Crossword Puzzle Answers: May 10, 2013
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May 8, 2013
Tales from a mother: The Jewish wedding
Every time my son, Jonathan, left for school, for camp, for college, I felt a heartbreaking sense of loss. That’s because your main instinct as a mother is to keep your child as close to you as possible. But your main job as a mother is to prepare your kids to separate. It’s the cruel catch-22 of parenting.
I am generally an outspoken person, but with Jonathan I often kept my feelings to myself. He announced that he was going to work in London for a year. What I said was: “Oooh, that sounds wonderful!” What I was really thinking: “You’ll be looking the wrong way and get hit by a bus, you’ll get chronic bronchitis from that miserable climate, and you will learn to think of toast as a meal!”
The only good thing about working in England is that the Brits know zilch about Jewish culture, so whenever Jono wanted to visit he could just make up a holiday. “I’ll be out next week. I have to be with my family for the first five nights of Kishka.”
When he got here, Jono told us that things with his girlfriend had gotten “serious.” Oh, my God! A WEDDING! “I have dreamed about this day for years! This is the best Kishka present you could have given me!”
That was a big fat lie. The fact is I’d be perfectly content if Jonathan stayed single forever. That way I wouldn’t have to share him on holidays, I would remain the leading lady in his life, and I wouldn’t have to watch him making googly eyes at some trollop! But there’s a rumor going around that I might die someday, and I didn’t want my child to be alone. He called a few weeks later to describe the wedding plans: a huge, traditional, black-tie affair in New York after he moved back from London. “Oooh, that sounds wonderful!” Oy!
I took a valium and spent the rest of the day on the phone with the Yenta Brigade. “Are they out of their minds? It’s too big, it’s too formal, and it’s too Jewish. … What do you mean ‘It’s not my wedding?’ Why does everyone keep saying that?”
I said nothing to my son about my concerns. For starters, why black-tie? In our artsy, hippy crowd we don’t wear tuxes and evening gowns. And why the huge guest list? People are not going to fly in from all over the world for a glass of champagne and some chopped liver.
Most importantly, I’m not comfortable with all that traditional Jewy stuff — a rabbi saying prayers, a Hebrew marriage contract, and 100 baby-blue yarmulkes from UnderTheHuppah.com. Our family is not observant in any way. We are secular Jews who believe in the time-honored ancestral values of eating out, going to the theater and bargain shopping. But, again, I kept quiet.
Things got frantic. I had to buy a gown, we had to fly to New York, and my husband Benni’s huge Danish family was coming in from Copenhagen. I figured we’d take them out for Chinese — as an introduction to Jewish culture. And then things went from frantic to insane: Benni’s brother was coming with his two ex-wives, and they were all staying in the same room with one king-sized bed. And now you know why the Danes are considered the happiest people in the world!
I found a beaded gown at a yard sale that still had a $1,200 price tag on it. I paid 20 bucks, and kept the tag in case I wanted to resell it on eBay. Benni dug out his old tux from 1967, which still fit perfectly — as long as he didn’t button it or zip up the fly.
To my surprise, people did fly into Manhattan from all over the world, and everyone looked magnificent in their evening clothes. I got a shiver when Benni’s very assimilated Danish Jewish family put on yarmulkes for the first time in their lives.
Four young men carried the chuppah, which was draped with the bride’s late father’s prayer shawl. When the music changed, Alisa, the bride, entered wearing her great-grandmother’s lace wedding veil. And when my son looked at her, I felt that same sense of loss that I used to feel when he went off to school, to camp, to college. Only this time, he wasn’t coming back.
Then — just like in “Fiddler” — Jonathan broke the glass and everyone shouted “Mazel tov!” We danced back up the aisle, and we kept dancing, eating, drinking, laughing and crying the whole night. And all the things I worried about — the formal attire, the big crowd, the Jewish stuff — turned out to be all the things I liked best about the wedding. I am so glad that I did a mother’s job and kept my big mouth shut!
Humorist Annie Korzen is an actress (“Seinfeld”), writer and speaker. She is the author of “Bargain Junkie: Living the Good Life on the Cheap.”
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Mother’s Day: The gift of responsibility
On Mother’s Day last year, I was already a couple of months into my pregnancy. Still, there could not have been a concept more foreign to me than the idea of being a mother. I was slow to comprehend the impending reality of motherhood, which I knew rendered me different from many women in my position — a realization that left me feeling alienated. Barely able to contain their excitement at having successfully begun the process of fruitful multiplication, many women by this point have already chosen names for their unborn babies and stenciled them on nursery walls, or purchased maternity clothing for a body whose changes are visible only to the woman herself, if at all. Some people even begin parenting classes immediately, frantically stocking their homes with baby gear about which they will one day say they can’t imagine living without.
It would be an understatement to suggest I found neither joy nor comfort in such impulses. While it’s true that the pleasure I experienced upon learning I was pregnant remains one of the most deeply happy and moving moments of my life, my pleasure was intensely private. I experienced it quietly and intimately. And yet truly it never seemed quite real to me. Over the course of my pregnancy, no matter how large my body grew and no matter how searing its physical difficulties, I felt disconnected from the biological fact that I was going to be a mother. My husband and I spent hours talking about the incomprehensibility of what people call the miracle of childbirth — a miracle so mundane that it happens thousands of times a day to people all over the world.
Given its immutable pervasiveness, one would expect that pregnancy would be the most natural and comforting scenario in which a woman can find herself. Yet hovering alongside my joy was an unshakable feeling of horror that seemed to come from the realization that I knew virtually nothing about the next phase of my life. Certainly I was only enriching my life, adding to it rather than substituting one identity for another. Still, I imagined a precipice on which I was perched. Perhaps the fact that I was pregnant became most real to me when I learned that I was going to have a son — learning the sex of the fetus put flesh on the bones of any baby dreams I had dreamed.
But as the initial excitement mellowed, I was suddenly crushed under the realization, again, of how little I knew. It suddenly occurred to me that I had no idea how to comb a little boy’s hair, for example, and that I was already poised to disappoint him in so many ways. To complicate matters, no amount of perusing the Web for guidance on what kinds of bottles or baby carriers to use would reveal the secret for discovering the perfect one. It became apparent to me that despite my breadth of scholarly knowledge in my professional life, I was lacking some crucial real-world insights, and I feared this lack would most certainly contribute to my son’s inevitable future delinquency.
As it turned out, the basic things come simply, proving the madness of our worrying. My son’s hair, for example — he was born with an abundance of it — fashioned itself into a dark, jutting faux hawk within hours of his escape from my womb. Five months later, I have little need for a comb. Still, the first couple of months as a new mother comprised the most difficult period of my life. Women are forced to learn quickly in these first weeks despite the emotional and physical residue of labor and childbirth, which is much more violent than anyone ever admits. But how can we be surprised? The world itself, wild and waste, came into being violently, through an ordering of chaos. But one day I woke up and realized that much of the turmoil had become more memory and less physical reality. And a new realization set in.
A few weeks ago I gave a talk at the University of Alaska Southeast as part of an honors symposium focusing on transgenerational trauma and memory. The symposium, organized by my friend and colleague Dr. Sol Neely, was built around a book by Gabriele Schwab called “Haunting Legacies: Violent Histories and Transgenerational Trauma.” Schwab, a German woman, explores the trauma of both victims and perpetrators of collective tragedies, focusing specifically on the ways in which we — both individually and collectively — pass on violent histories for our children to inherit. I begin to question what kinds of violent histories and traumatic memories I am in a position to pass down to my own son. The nature of traumatic memories suggests that they are buried deep within the psychic archive, but given that we unknowingly transmit these histories to our children, every day I feel compelled to keep thinking through the question of my responsibility to my son.
My own academic research on the writing of the philosopher Emmanuel Levinas reminds me that I am not just infinitely responsible in an abstract kind of way. I am responsible not only for my son, but also for his responsibility. Strangely, I feel delighted underneath a burden so immense. The relationship of the parent and the child is the ethical relationship par excellence. As others have found, becoming a mother teaches me more about the nature of responsibility than any textbook or philosophical conference. And this is what I have always, insatiably, set out to do: to learn. I realize now that my concerns about whether I could comb my little boy’s hair or select the right cup holder for our stroller were masking more somber issues. What, exactly, is the nature of my responsibility to my son? What kinds of violent histories will I pass on to him? How do I teach him to respond ethically to these histories?
The Torah is full of advice for children in terms of how and how not to treat their parents. We are told to honor our parents, to refrain from disrespecting them, to fear them. The talmudists elaborate on this idea and tell us not to smite our parents, curse them, or rebel against their authority. The punishments for rebelling against these admonitions are often excruciating, sometimes calling even for death, though the talmudic rabbis seem to have found such pronouncements to be a bit harsh. Still, the biblical regard for how children should treat their parents is unflinchingly clear, even if honoring one’s parents is referred to as the most difficult mitzvah.
The teachings become murkier with regard to parents’ responsibilities to their children. In fact a cursory reading of Jewish texts might lead one to believe that the Torah has little interest in delineating the responsibilities of parents in relation to their children. Certainly (and thankfully!) there is even less interest in mapping out various forms of capital punishment in response to parents who fall short in their responsibilities. Yes, of course, we’re told (by way of both Torah and talmudic texts) to teach them the ways of Torah and mitzvot, to impart to them the story of Sinai, to marry them off to other Jews, to circumcise our sons. But sometimes I wonder if the immensity of the parental responsibility to children isn’t somewhat downplayed. In fact, I’m not convinced that honoring one’s parents is the most difficult mitzvah in light of what it means to teach our children the way of Torah, a far greater challenge given that it cannot, in one lifetime, ever be fully taught.
The big question, of course, has to do with what it means to begin to teach Torah — because all we can do is begin to teach Torah. The talmudic story of the convert addressing the great Hillel (who admonishes the man, “What is hateful to you, do not do to others”) has long been the lens through which I understand Torah. If we learn nothing else in Torah, we learn the value of responsibility, of the value in treating others with kindness, and dignity, and respect. But responsibility also means taking account of the histories that we inherit and the legacies of suffering and violence of which we are a part, regardless of our proximity to them. Responsibility means beginning to acknowledge them.
I may not have participated directly in slavery or in the Native-American genocide, but as an American I inherit the culpability for these violent moments in our shared history. They are part of my national legacy, and if teaching Torah means teaching my son to be responsible and to respond ethically, then it means teaching him how to take ownership of these kinds of events. It means teaching him to be the kind of person who insists that such violence does not become part of a future legacy. The American novelist William Faulkner famously said the “past is never dead. It’s not even past.” It’s important to me that my son understand this idea so that he cannot but respond to the call to responsibility to which, in Levinas’ words, we are all summoned.
The transmission of personal histories of violence and trauma can be more complex. It’s strangely easy to acknowledge my responsibility for events to which I am only indirectly connected. And it becomes even more complicated when a history of violence contains moments where one is both perpetrator and victim. As I sift through the remnants of my own childhood, a couple of key moments are difficult to forget.
When I was little, my sleep difficulties were no less pronounced than they are today in my 30s. I have vivid memories of being alone in the dark of my room, waiting for the house to quiet so that I could walk the halls and experience being in my home as if I were the only one. On one such night, I walked quietly down a carpeted hallway and heard my father’s voice call out from my parents’ bedroom. “Stop. Don’t move or I’ll kill you.” I couldn’t have been more than 7 years old, but I knew that this was the voice of trauma, a trauma that took the shape of both victim and perpetrator. My father, a veteran, incurred serious PTSD from his time in the Vietnam War, particularly his time on Ap Bia Mountain, in what would notoriously be named the Battle of Hamburger Hill. There are very few honors that he didn’t receive — medals for honor, valor, bravery. But he was also wounded physically on this hill. He lost friends and fellow soldiers. He lost the young man he once was. In some ways, I don’t think he ever fully came home. And though he has shared stories with us throughout our lives, we, his family, can never truly be there with him. And this is part of what I have inherited — sadness, because I will never be able to connect with my father on this fundamental level, because I will never really know him since I will never understand the trauma that has shaped him. His memories are violent, and they both are and are not ours. Such is the nature of inherited histories. He shared them with his five children often, but as is the case with testimony, what remains unspoken — what is impossible to say — becomes the dominant mode of narrative, the mode that says the most. And so I knew, that night in the dark hallway, to be still and to wait until I heard the deep breaths of sleep resume before I crept along.
Wartime scenarios are particularly complex, as soldiers can become ensnared in the role of both victim and perpetrator. I grew up under the shadow of this tension, and because of that I’m conscious of the ways I’ve inherited the violence. Schwab’s book talks briefly about how children of people coming from one violent or traumatic event often focus their energies on other traumatic events. It’s as if trauma or violence becomes embedded in a child’s identity, and knowing that the trauma of their parents is inaccessible, they reach for an understanding of one to which they are less directed. Here my very early fixation on the Holocaust makes even more sense. My parents were wildly successful in creating a fun and happy home for their children, but as we grow older my siblings and I cannot help but identify the ways in which we also have been shaped by my father’s complex history.
As I marvel how the multiple facets of my life and identity have been molded by the histories that precede me, I begin to take even more seriously the burden of responsibility that accompanies motherhood. I think lately of a passage by Alicia Suskin Ostriker in “The Nakedness of the Fathers: Biblical Visions and Revisions”: “I vowed that my son would not, if I could help it, be a soldier or a violent man. I hoped he would be a gentle person and good lover. I wanted to love him in a way which would increase and multiply, a ripple effect, when he undertook his life in the world. This too I suppose was a form of control, a mother trying to influence the course of history through her son.” I cannot help but find resonance in her words, but I would also add to them.
I want my son to say, “Here I am.” But I know that I have to show him how to do that, how to say that. I have to model what it looks like to be responsible not just for my own actions, but for the history that I have inherited as a human being, an American and a Jew.
Monica Osborne is a writer and professor of Jewish studies with the Glazer Institute at Pepperdine University.
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Q&A with Rabbi Ed Feinstein
On Sunday, May 11, Rabbi Ed Feinstein, senior rabbi at Valley Beth Shalom, will be feted for his two decades of service to the synagogue. He talks in this edited version of an interview about changes in synagogue life, his theology and what he prays for.
Jewish Journal: Twenty years. Does it feel like a long time?
Ed Feinstein: Some days. (laughter)
JJ: So, how do you think that synagogue life has changed in those 20 years?
EF: In the beginning of the 20th century we were very active and very conscious of creating a new modern form of Judaism, an American form of Judaism. In the middle of the 20th century there were two traumas: The Holocaust and the creation State of Israel. And the community consciously decided to stop the process of re-creating itself. They adopted continuity as a motto. Which meant we weren’t going to continue the creativity that had marked the community in the early part of the century. And for a generation, the community hunkered down and protected itself. It created all kinds of institutions — it created synagogues and summer camps and seminaries; there was a lot of philanthropy. But there wasn’t a great deal of institutional creativity, and ideological, philosophical creativity. And that worked from the end of the Second World War, until the end of the 1980s. But by the ‘90s, that numbness wore off, and the community once again returned, by force, because the kids asked their parents a very powerful question: Why be Jewish? Up until that point, if anyone ever asked that question, what you answered with was a narrative of the holocaust. You dropped your eyes and lowered your voice and whispered something about the 6 million, and the conversation was over. But all of a sudden kids weren’t responding to that language anymore.
JJ: And that’s when you came here.
EF: And that’s about when I came to Valley Beth Shalom [VBS]. So this last 20 years has seen the return of what I think is an enormously energetic creative process of reinventing American Judaism, reinventing Judaism for modernity. We are renegotiating our relationship with the state of Israel; we are finding a way to tell the story of the Holocaust; we are finding a way to tell the story of our own identity. We’re trying to figure out what is our relationship to the outside world. What does it mean there are so many among us who weren’t born Jewish, and yet are participating in the Jewish community? We are trying to figure out our politics in America; we’re certainly trying to figure out our relationship with God.
JJ: Do you the model for a large synagogue like VBS — I don’t know how many families you have…
EF: A million.
(laughter)
JJ: No seriously, about how many is it?
EF: About 1600.
JJ: That’s huge by many standards.
EF: Yeah thank God they don’t all want a bris on the same morning.
JJ: Do you think that’s a good model for the future?
EF: In order to survive the ups and downs of the economy, institutions have to be big. When the economy tanked VBS made a very clear statement: We will not lose a family because of money. And we were able to keep that promise because the institution is big enough and has a broad enough reach to absorb an economic downturn and still move forward. However, because community is what a synagogue is about, connecting people to people, to God, and to their traditions, it has to be small. So, while the synagogue is an institutional framework that is very big, within it are dozens of micro-communities that are very small. And my job is to bridge those two realities. On Shabbos morning we have 5 or 6 minyanim that are meeting. And people get to pray with the people that they love. We have many many classes all over the city there are classes, there are lunch time classes being offered. We have a number of small groups of people going out to do social justice work. The only time the whole community really meets is on the high holidays. And the wonderful thing about the high holidays is that’s when you get to see all of your friends from all of your micro communities sitting with each other, and you realize how interwoven all of these micro communities are. That’s the model.
JJ: Can you define your theology?
EF: Theology for me begins with the question of “what is the meaning of my existence?” “Why am I here?” What are the passions that get me up in the morning and move me through life? Theology doesn’t begin with the metaphysics with the way the universe is constructed it begins with the realization that my life has meaning, that I matter, that I’m important, that I have significance. And the question is what kind of universe would I have to imagine in order to recognize that my life matters and that I have meaning in my existence. It’s a universe that bears the possibility of repair. If I posit that the universe is so broken and it’s broken pieces could never fit together, then I really ought to go become a Buddhist. Because the Buddhist tradition teaches a withdrawal from the pain of being in the world. But the Jewish tradition teaches a different message. That there’s a possibility of tikkun. And because there’s a possibility of tikun, our efforts to do justice in the world, to bring gentleness to the world, to care for each other, make a difference. That is a faith statement.
JJ: How do you reconcile that against things like the Boston bombings?
EF: The brokenness is still deeply profound. There is a deep brokenness in this world, and that brokenness is also expressed through human beings. And our job is to try and repair the brokenness. I think the story that all of us wept at is the story of all the men and women who went running toward the explosion.
JJ: Did you grow up thinking you were going to be a rabbi?
EF: No, not even close. In fact some mornings (laughter) I don’t wake up thinking that way. My mom and dad owned a bakery in the West San Fernando Valley. Dad’s a baker, Mom’s a bakery lady. Mom created a community in that bakery. Go on a Sunday morning, every Jew in America was in that bakery. And there was a sense of belonging and caring in that community. I always want to be part of community.
JJ: So, in a sense, it’s turned out that you’re doing what you imagined, it’s just a different role.
EF: I never would be like this. Because when Rabbi Schulweis asked me in 1993 to come here, this was a dream. I never thought…I fell in love with him when I was 16 years old. I watched him on that pulpit, I watched the magic that he would do; I listened to his words. All through college and rabbinical school, my dad would send me tapes of Rabbi Schulweis’ talks, because I was so taken with the power of his mind and the power of his oratory and the power of his soul.
JJ: So what’s the most fun part of your job?
Friday morning, telling stories to kids. I still do it, I’ve done it since I was ordained, I get on the floor and I tell the kids all these Jewish stories. And I watch their eyes grow wide. The story I love to tell, it’s a true story, the week I was ordained a rabbi, no the week I started my first job as a rabbi, in Texas, Nina, my wife sent me to the grocery store to buy some milk, and I was walking up the aisle. And there was a shopping cart coming the other way, and it had one of the 3 year olds from the nursery school in the jump seat, and the kid looks at me and he looks at his mother and looks at me and he points and says “Look mom, it’s God!” True story.
JJ: And what did you say?
EF: I said God bless this kid, I hope he joins the board of directors. No I realized, you know, you imagine God to wear the face of the people who teach you about God. You imagine religion to have the same emotional tenor of the people who teach you religion. Too many of us were raised by teachers and rabbis who were cold and forbidding and distant. And if I could be close to kids, hug kids, engage kids, tell them stories that contain the wisdom of the tradition but do it with laughter and joy, that’s a gift to a generation. So Friday morning, you’re always welcome, 9:20 am, you can hear about the boy who turned into a chicken. “Sheldon the Shabbos Dog” is one of our favorites.
JJ: So what’s the least fun?
EF: Oh God. The least fun is when the institution of the synagogue and the sacred community of the synagogue don’t correspond. And they rub up against each other. Dealing with financial issues, dealing with personnel issues, dealing with the business of the synagogue when it doesn’t correspond with the sacred character of the synagogue. The least fun is when — this is too honest, but the least fun is when I don’t have the time or the energy or the presence to actually meet the needs of the people whom I need to meet the needs of. When someone says “I was in the hospital, and you didn’t come,” or someone says “I was in pain and you didn’t respond.” And they’re right. Because there’s one of me and there’s a lot of them and its hard to keep track and its hard to get there.
The torah’s all about this. This is Moses’ complaint to God — he says “What did you do this to me for?” And I know exactly what he feels like. The least fun part of the job is when the doctor says to me, there’s nothing else I can do. Would you like to tell the patient or shall I? And I have to go in and sit with somebody who I deeply care for and say we have to talk about what’s coming next. And you know it’s painful, it’s just so painful. That’s the hardest part of the job.
JJ: Often we look to the rabbi for a solid sense of faith. As a rabbi do you find that it’s hard to be human in those ways?
EF: No, and I’ll tell you why. Because what Rabbi Schulweiss taught me is that that’s not the rabbi’s job. It’s not my job to have faith when all of you have doubt; my job is to put your doubt into words. It’s my job to remind you that you’re not the first person to argue with God in that way. To give you the courage and resolution to get up, and to recognize that your indignation in the face of the world’s evil is in fact the most glorious part of your humanity.
JJ: I think you just hit your theology in a different way.
EF: Absolutely.
JJ: Do you worry about anti-Semitism?
EF: Only among Jews. I mean that very seriously, and without facetiousness. No, I do not. Yes I worry about Al-Qaeda, like everybody in America. We saw in Boston what happens when two lone wolfs can set off an explosion and ruin a national moment. Like everybody, I worry about that. But in terms of specifically anti-Semitism…no. What I worry about is the viciousness of Jews against other Jews. The perverse irony of Jewish history is that at moments when the outside world is ready to accept us, we find new ways to be self-destructive. Look at what’s going on in Israel. You know, there used to be the joke about what would happen if peace broke out. And in Israel, that is sort of what’s happening right now. They’re beginning to focus on the internal life of the country and all the unresolved conflicts within the internal life of the country are now being recognized.
At VBS, we have been very successful in creating an environment in which everybody knows that they’re going to hear lots and lots of points of views they disagree with. We brought Jeremy Ben Ami from J Street, we brought Mort Klein from ZOA. And we have brought people from the New Israel Fund. And we’ve brought people from much more Right Wing positions. And I have worked very diligently to say again and again that our job is to listen, to evaluate, to judge, you don’t have to agree, but you have to listen politely.
JJ: Here’s a very personal question: What do you pray for?
Peace. Everywhere. Peace in the world, peace for Israel. A vision for Israel to find its way to peace. A vision for America to find its way to peace. Vision for the Jewish community to fnid its way to wholeness. And personal, I just pray for the capacity to find peace. to find moments of peace and moments of joy, moments of recognition. To me you don’t pray for stuff as much as you stop and recognize what’s in front of you. Prayer to me is not as much petitionary as it is appreciative. So, to get myself to stop worrying, and stop wrestling with the world, and just recognize how blessed I am. You know, I’ve gotten to work with Harold Schulweis for 20 years; what a gift. For 20 years I get to sit next to the greatest Jew of the 20th century, every Shabbos morning, and schmooze. I have five young rabbis I work with, brilliant, wonderful souls. I’ve made friends in this community, the other rabbis in this city are my friends. And I’ve been blessed with a wonderful family. So I ask God to slow me down and help me see the blessings that are mine.
JJ: And what would you ask us to pray for?
EF: Certainly peace. (long pause). I don’t know what I’d ask you to pray for. I’ve asked the community over and over again to live with meaning. To live on purpose. To live with significance. To build lives that matter. To not waste the gift of life. To not waste the moments that are given to us. To not waste the opportunities that have been given to us. To me, this is the purpose of Torah, to teach us how to fill moments with significance, and to take seriously this notion that I carry the image of God and to live that way. I want people to live with significance, and not waste life. So that every day of your life, you know that you matter, that your life matters, that the work you’ve done in the world matters, that your relationships matter. That’s what we pray for.
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Grace in the wilderness: Parashat Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20)
The book of Bamidbar, literally “in the desert” or “in the wilderness,” is a hard book to read. Over and over, plagues break out and thousands are killed. The reason, we are told, is a pronounced lack of faith in God. I found the repeated spilling of Israelite blood difficult, to say the least, until Bible scholar Adriane Leveen put it into mythic perspective for me.
Only two of the adults who left Egypt enter the Promised Land, Joshua and Caleb. As Leveen writes, “To destroy Egypt, God must destroy the generation.”
What did the new generation need to learn? The standard interpretation, which is undoubtedly correct, is that the stories in Bamidbar were written to emphasize the Israelites’ dependence on God, Who provided navigation (the pillars of fire and smoke to guide them), food (the manna), protection (the Israelites prevail in battle when Moses raises his arms to the heavens) or lack thereof (the plagues).
Unfortunately, this is difficult to digest. Why would those who witnessed the plagues against the Egyptians, the parting of the sea, the destruction of the pursuing chariots and God’s appearance at Sinai, lack faith, while their children did not? When I became an Israeli desert guide and walked the desert with Bible in hand, I was further baffled. Many biblical stories show a deep knowledge of the landscape, and the desert itself is sometimes an indispensable actor in the drama, but the stories of Korach and the other rebellions, not to mention the dedication of the alter, the spies, Bilaam, the census and the giving of the laws of the Priests, the Nazirite and the Sota, could have happened anywhere.
The desert of Bamidbar is like a city dweller would imagine it — desolate and lifeless, relegated to the symbolic role of a mythic cemetery for the former slaves.
But as we desert dwellers in Southern California know, few deserts are actually desolate and lifeless. There are words for uninhabitable desert in the Hebrew Bible: shemama and yeshimum. The Hebrew root of midbar — daled, bet, resh — means border or threshold. (So, for instance, the entrance to the Temple was called the dvir.)
Midbar specifically refers to grazing lands: not enough water for cultivation, but not an inhospitable wasteland, either. Wilderness for the Israelites was similar to our contemporary definition of wilderness, a place without roads and permanent dwellings, where the farming that enables civilization is not possible. This is the Judean desert between Jerusalem, Hebron and the Dead Sea, where David and the ancient Israelites shepherded their flocks.
And it is the well-watered, central mountains of Sinai. This makes sense, for the Israelites left Egypt with their flocks.
If we read between the mythic lines of the book of Bamidbar and consult the reality that is the Sinai Desert, we might actually shed more light on the question of why the Generation of Miracles must be inherited by the Generation of the Wilderness.
What does the desert teach its inhabitants? Even if manna is provided, the wilderness is no place for the passive dependency that slavery engenders. Surviving far from civilization takes the kind of rugged independence and self-sufficiency that characterizes those who built the first kibbutzim in Ottoman Palestine. Courage is required. And so is honesty. There is no room for illusions and hubris. Follow the mirage and you will walk to your death.
In the wilderness, one learns how to live at risk without anxiety. I am much more likely to die in a car accident in Los Angeles than on a trail while backpacking in the Sierra. Life everywhere is tenuous, but I pretend otherwise in civilization. I don’t think of the accident rate when I get in the car. Far from hospitals in wilderness, however, I am keenly aware of danger. I respond by paying greater attention.
The desert forces me to trade my arrogance for humility and listen deeply to the rhythms of weather, animal movements and the seasons. If I know the gifts of the plants and how to discover water, I learn to trust God’s magnificent world. I feel safer than in the city. The Hebrew word for faith, emunah, means trust. In wilderness, I am lost without it. It is a faith that needs no leaps; with every sip of water and morsel of food, I am aware of God’s gifts.
But I also know my limits. Exposed and vulnerable to the storms and the scorpions and countless other dangers, I know that no matter how smart my decisions, I will not be alive tomorrow without grace. The very same landscape that demands my independence makes me keenly aware of my dependence. I don’t imagine God’s care for me; I feel it.
Independent, comfortable with danger and risk, humble, trusting in God’s world, thirsty for God’s grace: The Generation of the Wilderness acquired the qualities needed to meet the challenge of entering the Promised Land.
Does Judaism ask anything different of us today?
Rabbi Mike Comins teaches the Making Prayer Real course (MakingPrayerReal.com), and directs the TorahTrek Center for Jewish Wilderness Spirituality (TorahTrek.org). He is author of “Making Prayer Real” and “A Wild Faith” (Jewish Lights).
Grace in the wilderness: Parashat Bamidbar (Numbers 1:1-4:20) Read More »
Fake medicine
Counterfeit Drugs Kill People and Fund Terrorism in the Middle East
Caveat emptor means “buyer beware.” Fake medicines are now a multibillion-dollar industry affecting people in virtually every country in the world, and the problem is getting worse. It has been estimated that up to 15 percent of drugs sold worldwide are counterfeit, and in parts of Africa and Asia it can surpass 50 percent. We are also vulnerable in the United States even though we have a better-regulated pharmaceutical system.
This problem became epidemic in the late 1990s with the globalization of pharmaceutical manufacturing, the commercialization of the Internet and the relatively new drug Viagra. By 2002, hundreds of thousands of fake Viagra pills flooded the market, and today birth control pills, hormone replacements, diabetes treatments, weight-loss aids, cancer and transplant drugs, schizophrenia medicines and HIV therapies have all been counterfeited. The list goes on. The selling occurs mostly through online pharmacies worldwide, but the manufacturing appears to focus mainly in loosely regulated countries like China and India. Unfortunately, medications that come in injectable forms, like insulin, are even easier to counterfeit than tablets. One can just use sterile water or even tap water.
To create an online pharmacy is rather simple. Get the active pharmaceutical ingredients from China, put together a Web page, and you are ready to go. It literally could take 45 minutes to create your own.
Accountability for these “pharmacies” is virtually nonexistent. Of 10,000 Internet drug outlets surveyed by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy, 97 percent were out of compliance with legal or patient safety standards.
Historically, drug smugglers are often penalized by way of imprisonment if the drugs in question are heroin or cocaine. But those who produce or smuggle counterfeit medicines, by contrast, often face lax enforcement and light punishment. Some governments look at drug counterfeiting as a trivial offense. After all, everybody likes cheap “Viagra.” Recently, the pharmaceutical industry has persuaded several governments to stiffen regulations against fake drugs because counterfeit drugs can kill. Most are poorly made, containing the wrong dose of the active ingredient or a totally different ingredient, such as antifreeze or arsenic. Drug resistance against bacteria can occur because of ineffective antibacterial medications, particularly in Africa and Southeast Asia; it is estimated that up to 30 percent are fakes. The United Nations estimates that roughly half of the antimalarial drugs sold in Africa are counterfeits. The World Health Organization estimates that at least 100,000 people per year, mostly in poor countries, are killed as a result of fake medicines. It is estimated that the global market for fake medicines could be worth over $200 billion per year.
Although the United States has the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to watch over us, according to the commissioner at this organization, 80 percent of the ingredient manufacturing sites for FDA-approved drugs sit outside our country — located in one of the 300,000 facilities in 150 different countries. These small companies export FDA-regulated products into the United States. Clearly, there are many weak points along this odyssey from which to steal or introduce adulterated and counterfeit products. You may recall that in 2007, 149 people died as a result of contaminated Heparin.
There have been some recent reports suggesting that terrorist organizations in the Middle East are using fake medicine to fund their heinous activities against Israel.
The Rise of Counterfeit Cancer Medication
The counterfeiters have recently moved from fake Viagra to making counterfeit cancer drugs, probably because of the larger profits. These illegal manufacturers have become more aggressive, as a vial of the cancer drug Avastin sells for $2,400 compared to $10 to $20 a tablet for Viagra. Although speculative, I also believe these very immoral thieves feel that the patients with cancer will probably die anyway, so no one can prove the fake drugs were causative.
The United States traced some of these drugs that originated from China, which then passed to Turkey through England, and then were transported to our country. These fakes contained starch, salt, cleaning solvents and other chemicals, but not the active ingredient, according to Roche, Avastin’s manufacturer. Bogus copies of the breast-cancer drug Tamoxifen also have entered our shores in recent months.
In China, the manufacturers are licensed as chemical companies, therefore they are not subject to regulation or inspection, as in our country. It is rare that anyone is arrested or convicted for these heinous crimes against humanity.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Over the past 10 years, there have been some collaborations between national and international public health agencies, such as the FDA and the World Health Organization. Many counterfeit and illicit drugs have been confiscated, resulting in the arrest of more than 80 people, as well as the elimination of more than 18,000 illegal online pharmacies. The pharmaceutical manufacturers and the FDA are developing new anti-counterfeiting techniques, such as handheld counterfeit detection devices designed to analyze chemicals and potential tampering of these medicines. Also, some pharmaceutical companies have put identifying markers on drug packaging, which can be scanned, somewhat like radio-frequency identification. Some are more covert, using UV fibers woven into the packaging, inks and images. More recently, nanotechnological markers in DNA are being incorporated into the makeup of the drugs themselves to help prevent drug counterfeiting processes.
Unfortunately, these new technologies, to detect counterfeiting, do not eliminate the problem, but only minimize it. The FDA has recently discovered that counterfeiters target some consumers through social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter.
On an optimistic note, the government of Nigeria, where fake drugs are prevalent, has declared its intention to adopt a “war” against the counterfeiters. The Pharmaceutical Security Institute gives warning that this war will be hard to win. Hopefully, more obstacles developed by each country will raise the cost and complexity of manufacturing counterfeit drugs, thus the profit margin will diminish. Hopefully the “bad guys” may now choose to fake other objects instead of medication that cannot harm or kill anyone.
Dr. Norman Lavin is a clinical professor of endocrinology and director of endocrinology education at UCLA Medical School. He writes the Jewish Diseases blog at Fake medicine Read More »
Letters to the Editor: Monty Hall, Anne Frank, Boston Hero, Syria
L.A.’s Jewish Presence
Great cover story (“How the Jews Changed L.A.,” May 3). If it were not for the innovative ways of the Jewish people, Los Angeles would not be the entertainment empire it is today. In fact, it would be decades behind where it is and Sid Grauman might be famous for a gas station. Equality would still be a dream, and Barbie would not be a part of the American fabric. I don’t know where we would be in history or in the future. Thank God the Jews came here.
George Vreeland Hill
Beverly Hills
Monty the Mensch
A mutual friend introduced me to Monty Hall in the late ’80s (“Monty Hall’s Best Deal,” May 3). Monty was told that I was the executive director of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, and after a few minutes I asked him if he would emcee an upcoming dinner. He laughed and said yes, and that was the beginning of my asking Monty for that favor many times. Each time I would call, he would say “nuch a mul,” Yiddish for again, and I would say nuch a mul. He never said no. I doubt that he ever said no to anyone, unless it would have been impossible for him to do it. When Monty was born, the Almighty looked down and said, “Here, world, is a mensch.” Thank you, Monty, for everything you have done and for everything you continue to do. May you live past 120.
Shelly Levy
via e-mail
Holocaust Education at Santa Monica High School
I was dismayed by your article about an alleged incident at Santa Monica High School, which ignores the history of the pioneering work in Holocaust education at Santa Monica High School over the past 10 years (“Nazi Role-playing at High School Causes Stir,” April 26). We’ve partnered with Facing History and Ourselves, participated in Chapman University’s annual Holocaust art and writing contest, and been honored by the 1939 Club. During the fall quarter, all freshmen learn about the Holocaust, and students analyze the actions of perpetrators, bystanders and, most importantly, upstanders. As a result, we have seen an increase in students becoming upstanders — whether it be intervening to stop a fight on campus or joining an international organization’s actions to aid refugees. Students also recognize, and disrupt, anti-Semitism. For example, a few years ago, students noticed someone had marked a swastika on some lockers and they began a campaign to clean up the graffiti and to educate their fellow students about why that symbol is intolerable. It saddens me that the Jewish Journal did not investigate, nor report on, these important achievements.
Meredith Louria
Teacher-Leader, Santa Monica High School
Netherlands Anti-Semitism
There was always anti-Semitism in the Netherlands (“Anne Frank, Mehmet Sahin and the Netherlands,” May 3). I came in contact with it in 1935-36.
Even in 1946, anti-Semitism was not an exception. Vuile jood (dirty Jew) and worse words were heard almost every day. Not everybody in the Netherlands is a closet anti-Semite, but there always were a lot of people in Holland who did not like Jews. Their favorite saying was: Go back to Palestine.
Jerry Gerrit Meents
Ogden, Utah
via jewishjournal.com
Principles of Judaism in Action
I was particularly struck by Bruce Mendelsohn’s remarks concerning pikuach nefesh, wherein he said, “I think there’s a difference between Judaism in theory and Judaism in action” (“My Cousin: A Boston Hero,” May 3).
I am reminded of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was criticized by many in the Jewish scholarly community for stepping outside of the cloistered world of study to march with Dr. Martin Luther King from Selma to Montgomery. Heschel responded, “My feet were doing the praying.”
Arlene Ford
Culver City
A Community’s Challenge
Just what the Jewish community needs — another shandah (“More Ponzi in Iranian-Jewish Community,” May 3).
Suzy Lenkowsky Krikorian
Los Angeles
via jewishjournal.com
The Future of Radical Islam
The secular governments President Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain are helping to destroy will be replaced with more radical Islam governments that will come up against Israel and force Islam on the world (“Syria, Red Lines and Chemical Weapons,” May 3). Jimmy Carter helped destroy the secular government in Iran, and now Iran is a threat to Israel and the world. How many more Irans will Obama and John McCain help create?
Howard Grant
via jewishjournal.com
Correction
In “What Israel Means to Me” (April 19), the photographs of Joshua Holo, Sarah Sax and Shulamit Nazarian were not taken by Andy Romanoff. They were taken by Joel Lipton.
Letters to the Editor: Monty Hall, Anne Frank, Boston Hero, Syria Read More »
DSM vs. Soul
By Inga Roizman
The manual in which to diagnose mental illness is the DSM. If you don’t know, DSM stands for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. New “illnesses” are added every 10ish years as the culture’s atmosphere fluctuates. While many of the diagnoses found in the text can be valid, the new DSM V is doing more harm than good. This book does it’s best to dissect the human condition and reduce personality traits and moods to numerical codes which are used to bill insurance.
One of the newest “illnesses” that doctors can now prescribe treatment for is grieving. That’s right grieving is now considered a clinical disorder. What? Are they really trying to diagnose the human condition?
Now, I realize I sound a little chippy. And I am. And I just made up the word chippy, but it seems to describe how I’m feeling about the new DSM V.
Yes, grieving is painful, isn’t that what makes us human? Imagine you lost someone you love. Maybe your child suffered from an incurable disease. Grieving over that loved one is part of the process that the living must go through. Will medicating your feelings away bring back that person from death? No, yet here we are.
Recently, the Director of the National Institute of Mental Health published a blog outlining what research the U.S. government would fund. The NIMH has decided to no longer rely on the DSM, a text that has long been seen as a holy document in the realm of psychology…this is a huge deal.
Now let me introduce the RDoC, NIMH’s Research Domain Criteria. It’s another book. It’s the one the drug companies will have to use to get funding for research in bipolar, schizophrenia, autism. These guys want to look for biological causes. I’m not against that.
I am against attaching a label, a code number that insurance companies can know them by when the human condition is ever changing, full of movement and growth and comes with many parts.
G-d knows I’m not against drugs, but the soul of the human being is so often forgotten.
This hoopla is what has drawn me into the Positive Psychology movement, a model in which depression is treated with happiness. Where optimism is cultivated and hope is instilled through gratitude.
The soul must find nourishment or it turns on itself. I believe it’s the job of anyone in the psychology field to help people find purpose and connection. That’s the ideal we should all strive toward.