Rabbi Andy Bachman on the Gaza situation

Rabbi Andy Bachman posted his thoughts on the Gaza situation:

As Israel’s incursion into the Gaza Strip moves well into its second week, most of us watch from the sidelines or a distance with a heavy, heavy heart over the loss of innocent life. No one deserves to die who has not brought death on to him or herself, least of all an innocent child. So to be fundamentally clear: even those of us who support Israel’s efforts to break Hamas and seriously damage its ability to torment Israeli towns with terror mourn loss of every innocent life and grieve with those families. In addition, our hearts go out to those terrified by bombs dropping in homes,
on streets, in mosques.

But Israel’s war, I believe, is a just war.

When Israel pulled out of Gaza, tearing deeply at the fabric of its own society to uproot families there (a disengagement I strongly favored and still do) the entire world was able to see if it chose to look that Israel was willing to risk the unity of the
nation to take fundamental steps toward peace. The Hamas leadership took the
exact opposite steps, took no risk, brutally murdered its own in waging violent
and bloody civil war with the Palestinian Authority, and continued on its self-destructive path of trying to wage existential war against Israel. Never has it seriously addressed Israel’s justified existence; never has it accepted
Israel’s RIGHT to exist; and never has it seriously sought to make peace.
Rather, it has embarked on a hundred years plan, to wear down the psyche of the
Israeli population with terror, kidnapping, and the selling of a religio-fundamentalist viewpoint that completely de-legitimizes any Jewish claim to the land.

It’s truly depressing.

. . .

And, I’d point out to people willing to read the situation: the West Bank is relatively calm, not only because of security but because the PA was defeated by Hamas in
Gaza and the PA has given tacit approval to Israel’s operation. Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia–each of whom bear as much as or more responsibility for the continued statelessness of Palestinians by not working harder in partnership with Israel for peace (how did all those weapons get into Gaza?)–have given Israel tacit and at time explicit approval for these operations.

Israel will continue to be portrayed as illegitimate; blood-sucking; heartless; amoral; genocidal; racist–you name it. It’s a rhetoric that has lost most of its meaning, sadly, because for years and years people are more comfortable talking and pontificating than holding leadership accountable not only in Washington, DC or on the college campus but in Gaza City and Ramallah.

Remember Ehud Barak’s quote: If I were a Palestinian youth, I’d fight the occupation, too. That is the man who is leading Israel in this war. Despite war’s brutal reality, when Hamas wakes up from its delusional nightmare that Israel has no place in this world, it will in fact find an incredible capacity for making the necessary sacrifices as a nation to live in peace.

Read the entire text here.

Worship, Gotham!

For the last two hours, I've been suffering from what I think may be my first-ever migraine. Advil hasn't worked and I hate bright light right now. But, through the pain, I received an email that got me excited and, if only for a few seconds, made me forget my pain.

My friend Adam Who-Is-Hopefully-On-The-Path-To-Becoming-a-Rabbi, sent me the following email:

Dude,

We've gone to Hare Krishna prayer worship, I've taken you to
Reformed temples, you've taken me to Catholic and Lutheran Church. Now
that I've got some free time (and I feel like I need to learn more about
different religious services since I am reading my History of Religion book and
don't understand the differences between religions), do you want to do a tour of
the most impressive houses of worship services in NYC? I figure we should
re-hit Catholic and Reformed Jewish (just for St. Pats and Temple Emanu-El), but
I am more curious about other religions and denominations of Christianity.
The Buddhist, Hindu, Islam, Ba'hai and the like will take some time to research,
but just off the top of my head we will need to go to Trinity Church for
Episcopalian, Jewish Theological Seminary for Conservative Judaism and Society
for the Advancement of Judaism for Reconstructionist Judaism.

Let me know if you are interested.

Adam

This is the kind of email that makes my day.

I long for the days when I had easy access to various religious services, leaders, and scholars. When I was a student at NYU I was the Vice President of the Newman Club at the Catholic Center. In addition to the regular Newman Club meetings and Sunday Mass, I had access to the Islamic Center just across the hall, met a few times with the Rabbi at the Bronfman Center, hung out and talked religion with Ba'hai friends, went to Buddhist meditation days, attended ecumenical services with other Christian groups, and broke bread with the children of Abraham.

Adam sent a follow-up email saying that perhaps going to the "impressive" houses of worship may limit our experience and I agree. We should go to the places where the rabbis, imams, pastors, gurus, etc will spend time with us, teach us about their religion, and let us ask questions.

This will probably require arranged meeting times, etc. But, if you happen to be a religious leader and are reading this, your services would be greatly appreciated as we set forth to explore the religions of NYC.

Worship, Gotham! <-- that's what I've decided our series is going to be called. I could see this becoming a great television show, a sort of lay God Squad. If only we had access to a camera and production studio . . . .

The VP debate - recap

I found this on Rabbi Bachman's blog. Fun stuff:

Get the latest news satire and funny videos at 236.com.

Last night I watched SNL. Genius! My fellow NYUer, Paul Snatchko had the link:

Rabbi Bachman says, "Get to church."

Bringing peace does not only involve donation of money to help end hunger and poverty. Nor does it only involve working on large-scale social issues. Sometimes it makes a world of difference to make a difference in just one soul.

I'm sure Rabbi Bachman has a lot of anecdotes from his life as a clergyman in New York City. This one is touching and I'm sure that Zeke will get around to visiting Church soon. Sometimes all it takes is a little reminder from a rabbi:

For the second time in a month, I couldn’t get the keys to work in our car. Apparently, some kind of computerized and magnetized process, encoded inside the keys to match a reading inside the ignition, was not working. It wasn’t in sync. The first time around, I had to pay the dealer around $95 to cut new keys and re-program the ignition, causing me more of a headache than anything else. Mainly it had to do with a security feature I wasn’t ever quite aware of until it broke down and made me realize I never would have requested it in the first place.

But the second time, I was even more annoyed. It had happened last week, just as I finished a visit with a family to plan a funeral. The day was bitter cold; the death, even worse. And I was sad and drained. To walk outside only to discover that the car didn’t work was somehow a fitting end to the day. Rather than take a cab, it seemed right to brace the unsympathetic winds and walk the distance, thinking of the weight of responsibility of the days ahead.

I had to borrow a car to head to the burial the next day, a minor inconvenience, and plotted all week long to get back to the car in order to arrange for it to be towed so I could get myself some new keys, yet again.

That moment finally came last night. Again, the cold was all around; rain clouds had begun to gather; and I was feeling generally annoyed. AAA arrived–keeping me posted with calls at five minute intervals (great customer service, I’ll add here) and then the driver pulled up. He was a young man, in a Yankees hat, and together he and I set to pushing my car out of the spot it was in so we could hook it up to the tow. “Stay low, brother, stay low,” he offered as we pushed car back and then out of its spot.

When we were finally read to roll, he said, “So you’re clergy–I noticed the sign in the window.”

“Yeah,” I said. “A rabbi.”

“A rabbi? Well alright. Doing the Lord’s work.”

And then the following fifteen minutes consisted of a streetside confession–less rabbi, more priest.

I learned about the Church he attends (when he’s not driving so much) the foods he eats (when he’s not thinking so much) and the women he chases (when he’s not praying so much). He seemed genuinely Lost in a Flood. And the wind was blowing, and the rain was getting ready to fall, and there was an urgency to his words–as if in saying them he was seeking a healing long overdue.

But he kept doubting his ability to overcome. He wouldn’t listen to my pleas for patience, for being kind to himself, for heading back to Church on Sunday no matter what. I held his hand as he reached out for me and said, “What’s your name?” (just as I remembered the famous Midrash about the Children of Israel being saved from Egypt because they remembered their Hebrew names.)

“Zeke,” he said.

“Like the Prophet Ezekiel, who dreamed of angels,” I replied. “Your name carries in its meaning the virtue of an angel. Did you know our rabbis teach us that God saved the Jewish people from Egypt because they remembered their Hebrew names?”

He stared back at me and I at him. But for the broken keys in one chariot, I never would have come face to face with Zeke in his Chariot, rigged up to tow cars on winter nights in Brooklyn.

I urged him to take Sunday off; get to church. “You have to rest, brother. It’s a commandment.”

“Saved just because of their names?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“It’s powerful to know that, rabbi,” said Zeke. “I’ll be in touch.”

With whom, I suppose, depends upon where he ends up Sunday morning.

Rabbi Bachman: Indulge in making peace

I met Rabbi Andy Bachman a little over 5 years ago at NYU. He was the director of the Jewish Center at NYU and I had reached out to him to have an interfaith gathering during our tense post-9/11 days. I had the pleasure of attending two Reformed worship services and then being a part of the Interfaith dinner where the Rabbi, the Priest, and the Imam led a panel discussion on their common ancestor, Abraham.

In addition to all the formal events, I also got to know Rabbi Bachman as a very intelligent, thoughtful, and caring family man. I was delighted to have stumbled upon his blog recently, it's rare that you get some insight into the thoughts of a religious leader.

Here I present to you his piece on Christmas Day. For those of you not from NYC, there's a very common New York experience that happens on Christmas Day -- Chinese Food!

Many non-Christians - most commonly Jewish and Chinese folks - end up going out for Chinese food and then maybe catch a movie. As a Catholic who celebrates Christmas on Christmas Eve and Midnight I was able to participate in this inter-cultural/inter-faith experience on occasion.

Rabbi Bachman and his family now participate in a similar event (minus the movies and plus a Christmas service). Read on:

Indulge in Making Peace

The first step was the Chinese Food. “Two?” said the hostess at the entrance but I heard, “Jew?” And why not? One quick look around the restaurant indicated that the two tribes most represented last night were the Judeans and the Cantonese.

“Where are all these people from, serving us the Chinese food?” my five year old asked. It suddenly occurred to her that there was a discernible pattern at work. That there was a relationship between the people and the food. A cultural-anthropological moment to behold!

“They’re Chinese,” I said. “The come from China, the largest country on Earth. We’re Jews, and we are among the smallest nations on Earth. But on Christmas we come together since neither of us really celebrate Christmas.” (Too complicated to explain that there are Chinese Christians. We’re dealing in broad strokes, cultural tropes. Nuance can come a bit later.)

We eat, share the meal with friends, and then head out.

Just like last year, we stop at one of the churches in the neighborhood. Baby Jesus is missing from the Nativity scene.

“Where’s Jesus?” one of my kids asks.

“Maybe the church puts him out in the manger at Midnight,” I offered.

They’re used to asking questions about ritual settings, I think, pondering the Seder table’s set-up for the Four Questions.

We head over to Old First Reformed Church, where my friend Rev. Daniel Meeter is nursing the same wicked upper respiratory infection I had last week. Despite his ailing state, he looks great in a tuxedo and black robe. He came to us on Yom Kippur. We go to him on his holy day. That’s what friends are for.

“Thank you for coming, brother,” he says. And then is off to his procession. My kids grab candles and take their seats to listen to the music, a beautiful collection of hymns and melodies they don’t hear in Shul but nonetheless represent our neighbors’ best efforts at reaching God on their terms, in their language.

The candlelight service is a great touch. It’s very effective ritual theater. We Jews do a candlelight service once a year as well–on Tisha B’Av, to commemorate the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. I think back to last summer, in Jerusalem, where we sat on the ground overlooking the Old City and listened to Lamentations sung in Hebrew while holding candles. A Yahrzeit candle of mourning representing one new light of hope. Always intertwined for us Jews–mourning and renewal.

Back to the Church. The service is alternating expression of text and song. Each hymn illuminating in some form the prior words read from Scripture. One of our congregants read from the end of the Sacrifice of Isaac, a devotional reading that for Jews is about the struggle and promise of faith; and for Christians is about representative of the promise of Jesus. The Hebrew was chanted beautifully. My kids shot up and followed along, beaming with pride. The ecumenicalism of the moment seemed to work.

I imagined earlier sages visiting Churches, experiencing the wonder of other nations seeking God and having the confidence to appreciate that when done right, religion can be a great, unifying force in the world.

For me the climax of the service was hearing Gloria in Excelsius Deo, a classic hymn from the early church still sung today. “Glory to God in the highest” ring its words and I thought, “that’s right. In the highest. Beyond the reach of hatred; beyond the reach of division; beyond the reach of suicide bombers and fanatical martyrs; beyond the reach of those who would take the branch from the Tree of Life and destroy all that is good in what we ultimately strive for, in the highest: blessing and peace.

Afterwards, we go for ice cream. One of us orders Mint Chip; another orders Chocolate Chocolate Chip. A third orders Dolce du Leche. Each of us have ordered double flavors. What a rich and indulgent night. We hurry the kids home. In the morning we will go deliver toys to some less fortunate kids who are celebrating their holiday at a free meal. Even to give is an indulgence in blessing.

And I find the symmetry. Our personal lives are completely Jewish. We keep Shabbat. Our kitchen is kosher. We travel to Israel as a family. And, in our broader neighborhood, we respect and appreciate the paths others take to find blessing and peace.

What a rich and indulgent life.

To indulge in making peace where there is strife.