Reflections on Adlolf Eichmann Fifty Years Later May 21, 2010

Reflections on Adolf Eichmann Fifty Years Later

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Richmond, Virginia

May 21, 2010

 

With little public notice will pass this Sunday the fiftieth anniversary of a very historic moment. It was on May 23^rd, 1960 that Prime Minister David Ben Gurion arose in the Knesset, the parliament of Israel to announce the capture and extradition to Israel of Adolf Eichmann.  As a twelve year old, in an age that little was taught about the Holocaust, his was not a well known name. Most people would not have recognized it. In time we would. My Bar Mitzvah preparations and its celebration were framed by his capture and his execution. I remember watching segments of his trial on our black and white TV, the Hebrew unintelligible to me, in a place that I would eventually visit, but then was so very far away, about the most terrible chapter of Jewish and human history, that was yet to be revealed. When I saw a little blurb noting that it was fifty years ago, I was instantly transported back to that time, sitting on the floor of the den in my parents' house and looking at this man behind a glass cage.  I made a note in my diary to talk about it tonight.

 

What can be said fifty years later, after the unmasking of the man singly responsible for the extermination of the Jews of Europe?

 

I remember looking at him, suit and glasses and not believing that that man could have had so much power to do it. While the face of evil is quite clear in the appearance of an Adolf Hitler or Stalin, would we have noticed Haman walking down the street, or a Pharaoh, if dressed ordinary? Probably not. It is hard to recognize evildoers. That was one of the lessons from Eichmann – evil doesn't have to look macabre. It can look ordinary. The terrorists of 9/11 looked ordinary otherwise they wouldn't have been able to get on the planes. So, too, the man who parked the SUV in Times Square. Evil can look ordinary.

 

As I looked at Eichmann on television, as a naïve youth, I wondered: "Why did he hate us so much?" I was the only Jew on my block, for many blocks. We played box-ball in the concrete squares of the street and touch football between the telephone poles. We nailed vegetable baskets to scrap wood, cut out the bottom and nailed it to the telephone pole to play basketball. Did these kids secretly hate me? Did their parents? How did this happen, all of a sudden? Through this trial I would learn that the answers to my question(s) were immense. It was like peeling off layers of a gigantic onion, or trying to put together a billion piece jig saw puzzle, each layer, each piece just splicing off to many more unending pieces. Fifty years ago, looking at Eichmann on the television, was a very disturbing, upsetting experience. I did not know what to make of it. It was the beginning of an essential and indispensible piece of my education.

 

We would come to learn that Eichmann was a tremendous tactician. He created an intricate, extensive, exhaustive plan to exterminate eleven to twelve million people, the Jewish population of Europe. From his trial we would come to understand that without the assistance and complicity and complacency of millions of "ordinary" people, those who conducted the trains, those who saw the trains, those who saw the round-ups and empty apartments, who took over vacant homes, businesses and belongings, those who made up the train-schedules, and those who brought food –such as it was – and raw materials to the camps and took away finished products, the Holocaust couldn't have happened. Eichmann's diabolical scheme relied on the "common man." Furthermore, it depended on Christian Europe to kill the Jews of Europe. When I graduated high school four years later, they still had not revised the history books. That is why we bore witness at the hearings here in Virginia when they instituted SOL's. Can the "man on the street" be corrupted to acquiesce to evil, to enable evil, to assist evil? Eichmann's trial taught that the answer is "Yes." While the Holocaust is awfully complicated and complex, the truth is that good can never be taken for granted. We have to work hard to make the world a good place. We have to join hands with good people to do good things and make a good world. Eichmann's trial was a shock to me because I didn't know if the world I was looking at was true or just a veneer. Sometimes I still wonder.

 

From my public school history I learned nothing about the Holocaust, but I did learn that World War II ended in 1945. I wondered: "Where was he for fifteen years?" "How did he get out of Germany, out of Europe and into Argentina and manage to live there all these years?" I learned that that was a very big question with even a bigger answer. While the Nazis lost the war, it didn't mean that Nazism was dead. Nor were all those responsible for it captured. Growing up in the 1950's my sense of morality was shaped by such quintessential television shows such as the Lone Ranger, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry. The good guys win and the bad guys lose and are punished. Like my TV, the world was portrayed in black and white. The Nazis – all the Nazis – should have been punished and punished severely. It was a shock to me that Eichmann and others had escaped and to live comfortable lives. His discovery forced me, us, to re-evaluate the world in terms of its myths of good and bad, and perhaps give us critical tools to analyze it today. Eichmann's very existence was an eye-opener to me. It boggled my mind. It called into question the structure of my world. That truth stays with me. I am always questioning my/our world.

 

Yesterday the Commonwealth put to death another criminal. I don't know how many have been put to death in whatever timeframe, not can I compare our Commonwealth to other states. But I can say with modesty, humility and pride, that despite the severest provocations of the intifadas, fedayeen, suicide bombers, and the murders of children at Ma'alot – I wonder how many remember that name – the only person executed by the State of Israel is Adolf Eichmann. In an environment where "life is cheap," where individuals are just numbers on arms, lines on page in unending books, the Jewish DNA embedded in Medinat Yisrael does NOT exact an "eye for an eye" except for the one person who would have exterminated us all. That is also a lesson to learn.

 

So when you get the newspaper this Sunday and it says "May 23^rd," pause for a moment. Reflect back fifty years and think of the great irony, the vindication and the great justice of a little, old, white wisped haired Polish born Jew, announcing in the Knesset of the Third Jewish Commonwealth that Adolf Eichmann, mastermind of the Final Solution, was captured and would be brought to justice, brought to answer for his sins in the court of the people whom he intended destroy.

 

Shabbat Shalom

A House Without Heirlooms -- May 16, 2010

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"A House Without Heirlooms"

D'var Torah

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Temple Beth-El Annual Meeting

May 16^th, 2010

 

Dear Congregation:

Dr. Ismar Schorsch, past chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary wrote a d'var Torah in December, 2001 on the Torah portion of Vayeshev, talking about patriarch Jacob's moving and reflecting on the moves in his own life. Born in Germany, he arrived in America in March, 1940. As his father was a pulpit Rabbi, they moved to different congregations. Being a renowned historian, Dr. Schorsch reflected on the American Jewish scene. He wrote: "We American Jews are forever relocating…Yet frequent moving puts Jewish identity at risk…The price of our celebrated mobility is a house without heirlooms."

I found his d'var Torah when I was preparing for Torah class and set it aside to write this one. What are heirlooms? Do you really need them? What do you do with them? What happens when you don't have them or discard them?

Heirlooms are physical tangible objects that have history. The dictionary definition is "a possession handed down from generation to generation." Of course an heirloom was created some time, but was added to collection which grows slowly over time. Heirlooms have meaning beyond their immediate usage. Heirlooms don't necessarily sit in a corner or on a shelf. They are used, but in their moment of usage speak by their existence of past times, past people, past moments of usage. I have many heirlooms. Sometimes they compete for my usage. I always use Ruby's grandfather's Kiddush, engraved with the town from which he came. My first Shabbat dinner at her grandmother's table, Grandma gave me that cup and said "You make Kiddush." I have used it ever after. I am still at her table. Though deceased 31 years, she lives. She lives in the Shabbat Yom Tov licht that Ruby lights, her licht that she gave Ruby when we were married. I sit in the chair that was in my maternal grandmother's tenement apartment, in which I sat as a little boy. I sit in that chair and remember her and my life then, even as I do it in here. There is an indelible, invisible, unbreakable, unending connection from Boro Park, Brooklyn, N.Y. to Richmond, Virginia.

Do I need them? My life would be empty without them. Not that they don't make pretty things now, but these objects, and many more, give depth, meaning, connection, history, purpose and illumination to me, to my life, to the deeds that I do. They add levels that would otherwise be missing and thus my life shallower, emptier. We have already handed down heirlooms to our children and grandchildren and are thrilled to see them in their places and in their usages. There is such great joy to retell the stories and passages of an heirloom to Ariel, Moshe and Raya, time after time. It is a rich weave, a luxurious tapestry.

And when you don't have them? My maternal grandmother told me a very long time ago that she brought from Europe her own Shabbat and Yom Tov Licht. I naively asked her where they where? She proudly said that she gave them away for the scrap metal drive of World War I. I never told her how disappointed I was not to have seen them, touched them, watched her light them, see my mother light them and the next generation. It was and is a void of which I am perpetually cognizant.

Heirlooms root us in being, in meaning, in purpose, in history, in relationships, in connectedness. Heirlooms are not museum pieces. Heirlooms do not sit to gather dust and be forgotten from whence and from whom they came. They are meant to be used and lived, held and kissed, cherished and hugged. We bask in their presence and they bless us.

On Friday morning I shared with our son Menachem this quote "a house without heirlooms." In the dialectic of our conversation he asked, Abbah, what about the reverse, "heirlooms without a house." I acknowledged to him to that the words written in both directions have the same implications. As Dr. Schorsch noted, particularly American Jews are very transitory. Look at our congregation. Many are from elsewhere. Many are only one generation here. We can surely take our heirlooms. But when we moved, did they have their places or did they stay in boxes, some for a long time, maybe some are still in them now? There very surely can be heirlooms without a house. Heirlooms without a house.

The synagogue is a house. A house with heirlooms.

Israel (The People) Has A Responibility for Israel (The State) --- May 14, 2010

Israel (The People) Has A Responsibility for Israel (The State)

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

Richmond, Virginia

May 14^th, 2010

 

As many as will hear these words at our Shabbat services, I am thankful that many more will receive them on our synagogue's listserv. I write this to call your attention and as a call to action. I really need much more time that allotted for this evening. I truly wish that it was Yom Kippur and I was speaking to the whole congregation face to face.

 

Two weeks ago I issued a rhetorical challenge: If Israel did not exist, who would follow a Theodor Herzl - a pied piper with a pipe dream - to create it? One hundred and twenty-five years ago we had nothing. Pogroms were raging in Eastern Europe. The Holocaust was on the distant horizon. Today we have a State. Sixty-two years ago the United Nations called it into being. Can anybody here imagine living as a Jew today without having the State of Israel? How precious an entity! How fragile an existence! But that existence is threatened from within and from without, from nearby and from far away, by those who hate it, despise it and actively seek to destroy it, and by those who seek to do good, but could also lead to Israel's destruction. It is hard to tell the players without a scorecard! We don't live in Israel. We won't serve in Tzahal. We won't pay their taxes. We won't elect their government.  We don't have to agree with any specific Israeli policy, and there are many with which I vehemently disagree. But as Jews, as Am Yisrael, as Goy Echad – one people, we have a vested interest, we have an existential consequence, we have an obligation, we have a sacred duty to do our part as part of world Jewry to protect and defend Medinat Yisrael. It is not my intention to whitewash anything. Sometimes Israel needs to be saved from itself, from illegal settlements, and as the current tussle over a proposed Conversion Law in the Knesset. Sometimes it is from others, Iran, Hamas, boycotts of Israeli professors. Tonight I specifically focus on the actions of the Presbyterian Church USA.

 

You will not currently find this on the front page of any newspaper; but it will get there.

You might discount its importance. That will be lying to ourselves.

You might ignore it.

But at the peril of having sinned against all our forbearers and all our history,

                                                                                                and against our destiny.

 

Background: Presbyterian Church USA created a special committee (MESC) – the Middle East Study Commission because they believe that they have a religiously driven necessity to fix the world, and specifically, peace between Israel and the Palestinians. They have issued a 179 page report that I have read and reread which will be placed for adoption in their July convention.

            I don't know the size of the Presbyterian Church.

            I have no personal interest in or knowledge of their particular theology.

            I can't say for sure that this document will be adopted. I pray not.

            I can't say for sure that this document will absolutely change American policy and detrimentally affect Medinat Yisrael.

            But, I am absolutely sure that it is an enormous threat and has inherent power to destabilize American support for Israel and delegitimize Israel as a constituent country among the nations of the world.

            I do not know who here in synagogue understands the issue of divestment, but this far exceeds that. [Divestment in this context means that organizations/companies should not invest in a company, remove their investment funds in companies that invest in Israeli companies, not do business with a company that trades, does business or in any way contributes to the economic activity of the State of Israel. Thus because of its potential harm to the economic fabric it is a lever to use concerning its political policies.]

 

To distill this extensive document down to its essence, in one language or another – you have to read carefully, this is what it says:

 

1. That Israel is a delegitimate entity that neither the League of Nations nor the United Nations had the right to create.

2.  That Israel was only created because of the Holocaust and the Arab Palestinians are paying for it.

3. That tracing our roots to the land throughout the Bible and the course of Jewish history is worthless. We have no claim to any part of the land of Israel.

4. Nevertheless, with a fundamentalist reading of the Bible, Israel should behave according to it. No one else has to act that way!

5. That the true and rightful inhabitants of Palestine are the Arabs.

6. That it is the fault of the Jews for all the violence that has occurred.

7. That the occupation of the all areas since the Six Day War is a sin against God.

8. That the United States should completely reverse its support for the State of Israel by withholding financial and political aid until Israel complies with resolutions from the United Nations, no matter how one-sided, anti-Semitic, racist and suicidal they will be.

9. That companies should follow BDS – boycott, divest and sanctions against Israel.

10. That the conditions in Gaza are all Israel's fault.

11. That terrorism against Israeli civilians is legitimate.

12. That the problems of Christian Arabs, of which there are many, are Israel's fault.

 

I will admit that I have reduced their report to very evocative language. I fully intended to do so. I need to get your attention! Even if they don't use this exact language, do not delude yourselves: this is what they are saying. This did not begin with the Presbyterian Church. This has been going on for a long time. There is along history against the creation of the State of Israel, against support of the State of Israel, and most recently the humiliation of the leader of the State of Israel. It most recently played itself out as USC Berkeley where Menachem our son waded into a room, one of the few defenders of Medinat Yisrael in a hostile environment. The PCUSA document is entitled "Breaking Down the Walls," a term taken from the New Testament book of Ephesians 2:14 which refers to the breaking down of Judaism. Who knows why they took this title? This document follows from one placed on the website of the World Council of Churches entitled "The Kairos Palestine Document" of 2009 which used the name of a 1985 document written against the then South African government and its apartheid government, which eventually world pressure brought down. They seek the same against Israel.  This is no laughing, no passing, no glancing matter.

 

The purpose of these remarks is to make those present and those on the listserv aware of these matters and shake your complacency and make you aware of the unfolding scenario. In the printed edition of this sermon are embedded links to the USCJ, CCAR and PCUSA for you to read materials first hand.

http://data.ccarnet.org/cgi-bin/resodisp.pl?file=kairos&year=2010

http://www.uscj.org/Proposed_Report_on_I8324.html

http://www.uscj.org/Why_Be_Concerned_Abo8325.html

http://www.pcusa.org/middleeastpeace/pdf/middleeastpeace-fullreport.pdf

 

 We are informed that on the local level many members of Presbyterian churches do not share these positions.

We need to reinforce them in their true support of Medinat Yisrael and have them vocalize that in their churches.

We need to indicate how strongly we support the existence of Medinat Yisrael, even when we are advocates of change of policies.

We need to say clearly that the adoption of this report as policy would be thoroughly disruptive to Jewish – Christian relations, as least with the Presbyterian Church, which we do not desire, but rather to be partners in improving the world.

 

We proclaim for all to hear that from the essence of our souls we are most committed that the third Jewish Commonwealth, Medinat Yisrael, standing proudly and forthrightly among the family of nations, is the national liberation of the Jewish people, is the natural and proper fulfillment of our 3,500 years of history rooted in the soil in which it was born, in which it lived, whose footprints appear under every rock and stone.

 

Israelis and Palestinians, Muslims, Christians and Jews have been partners in suffering.

If all so will it, they can be partners in peace.

This document, this approach, this attitude is not the way.

 

Am Yisrael Chai. Medinat Yisrael Chai, and as Helen Zimm always adds after an aliyah, "forever and ever."                                                      

Shabbat Shalom.

Levitical Reflections on the Health Care Bill: What Was Missing in the Debate?

Levitical Reflections on the Health Care Bill: What Was Missing in the Debate?

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

May 8^th, 2010

 

I am not sure whether my maternal grandmother ever read the last two sedras of the book of Leviticus but she certainly lived her life according to its ideals. During the Depression, when the evictors came to throw you and your  belongings out of the apartment and onto the street for non-payment of rent, my diminutive grandmother would schlepp on her back the furniture back into it. It certainly must have made quite a scene on the streets of Boro Park section of Brooklyn, New York. In my lifetime I remember that the outer of the two shopping bags was always that of the ILGWU - International Ladies Garment Workers Union. In her earliest life my grandmother worked in the sweat shops rolling cigars and making umbrellas. With a grandmother like that, two grandfathers and a father who were factory workers all their lives, I grew up with the issues of Leviticus, social justice, workers' rights, unions, and health care as my daily fare, as much as the real food that my mother served at the kitchen table. Listening to passionate Yiddish conversation - of which I understood little but loved its cadence and intonations, and the Workman's Circle Arbiter Ring are as part of me as the air I breathe.

 

It is with those eyes, ears and heart that I ruminate on the Health Care Debate recently paused - not concluded - in the reflection of the sedras of Behar and Behukotai. While the debate focused on costs, cuts and coverages, there was something essential missing in the argumentation. Exactly in this point Judaism has a great deal to say and add to the conversation. The piece that disturbs me most and that is missing is the following:

 

The belief that: Everyone is equal. Everyone is holy. Everyone's well-being is sacred. Thus, everyone's health should be equally cared for. A just society takes care of everyone. A society were some are and some are not, some are  cared for more and some are cared for less, is rotten in its core. Why is there a debate at all? Is not the cardinal value enshrined in America's holiest document that we are "entitled to the pursuit of life"? How do you have life without health? Why didn't the debate focus on being a just and moral society? That was not in evidence.

 

I can put my finger on the one detail that makes everything clear to me. Why is it, how can it be that a person elected to Congress and serves only one term will received the best medical care in the land for life, yet the person who will break his or her back in the most laborious trades, sweating in the summer and freezing in the winter, without whose labor we could not live, can have no health care at all? It is not a question of cost. It is an issue of the view of the collective society. Are some of us more holy than others? Are others less holy than the rest of us? It is an issue of justice. This is what was missing in the health care debate. Even worse, the underlying assumption is not everybody should have health care.  The haves have it, and the have-nots do not. This attitude Judaism most strenuously rejects with all its might.

 

These two Torah portions have a great deal to teach America and contribute to the debate that is far from over. I will indicate just a few pieces.

 

1. No body owns the world. No body owns health care. God owns the world. We are temporary custodians of all that is in it. We read that God says: "Kee Lee Kol HaAretz" - "Because the world world in Mine."  We are recipients of God's gifts and stewards of it, once received. We are transient and what we have is impermanent. We don't own others. We barely own ourselves. How dare we keep health care from others, minimize and restrict, while others "have it all"? Health care is God's gift to humanity.

 

2. When society acts unethically and immorally it will ultimately be destroyed. This week I paused to wonder: Which is more dangerous to the existence of the United States? The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? The SUV that nearly blew up in Times Square? [I have been there for a number of New Years Eves.] Or sick people that can't see a doctor and get medicine? Which threatens our society most? The Torah says: sick people. The chastisements - the Tochecha - in Behuckottai indicate that the people lose the right to the land and will be destroyed not because of idolatry but because of immorality, specifically, the breaking the laws that protect individuals, workers rights, taking care of the poor and ruling with justice. These laws, the Torah says, came from Sinai, just like the "big ten" to indicate how central, critical and core they are to have a proper society.

 

3. It is too bad that when they etched the words on the Liberty Bell that they didn't do it in Hebrew. It says: "And proclaim d'ror - translated as liberty - throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof." What does d'ror mean? Rashi explains that the word comes from "dar" meaning "to dwell" and indicates that a person can live wherever they want; they are unfettered; they have true freedom of movement. Ibn Ezra has it refer to the freedom of a little bird that can fly wherever it desires. Nachmanides also connects it to living wherever we want but refers to "b'nai chorin" - a term that should echo from Pesach seder - namely - that we are not enslaved, not to a Pharaoh, not to anyone. The context for all these comments is the release of indentured servants in the Jubilee year and the resetting of the economic clock to the pristine moment when all were equal. No matter how distant from reality, it is a dream to which to aspire, a vision of society that elevates all, but none to high above others; a healthy society, where the public policty about health care for all is a matter of justice and righteousness.

 

4. I close with reference to one further commentator, called Ba'al HaTurim. He plays gematria and counts the value of the letters of the word d'ror as 410 [ daled is 4, vov is 6 and resh is 200 twice = 410]. He notes that the duration of Solomon's Temple was 410 years from its construction to its destruction. Regardless of historical truth, the point is well taken: Their world was destroyed because human beings were destroyed; because society became unjust; because the poor and the defenseless were trampled; because of the inequality of wealth and privilege. Soon America will celebrate its 234^th year of independence. May this grand experiment in human governance long exist and its flag proudly wave. May it truly proclaim d'ror throughout the land, for all its inhabitants.                                                                                             Shabbat Shalom.

Prologue to "Opportunities for Intermarried Families"

Prologue to  "Opportunities for Intermarried Families

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

April, 2010

Richmond, Virginia

 

This piece is written to serve as a prologue to the document that I composed on the inclusion of intermarried families in Jewish rituals that documents my stance and its application. There is an introduction to that document. This is an additional composition to support and amplify that presentation.

 

The word most associated with us is "Jew," but that is really a misnomer. It is a geopolitical term, not a religious one. The word "Jew" comes from the word Judah to indicate that the members of the group descended from the tribe of Judah, the last remaining tribe after the disappearance of the northern ten tribes in 722 B.C.E. and the absorption of the tribe of Simeon into Judah. The Jews lived in Judea. They were Judeans and thus we are Jews. In our context the issue is not our geopolitical identification. We are Americans, even, Virginians. The issue which is the heart of the matter is our religious identification. The appropriate word in this context is Israel. This is our real name for it speaks to the essence and the question of our identity. From Jacob on, the nomenclature that creates us and binds us, the name of our identity is "The Children of Israel," which will be shortened to just Israel. It is with the people bearing that name that God makes and renews the covenant. That is the term used by all the prophets when speaking about us and God in faithfulness and its lack. It is under that name that the Maccabbees will fight for the faith.

 

If I was to set up parallel columns between the three dominant faiths in the Western World, one would be labeled Christianity and another would be labeled Islam. It is clear that the former is used to identify its adherents as believers that the Messiah has come. The latter term indicates that its believers must submit completely to the deity. Our keyword is Israel for it indicates that we are "straight," righteous," "upright," – "Yashar"- with God – "El." Only with Israel did God make a covenant. Only this name reflects standing in a "Jewish" covenantal position.

 

For Christianity its devotee is called a Christian and for Islam its devotee is called a Muslim. Both terms clearly derivative from its core name. To be in parallel context, our name has to be Israel.

 

In continuing the parallel, the nexus of Christianity for the Christian is Jesus on the Cross; for the Muslim it is Mecca and the Ka'aba; for Israel it is Sinai (wherever it is located, and not the Kotel).  These are the core 'locations' of the faith and thus of the identity. For the Christian in their Christianity the expression of faith is the New Testament because it proclaims a new covenant (to replace ours!). For the Muslim in their Islam it is the Koran, to be read as the correct reading of all which Christianity and Israel have distorted, which is their covenantal book. For Israel in our "Israel" it is the Torah, which is the document of our covenant.

 

I am always mystified why everyone but Jews understand this very clearly. Perhaps it is due to the complications of our history which weaves many strands. (But living in America most of those strands are no longer operative.) Surely there are many people who stand outside of any religious covenant regardless of their families' religious origin. For some this has been for several generations. But for those who operate inside any religious orientation, these distinctions are clear and unquestionable.  For the sake of its religious integrity, the church does not invite nor desire neither Israel nor the Muslim to participate in its rituals. Similarly, the mosque does not invite neither Christian nor Israel to participate in its rituals.

 

We have our religious integrity as well.

My name, Israel is my being.

My being is to stand in my particular covenant.

Without my name and without my covenant, I do not exist.

 

All this might seem obscure and pedantic, but I assure you otherwise. The Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore was conducting sessions here in Richmond to which I was invited to participate. The theme of their study was The Scandal – meaning trap - of Particularity, namely, can we find all the parts that are in common between us in order to make a better and deeper relationship, or "fudge" the differences between us. An admirable task. Then at one session a Christian participant asked this question: Would the "Jews" mind if the Christians used the term Israel to identify themselves?  I had the unenviable position to be the first "Jew" to respond. I said that it would be completely and unequivocally objectionable and unacceptable. I said: that was my name and they couldn't have it for I wouldn't relinquish it. You could feel the air go out of the room. Though I was just an invited guest I threw the biggest monkey wrench into their deliberations. I left it to my co-religionists to figure out their subsequent responses. One by one, they could not deny my answer. In this very deep and probing study of the relationship of Christians and "Jews," of Christianity and "Judaism," there finally was a bottom line that defined us and could not be used to define them, for its was the gateway to the entirety of our entity, of the purpose of our existence on earth. Later, my candidness, honesty and forthrightness were appreciated for it refocused the conversations in a productive and truthful direction.

 

I don't know who thinks about any of this when they enter into the synagogue. I do. As I study the evolution of our group in America, as I live and work in the synagogue world, particularly that of Conservative Judaism, I have grappled with the seeming invisibility of the Covenant of Israel which others eagerly claim, and we are equally eager to give up. It is simply played out in the orchestration of who can or not, should or not, do what in synagogue ritual. If the concept of covenant is irrelevant, inapplicable, then anyone can do anything any time. If it is relevant, if we have self-definition and believe in it, then there are some things that are clearly "out of bounds" for others, for they are expressions of our covenant. Every other faith does this. Why can't, why shouldn't we?

 

My document is my attempt to find the illusive and imaginary golden mean of recognizing and preserving ourselves as Israel, a people covenanted in faith, while at the same time respecting and including Christians who are connected in bonds of marriage or friendship. I have refined the details to the extent that my personal philosophy and theology allow. Some are amazed at things that I do. Others are appalled. I am quieted, for I believe that I have done the best to honor both sides of an equation, that I am not sure are quite equal. I rest peacefully in myself and leave judgment to the God of Israel.

Three Days That Changed Jewish History April 16, 2010

Three Days That Changed Jewish History

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

April 16^th, 2010

 

In the post Pesach season, there are three special commemorative days on the Jewish calendar for events in recent Jewish history. Two are for sadness and one for joy. They have changed the course of Jewish history. Last Monday, 28 Nisan was Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day. This coming Monday, 5 Iyar, is Yom HaZikaron, Israel's Remembrance Day and Tuesday, 6 Iyar is Yom Ha'Atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day. Usually, Yom HaZikaron is on 4 Iyar and Yom Ha'Atzmaut is on 5 Iyar, but both observances are deferred one day so that Yom HaZikaron would not start at the end of Shabbat, leading into Sunday.

 

Living in the Diaspora, these three days have a diminished presence in our lives.

That is a great tragedy!

These three days encompass the sweep of Jewish history.

They are the culmination of two thousand years of homelessness and helplessness.

They embody the depth of the dilemma of our powerlessness and the height of our salvation and reemergence onto the stage of history as a nation.

 

I don't know Jewish life without the Holocaust. I don't know Jewish existence without Medinat Yisrael. It is impossible for me to imagine "my" Jewish history without both events. They are as real to me as Thanksgiving and Independence Day here in the land of my birth. We cannot be oblivious to these three days! These days are crucial!

 

The Jewish people as a faith community has a history of being the bearers of the faith.

What has happened to us in history is precisely because we have carried the unique Jewish faith to the world.

We have been witness to the faith in an incorporeal God who demands through law universal morality and the recognition of the holiness of every man, woman and child.

We have born every burden in our trek because we believed in our God, believed in our mission and believed in ourselves.

If God did not want us here, I doubt that we could have survived.

If we did not want to be here, we certainly would not have survived and been reborn.

There is no faith without a history.   There is no history without a faith.

These three days are living proof!

 

One thousand, nine hundred and forty years ago ended the Second Commonwealth of the Jewish people with the destruction of the second Temple and of the city of Jerusalem, our capitol, by the Romans. The worst and longest dispersal of the Jewish people had begun. It became worse after the bloody end of the Bar Kochba revolt sixty five years later in 135. While Jewish communities would continue to exist in the land of Israel they would be fragmented. In the grand sweep of Jewish history one great center of Jewish life and learning will develop after another, only to be destroyed in turn. Israel will be followed by Babylon, which in turn will be followed by North Africa. That will be followed by Spain which will be followed by Western and then Central Europe, which will be followed by Eastern Europe. And then it will all be destroyed - but for us and a very small presence in the British Mandate of Palestine. While Yom HaShoah focuses on the destruction of European Jewry, the true Jewish eye must look at the events spanning our entire existence, Pharaoh and Egypt, Assyria denuding us of ten tribes, the Babylonian destruction of the First Commonwealth and Solomon's Temple, the confrontation with the pagan Greco-Roman world and its ethos, and then the termination of our independence and immense loss of life by the Romans. In Israel they do not call the day just Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Day, they append the term v'hagevurah–and of heroism.

 

In the first instance Israel added this term because of the expanded focus upon those who fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto, as well as the uprisings in other ghettos, not as well documented nor publicized, but utterly heroic in each instance. Israel wanted to include the acknowledgement of the Jews who fought against the Nazis as partisans by themselves and with other partisan groups. After the initial focus on the death and destruction of the Jews, Judaism and Jewish life of Europe in the Shoah, the wider vision included numerous heroic chapters such as the singular and young Anne Frank. Yet Jewish heroism has been evident in every chapter and in each location in the entire span of our history. Our Jewish history, our Jewish identity – we are defined by the tragedies and the triumphs, the catastrophes and the courageousness of all the generations. We might be third, fourth and even fifth generation Americans. We are always first generation Jews.

 

When you come to Israel, fly over the coastline, you see the magnificent city of Tel Aviv. Come to Jerusalem you will soon be able to ride the light railway system throughout the city. Soon there will be fleets of electric cars who can swap out batteries faster than we can fill our tanks with gas, plugging them into to charge over night. Yet when you ascend to Jerusalem, don't miss the rusting tanks in Sha'ar HaGai; walk Israel's Burma Road that saved the city from siege; go to Yad Mordechai who held back the Egyptian advance on Tel Aviv; climb to Golan Heights and see the Galilee laid out before the Syrian advance. Israel never takes its existence for granted. Jews the world over can never take Israel's existence for granted. We pay homage to those Jews who laid down their lives, veterans of the kibbutzim, immigrants out of the DP camps, new olim from Russia who stopped the waves of Egyptians at the Canal on Yom Kippur, those who made bullets in secret underground, those who clawed their way up the Golan Heights twice to stop the bombardment of the Galilee, and those who fought now in Gaza to stop the reign of terror upon the Negev, Ashkelon, Ashdod and Sderot. The saga of their heroism and of their deaths is observed in Israel with a long minute of silence as the country halts. Buses stop. Taxis stop. Classes stop. For without these heroes, Jewish history in the holy land, the core of our Jewish history would have stopped. I shudder when I think that; when I say it. Their stories are our story. We can have our pride in Israel because they died for us to have it.

 

The synagogue was never the place for flags. There is the Aaron HaKodesh, holy Ark, the Ner Tamid, eternal light, lecterns and chairs. In older synagogues there is a place to wash hands and bookcases for books to study. I am not sure when the creation of memorial boards for the dead began to appear. But the modern synagogue has added memorials for the Shoah in the special candelabra and a Torah saved from the Holocaust. Since the creation of Medinat Yisrael we have added its flag, and therefore the flag of the United States as well. We do recognize and give thanks for the security and safety that America has given to the Jewish people. It is like no other place in human history. Yet we specifically place the flag of Medinat Yisrael for it is more than just a flag.

 

It embodies our national reclamation, the eternal reconstitution and the everlasting existence of Am Yisrael, the people of Israel.

It validates all the sacrifices and all our deaths along our long and ancient road.

It blue stripes it represents the Talit, symbol of the Torah and its mitzvot. The Magen David, legendary attached to King David, roots us our ancient history. The white is the purity of our faith and purpose in history. But when I see the Magen David flying proudly in the stiff breeze of Israel I see its triumph over all those who burnt our books, who burnt our bodies. Our flag waves. Our people lives. Our faith is unflagging.  Our flag is unfurled for all to see, just as they see us in every country upon the earth.

Medinat Yisrael Chai V'Kayam.

Am Yisrael Chai V'Kayam.

Israel lives.

The Jewish peoples lives.

Forever.                                                           Shabbat Shalom.

Down in the Land of Cotton, April 9, 2010

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Down In the Land of Cotton

April 9^th, 2010

Rabbi Gary S. Creditor

 

Being Brooklyn born and bred, birthplace of my parents and brother, the ultimate destination of my immigrant grandparents, and thus my being a die-hard fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers, I am nevertheless a Yankee. My orientation is north of the Mason-Dixon Line. I learned history from the northern perspective. Moving to Richmond was much more than a geographical change. I also learned what my history books and the Life Magazine series of the 1960's called "The Civil War" was referred to here as "The War of Northern Aggression," – "which was none too civil." On first blush it sounded humorous, but I quickly realized how serious this was to those born in the south.

 

While I have not been interested in the battlefields in the greater Richmond vicinity, the history of that era is clearly inescapable. Whether it is the White House of the Confederacy, the Tredegar Iron Works, the monuments of Stuart, Lee, Jefferson, Jackson, and Maury in a row and others that dot the landscape, the very name "Richmond" is enough to evoke the great conflagration that nearly devoured this nation. One doesn't need a month dedicated to it to know where we live and the history of our area.

 

There is much that every American throughout every corner of this country needs to learn about The Civil War. It is a crucial element in our history. There was clearly a different conception of this country's nature, some that still echo very strongly today. Is power inherent in the separate parts of the corporate body, namely the states, or is it located in a strong central body, the national legislature, the Congress? It influences the debate on health care, on abortion, labor issues, environment, taxes and transportation. There was a different culture and temperament in this country, between a still agrarian society and more mechanized work place. In an era before mass migrations, except towards the west, societies maintained their inherent structure, and it was very different north and south.

 

When I think of the Civil War I am in awe of the passion evinced on both sides of the fight. I am amazed at the numbers of men who died and were maimed fighting for what they believed in. I visited the hospital at Chimborazo on Church Hill and saw the implements of the medical trade in that time. Some of the Life Magazine articles focused on the hardships of being a soldier in either army. I shake my head in admiration of their courage. I think of the great battles of Gettysburg and Petersburg, and the nickname "Stonewall" for General Jackson. Later generations of American soldiers would emulate that title in the wars of the 20^th century. There was great military skill by Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant, the men who created the CSS Virginia out of the Merrimack and those who invented the Monitor and went to their deaths when it sank off of the Carolinas. They would be the inspiration of the men and women in the army, air force, navy and marines that still fight to defend us and democracy. One must never forget this chapter of American history, never trivialize it, denigrate it, or belittle it. As long as this country exists, it will be part of the fiber of the American soul. It should not be seen as only Confederate history. It is American history. Whether we are born north, south, east or west, whether we are with long ancestry or are "just" the third or forth generation, this is our history.  But there is another indisputable component of this history. That of slavery.

 

We have just concluded Pesach. Reading the Hagaddah at Seder night, the shortest version of the story, or reading the extended narrative in the Book of Exodus, I have often commented that these are "the sanitized versions." In neither edition do we see the blood and gore, we don't hear the screams, we don't feel the lash of the whip, we don't cringe with fear, we don't pant in thirst and hunger, and we don't shiver in the cold of night nor sweat in the heat of an Egyptian sun. Our male children are not ripped from arms, we don't hide them in the reeds, and we don't despair of life itself. But we do repeat, generation after generation, that we are supposed to see ourselves as if we were there. So we dip greens and eat salt water. Twice we are supposed to eat bitter herbs and not in the dainty quantity to avoid the pain. The traditional minimum far exceeds our usual dosage. It is supposed to burn. It is supposed to hurt. That way we have some inkling, some faint imagination, of what it was to be a slave to Pharaoh in Egypt.

 

For that reason Torah forbids slavery. The language of the Torah is misused. The laws of Torah never permit us to do to others as was done to us. From the enslavement in Egypt we learned compassion, humility, humanity and dignity. The evil of Egypt, the salvation by our God, the resistance of the Israelites, the courage of the women, the stamina of the men are invoked daily in our liturgy and is the cornerstone of Shabbat observance. Shabbat is the perpetual and eternal memorial.

 

When I think of the Civil War, I think of Egypt. I think of the worst of man. Everything I think of the Egyptian slavery of the Israelites, every allusion to pain, horror and suffering that I read between the words of the Torah and of the Haggadah, I infer, I inter, I posit to be the slavery in America of the 1800's predominantly in the South. I can't understand how one human being whips another, how women and children are treated like chattel, how people are 'owned,' bought and sold like cattle. With family such an elemental component in Judaism, I can't fathom how children and parents are separated never to know their ultimate disposition nor see each other ever again.

It is not an issue of my naïveté. It is an issue of my humanity.

It is the contrast of what my Judaism teaches me to be,

As I watch humanity betraying its name.

 

And further: If any religion was to be born of Judaism, they needed to learn the lesson of love from our Book of Leviticus, "love they neighbor as thyself." I cannot comprehend how "The City of Churches" – Richmond, could be the home of Lumpkin's Jail. They are the diametric opposites. There is an eternal inconsistency between the two. How can you quote from Genesis that "Man" – it doesn't state the color – maybe they were transparent – "Is created in the image of God" upon on the Hill and then treat "Man" as less than an animal in "The Bottom?"  That is part of the story, too.

 

I don't seek to answer any of these questions nor answer any of my quandaries. Maybe there are no answers. Just like to the Holocaust. We put together words, but they are still not answers.

 

I cite all this because how wrong and terrible it was for the governor's proclamation, far beyond the omission of reference to slavery. That is just "the straw that breaks the camel's back." True justice to the heroes and the heroines, the victors and the vanquished, true homage to the gallant and the glorious is only to be achieved through a deep, perceptive, embracing, honest, and complete learning by adult and youth of the American story. It is equally to clear to the simplest of eyes, that there is still much to be learned from the Civil War. We are not yet the best that we can be. The promise of America is for many, only a promise and far from being fulfilled.

 

Shame on the governor for whatever reason, haste, dispatch or inattentiveness to detail! From the House on the Hill, we demand better. Rescind the proclamation. Don't just emend it. Let it embody complete learning of the historical record; the yearning for real equality; the desire for America to fulfill its ultimate destiny. Let it show respect and honor to everyone, Confederate and Union, black and white.  We will be made stronger by its truth.                                              

Shabbat Shalom.