Jewish Current Issues

The Tranquil Routines of Ordinary Life

A nice passage from Ian McEwan’s short story, “The Use of Poetry,” in the December 7 New Yorker – about a character who served in World War II, a “meat-and-two veg man who despised garlic and the smell of olive oil,” and who became a non-demonstrative father after the war ended:

He had had a long war, serving as a junior officer in the infantry in Dunkirk, North Africa, and Sicily, and then, as a lieutenant colonel, in the D Day landings, where he won a medal. He had arrived at the concentration camp of Belsen a week after it was liberated, and was stationed in Berlin for eight months after the war ended. Like many men of his generation, he did not speak about his experiences and he relished the ordinariness of postwar life, its tranquil routines, its tidiness and rising material well-being, and, above all, its lack of danger—everything that would later appear stifling to those born in the first years of the peace.

(Hat tip:  Jewish Current Wife)

Two Videos for Friday

U.S. Ambassador James Cunningham and Defense and Air Attache Colonel Richard Burgess took part in the dedication ceremony for a JNF-sponsored September 11 monument and Living Memorial at the entrance to Jerusalem (in the surrounding forest) on Thursday, November 12, 2009.

Fran & Marlo Cowan (married 62 years) playing an impromptu recital together in the atrium of the Mayo Clinic. He turned 90 in February. The song is Old Grey Bonnet: (Hat tip for both videos: Sue Meltzer)

Readings on Forgiveness

IN THE MAIL:  Connie Domino, “The Law of Forgiveness” (Penguin Group Nov. 2009).

Worth reading in connection with two recent articles in Azure:

Yotam Benziman, “Forgiveness and Remembrance of Things Past” (Azure No. 35, Winter 5769/ 2009)

[T]he most common perception of forgiveness is that of “negating the wrong.” Richards, Hampton, and Murphy present us with two possible answers to the question of who is supposed to do the negating. Richards suggests the offender, who repents; Hampton and Murphy suggest the wronged individual, who forgives. But there is a third possibility: The sinner and the sinned-against can erase the past together.

Robert Enright, “The Radical Meaning of Forgiveness,” (Azure No. 38, Autumn 5770/ 2009).

And an old JCI post on the topic, worth reading again:  "Forgiveness." 

The Synagogue Blog

Rabbi Eric H. Yoffie Yoffie devoted a significant part of his November 7 Toronto Biennial Sermon to the Synagogue and the Internet.  He argued that synagogues need to see the Web not as a bulletin board for announcements but as an act of communal collaboration, with the potential to empower synagogue members.  

The following is an excerpt from that portion of his sermon: 

Are we making the most of this potential? Not even close. Almost all our synagogues have email lists and websites; but these are usually a way to present information rather than a means to engage their members. . . .

I believe that we are missing a critical opportunity. The Internet and cyberspace are changing all the rules of Jewish interaction, and we need to be at the forefront of these changes. We need to create an online, Oral Torah of ongoing Jewish discourse, and invite in the opinions of our members. We need to ask our members to share their personal stories and Jewish memories – which they love to do when given the chance. We need to encourage hotly debated, multi-voiced, civil discussions on synagogue and local issues, and on Israel and national issues. . . .

[T]here is one particular idea that I hope every synagogue will think about immediately, and that is a congregational blog – not just an electronic temple bulletin, but a truly interactive, online forum. We need blogs because the era of one-way, passive information consumption is over. Our members, young and old, expect to talk back and have a conversation; they think in terms of networks rather than hierarchies. And creating a blog is easy and free, and the technology is so simple that even I can understand it. . . . At the beginning, participants may be few, but if we address the real issues in people’s lives, the numbers will grow.

. . . Let’s exchange Jewish memories. Let’s talk about why we come to services or why we don’t. Let’s discuss the big issues of the Jewish world. And Presidents and board members can test ideas and ask for feedback, on anything from dues and membership to personal theology.

It is a rare business nowadays that doesn’t have an online forum for customers to share insights, make observations, and post questions. Given the importance of our sacred work, shouldn’t we be doing the same?

William Safire described the web as an “electronic community of magnetic relevance” with particular significance for Jews.  For those shuls that do not have one, the synagogue blog is overdue.   Start here.

The Goldstone-Gold Debate

The videos of the debate last night between Judge Richard Goldstone and Ambassador Dore Gold are up at One Jerusalem.  Carl in Jerusalem provides a comprehensive summary here, and a post-debate reaction here.

 

The visual presentation that Dore Gold used can be found here.  If you do nothing else, scroll down to the last video and click on it.

 

All essential viewing and reading.

The Jewish Press List of Notable Blogs

Jason Maoz’s “Media Monitor” at The Jewish Press has printed its updated listing of worthwhile websites and blogs, with (as always) no particular order to the list, and with some deletions and additions from the prior list published in February.   

Jewish Current Issues (jpundit.typepad.com/jci) 

Contentions (commentarymagazine.com/contentions) 

Seraphic Secret (seraphicpress.com) 

The Daily Howler (dailyhowler.com) 

Spengler (firstthingscom/blogs/spengler) 

IsraPundit (israpundit.com) 

Power Line (powerlineblog.com) 

Smooth Stone (smoothstone.blog.com) 

James Wolcott (vanityfair.com/online/wolcott) 

OxBlog (oxblog.blogspot.com) 

LILEKS (lileks.com) 

Soccer Dad (soccerdad.baltiblogs.com) 

Real Clear Politics (realclearpolitics.com) 

The Atlantic Online (theatlantic.com) 

News From Israel (isrinfo.demon.co.uk) 

The Politico (politico.com) 

Sultan Knish (sultanknish.blogspot.com) 

Arts & Letters Daily (aldaily.com) 

The Telegraph (blogs.jta.org/telegraph) 

Capital J (blogs.jta.org/politics) 

Front Page Magazine (frontpagemag.com) 

The American Thinker (americanthinker.com) 

Emes Ve-Emunah (haemtza.blogspot.com) 

InstaPundit (instapundit.com) 

National Review Online  (nationalreview.com) 

Jewish World Review (jewishworldreview.com) 

Times Watch (timeswatch.org)  

Jules Crittenden (julescrittenden.com) 

Hirhurim/Musings (hirhurim.blogspot.com) 

Cross-Currents (cross-currents.com) 

The New Nixon Blog (thenewnixon.org) 

The Daily Beast (thedailybeast.com) 

The Tablet (tabletmag.com) 

Melanie Phillips's Diary (melaniephillips.com/diary) 

The American Spectator (spectator.org) 

Snarksmith (snarksmith.com) 

The New Republic (tnr.com) 

Regret The Error (regrettheerror.com) 

Political Mavens (politicalmavens.com) 

Brain Terminal (brain-terminal.com) 

Boker Tov, Boulder! (bokertov.typepad.com/btb) 

Media Matters (mediamatters.org)

News Busters (newsbusters.org) 

The Bagelnosher Blog  (bagelnosher.blogspot.com) 

American History (americanheritage.com) 

The Weekly Standard (weeklystandard.com) 

Pajamas Media (pajamasmedia.com) 

Think-Israel (think-israel.org) 

Little Green Footballs (littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog) 

A Simple Jew (asimplejew.blogspot.com) 

Yeshiva World News (theyeshivaworld.com) 

Vos Iz Neias (vosizneias.com) 

PoliPundit (polipundit.com) 

Haaretz (haaretz.com) 

AtlanticBlog (atlanticblog.com) 

This Modern World (thismodernworld.com) 

The Huffington Post (huffingtonpost.com) 

The American Prospect (prospect.org) 

Jewcy (jewcy.com) 

The Politicker (observer.com/thepoliticker) 

Media Research Center (mrc.org) 

Baseball Crank (baseballcrank.com) 

Faith and Fear in Flushing (faithandfear.blogharbor.com) 

Mets Fan Blog (danabrand.com/blog) 

Ambassador Dore Gold on Iran

Monday evening former Israeli UN Ambassador Dore Gold spoke in Los Angeles to about 250 people about his book “The Rise of Nuclear Iran: How Tehran Defies the West.” 

Doris Wise Montrose, Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors president, introduced him with these words:

For the first time since Hitler’s Germany, the leader of a major country dares to lead chants calling for our destruction: “Death to Israel, Death to America.” . . 

Within living memory of the Holocaust, there is reason enough to be afraid of it happening again. . . . We cannot afford the luxuries of disbelief or denial, not when there is evidence. . . .

You don’t want to be afraid, I don’t want to be afraid, but if we are not, when we have reason enough, then we will not act.

Ambassador Gold said every member of Congress and the Secretary of State have received a copy of his book.

Whether they have read it is, of course, another question -- but at least there is no question they now have the information necessary to appreciate the situation confronting them.

Amb. Gold was asked by a member of the audience about the feasibility of Israeli military action if all else fails. His answer, after caveating that he is not currently an Israeli official, ended with this:

“All I can say is Israel has been studying this problem for more than 10 years, and Israel will defend itself if it has to defend itself.”

Below is a video of the final question posed by a member of the audience and Ambassador Gold’s answer – two minutes worth watching:

Photo Sharing - Video Sharing - Photo Printing

Ethical Wills and the Second Death

Sinai Temple’s class on ethical wills, “Passing on Your Heart’s Treasures,” will be taught this Wednesday, from 7:30 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at 10400 Wilshire Blvd. in Los Angeles, by the extraordinary Norm Pell.  There is no charge, but registration is required (310-481-3243, or email at programs@sinaitemple.org).  

 

Here is an excerpt from the ethical will of Abraham M. Ellis, written September 16, 1955, based on a life that began in Europe in a prior century, and ended in Philadelphia in a new world:

 

Why do I leave this will?  This is a question that would not have had to be asked a hundred years ago or more when it was common for a Jew to leave not only a will of property but a will of advice, an ethical will.  A man should provide for the next generation materially – this is the duty of every father, his undeniable responsibility – but he must provide for them spiritually as well; he must seek to make their way in life easier by showing them where the path is to be found which will guide them through the forest of daily living where it is so easy to lose both body and soul.  In setting down this will, then, I am but doing what countless Jews have done before me in days gone by, and what I hope will again be taken up as a sacred mitzvah by our generation.

Rabbi Jack Riemer’s book on ethical wills recounts Harold Kushner’s interpretation of the comment Jacob makes when he sees his son Joseph again, whom he thought had died:  Jacob says “Amuta hapa’am” – literally “I will die this one time.”  (Gen. 46:30).  Kushner explained that everyone owes life one death, but a person leaving no one to remember him dies a second one.  Once Jacob knew that Joseph was alive and had children, who would remember their grandfather’s life, Jacob knew he would only die once.   

 

At the end of Ian Frazier’s “Family,” a book that movingly records the small moments of his ancestors’ lives (such as the night his mother danced in college and wrote in her diary that “my heart danced with me”), he sits alone by his mother’s hospital bed, realizing that “sooner or later I would die too:”

 

And soon all the people who had accompanied me through life would be gone, too, and then even the people who had known us, and no one would remain on earth who had ever seen us, and those descended from us perhaps would know stories about us, perhaps once in a while they would pass by buildings where we had lived and they would mention that we had lived there.  And then the stories would fade, and our graves would go untended, and the graves of those who had tended ours would go untended, and no one would guess what it had been like to wake before dawn in our breath-warmed bedrooms as the radiators clanked and our wives and husbands and children slept.  And we would move from the nearer regions of the dead who are remembered into the farther regions of the forgotten, and on past those, into a space as white and big as the sky replicated forever.  And all that would remain would be the love bravely expressed, and the moment when you danced and your heart danced with you.

Think of an ethical will as the love bravely expressed -- as a way to pass on the treasures of your heart, from the days your heart danced with you -- and as a sacred mitzvah, a way to die only once.

Sholom Aleichem's Ethical Will

Sinai Temple’s class on ethical wills, taught by Norm Pell, begins October 28.

 

On May 17, 1916, The New York Times published the will of S. Rabinowitz (Sholom Aleichem, 1859-1916), who spent his last years in New York.  The Times said it was described as “a fine example of the traditional ethical will left in all ages by the great men of Israel.”  Here are the beginning and end of its 10 paragraphs:

 

Wherever I may die, let me be buried not among the rich and famous, but among plain Jewish people, the workers, the common folk, so that my tombstone may honor the simple graves around me, and the simple graves honor mine, even as the plain people honored their folk writer in his lifetime.

* * *

My last wish for my successors and my prayer to my children:  Take good care of your mother, beautify her old age, sweeten her bitter life, heal her broken heart; do not weep for me – on the contrary, remember me with joy; and the main thing – live together in peace, bear no hatred for each other, help one another in bad times, think on occasion of other members of the family, pity the poor, and when circumstances permit, pay my debts, if there be any.  Children, bear with honor my hard-earned Jewish name and may God in Heaven sustain you ever.  Amen.

Passing on the Lessons of Your Life

On October 28, Sinai Temple will once again present an extraordinary class entitled “Ethical Wills – Passing on Your Heart’s Treasures, with Norm Pell.”  

Ethical wills are “a lovely Jewish custom, one that is unfortunately not sufficiently known in our time” but that has produced some of the most moving Jewish literature from both known and unknown writers, collected in “Ethical Wills – A Modern Jewish Treasury.”  The remarkable aspect of the “wills” is that each one is different, and each one can only have been written by the person who wrote it.

Norm Pell, the extraordinary teacher of the extraordinary Sinai class, was profiled earlier this year in The Jewish Week of New York by Tamar Snyder:  “Being Of Sound Mind, Body — And Conscience:”

Norman Pell first learned about ethical wills a few years ago, when Beatrice Taishoff, who is his son-in-law’s mother, shared her ethical will with the extended family. At first, he believed that writing his own ethical will was unnecessary. “Those who know me already know about me the principles I try to live by, and what is important in my life,” he writes in the introduction to his ethical will. “I even thought it would be counterproductive to reduce these thoughts to writing.”

After embarking on the project, however, Pell discovered great benefit in writing down one’s hopes, dreams and even disappointments. With the encouragement of Rabbi David Wolpe, he researched the topic and began giving ethical will writing workshops in Los Angeles, where he lives.

He begins the workshops by differentiating between three types of wills: the living will, the traditional will and the ethical will. “A regular will outlines your material assets and a living will makes known one’s wishes regarding life-prolonging medical treatment,” he says. “Both are legal documents.” An ethical will, however, doesn’t have to conform to strict rules. “It can be one paragraph or several pages,” he says. “For all intents and purposes, Mitch Albom’s best-seller ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’ can be considered an ethical will.”

“Do you know who you are named after?” Pell often asks those who attend his workshops. Often, participants will reply, “I’m named for my grandfather; he was a nice guy.” But they don’t know much more about the man or woman their parents admired enough to name them for. An ethical will not only forces a person to reexamine his or her life and goals, but also ensures a lasting legacy for future generations. “In 50 years, someone will name somebody after you,” Pell often says. “Wouldn’t it be nice if they knew what your life was all about?” . . .

Writing an ethical will isn’t easy, Pell cautions. “It’s not something you sit and write in a day,” he says. “It can take a year. When you do so, you finally come to face who you really are.”

Contact the Sinai Temple Program Department at (310) 481-3243 or at programs@sinaitemple.org.