My Thoughts on Exile

I know that I have been absent for some time.  I have been taking time off to be with my new family.  Maybe I will write a bit about my experiences of fatherhood so far sometime down the line.  But, first, I am going to attempt to answer my question from my last post.  Are we Jews still in Exile?

No.  Exile was a condition of degredation.  I've taken some flack for saying this before, but I don't see antisemitism as a real threat to American Jews.  Sure, there is always some fringe wacko, or stupid kids with stupid pranks in middle school, but if you think about it, we Jews have made it in America.  I don't see the gentile population or the government turning against us.  (We are disproportionally represented in the government.)  50 years ago, it was hard for Jews to get into Harvard.  Today, there has been a Jewish president of Harvard.  50 years ago, gentile fathers would not want their sons or daughters marrying Jews.  Today, intermarriage rates are huge.  Jews are seen as desiralbe marriage material.  We are at home in America.

But, on the other hand . . .

Yes.  I am a Zionist.  Something in my heart tells me that I should be living in Israel.  As the great Medieval poet and philosopher Yehudah HaLevi writes, "My heart is in the East and I am at the edge of the West."  My Zionism says that Israel is the only place were we can create an ideal society as Jews.  Sure, in America, I bring my Jewishness with me when I engage in social issues, but Israel is the only society where public transportation is a Jewish question.  I often want to be part of that great experience.  My Judaism is pushing me to it, but alas, I am quite comfortable here in Exile. 

So, on the other hand . . .

No . . . I am not in Exile.  I choose to live here in America.  I feel my mission right now is to help Jews in San Diego (and at Beth Israel specifically) find meaning through owning their own Judaism.  I can easily board the next El-Al flight to Tel Aviv and make aliyah, but I'm not going to.  Doesn't exile imply some sense of coersion?  We as Jews have a choice.

So, what do I think.  Are we Jews in Exile?  I think we are all in Exile, Jews in America and in Israel and anywhere else Jews live.  I don't mean Exile as a geographic destination, be an existential situation.  I see our mission as Jews is (among other things) to make the world a better place, and that is an infinate task.  We should not be comfortable until it is complete, so in a sense, we Jews should never be totally comfortable.  We are in Exile from a perfected world.     

Exile?

Tonight at CBI Rabbi Berk is speaking on the Babylonian Exile as an outreach program for the San Diego Opera in preparation for the performance of the opera "Nabucco" that takes place during said exile.  We were just discussing in his office the question: Are we Jews still in Exile?  I need to think about it for a little.  What do you, my loyal readers, think?

One Last Tefillin Post

The Union for Reform Judaism's great "The Torah: A Women's Commentary" features a great poem about Tefillin in the section for this week's Torah portion, Parashat Bo.  The poem is written by Rabbi Elizabeth Tikvah Sarah, a Bristish Liberal rabbi.  The Commentary uses this poem as a comment on Exodus 13:9, 16.

Here is the poem:

Meditation for Tefillin

I cannot                                                                                                                       
bind myself                  
to You                       
I can only                    
unbind myself              
continually and            
free                             
Your spirit                 
within me   

So why
this tender-cruel
parody of
bondage
black
leather
straps
skin
gut and
sacred litany of
power and
submission
which binds us
Your slave-people
still?

My own answer is
wound around
with every
taut
binding and
unbinding
blood rushing
heart pounding
life-force surging
              pushing
              panting
              straining
              struggling to
              break through
              to You              

While we are on tefillin . . .

I wrote this piece while I was a rabbinical student.


T’fillin Shel Yisrael (some ramblings on phylacteries)

      In Memory of Yisroel ben Yekusiel Yitzhok

“Can a Reform rabbi wrap t’fillin?” my grandpa asked me while we were eating lunch after my college graduation. I had just been accepted to HUC. He never quite got Reform Judaism.

“Sure, a Reform rabbi can wrap t’fillin. It’s just that most probably don’t,” I answered.

“Do you have a set?”

“No.”

“Then take some of the money I’m going to give you for graduation and buy a set of t’fillin.”

“Sure,” I replied without thinking that much. Why shouldn’t I have a set of t’fillin?

My grandpa was an active Orthodox Jew. Not fervent, but active. Shabbat was Shabbat, but if the Cardinals were playing on Saturday, the TV would be on. He walked to shul (in his dialect of Yiddish it was pronounced “sheel”) on Shabbat until he got too old, so then he drove and parked in the parking lot of the strip mall next to the synagogue. To him, Judaism was the traditions like t’fillin. He could understand that the Torah may have been written by humans, but he did not understand why Reform Jews, for the most part, didn’t wrap t’fillin.

As soon as I returned to my parents’ house in St. Louis for the summer after college graduation and before the HUC year in Israel, I went online to research t’fillin. I felt I found a good set for a decent price, and I sent away for it. When they arrived (with a mezuzah scroll thrown in for free) I rushed up to my bedroom to try them out like a child with a new toy. I thought I knew what I was doing because I downloaded instructions from a website. T’fillin were harder than I guessed they would be. Those seven wraps around the arm didn’t seem to want to stay on. When I thought about it, it was weird. Only crazies bind themselves in leather. But, I kept with it and practiced everyday.

I practiced in my room because I was a little embarrassed. I thought my mom, who had left Orthodoxy, would find out. It’s as if I was doing something illicit. She did find out, but she didn’t care. My room became my own little synagogue where I wrapped t’fillin and practiced the prayers.

In Jerusalem I was worried that I would stand out as a t’fillin wrapper, but it turned out that several of my classmates were in the same club. I never asked them why they wrapped. I told myself that I did it because of a challenge from my grandpa. I soon realized that it wasn’t because my grandpa challenged me to wrap t’fillin, but I wrapped because I loved my grandpa. I didn’t have to prove my Judaism to him. If I didn’t wrap t’fillin I could still be a good Jew. I kept wrapping because this was something that was meaningful to my grandpa. Who decided for me that t’fillin couldn’t be meaningful for Reform Jews? Wrapping t’fillin was binding us together.

Yisroel ben Yekusiel Yitzhok (Irvin Alper) died on Hashanah Rabba of 5765. I asked if I could have his t’fillin. He told me once that they were his uncle’s before they were his. He didn’t know who gave them to his uncle. When I took them out of their bag they smelled like Grandpa Irv’s cologne. The knot of the t’fillin shel yad was tied in the Hassidic tradition. Irv wasn’t a Hasid. Maybe his uncle was?

I now wear my grandpa’s t’fillin in my room in my apartment. (I use my internet set at school.) They now smell more like me. Someday I will give them to my grandson or granddaughter (something he probably couldn’t fathom). Maybe the t’fillin will bind them to me, Yekutiel Yitzhak, as they bound me to Yisrael ben Yekusiel Yitzhok.

More on the the tefillin threat

Here is the Philadelphia Police's statement.  I'm not quite sure what "olfactories" are.

Have Tefillin Will Travel

I got a kick out of this story.  Apparently, a plane was diverted this morning because some passengers thought that a teenager donning tefillin on the plane was strapping himself with bombs.  Now, I shouldn't make fun of serious security issues, but come on.    

Avatar and Judaism

While I have yet to see the movie, here and here are interesting takes on it by one of my favorite contemporary Jewish writers, Jay Michaelson.  Maybe when I see the movie, I can comment more.