September 11, 2013

The psychology of repentance

Leave a Comment / Holidays, Judaism / Jared Sichel

In addition to his vast experience as a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst treating survivors of childhood and adult trauma, Dr. Stephen Marmer is known by many of his patients as someone who has a positive view of the role religion can play in one’s psyche and happiness.

Marmer serves on the faculty of UCLA’s medical school and has a private practice in Brentwood, and his patients have come from almost every large faith tradition, including Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism and Shinto. Speaking both as a professional and as a self-described “serious-minded” Jew, Marmer recently talked with the Journal about the intersection of the psyche and religion with regard to some of Yom Kippur’s main themes — forgiveness, repentance and God. The following is an edited version of that discussion.

Jewish Journal: From a psychoanalytic perspective, what does Yom Kippur mean?

Stephen Marmer: It’s an opportunity to take a compassionate but searching inventory of who you are and how you’ve acted, and to know that if you make a sincere effort to improve you will be written in the Book of Life.

JJ: What does that mean — to be written into the Book of Life?

SM: Not necessarily for more years, but for more richness in your life. It’s an opportunity, through honest reflection, to reduce shame and guilt and to add to growth.

JJ: How can examining your past actions lead to growth?

SM: You see your strengths, you see your weaknesses, you see the people whom you care about and whether you’ve lived up to your ideals in the way you treat them. It’s also a reminder that we don’t have forever to improve. Hillel’s third saying, “If not now, when?” really makes sense on Yom Kippur.

JJ: Where in the Torah does the theme of forgiveness appear?

SM: The most dramatic moment of forgiveness in the Torah comes after the sin of the golden calf, when God says to Moses that He’s so angry that He wants to destroy the entire people. Moses uses every wording that he can to persuade God not to do that and to forgive the people.

JJ: Can you talk about the themes of repentance and forgiveness that run through Yom Kippur?

SM: Forgiveness and repentance are two sides of the same coin. If you repent, you will earn forgiveness. If you forgive, you will reinforce others’ repentance. It’s obligatory to forgive those who make true repentance — it frees you of corrosive grudges. If you repent, it frees you from destructive shame and guilt.

JJ: Are there different levels of forgiveness?

SM: Yes. The first and most complete type of forgiveness is exoneration, in which you completely wipe the slate clean and restore a person to a full standard of trust.

In the second kind of forgiveness, which I call forbearance, you know that you can’t wipe the slate clean because the other individual hasn’t fully repented. But the relationship is still important, and you don’t want it to be destroyed by grudges. So you exercise forbearance to maintain the relationship while still keeping a watchful eye. This is very close to the concept of “forgive but don’t forget” or “trust but verify.”

The third level of forgiveness applies when the other individual is either no longer alive or has no intention of making any kind of reparation. But the preoccupation with what they’ve done to you is eating away at you, and for that you need to release. You don’t have to exonerate, and you don’t have to have forbearance. But, for your own sake, you have to let it go.

JJ: Which level of forgiveness did God exercise at Sinai?

SM: I think He exercised forbearance. I think He knew that we were very flawed, but He loved us and it was still important to Him to maintain that relationship.

JJ: Is there a proper way to apologize to someone whom you’ve hurt?

SM: You take responsibility and you don’t push it off on the other person. You have to try to give them reason to believe that you sincerely will put forth the effort to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

JJ: Is an apology that is mixed with an excuse truly an apology?

SM: Try not to blend your apology with accusations. You make your apology based on your actions. It’s OK to give context if you are asking for forgiveness. It’s OK to try to explain what was going on that prompted you to do these missteps. But try not to do it in a way that puts blame on the other person for provoking you.

JJ: But what if the other person really did do something that, in a way, provoked your hurtful action?

SM: If there’s another issue about how they provoked you, then that’s an additional conversation for which they may want to ask for your forgiveness. If that’s a matter of concern, you need to make that a separate type of interaction.

JJ: Should someone hurt by a loved one give the person who hurt him or her opportunities to forgive?

SM: I like to say that it takes a little while for ink to dry. Before it completely dries, you can wipe the slate clean. What I mean is that if I say something, and I observe that it’s hurtful to the person whom I said it to, I want them to give me a minute or two in which I can recognize what I said, come to my senses and then retract what I said.

And I would like to grant that same privilege to anyone who hurts my feelings. If you leave a little bit of space to allow a person to retract a misstep, you are going to have fewer hurt feelings. It’s much harder to reverse something once the ink has dried.

JJ: What impact does holding a grudge have on someone?

SM: First, it diverts a lot of energy from living your life. Second, it’s a constant preoccupation — you are letting the other person and the way they hurt you live rent free in your mind. And third, whenever you think about it, you go back and relive the hurt. All three of those things take away from productivity and happiness.

JJ: What does a refusal to apologize suggest about someone?

SM: It risks losing the relationship. It keeps you in a state of uncertainty and guilt and shame. It deprives you of the joy of healing. Some people think that an apology or repentance or reparation is too humiliating. But usually we have the choice of “being right” or “being friends.” In almost every case, it’s more important to choose being friends.

JJ: Is it ever appropriate for a third party to offer forgiveness on a victim’s behalf?

SM: For really serious matters, only the person who is hurt can offer forgiveness. I can’t forgive you for something you did to somebody else. I can only forgive you for what you did to me. When the pastor in Columbine said that he forgave the shooters for the murders of those kids, I thought, “You don’t have a right to forgive the murderers for the murders of those kids. Only the kids who were murdered have a right to forgive.” Only the victim can forgive for what was done to them.

JJ: In the Hebrew month of Elul and in the days around the High Holy Days, do you do anything personally in terms of seeking forgiveness?

SM: I have a personal tradition with my two daughters (ages 28 and 31). We use the week between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to sit down, one on one, and I start by telling them all of the things that I regretted that I had done to them in the preceding year. Then I ask them if there was anything that upset them that I left out. I ask them for forgiveness and understanding.

JJ: And do they ask for your forgiveness?

SM: I say, “Is there anything that you want to say to me?” referring to things they may have done that hurt me.

JJ: For how long has your family had this tradition?

SM: We’ve been doing this for over 25 years.

JJ: Have Jewish teachings or wisdom helped you in your career in terms of how you counsel people?

SM: Yes. The whole general outlook of Judaism is very much like my psychiatric perspective. We have a yetzer hatov (good inclination) and a yetzer hara (evil inclination), which is very consistent with my view of human nature from a psychiatric perspective.

JJ: From a psychological perspective, which Torah characters stand out to you as particularly interesting?

SM: For a long time I’ve wanted to write about how people changed in the Torah. And the character who changes the most is Joseph. I want to write about what religious and psychological forces helped turn Joseph from a bratty, spoiled, over-indulged, entitled teenager to a noble, wise, loving and generous brother and leader.

JJ: What transformed him?

SM: He acquired humility in jail. He was a big shot in his family, since he was Jacob’s main connection to Rachel. And he lorded over his brothers. Even when he went to Egypt he was a big shot in the Potiphar household.

JJ: And what happened to him in jail?

SM: He was not bitter, he was not resentful, and he rose to the occasion. He behaved in such an exemplary way that the head jailer gave him additional responsibilities. A few years later, Joseph is summoned to Pharaoh, and instead of being angry at the wine steward for letting him languish in jail, he shows no grudge. His bad experiences cured his entitlement and his arrogance, and they made him gracious and humble.

JJ: And when does he show humility?

SM: When Pharaoh praises him for all kinds of wisdom, Joseph says humbly, “It’s not me, it’s God.”

JJ: Tell me about your relationship with Judaism.

SM: I am the gabbai of our Shabbat morning minyan at Stephen S. Wise Temple. I blow the shofar at the main sanctuary services on Rosh Hashanah. I have the great honor and responsibility of sometimes singing the afternoon service on Yom Kippur to give the cantor a rest.

JJ: Do you study Jewish texts?

SM: I am always studying. I’ve written an 180,000-word Torah commentary that I’m in the middle of revising now.

JJ: Do you identify with any denomination?

SM: I consider myself a post-denominational, serious-minded Jew. I don’t find that any of the denominations quite fit my ideas or my level of practice.

JJ: Have you counseled victims of immense cruelty whose relationships with God have been damaged or severed due to what they experienced?

SM: Yes.

JJ: Can you tell me about any of those instances?

SM: Holocaust survivors are the most dramatic example, although I’ve had a number of patients who were severely abused or tortured as children. They just cannot accept that God would permit a world in which cruelty of that magnitude would be possible.

JJ: And how does that manifest itself in terms of their belief in God?

SM: Some of them hold a grudge against God, and some of them reject God. I don’t even try to challenge them on that. I don’t challenge them on theological grounds. I just try to help them live as good a life as they can live. The only thing that I would try to help move them toward is release. What happened to them should not be something that they think about every minute.

JJ: Do you discuss forgiveness toward God with them?

SM: It’s not anywhere near the top of my agenda. If it comes up in context I will, but it’s not something that I push.

JJ: Why not?

SM: Because I can’t speak for God. I can’t blame them for their anger and disappointment. I am not a direct party to their relationship with God. It’s an issue between them and God. I’m a psychiatrist, not a rabbi.

JJ: Is there anything you’d like to add?

SM: No, I think we’ve covered enough for a New Yorker profile. Thank you and have a meaningful and easy fast.

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Muslims, stop blaming Israel

Leave a Comment / Opinion / Jewish Journal

Whenever calamities befall Muslim-majority nations, there is always a country to blame: Israel. Is there a revolution against a tyrant? Zionists are responsible. Who else could be at fault if there is a clash between Sunni and Shia groups? The Jews. Did a bomb explode on the other side of the world, or is there a problem with the economy? No need look any further than Israel. And where else would the control center for destabilizing the Arab world be? In Tel Aviv, of course!

The late Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi blamed Israel for the violence and unrest in Africa. Former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh said that the turmoil in the Arab world is a pro-Zionist conspiracy. Saudi cleric Sheikh Ismae’il al-Hafoufi blamed Israel for the desecration of Islamic holy sites in Syria. Sheik Abd al-Jalil al-Karouri, a Sudanese cleric, pointed to Israel for the Boston and Texas bombings. And then there’s the belief that Zionists planned the tragic events of Sept. 11, 2001, to demonize Arabs and Muslims in the eyes of the world.

This madness of putting the blame on Zionists — and Israel in general — is a knee-jerk reaction with no basis in logic. The most surprising part is that so many people believe this without question and continue to disseminate such rumors far and wide.

Syria, Egypt, Iran and Lebanon all aggressively hold the “Zionist regime” responsible for their woes. While Bashar Assad accuses Israel of trying to destabilize Syria, the Syrian opposition blames Israel for assisting the Assad regime by giving them diplomatic cover. Both sides see Israel as responsible for all the bloodshed and unrest going on in Syria. Now with the possibility of an international intervention in Syria, Iranian legislators and commanders are issuing blunt warnings, saying any military strike from the United States on Syria would lead to a retaliatory attack on Israel. Israel’s staying out of the equation, it seems, is simply not possible. Even though Israeli politicians refrain from taking sides in the regional conflicts, all sides point toward Israel anyhow.

On the other hand, we have the Egyptian coup d’état, where we see both sides ascribe blame to Israel. Interestingly, the Egyptian grass-roots protest movement Tamarod blames Israel but urges the Egyptian government not to renege on the Camp David accords. If Israel condemns the violence committed against the anti-coup alliance, she is labeled as an enemy of Egypt and accused of collaborating to destroy the Egyptian army. Even the state-allied newspaper al-Ahram claimed that Israel is in an alliance to demolish the Egyptian army and to balkanize the country. Furthermore, in 2010, an Egyptian government official blamed Israel intelligence for a fatal shark attack off Egypt’s shores.

It must sound like a bizarre joke for some, but this tragicomic situation is quite serious for many in the Middle East. We are no longer surprised to hear Israel’s being the scapegoat for every single evil in the world, but Iran’s blaming the Zionist entity for the deadly earthquake in Iran was pushing the limits of credulity. This, despite the fact that Jews are a handful of people, a tiny population when compared to the overall population of the world.

Now let’s look at what is really going on in the Islamic-Arab world. There is a continuous and unending stream of hate — hate of the Shia, hate of the Wahabbi, hate of the Sunni, hate of the Alawi, hate of the Christians, hate of the Jews and so on. We also see slogans such as: “May God Destroy Israel,” “Down With the United States,” “Damn the West.” Hatred is deeply ingrained in their tradition, in their culture and in their own education. This fierce, venomous style is what is tearing the Islamic world apart; this is exactly what is happening in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan and others — Muslims killing Muslims.

This outcome is the result of intense efforts by some Muslim clerics who encourage hatred of the “other.” Muslims kill each other and then both sides blame the Jews. Wahabbi scholars say that all Sunnis are unbelievers and should be destroyed. Sunni scholars say Shias are unbelievers and their death is obligatory. Shias say that it is obligatory to kill Sunnis, as they are enemies. These are Muslim clerics who are promoting the most violent brand of sectarianism, preaching hatred and calling upon their followers to commit massacres. How do Jews make Muslims kill other Muslims?

When Muslim followers heed these clerical calls for violence, these same clerics turn around and promptly blame the Jews. What about calls for Muslims to not kill each other? What about Muslims unifying to solve their own problems without resorting to violence? What about the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, with its 57 member states, or the League of Arab States, with its 22 states, both which seem utterly helpless to bring about any solutions?

Some religious scholars have led many ignorant people astray with their false teachings, which plant seeds of hate. They implement a faith they have largely invented under the name of Islam — a faith that includes hatred, violence, darkness, which attaches no value to human life. They espouse bloodshed in the name of Islam, spreading hatred toward Christians, Jews and even other Muslims. These loveless, misguided people are most definitely not Muslims, but bigots and radicals.

As Muslims, let’s stop pointing the finger at others for our problems. It is time for the Muslim world to take responsibility and to ponder what has gone so horribly wrong with the Muslim world. Why is there so much bloodshed? Superstitions, innovations, localized traditions and bigotry have replaced the Quran in some Islamic countries, and their religiosity is a deeply artificial one. This hatred has to stop and Muslims must embrace the true spirit of the Quran, which is love, compassion and brotherhood for all.

Sinem Tezyapar is a political and religious commentator from Turkey, and an executive producer at a Turkish TV network.

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Coming of age in midlife

Leave a Comment / Entertainment / Jewish Journal

The main character in the play “The Bells of West 87th” undergoes what could be considered a coming-of-age crisis, albeit much later in life than is usual. Mollie Fein (Cameron Meyer) is awkward, unmarried, unfashionable, approaching 40 and trapped in the midst of her hilariously dysfunctional Jewish family. She has taken over from her parents, who separated four-and-a-half years ago, as the manager of an apartment building on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Mollie’s father, Eli (Robert Towers), remained in Apt. 3E, while his wife, Ida (Carol Locatell), moved into Mollie’s apartment, 3D, right next door. Eli thinks Ida is living on Staten Island with their other daughter, the pretty, happily married Maxine (Dagney Kerr), Mollie’s sibling rival. To maintain this subterfuge and to keep track of her husband, Ida had Mollie install bells with different ring tones on every door and window of Eli’s apartment — hence the play’s title — so that she would always know what he was doing and could avoid running into him in the hallway.

“Believe it or not, a friend’s family sparked the story,” playwright Elin Hampton explained. “I have a friend in New York, and she had told me this story about her parents, and about the way her mother was keeping track of her father with bells, and I thought it was hilarious. And I said, ‘Can I use that?’ She said, ‘Yep, all yours. So, go for it.’ ”

The action gets into gear when Mollie reveals that she has been taking a poetry class, where she met Chris (James Marsters), a man with whom she plans a romantic future. She has invited him to dinner and is slowly letting her parents know that she doesn’t want to continue being an apartment manager, that she wants more out of life, that she’s fallen in love with someone who loves her, and that she might be moving in with him.

“So, when the play starts, and she lets all that be known,” Hampton said, “there’s a tug of war, and her passive-aggressive parents don’t want her to leave. They love her; they hate her; they don’t think much of her; but they’re dependent upon her.”

She, in turn, needs their love and approval, Meyer observed, adding, “She’s a very morally upright person and wanted to help with the family business and take care of them as they were aging, and, eventually, she figures out that she has to take care of herself, too, like we all do.”

Meyer, who stepped into the role at virtually the last minute when Juliet Landau had to leave the production, is not Jewish, but said she’s had a lot of exposure to Jewish life.

“My parents and I had a lot of close Jewish friends, and in college and since then I’ve had close Jewish friends. My husband’s family is Jewish.

“I’m just doing the best I can to understand where this character’s coming from and relate to her on a universal level,” she said.

Meyer also said that the role of Mollie, besides being a very funny part, has great rhythms and timing. She views the character as a strong person, even though other characters think she’s a loser.

“I don’t think she is,” Meyer said. “She spent a lot of years taking care of everyone else and never had that chance to take care of her own needs and her own desires, and everyone has to have that chance. Most people do that when they’re in their teens or 20s, and she has to finally do that.”

But she doesn’t do it with Chris, the man she envisioned as her knight in shining armor who would take her away from her crazy family. Chris actually fits in with her parents and is perfectly happy to encourage Ida’s burgeoning brooch-making business and Eli’s ambitions as a magician.

Marsters described Chris as a loving, pure, happy soul who turns out to be of very little use to Mollie. “Chris lost his parents when he was young. They were religious fundamentalists who got drowned while being baptized.

“To him, anyone with parents is lucky. It doesn’t matter how healthy or unhealthy they could be. Anyone with parents that are breathing is lucky.”

The actor said that, conversely, Mollie’s parents, especially her mother, need acute attention. “I think, for Chris, to be needed by a mother figure is filling a hole, and so he’s quite happy to step into the role that Mollie, ultimately, happily, escapes from.”

Marsters and playwright Hampton are both alumni of the TV series “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” Marsters said that he was drawn to Hampton’s current project largely because of his admiration for her, citing what he called her ability to combine humor with pathos.

Hampton, who was raised in Conservative Judaism and continues to be somewhat observant, thought her play would appeal primarily to Jewish audiences, until she held readings prior to this world premiere production.

“I had people in the audience who were African-American and Italian and Asian saying, ‘This is my family,’ which really surprised me. So I think there are other ethnic groups that have close-knit families, and I think it is relevant to all these families.

“I grew up with Neil Simon and Wendy Wasserstein, and they were my idols. They were the people that I think inspired me as a playwright, so, in my head, it was very much a Jewish-themed play, but, like I say, surprisingly, everybody seemed to find it relevant to their lives, no matter who they are.”

As Ida says in the play, “Normal is what people call families that aren’t theirs.”

“The Bells of West 87^th” Greenway Court Theatre, 544 N. Fairfax Ave., L.A. 90036. Sat., Sept. 7 – Sun., Oct. 13. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 6 p.m.

Tickets: (323) 655-7679, ext. 100 or boxoffice@greenwayarts.org

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Sneak Peak: The Mindy Project

Felder rocks Liszt, Lincoln

Leave a Comment / Culture, Entertainment, Is Featured?, Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News / Tom Tugend

Even for the energetic and versatile Hershey Felder — pianist, actor, playwright, composer and producer — the time warp of his next two world premieres may be considered a bit of a stretch.

Coming up first is “Rockstar,” opening this month at the Laguna Playhouse in Laguna Beach. Then, at the beginning of next year, Felder switches personas and countries in “Abe Lincoln’s Piano” at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood.

The title character of “Rockstar” is the 19th century Hungarian composer and piano virtuoso Franz Liszt. In his time, “He changed the way music is listened to, just as Elvis Presley did in his time,” Felder observed in an interview.

“Liszt turned the piano, then used only for accompaniment, into a solo instrument, becoming the greatest virtuoso of his era and perhaps of all time,” Felder noted. “In addition, he was a hot-looking guy.”

In 2011, on the 200th anniversary of Liszt’s birth, The New York Times ran an article under the headline, “Still Wondering if Liszt Was Any Good.”

Clutching the newspaper in “Rockstar,” Liszt’s ghost visits the room where he died in Bayreuth, now a German museum; he is still handsome, but showing the wear and tear of the past two centuries.

Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, married Richard Wagner, and the anti-Semitism of Hitler’s favorite composer is occasionally ascribed also to his father-in-law.

“The Nazis claimed Liszt as an ‘Aryan composer’ and used the finale of his ‘Les Preludes’ as the theme music for their weekly newsreels, but he was never an anti-Semite,” Felder said.

Indeed, one scene in “Rockstar” portrays Liszt’s ghost as devastated when he learns of the descent of German anti-Semitism into the mass extermination of Europe’s Jews.

Few modern artists have been more intensively involved in Jewish history and tradition than Felder. The son of a father who survived the Holocaust and settled in Canada, Hershey made his professional stage debut at 14 on the stage of the Yiddish Theatre in Montreal.

Even earlier, at 6, he entertained residents of the Jewish old age home by playing the piano, although to mixed reviews.

“One elderly lady came up to my parents afterward, telling them, ‘You either have to give the boy some piano lessons or kill him,’ ” Felder recounted.

Hershey survived and went on to graduate from the Hebrew Academy in Toronto, a city where his uncle, Rabbi Gedalia Felder, was a respected scholar and author.

Felder has drawn on his heritage directly in his compositions (“Aliyah Concerto on Israeli Themes”), recordings (“Love Songs of the Yiddish Theatre”), concert-plays (“George Gershwin Alone,” “Maestro: The Art of Leonard Bernstein”) and as director (“The Pianist of Willesden Lane”).

While Felder will age 200 years in “Rockstar,” in “Abe Lincoln’s Piano” his challenge will be to represent 20 different characters with hardly any costume changes.

The new production, following his earlier “Lincoln: An American Story,” continues Felder’s fascination with the life and death of the 16th president.

The idea for the upcoming show was triggered by Felder’s visit to the Chicago History Museum and to its attic, where the Lincoln family’s White House piano was stored.

Fascinated by the tales surrounding both the instrument and the events of the night Lincoln was assassinated, Felder interviewed the descendants of some of the people present at Ford’s Theatre on the fateful evening of April 14, 1865.

“I talked to the great-grandchildren and other relatives of the doctor who first treated the wounded Lincoln, of an actress who was on stage that evening, and of the woman who cradled the president’s bloody head, and so forth,” Felder said.

Most of the show’s musical numbers will be by Stephen Foster, from “My Old Kentucky Home” to “Oh! Susanna,” as well as other vaudeville and minstrel tunes of the era.

As the show progresses, Felder said, “I’ll play many roles, among them Mary Todd Lincoln, a young soldier, an actress and the first blackface minstrel, whose stage name, Jim Crow, became part of this country’s racial history.”

Trevor Hay, a longtime Felder collaborator, will direct both “Rockstar” and “Abe Lincoln’s Piano.”

“Rockstar” will be performed Sept. 17-29 at the Laguna Playhouse. “Abe Lincoln’s Piano” will be on stage at the Geffen Playhouse’s Gil Cates Theatre, Jan. 3-13, 2014.

For tickets or more information on either play, visit this story at jewishjournal.com.

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Yom Kippur in Afghanistan

Leave a Comment / Mobile, Mobile-Homepage, News, Worldwide / Jared Sichel

Every other morning, Army Capt. Nathan Brooks wakes up between 4 and 4:30 a.m. to go for a three-mile run before the intense heat of the Afghan desert sets in.

Following his daily exercise at Bagram Airfield, Brooks does two things that he said have most helped him feel connected to God since he deployed for Afghanistan in April — he wraps tefillin and davens Shacharit, the morning prayer service.

“That’s my thing that I hold onto,” said Brooks, a 33-year-old, single Orthodox Jew from Los Angeles.

Serving abroad, Brooks hasn’t been able to maintain the same level of religious observance that he did back home, where he regularly attended two Orthodox synagogues, B’nai David-Judea Congregation and Beth Jacob.

On Shabbat, because the military cannot take a day of rest in a war zone, Brooks still must complete his daily tasks for the Army. And for Yom Kippur this year, Brooks does not anticipate that he will be able to entirely fast.

“This is a war going on,” he said. “You do what you can.”

Sitting in his quarters in Afghanistan on a recent evening — morning in Los Angeles — Brooks spoke with the Journal via videoconference about his experience as an officer and an observant Jew serving the United States military for 16 years. (He joined when he was 17.)

In his role in charge of the 1106th Theater Aviation Sustainment Maintenance Group (TASMG) unit, Brooks has numerous responsibilities. He flies a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter during maintenance test flights and manages “depot level maintenance” activities, which refers to the issue and repair of Army cargo and helicopters.

In terms of fasting, Brooks said that although he would be unable to perform his duties if he did not eat or drink on fast days such as Yom Kippur or Tisha b’Av, he makes sure to restrict himself to water and bland foods.

“As a pilot, particularly in the heat of Kandahar [where he was previously stationed] for Tisha b’Av, it was maybe 114 degrees, and I still had to perform and function as a soldier,” he said. “When you are an officer in charge, sometimes the needs of your unit and your troops have to come before your own personal needs.”

Despite the impossibility of remaining strictly observant in Afghanistan, while Brooks was in Kandahar he and two other Orthodox Jews met regularly on Friday evenings without the benefit of a Jewish chaplain to pray, study Torah and make the best Shabbat dinner that kosher ready-to-eat meals (MREs) can provide.

MREs, even the kosher ones, are not exactly traditional Shabbat fare. The modest meals include dried cranberries, cereal, sunflower seeds and either a vegetarian dish, a beef stew or chicken with noodles. Not much variety — on Shabbat or any other day of the week.

“You eat those over and over again; it gets kind of old,” Brooks said.

Although the Army usually only provides Brooks and his fellow Jewish soldiers with matzah for religious meals, organizations like Project MOT often send challah in care packages for Jewish soldiers. In fact, sometimes there are so many packages from Jewish organizations — as many as five or six per week — that non-Jewish soldiers have asked incredulously if he knows the people sending him so many packages.

Since Brooks moved to Bagram Airfield a couple of weeks ago, he has spent Friday nights in the company of Rabbi David Goldstrom, an Orthodox chaplain who will be serving in Bagram for a few more weeks, returning to his hometown of Rochester, N.Y., shortly after the end of the High Holy Days.

A 47-year-old New Jersey native, Goldstrom leads Friday night services every week. He organized services for Rosh Hashanah, and will do the same on Yom Kippur, for which he hopes to have a minyan.

Goldstrom’s description of Shabbat and holidays at Bagram has little in common with how they are celebrated in America. For one, even though Goldstrom is able to observe Shabbat in Afghanistan, his attire remains a standard Army uniform. And attacks from the Taliban remain an almost daily disturbance.

“I may have to go to a bunker because of indirect fire, mortar attacks or rocket attacks,” Goldstrom said. “They do attack us almost daily.”

Goldstrom said that when an alarm on the base rings, he and other soldiers have to scramble quickly. It can happen during weekly drills, and it can happen during Shabbat services.

“An alarm goes off, and you hit the ground or head for a bunker as quickly as possible and wait for the all clear,” he said.

While serving as a chaplain in Afghanistan — away from his wife and two sons — is certainly a challenge, Goldstrom said that one of his favorite recurring moments is when he first meets a Jewish soldier.

“When they do see a Jewish chaplain, when they see the tablet and Star of David on my helmet, on my uniform, their faces light up.”

Come January, when Brooks likely will be back in Los Angeles, he plans to either continue flying Black Hawk helicopters as part of the California Army National Guard or return to school to further pursue a graduate degree in either geographic information science or in emergency planning.

Despite all the challenges involved with being an observant Jew in the military — especially when serving abroad — Brooks believes it’s all worth it.

“I think it’s really important that we have ourselves represented in the military,” he said. “As soldiers, we have a lot to give.”

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AIPAC makes push on Syria

Leave a Comment / United States / Jewish Journal

Pro-Israel officials rolled their eyes this week in response to the opposing spins about their support for President Barack Obama’s drive to punish Syrian President Bashar Assad for his purported use of chemical weapons against his own people.

Some suggested that once again, the tail was wagging the dog and Israel was leading the United States into another Middle East war. Others charged that the president’s arm-twisting was forcing the pro-Israel community to take sides in a congressional debate it would rather avoid.

Whatever the truth, Obama’s concerns about letting the alleged Aug. 21 chemical weapons attack go unpunished dovetailed with broader pro-Israel concerns about maintaining U.S. credibility in the region and the dangers of unconventional weapons.

“A lot of folks are watching, friends and foes,” said David Harris, executive director of the American Jewish Committee. “If we blink, if we flinch, foes will draw their own lessons and the world will become a more dangerous place.

“And friends are also watching, including friends in the Arab world, friends in Israel, elsewhere. They will draw their conclusions, fairly or unfairly, that they cannot necessarily rely on the United States.”

Jewish groups were hesitant initially to support Obama’s push to strike following an attack that is said to have killed more than 1,400 Syrian civilians, including several hundred children. But the reluctance all but evaporated after top Obama advisers outlined the administration’s proposed legislation in a conference call last week with Jewish leaders.

The next day, Sept. 3, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) mobilized its grassroots to call members of Congress. On Sept. 10, 250 of its top members held one-on-one meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill.

The lobby’s talking points, as outlined by an AIPAC official who spoke anonymously, are twofold.

“One, there is a very strong strategic case: If we are to deter Iran from obtaining an unconventional weapon, we must stop its proxy Syria from using them without consequence,” the official said.

“Then there is the moral case: Barbarism on a mass scale must not be given a free pass. We have sent the photos and videos of hundreds of children being stricken, and it is imperative America must act.”

Despite the forcefulness of AIPAC’s push and the lobby’s vaunted clout on Capitol Hill, Obama faces an uphill battle in gaining support from Congress for a strike. In the U.S. House of Representatives, sentiment leans against authorizing a strike. The Senate appears to be split evenly.

The nod from AIPAC and other pro-Israel groups could help shift the balance — in part because lawmakers tend to defer to groups considered expert on a given topic, but also because of the fundraising prowess associated with the pro-Israel community.

AIPAC’s support is joined by other leading American Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. Notably, both partisan Jewish organizations — the Republican Jewish Coalition and the National Jewish Democratic Council — are backing Obama.

Despite the community’s caution to have the president lead lest it be blamed for another Middle East war, commentators already are fingering Israel as the catalyst for American military action.

“AIPAC wants this war” was the headline over a string of posts by Andrew Sullivan on his influential Daily Dish blog over the weekend. And the conservative Jewish radio personality Michael Savage blamed Israel outright on his syndicated talk show.

“I’m sick of this slavish worship of Israel,” Savage said, according to the conservative website Newsmax. “No, it’s America first and Israel’s the tail, not the dog. We’re the dog, they’re the tail. And I’m sick and tired of America being yanked around like we’re the tail and they’re the dog.”

Until recently, Israel had maintained a careful distance from pronouncing on the Syrian civil war, except to note that it would respond to any attack on Israel — by the government or the rebels. But The New York Times reported Tuesday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reaching out personally to some congressional leaders at Obama’s urging.

Neither the Israeli embassy nor U.S. congressional leaders would confirm the Times report. But in the wake of the chemical attack, Israel has grown more vocal in supporting a response that would degrade Assad’s unconventional weapons capability.

“Israel agrees with President Obama that the use of chemical weapons is a ‘heinous act’ for which the Assad regime must be held accountable and for which there must be ‘international consequences,’ ” Israel’s ambassador in Washington, Michael Oren, wrote last week on a Facebook message. “Israel further agrees with the president that the use of chemical weapons promotes the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and encourages ‘governments who would choose to build nuclear arms.’ ”

Oren’s former deputy Dan Arbell said any Israeli pronouncement on a matter of intense public debate would have to be made with considered delicacy.

“It’s always a fine line to walk,” said Arbell, a lecturer on the Israeli-Arab conflict at American University. “You don’t want to insert yourself into the middle of a debate.”

Harris said the narrative of Jewish eagerness for war — peddled heavily during and after the Iraq War — was to be expected. But he added that this should not inhibit Jewish groups from exercising their right to make their views known.

“We’re proud Americans who have every reason and right to engage in the debate as other Americans,” Harris said. “We care deeply about American influence and American national security.”

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Yom Kippur War: Against the odds

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Of the all surprises on Yom Kippur 40 years ago, the most difficult for Israel to come to grips with was the least tangible.

The simultaneous attacks by Egypt and Syria were the basic surprise, catching Israel with the bulk of its army not yet mobilized. Egyptian troops unveiled new infantry tactics and a new Soviet anti-tank missile that, in the first 12 hours of fighting, knocked out 180 tanks, the bulk of Israel’s only armored division in Sinai. Israeli leaders were astonished at the audacity of the Arabs in going to war only six years after the Six-Day War seemed to have ushered in Israeli military domination in the Middle East for the foreseeable future.

What jarred the Israel army beyond issues of strategy and tactics — matters that could be attributed in part to Soviet advisers and technology — was the fact that Egyptian infantrymen were holding their ground in the face of repeated charges by Israeli tanks and fighting well.

An iconic photo from the Six-Day War was of boots left behind in the sands of the Sinai by fleeing Egyptian soldiers. This came to symbolize a societal divide between a powerful modern nation and a backward Third World nation that would not be bridgeable for generations to come.

“The Arab soldier lacks the characteristics necessary for modern war,” declared Gen. Haim Bar-Lev, the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) chief of staff at the time. These characteristics, he said, included rapid reaction, technical competence, a high level of intelligence, adaptability, “and, above all, the ability to see events realistically and speak truth, even when it is difficult and bitter.”

Disdain for the Egyptian soldier was shared even by their military mentor, the Soviet Union. Marshal Andrei Grechko, the Soviet defense minister, told Egyptian President Anwar Sadat that there were three prerequisites if Egypt intended to go to war: arms, training and the will to fight. “The first two you have,” Grechko said.

Defeat, however, can be a great motivator. The Egyptian army had been upgraded by Anwar Sadat after he became president in 1970. He purged the general staff of political appointees and chose a charismatic paratroop general — Saad el-Shazly — over 30 more senior generals as chief of staff. Illiterates were removed from tank crews and the army as a whole subjected to intense retraining in the desert. The Soviet Union supplied weapons and thousands of military advisers.

Soberly analyzing Israel’s advantages, the Egyptian command and the advisers developed ways to counter them. Soviet anti-aircraft missiles, which had been introduced a few years before in small numbers, were now woven into a virtually impenetrable network of batteries protecting the front line along the Suez Canal and over the Syrian lines opposite the Golan Heights.

To deal with Israel’s tanks until Egypt could bring its own tanks across the canal on pontoon bridges, Shazly sent over masses of infantrymen in rubber boats armed with RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades) and the deadly new Sagger missile. Each of the five Egyptian divisions that crossed the canal threw up a shield of 800 anti-tank weapons, perhaps the densest such array ever seen.

Israel had not rested on its laurels after the Six-Day War. It doubled its warplanes and tanks by 1973, but victory had made it careless. “We’re fighting Arabs, not Germans,” as one general said when asked about Israel’s war plans. The bunkers of the so-called Bar-Lev Line along the Suez Canal had originally been intended only to provide shelter from artillery fire during the War of Attrition. However, it evolved into a defense line even though it was too thin and ill-suited to serve as one. Ariel Sharon was among the generals who warned that it would prove a death trap for its garrison and for any units that tried to reach it if the Egyptian army staged a major crossing before Israel had mobilized its reserves. The huge number of Israeli tanks knocked out on Yom Kippur were indeed lost trying to relieve the garrison.

Israel’s air force had warned that it would need two or three days at the start of war to attack anti-aircraft batteries. During this period they would be unable to provide ground support for the army. The small standing army along the borders could not hope to block an all-out Arab offensive without air assistance or unless the reserves — two-thirds of Israel’s army — were mobilized first. Mobilization depended on a warning from military intelligence. This failed to come. Thus it was that the Arab onslaught on Yom Kippur was met by 19- and 20-year-old conscript soldiers and their officers facing odds of 8:1 or higher.

On the Golan Heights, the Syrians broke through the first night and at some points reached the edge of the plateau overlooking the Galilee. In Sinai, the Bar-Lev Line fell. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Israel’s military icon, warned colleagues of Israel’s possible destruction. So shocking was the surprise attack and the efficiency shown by the Arabs that senior commanders could not think clearly.

“You break into a cold sweat and your mind freezes up,” a deputy division commander — a veteran warhorse — would recall. “You have difficulty getting into gear, and you react by executing the plans you’ve already prepared.” These plans proved disastrous in the new circumstances.

Within days the shock passed and the battered Israeli forces found their feet. The recovery of the Israeli army in the Yom Kippur War deserves a place in military annals as an achievement far greater than the glittering victory of the Six-Day War. It is a story of raw courage, professionalism and improvisation.

The war ended with the IDF on the roads to Cairo and Damascus. Only the intervention of two Iraqi armored divisions prevented the depleted Israeli forces on the Golan from reaching the Syrian capital. Cease-fire talks on the Egyptian front, for which U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger opened the way, would lead six years later to the first peace treaty between Israel and an Arab country. Egypt had recovered its pride in the first half of the war. Israel had recovered its deterrence in the second half.

The price for Israel in 19 days of fighting was 2,600 fatalities — three times as many men per capita as the losses suffered by the United States in a decade of fighting in Vietnam.

Abraham Rabinovich is the author of “The Yom Kippur War: The Epic Encounter That Transformed the Middle East” (Schocken, 2005).

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