in both environments, sleeps with a fellow inmate or a guard.

The book alternates between the stories of a handful of women and the history of women’s incarceration in the U.S. I found the latter only of passing interest, in part because how little effect the past has had on the trajectory of how women now fare in the criminal justice system. The first women’s prison, Mount Pleasant, opened in 1838 on the grounds of the infamous Sing Sing prison, and it was closed in 1850. MCI-Framingham, which opened in 1877, is the oldest running women’s prison in the U.S., so its history could be instructive. But it falls into a depressingly rhythmic pattern: A reform-minded woman takes over and institutes changes aimed at true rehabilitation, and then a (usually male) higher-up decides that the programs and practices are self-indulgent and replaces the reformer with a traditionalist. And then a reform-minded woman takes over again . . . The regularity of the ups and downs made me wonder whether a permanent revolution will ever be possible.

rug hooking class at MCI-Framingham, 1948; photo via Framingham Public Library

rug hooking class at MCI-Framingham, 1948; photo via Framingham Public Library

In Rathbone’s account, MCI-Framingham, probably like many prisons in the era of government budget shortfalls, has very little in the way of programming. She writes: “Its website indicates a long list of programs available to the women of Framingham . . . but when you take into account the diversity and breadth of its population, it remains a fact that each women at MCI-Framingham has access to fewer programs, and therefore to fewer privileges and less prison-earned ‘good time,’ than most male prisoners in the state.” Indeed, Rathbone’s analysis is that the sexism of our society is reflected in the prison system: Men get disproportionate resources. But women in prison have disproportionate need, in part because of past abuse, drug addiction, mental illness, and their responsibility for children.

Sidebar: For what it’s worth, I should note a criticism of this analysis: Our class discussion on the book was led (in the absence of my professor) by Rev. Joyce Penfield, executive director of The Blessing Way, a Rhode Island institution that provides “spiritual guidance for reentry & recovery.” She argued that per capita, women get vastly more resources than men: There are more programs in men’s prisons, but they constitute 94% of the country’s prison population. I’m not sure that this changes the experience of scant resources that the women in Framingham report, but I feel compelled to mention this disagreement. And Penfield even went further, suggesting that her experience in the Rhode Island penal system is one of plenty where women are concerned.

Most compelling, as is so often the case, are the stories Rathbone tells. These are women you want to root for: None of them ever had much to begin with, were given pretty short shrift in life, and are now facing just about the steepest uphill climbs you can imagine. Most heartbreaking were the struggles with child-rearing. As women are most often the primary caregivers in our society, so too are they in prison. And they seemed to spend most of their energy behind bars monitoring the often insecure living situations of their kids. Unlike the majority of incarcerated men, each woman could not rely on her children’s other parent to do the care-taking in her absence.

Somewhat mystifying was Rathbone’s treatment of sexual relationships at the prison. She devotes a number of pages to the prevalence of these illicit affairs (physical touch between inmates and just about anyone is forbidden), both between prisoners and between prisoners and guards. Such contact is commonplace, even rampant, for all the same reasons that it is on the outside: One of the women in the book, who resists such affairs for most of her time in prison, even witheringly notes that her fellow inmates just replicate on the inside the same problematic relationships they had on the outside. Her cellmate hooks up with almost every officer that is interested, while another woman is involved in an abusive relationship with a fellow prisoner. And these relationships, like everything else in jail, are commodities. What’s lacking, to my mind, is a discussion of the question of whether carceral relationships can ever be truly consensual, particularly between inmates and guards. Rathbone only talks very briefly about allegations of rape in that institutional context — but devotes an entire chapter to a now-defunct web site that seeks to connect men to incarcerated women (ultimately called “Jail Babes” but originally and unfortunately dubbed “Jail Bait”). Maybe that says something important: As Rathbone begins her book, “Life in a women’s prison was full of surprises.”

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why have kids?

October 20, 2012 by 2 Comments

First: I don’t know whether I want children. I’ve never felt a strong desire for children. I have felt pressure from my mom and from (what I perceive is, more on that below) Jewish tradition. I’m mostly undecided, and I think I could be okay not having kids. I do wonder though, if it were socially acceptable, whether I would just decide not to. Which is strange to me, since I am not usually ruled by others’ expectations. I think part of it is the fact that relatively few people choose not to have kids, so I wonder if I’m missing something. I also wonder how to know that I won’t regret that decision. Deciding to become a rabbi has only intensified my anxiety about this issue: I don’t know any rabbis without children.

Over the holidays I read (on my Kindle app on my iPhone) Jessica Valenti’s Why Have Kids? A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness. It’s a short and quick read, and it in no way answers its own question. I was left with the overwhelming feeling that there is no rational reason to have kids. People do it because they want to, because they are expected to, because they were faced with an unintended pregnancy — all valid reasons. But it’s not necessarily going to make you a happier or more fulfilled person (at least not for a long while).

The book is divided into two parts: LIES and TRUTH. The first category includes “Children Make You Happy,” “Breast is Best,” “‘The Hardest Job in the World'”; the former, of “‘Bad’ Mothers Go to Jail,” “Smart Women Don’t Have Children,” and “Women Should Work.” Obviously, some of these are provocative, but Valenti does manage in some way to take on some of the sacred cows of motherhood. Much of the book draws from first-mother accounts, and the stories, quite frankly, are horrifying — and played into my worst fears. The standout in the book is her (unfortunately ill-formed) argument for the need in our country to move from individual to community parenting — thus requiring us to advocate for “government and workplace policies that honor parenting for everyone.” That’s a world into which I would want to bring children. Valenti just doesn’t really offer a way to get there.

Interestingly, related issues were raised last Shabbat in a Jewish context; at Temple Beth Zion, a congregant, the aunt of one of my classmates, gave a d’var Torah about the Biblical imperative to procreate, from the weekly parshah, Bereshit. In the first account of the creation of humans — the only humans at the time — in Genesis 1:28, G-d tells them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.” The talk was intensely personal, and it deeply resonated with me.

At my request, she sent me a copy of her d’var. Speaking from her perspective as “a Jewish woman who chose not to give birth or be the primary raiser of children,” she talked about her struggle with that decision and her exploration for its validation in Jewish tradition. She grew up in a different time, when women were told that being a mother was part of having a full life. (I’m actually not sure that things have changed that much, though perhaps the messages are less explicit.) She began to speak with women older than she and discovered that this might not be the case. After much agonizing, she related, “I felt at the end of the day that primary parenting is a huge responsibility and a lot of work that, while potentially quite wonderful, was not one of the major life works that I wanted to take on.”

She explained that she made that decision with the belief that it was in opposition to Jewish law and practice. At the time, she identified as a secular Jew, so whether there was support for her choice in Jewish tradition was not of import. When she became more religious mid-life (when having children was no longer an option), she began to explore what Jewish texts actually have to say on the issue. There are in the Tanakh examples of women who do not have children — most notably Dvora — which is to say nothing of the men and women who cannot have children. She also cited the story of Jacob’s reaction to Rachel in her despair over not having children; a 15th century rabbi interprets it as anger at her forgetting her basic worth as a human being.

Wrapping up, she asked, “What does it mean to be a mensch (human) in regards to procreation and the domination of the planet by human beings in the 21st century? What is our holy work and what is our holy work today as we explore our connection back to the very first mitzvah — of procreation?” Citing the writing of Rav Kook (the first chief rabbi of British Mandate Palestine) on the issue — his view is that procreation is not mere instinct but pursuit of divine goodness, to be found everywhere — she concluded,

From my point of view this means that procreation originally set the precedent for human holy activity that now includes all activity that nurtures the human race.

Oh my God! I forgot to have children!Thus, her work as a mentor and advocate for Jewish women is her holy work — born of the Biblical mandate to “be fruitful and multiply.”

This decision weighs on me, and it’s something I’ll continue to wrestle with as my window for having children continues to close because of my age. The d’var giver joked that she didn’t want to have the realization of a woman in a t-shirt she saw: “Oh my God! I can’t believe I forgot to have to have children!” Like her, I want “to make an active, intelligent decision about whether or not I [am] going to give birth and raise children.”

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