Op-Ed – Page 32

Staying calm amid bad news

Worn out by recent events? Me, too. For most of my work, I write things in advance to meet a deadline, but I can’t predict the future. Like Jewish balabustas (Yiddish for a woman who manages her household) throughout time, one way I cope is through working harder – by multitasking and planning ahead. I bake challah and meals in batches and freeze the extra. Why? So I can also work, take kids to medical appointments or even stop everything so I can sit down to help with math homework in those crucial moments before dinner.

Yet, we have a hard time calmly planning ahead when things feel out of control. Rising antisemitism, murders and crimes in the world affect us, as do natural disasters both locally and farther afield. These experiences can cause us to feel a sense of “trauma fatigue.” This can also be called “compassion fatigue,” and some say it particularly affects those in helping professions, like first responders, mental health and medical professionals, and social workers. However, it’s not limited to those people. Even bystanders to an event, who perhaps see footage on social media, on TV or in the newspaper, can be affected. Kids can be affected, too. We’re not immune to what this experience does.

Many react with a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. There may be an increased sense of panic or “fight or flight” feelings of adrenalin. Some people cannot sleep, or sleep too much. They have flashbacks to bad incidents that occurred, as well as physical symptoms. They may feel disassociated from themselves or others, and may feel less compassion for others in general. There are lots of symptoms associated with this. I’m not an expert.

However, I realized one morning as I walked my dogs that I felt weary and emotionally drained. It’s awful to hear about shootings of people at prayer, hate crimes and massive natural disasters like flooding. There are only so many times you can feel heartsick about these types of events before it takes a toll.

A recent New York Times editorial was an apology for an antisemitic cartoon that they printed. The editors acknowledged the creep of numbness and a lack of judgment when it printed this cartoon and when it came to recent anti-Jewish incidents. This numbness mirrored the New York Times’ and other newspapers’ historic failure to address the widespread rise in antisemitism in the 1930s and 1940s. The current editors pointed out the danger in this, apologized for one editor’s poor choices and the paper’s lack of oversight.

We’re all coping with a sort of numbness when it comes to the news cycles and increasingly frequent events. It’s hard to respond with equal amounts of compassion after every shooting or traumatic world disaster. What can we do to relieve this?

The following list is partial and includes both Jewish and general responses to stress.

Shut off social media. Whether you’re Sabbath observant or not, find ways to silence your phone, newsfeed or other notifications for a few hours or days. Shut off the noise on occasion and step away from the news and alerts. It will calm your fight or flight instinct.
Get outside. Take the ear buds out. Take a walk or run. Bring the dog, family, a friend or just your thoughts. Listen to the birds, squirrels, wind or the traffic. Give yourself a chance to exercise, be out in nature and smile at neighbours. See the world at a slower pace.
Read a book. Escape fiction is not just for the beach. Find something engrossing to read and lose yourself in it for awhile. If fiction isn’t your thing, learn something new with non-fiction. Study Jewish texts, geography, geology or whatever interests you. Give yourself time for your mind to do something other than freak out.
Practise deeds of loving kindness. Try every day to do something for others. It can be a thank you note, helping a friend or holding a door open for a stranger. Donate money or food to the food bank, volunteer or simply help clean up at home, work or synagogue. This is a Jewish way of keeping the world afloat.
Prayer and meditation can help us remain calm and boost our health. Everyone differs on this topic. Some religious people feel prayer “protects” the faithful. Others are skeptical but hedge their bets. Even atheists can be aided with repetitive words or activities that help tune into this part of the brain. However you see this, it’s hard to refute the scientific evidence that being part of a religious community or meditating on your own can make a substantial difference to our health and well-being.
Speak out. We can’t control much – not natural disasters or the actions of others. We can, however, work for what’s right. Judaism has a long history of social activism. While we may disagree in our opinions, we can still choose to advocate for what we believe. We feel less helpless when we talk with others who share our views and try to make positive change.
Seek out support. It’s natural to feel anxious. This is a good time to seek out others at your congregation, community centre, workplace or school and talk about how you’ve been feeling. Talk to a therapist or a rabbi. Find time for friends, family and community members who care about you.

These are only some things that might help. It’s just a start, but, as the rabbis say, “The world stands on three things: Torah, prayer/service and deeds of loving kindness.” It’s true that life isn’t boring these days, but I’m wishing for a bit of boring. Here’s to enjoying some safe, quiet and calm, and peaceful, warm days ahead. Be well.

Joanne Seiff has written regularly for CBC Manitoba and various Jewish publications. She is the author of three books, including From the Outside In: Jewish Post Columns 2015-2016, a collection of essays available for digital download or as a paperback from Amazon. See more about her at joanneseiff.blogspot.com.

Goats out in the wilderness

Let’s talk about goats. When I was doing research for my book Fiber Gathering, about U.S. fibre festivals, which attract thousands of people, I learned lots about goats. But what do goats, which produce milk, fibre and meat, have to do with Judaism?

In Leviticus, we read precise descriptions of the high priests’ clothing. One may scoff about the details, but I bet you’re wearing clothes. In many Torah portions, Jews think a lot about textiles. (If you don’t, you should! You’d be cold without clothes.)

We read rigid rules for sacrifice, how we should eat and how we should behave in terms of intimacy towards our partners and family. This is also the text that includes the most discriminatory and misunderstood interpretations of homosexuality.

Like any good Jewish parent, the Almighty offers us strict guidelines in Leviticus. There are things we should and shouldn’t do. However, there’s also an acknowledgement of our humanity. We make mistakes. There are times when we won’t understand how to behave, so here, too, is a Temple sacrifice procedure. This forgiveness process turns into part of our modern Yom Kippur service. We learn how Aaron makes a sacrifice to atone for the “strange fire” that his sons, Nadav and Abihu, brought to G-d and how they were killed for it. Part of Aaron’s prescribed ritual includes sending a goat named Azazel out into the wilderness. The goat carries away the people’s sins, and it lives.

My husband, a biologist, struggled a bit with this but felt comforted that, of all the domesticated animals to be cast out, goats could survive in the wilderness. I remembered the goat cheese we ate at the Taos Fibre Festival in New Mexico. We met the farmer who raised the goats and made cheese. He told us how he lived off the grid. He had to drive hours on a dirt road just to get to his mailbox, and several hours farther to get to town.

Every day, his goats are sent out into the desert to forage along with their guard dogs. Some shepherds keep dogs, others use donkeys or llamas to protect their flocks. This man described how his goats were free range and how they returned each night. He milked these goats and his cheese varied according to where they had grazed and the season. It was truly “wild” cheese – and most of his goats did fine, despite the desert predators.

While we try to follow rules, we are also aware that things change in our world. Like the goats, we are susceptible to danger. A recent JTA article (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) pointed out ways that congregations are preparing for “the next Pittsburgh” by changing the ways congregations protect themselves. The first 911 call in Pittsburgh came from the Sabbath-observant rabbi, who was persuaded the year before to carry a cellphone for emergency use. In the Poway shooting, Steve Vaus, Poway’s mayor, indicated that congregants acted quickly, using training they had received right after the murders in Pittsburgh.

A few years ago, I heard an upsetting story about our responses to potential danger. One day, a religious man was praying when the congregation’s alarm went off. He was concentrating. Although he knew how to shut off the alarm, he didn’t stop praying to silence it. A woman who worked at the shul lived nearby, heard the alarm and came running to help. Perhaps she wasn’t perfectly dressed (according to her community’s standard). She wasn’t calm – but she took her responsibilities seriously and rushed towards the emergency to help. Later, the praying man belittled the woman for being flustered and for not dressing properly. He didn’t acknowledge her speed and bravery. When she ran, she didn’t know it was a false alarm. She made herself vulnerable for the sake of her community.

I didn’t witness that “false” alarm, nor was I there when people acted bravely during the Pittsburgh or the Poway tragedies. However, we must read these situations critically, in the same way we read Leviticus. We continue to face conflicts and emergencies. Along with the rigid everyday humdrum, there’s a vulnerability that we face in the wilderness (the world).

Some feel Leviticus’s rigidity can make us wary of making mistakes or of finding solace in religion. Others suggest these rules create life’s order. We are all different. Yet, we must all cope with changes, surprises and danger. We might get cold in our environment and need to know what to wear. We might be surprised or do the wrong thing in the midst of prayer. We face danger. We are truly vulnerable out there in the world and before G-d, just like the goats.

Parents, like goatherds, have to trust that, after we offer our kids structure and skills, they will make it out there and come home again. We have to hope that our children and congregations will be sturdy and flexible enough when danger arises.

In Leviticus, the goat, Azazel, bore our sins and was alive and at risk. In a sense, we are those goats. We seek divine rules and structure, while at the same time coping with a world that requires us to think critically, adapt and be ready for whatever may happen next. It’s a wilderness out there. We must think on our feet.

I applaud those leaders who run towards the danger as Lori Gilbert Kaye, z’l, did, risking everything, and who follow the spirit rather than the letter of the law. Pittsburgh’s Rabbi Jeffrey Myers saved lives because he made an emergency cellphone call. Our religious traditions evolve. We no longer make sacrifices at the Temple. It’s important to reconsider our habits at many other occasions other than just Yom Kippur.

I’ve been belittled sometimes because I write about knitting. Yet, we wear clothes. According to Leviticus, that’s important. Also important? Being vulnerable to both the Divine, and to change. I keep that goat-in-the-wilderness image alive. We can meet these real-life challenges if we open up our minds to what’s really out there, bring a guard dog and avoid embracing rigid biases.

A miracle in Beit Shemesh?

(photo by Davidbena)

Beit Shemesh is centrally located, halfway between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Many Moroccan immigrants were settled here in tent camps in the 1950s, followed by many subsequent immigrants,

including from Ethiopia, the former Soviet Union, North America, South Africa and England. For the last decade, the city has been known as a hotbed of protests instigated by religious extremists – a symptom of an Israeli political culture moving toward greater religious segregation and intolerance.

Miraculously, though, the tides are turning, bringing with it hope and optimism. For the past decade, Moshe Abutbul, who is ultra-Orthodox, was the local mayor, and he marketed new homes to this community. Before the elections last November, popular opinion was that he would win again. His only challenger was Dr. Aliza Bloch. Though she was well-known and popular as an educator and community leader, Bloch is a woman and not ultra-Orthodox in a city that has been attracting more ultra-Orthodox residents while others have been slowly moving away.

But the miracle is that Beit Shemesh residents of all stripes and styles collectively understood that our beautiful city had deteriorated into one of the poorest in Israel. Everybody wants a nice, clean place to live and raise their families – whatever their religious observance. So, in what is probably a rare occurrence in the history of Israeli municipal politics, the residents of Beit Shemesh decided it was time for a change. They broke away from traditional voting patterns and voted for Bloch, who ran as an independent, under the banner of professionalism and transparency.

Bloch made no deals or promises as part of her campaign. She promised the people cleanliness, law and order, good education and the establishment of a youth department – 50% of the 122,000 residents are under the age of 18.

Bloch spent her first day in office getting to know every single employee on a personal basis. In her first month, she met weekly with the sanitation department, including personal tours of their routes to help improve morale and services to the entire city. She organized a municipal clean-up day for volunteers of all ages in every neighbourhood. She has already replaced many department heads, and the youth groups are finally getting facilities for their weekly meetings and programs, after 20 years of meeting outdoors on the streets, regardless of weather conditions.

Even more exciting are the “town hall” meetings with every neighbourhood that are open to the public, and her efforts to bring national ministers and other influencers to Beit Shemesh to help dig this fast-growing city out of its deficit and help it flourish.

The new administration works from early morning to late at night to improve the city services. But it’s the human factor that is most interesting. Bloch has a doctorate in education. She is literally educating an entire city to respect one another and cooperate for the greater good. And that is the true Israeli miracle of her first several months in office. A diverse and highly opinionated population is learning to live and work side-by-side with mutual respect and understanding. A city that was known for anger and intolerance is turning into a beacon of understanding and mutual respect.

Mimi Estrin Kamilar is a former Vancouverite who made aliyah and is a philanthropy consultant. She is a 25-year resident and community activist in Beit Shemesh. While she has known Dr. Aliza Bloch for a long time and became active in her campaign, she is not an employee of the mayor or the municipality.

Together on path to freedom

Passover is coming! As we prepare, we think of what it means to be enslaved and to be free. Some seders focus on human rights. Others read and discuss Jewish texts about how to understand the holiday. Every year, we re-examine not only how good the foods are, but the ideas around slavery and redemption.

At one of my first Jewish events in Winnipeg, 10 years ago, I heard racist comments about indigenous Canadians. I was really upset by the incident. I was so uncomfortable that I still remember the experience in detail, even though I’ve forgotten a lot of other things over time.

I recently attended some of the lectures in an extremely worthwhile series put on by Westworth United Church called Interfaith Dialogue on Truth and Reconciliation. Each year, in the springtime during Lent, this church offers some of the best adult education programming I’ve ever attended and they welcome the entire community. The topics are thoughtful but, even more important, participants come ready to wrestle with hard intellectual and emotional ideas. I was introduced to it because Dr. Ruth Ashrafi has been a speaker as part of this programming more than once, and I’m hooked.

This year, the series was held in four different locations throughout the community, including Congregation Etz Chayim, Westworth United Church, as well as at one of the mosques and at a Buddhist Temple. It was so well attended that it filled the pews – wherever it was held.

Each session, a religious leader spoke, but he or she spoke at the lectern of a different congregation. Dr. Shahina Siddiqui spoke at Etz Chayim. Ashrafi spoke at Westworth United. It was powerful to see people of different faiths take to different pulpits. These leaders spoke, in the context of their religious traditions, on their status as Canadians or newcomers to a place with a heavy past of racism toward and discrimination and neglect of its indigenous people.

The most shattering part of the series was to hear from indigenous elders. I only attended two of the events, and heard Theodore Fontaine and Chickadee Richard speak. I cried while I listened to them. Their powerful personal, political and religious stories shook me.

These were bright, strong leaders with absolutely valid points about how they and their communities have been affected and mistreated by Canadian law and society. Their beliefs and prayers – about caring for Mother Earth, about protecting water and guarding the lives of those they love – are no different than those of other religious traditions in Canada. Yet, there are still indigenous communities who are forced to live in terrible conditions, without access to clean water and without adequate education or health care. How can people of faith accept this dichotomy? How is it that the first people in Canada don’t have access to the basic human rights that most of the rest of us enjoy?

After each set of lectures, we were sorted into random discussion groups. In the first event, we were asked to imagine what it might have been like to experience residential school and how we felt we would have reacted. What would that have been like?

All around me, I heard older Canadians mention how they didn’t know, and that their history classes didn’t teach them what had happened. They struggled with this part of Canadian history. It’s a denial that seemed familiar from German accounts of the Second World War, when people said “they didn’t know” what was happening to the Jewish people in their communities.

I could see many parallels between the stories Theodore Fontaine told, of “going to the moon” and escaping the abuse by disassociating and going somewhere else in his mind, and the novel The Painted Bird, by Jerzy Kosinski, which describes the horrors experienced by a Jewish child during the Holocaust. Trauma causes us (humans) to do many of the same things, even if our religious and ethnic identities differ.

Many of us know that the trauma of the Holocaust doesn’t go away in one or two generations. Those indigenous Canadians who were sent away from their families to residential schools, where they were abused, fed poorly and otherwise mistreated – their trauma has affected their families for generations. Jerzy Kosinski dealt with his childhood Holocaust trauma through substance abuse and, eventually, suicide. It’s no wonder that many indigenous survivors do the same.

Passover is a time of year, like the High Holidays, where we throw off wrongs and bitterness in the hope of embracing new growth and change. We can throw off the bondage of old biases or ideas that have enslaved us. Prejudice against indigenous people, their traditions and the burden of past abuses needs to be addressed – by all of us.

At the end of the lecture series, the facilitators asked variants of this question: “What will you do in the next year to address reconciliation, promote diversity and inclusion, and to make change?” My commitment was to be brave in speaking out about these issues.

Now, I’m turning over the question to you. What will you do, as a person of faith, to make change? Start by reading the 94 recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Call to Action. Write to your politicians to protect the water, the earth and the peoples who came to Canada first. Go to a powwow or a reconciliation discussion. Look others, no matter who they are, in the eye and greet them with loving kindness. In short – do more. It’s the Jewish thing to do.

Remember – we were slaves in the land of Egypt and now we’re free. Free to step up, speak up and help others along the path to equal rights, respect and freedom.

Miriam’s legacy of drumming

Female hand drummers from the Iron Age II (eighth to seventh century BCE), found at the site of what was Achzib, on the Mediterranean coast of northern Israel. From the Israel Museum collection. (photo by Deborah Rubin Fields)

In February, an Israeli ultra-Orthodox bride got lots of media attention for playing drums before a mixed (male and female) crowd of wedding guests. Putting aside issues of religious modesty and political clout, does Jewish law restrict females from playing drums?

Significantly, there is a biblical precedent for female drum playing. It dates back to Miriam the Prophetess. Having just crossed a miraculously dry channel in the Red Sea, Miriam felt compelled to celebrate. She and the other Israelite women who had just experienced the Exodus play drums, referred to in Hebrew as tof miryam. (See Exodus 15:20.)

In a 2009 article in Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia, Prof. Carol Meyers notes, “The Bible mentions … only one percussion instrument … the tof, or hand drum, even though other kinds of drums were known elsewhere in the biblical world. Whenever this word is found, it is quite likely that the presence of female instrumentalists is implied.”

Meyers explains that this hand drum consisted of an animal skin stretched over a hollow body of any shape or size. Moreover, although tof miryam is sometimes rendered in English as a tambourine, it is not, given that it has no rattle or bells. Meyers further reports that the tambourine was not authenticated before the 13th century CE.

Additionally, Meyers points out that female figures predominate in unearthed Iron Age terracotta statutes, holding what appear to be hand drums. These women are plainly dressed, hence they appear to be ordinary people, rather than gods or members of the elite.

Few terracotta statues have been discovered in Palestine or Israel. Yet, from the biblical references of Exodus, Judges 11:34, I Samuel 18:6 and Jeremiah 31:4, we are left to understand that there was a tradition of female hand drum players.

Moreover, citing I Samuel 18:6-7, S.D. Goitein states in a 1988 article in Prooftexts, that a woman’s duty was to welcome the returning fighters and to praise them.

Of what importance were these female drums? Meyers elaborates that female public performance would (1) assume a level of competence based upon practice, (2) indicate that, in ancient Israel, there were groups of women performers and (3) imply that leaders and other members of the community acknowledged and appreciated the expertise of these women performers.

Not only that, but, in the book Miriam’s Tambourine: Jewish Folktales from Around the World (1988), edited by Prof. Howard Schwartz, Miriam’s drum had magical abilities. Relying on a 19th-century Eastern European folktale, Schwartz writes that the music from Miriam’s drum drove off serpents and kept Miriam herself in eternal life.

According to Rabbi Allen Maller’s interpretation of the Mechilta and Pirkei d’Rabbi Eliezer, while in Egypt, Miriam taught all the Israelite women how to play the drum. Moreover, he writes on blogs.timesofisrael.com, once the plagues started, Miriam repeatedly reminded the women of all that she had taught them and that, as a sign of their faith in G-d, they should all take at least one drum per family with them when it was time to leave.

Still it is not clear from whom Miriam learned to play. Did Miriam’s mother, Yocheved, teach her to play the hand drum? Or did Miriam learn from Egyptian women?

Broadcaster and writer Eva Dadrian states in her 2010 article “Let there be music!” that ancient Egyptian musicians realized percussion was basic to their orchestras. Thus, they played drums of different sizes. Drums were particularly associated with sacred ceremonial events, but they were also used during battles to rally the troops or to spread panic among the enemy forces.

Dadrian adds that, in spite of the richness of the documentation, our knowledge of pharaonic music remains limited: without theoretical treaty or musical score, it is particularly difficult to do an archeology of music. The two main membranophones used by ancient Egyptians were the single membrane drum mounted on a frame and the barrel-shaped drum with two membranes.

In the University of California, Los Angeles Encyclopedia of Egyptology, Music and Musicians (2013), Egyptologist Sibylle Emerit claims the single membrane drum is documented in Egypt’s Old Kingdom (2575 BCE to 2150 BCE) in a scene carved in the solar temple of Niuserra in Abu Ghurab. She relates that the non-epigraphic material from the East Cemetery of Deir el-Medina, dating to the 18th dynasty, indicates that the owners of the musical instruments buried in this tomb belonged to a modest social class attached to the service of local noblemen. Thus, Emerit confirms Meyers’ assertion about the plain appearance of female Iron Age II drummer statues.

Music researcher, lecturer and performer Veronica Doubleday notes in a 1999 Ethnomusicology article that plentiful evidence shows women played the frame drum in the Egyptian New Kingdom (1570-947 BCE) dynasties. There were musical troupes in temple rituals, as well as solo drum players.

Over the centuries, Islam, Christianity and Judaism marginalized woman’s public drum playing. In a PhD dissertation (2006), Mauricio Molina writes that early leaders of the Christian religion, for example, condemned the frame drums because of their connection with the fertility cults, which the Church was struggling to banish.

Aside from Miriam, Jewish (and non-Jewish) females might have been told that it is not lady-like to play drums, as drummers need to sit with their legs spread apart and drummers sometimes “let loose” to play.

Nonetheless, today, the number of female drummers – including Jewish female drummers – is growing. As the recent bride story reveals, the numbers are increasing even within the Orthodox and ultra-Orthodox community. In Jerusalem, for example, the school Mayever LaMusica (Beyond Music) offers separate drum lessons for girls and women.

Among those who grew up Orthodox are Temim Fruchter, former drummer in the Shondes, and Dalia Shusterman, who drummed in an all-female Chassidic alternative rock group. Elaine Hoffman-Watts, who died two-and-a-half years ago at the age of 85, was a klezmer drummer – many klezmer bands refused her talents because she was a woman; it wasn’t until her father (also a klezmer musician) intervened that she got work as a drummer.

Other notable Jewish female drummers with Israeli backgrounds are Meytal Cohen, Mindy Abovitz (who is also founder and editor-in-chief of the drum magazine Tom Tom), Iris Portugali and Yael Cohen.

So, the beat goes on and, after a long respite, women are again helping to produce it.

Deborah Rubin Fields is an Israel-based features writer. She is also the author of Take a Peek Inside: A Child’s Guide to Radiology Exams, published in English, Hebrew and Arabic.

Dig more deeply into identity

The Torah portions at this time of year, in Leviticus, are sometimes described as a hard sell. Leviticus’s detailed narrative about what is pure and safe, what’s diseased or leprous, and how priests can tell the difference isn’t light reading. It can be hard to interact with this kind of text.

At the same time, these details saved us as a people on numerous occasions. Keeping things clean, considering what was healthy, diseased or spoiled – historically, these things may have protected us from scourges like the Black Death. Analyzing the details of something difficult and complicated helps us find greater truths or safety, which are not always obvious from the outside, just as we continue to wrestle with diseases or challenges we don’t understand today. Whether it’s something described in Leviticus or a new kind of virus, smart people have to work to figure these things out.

In order to keep myself “working” and intellectually active, I do lots of reading and thinking about things I encounter. However, I don’t have much time to do this while juggling my household, kids, dogs and work responsibilities. I listen to audiobooks while I do household tasks. This gives me a chance to think about something bigger than, for instance, chopping salad or changing bedding. We all have a lot of boring waiting, obligations and chores to get through. Engaging my brain and listening to a book makes me feel a lot better about this grunt work.

I used to think I had to finish everything I started, but if it’s too violent or scary, I now shut it off. I recently found a new category of book to “shut off.” It doesn’t have an easy label, like “mystery” or “non-fiction.” Maybe it should be called “superficial.” Here’s what I mean.

I was listening to a memoir that contained recipes. In itself, this was a quirky choice for an audiobook, but I like food and cooking. Beyond that, the premise was larger. The author had been editor of a publication that had gone out of business. The memoir was supposed to describe how she found new direction through her cooking. I don’t write mean book reviews, even when I’ve been asked to review something, but I just can’t recommend this book.

I got very nearly to the end when I had to give up. Why? The primary reason was that the author is described, in her biography, as a Jewish person. However, her book rhapsodized about the food she made for Christmas and Easter and, even further, about the true glory of pork and shellfish. OK, I figured, maybe her husband isn’t Jewish. But I did more research. He was.

I could live with the idea that this writer didn’t keep kosher. Heck, lots of Jews don’t. I could even live with the idea that she’d decided, for whatever reason, to celebrate Christian holidays, if only there had been some explanation of why. She rhapsodized about matzah brei (but why?!) and yet she didn’t tell her readers why she ate it in the springtime. After awhile, I even started to feel cranky about how she used way too much butter in every recipe. Time to shut it off!

At its heart, I told myself that, while using the majority culture’s touchstones, like Christmas and Easter, might make a book more saleable, it seemed like a betrayal far worse than cooking with non-kosher foods. When I thought about it longer, I concluded that the whole thing was vacuous. She’d never actually explained how the cooking had helped her heal or get over such a big professional loss. At that point, it didn’t matter how the book ended. I was done.

Awhile back, I had a writing gig on a national platform. My proud husband boasted about it to our Montreal friends. The articles paid less than what I published locally and were poorly edited, but my earnest “voice” came through. That seemed OK. Then the editor told me that she would only get in touch again after she assessed how my previous posts had done. (The ones that, while earnest, had been poorly edited.) I never heard back. I guess they weren’t successful in her eyes. Instead, I saw parenting posts on that platform that celebrated Jewish writers who extolled how they proudly chose to be secular or why they weren’t comfortable investing in their religious or cultural identities.

All around us, hate crimes are rising. Minorities – like Jews – are being harassed. Just because it hasn’t happened to you yet doesn’t mean it won’t. So, why not ask Jewish writers to dig deeper and figure out what that identity actually means? When the Gestapo killed Jews during the Second World War, they didn’t ask, “Are you assimilated? Secular? Do you celebrate Christmas?” No. Why not embrace or at least learn about your real background?

I felt angry. My time is so limited that I hate wasting these spare moments on reading something so intellectually lazy. In between raising kids and walking dogs, figuring out our taxes (in two countries) and the rest of life’s details, well, I might as well get more sleep instead. If an entire memoir, written by a well-known figure, sounds so tone deaf, it bothers me that she makes a living selling these books.

Worse, my articles might have been seen as too earnest, too religious and too detail-oriented, and were tossed in favour of someone who was happy to express his apathy and ignorance about his Judaism. It’s like the (non-Jewish) editor said, “Well, gee, we want the Jewish perspective, but only if it isn’t too Jewish.”

Leviticus is a hard slog. Yet, every year, we go through all of the five books of Moses and we try to dig deeper to find something new. There are many commentaries on Leviticus. Some explain it, and others try to give modern examples for how to relate to its narrative. These are all worthy intellectual exercises, much like choosing to listen to books while doing mind-numbing chores.

What’s not worth it? Let’s not waste time on empty-headed accounts from people who determinedly embrace their ignorance. If you want to stay committed to your identity – Jewish, political or other – keep learning and growing so you can express it with pride.

Drugs and teens

When we hear the word addiction, it often conjures up negative images or stereotypes. We might think someone has made poor choices, is down and out, or weak-willed; we might think that it’s a problem confined to the Downtown Eastside. Rarely do we think of the word disease or think of addiction as a mental health issue.

Jewish Addiction Community Services (JACS) is committed to providing opportunities for the community to learn together and, on April 4, JACS and the Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver youth department are presenting a community forum called The Fentanyl Crisis: How It Affects Our Teens. This free event, geared to parents, teens and youth workers, is designed to help build awareness of illicit drugs, specifically fentanyl, and to teach how these drugs affect the teenage brain, and how to talk to teens about drugs.

According to a B.C. Coroners Services report, which was published last month, 86% of fatal illicit drug overdoses in 2018 occurred inside (i.e. not on the street) – 58% in private residences. The majority of these deaths were men between the ages of 19 and 59.

While the problem of addiction in British Columbia is well known, what is less well known or acknowledged is how our Jewish community is affected. In fact, denial that the problem exists is more the reality. Rabbi Shais Taub, a specialist in addiction and spirituality, who visited Metro Vancouver in 2012, said one in 10 people are touched by addiction – whether directly or through a close family member. It makes sense that those statistics are similar in our community.

Compare the reaction of when you hear about a friend who has recently been diagnosed with cancer, or another debilitating disease. While we may not know how to help, when a loved one is affected with a life-altering illness, we are usually motivated to offer assistance, whether it is making meals, visiting or giving money to a cause. In sharp contrast, addiction tends to push us away and we tend to blame the person who has a substance use disorder, instead of wanting to rally around and help them.

Why does a family feel shame and the need to shield others from knowing their loved one is affected by the disease of addiction? Why does the person themselves feel the need to hide? Clearly, the answers are complex. In a recent visit to an emergency department, a patient pleaded with a nurse that “no one in my community must know I am here.” That person was a member of our Jewish community. Not only are people struggling with an illness, but they often can’t reach out for help or don’t know where to turn.

We must and can work to reduce the stigma of addiction so that both families and people with addiction are supported. It begins with awareness of resources and education, with fostering a culture of being less judgmental, of being curious and open, and being willing to talk about how someone may have found themselves suffering from addiction. We also need to remind ourselves of the Jewish values of teshuvah (repentance), tikkun olam (repair of the world), community and chesed (loving kindness). People knowing that there are resources available, when they are ready, is key to recovery.

The April 4 community forum includes panelists Dr. Alana Hirsh, a physician working in the Downtown Eastside; Lee Gangbar, a registered nurse who works both at St. Paul’s Hospital’s emergency department and as an outreach healthcare nurse; and Anne Andrew, a parenting coach and author. To attend the forum, RSVP at eventbrite.ca (Fentanyl Crisis). For more information on the program or JACS, email shelley@jacsvancouver.com.

Shelley Karrel is the manager of counseling and community education with JACS. She has her master’s in clinical counseling, is a registered clinical counselor and also has a private counseling practice. She can be reached at shelley@jacsvancouver.com.

We do more than lift our feet

In Rachel Kadish’s book The Weight of Ink (Mariner Books, 2017), the fictional Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes, living in London, England, in the year 1657, writes a letter to Rabbi Manasseh ben Israel in Amsterdam (who was a real person), using the phrase “we lift our feet.”

In the time the novel was set, the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal was still raging but Holland had opened its doors to refugees. Ben Israel traveled to England to try and persuade Oliver Cromwell to allow Jews back into the country, from which they had been expelled in 1290. His argument was that Jews had to be present in every country if the Messiah was to arrive in 1666. While he didn’t manage to open up England to Jewish immigration, Cromwell did permit the 20 Jewish families then living in London in hiding, pretending to be Christians, to live openly as Jews. It proved in the end to be the thin edge of the wedge.

In this letter of consolation to ben Israel, Kadish has Mendes write the following passage: “Our life is a walk in the night, we know not how great the distance to the dawn that awaits us. And the path is strewn with stumbling blocks and our bodies are grown tyrannous with weeping, yet we lift our feet. We lift our feet.”

I was struck by the fatalism of Kadish’s rabbi. He was expressing a common outlook of religious people in the era – that our lives on earth are lived in a vale of tears, and that our hopes must centre on the beyond. And yet, the Jewish philosophy of life has always been that we must live the life we have here on earth to the fullest. Different from some other views, we deny that our lives should be lived solely in the hope of some future reward.

It is true that, come what may, our role is to “lift our feet” and keep on going. This is a staple of Jewish thinking. We keep on going. We keep on trying. We are the nation of try. If we surrender to the obstacles we face, we are beaten before we start. There is so much around all of us, whatever our background, that can be discouraging, but we can’t allow it to get us down.

Persistence in the pursuit of the goals we seek is a hallmark of Jewish life, and of successful people of every persuasion. We are not easily deterred. Our parents, like many others of immigrant origins, worked their whole lives to try and ensure that their children would get an education and a better start in their lives than was the case for them. Many Jews have gravitated to the research fields, where years of effort are required to achieve results.

Many large enterprises that mark the commercial landscape were once small businesses initiated by Jewish entrepreneurs. From banking, to groceries, from the shmatte (rag) business, to high fashion, it is difficult to find an area of economic activity where Jews have not shown their hand. Remember Bugsy Siegel and Murder Inc.?

Our seeming job in this life is to keep on keeping on. But many of us continue to search for a rationale for human existence. We know that the struggle for survival is in the nature of all living things. That is nature’s imperative. As thinking humans, though, many of us seek other reasons for our being, explanations beyond mere survival. We do not know how long our trip will be before we see the “dawn,” but, in the meantime, many of us are not satisfied that just reproducing ourselves is enough to justify the existence of the universe we are experiencing.

For Jews, the business of survival over the years has been an interminable task accompanied by incalculable losses. But, though few in number, we have survived and, where we have had the tools of defence, we have prevailed. Our religious say we are here to celebrate the glory of G-d, in whose image we have been created. Oh yes, and we are also supposed to provide a model so that all peoples will come to recognize His Oneness and supremacy. It has been a painful task, and not many of us are ready to own up to that particular role.

In these days, when religious speculation about life’s purposes is far from the central issue of our time, it is still important in the lives of millions of people. Even for those of us who are not among them, many of us would like to believe there is some purpose in our lives beyond mere existence.

Many people devote a good part of their thinking and their actions to improving the lives of others beyond their immediate circle, and they draw some sustenance and psychic reward from those efforts. Some people believe that certain issues are more important than even their own lives and, indeed, they stand ready to lay down their lives, if need be, in defence of these ideas.

Helping others and a willingness to die for our beliefs both point to things that we value beyond mere existence. Yes, we go on “lifting our feet,” but with principles that guide us until we reach the “dawn.”

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.

Editor’s Note: This article has been edited to make clear that Rabbi Moseh HaCoen Mendes is a fictional character.

Respecting minority opinions

There’s something extraordinary about Jewish texts. What is it? You may have heard of Hillel and Shammai, or any of the many famous rabbinic voices recorded in the Talmud and Midrash. Our foundational religious texts record and evaluate both the “winning” voice, the rabbi whose opinion became mainstream in our traditions, and minority views.

Sometimes, communities or people follow a viewpoint that was originally the minority voice. I’ve heard people say that they chose a less popular rabbi’s ruling, based on their study of the relevant texts. I’ve been at a Talmud study session where learner pairs presented summaries on why they sided with the minority in a debate.

Analysis and debate remain at the core of our Jewish identities. We’ve all heard the joke, “Two Jews, three opinions!” Sandwiched in that is the idea that we learned and thought deeply about it. There’s another angle to this joke though – the assumption that, if we’ve come to this point, we’ve heard differing opinions. We learned enough to make a judgment. We’re also committed to a civil discourse to get there, because, if every study session or discussion meant people fought violently, we’d never have survived for thousands of years.

Jews are traditionally committed to behaving appropriately – derech eretz, literally “the way of the land,” means “how we behave” – promoting peace and avoiding embarrassing others unnecessarily. We value a good argument but, in the end, agreeing to disagree – with civility – is key.

I recently read a piece written by historian Henry Abramson. It was published by online newsfeed JTA (Jewish Telegraphic Agency) about the Bergen-Belsen marriage contracts (ketubot) produced after the Second World War. After the war, this concentration camp became a displaced persons camp. There was a marriage and baby boom, seen as a way to repopulate the many lives lost there. However, the “standard” ketubah issued there did something very different. These marriage contracts acknowledged that many people didn’t know what had happened to their prewar spouses and families. It took years to find this out, and the contract stated that, if their first families reappeared, the people who signed this contract must take the situation to a beit din (a Jewish court) to figure out what to do. Jewish law was flexible and resilient enough in this terrible situation to find recourse in civility and law.

Unfortunately, the effort to accept difficult, diverse situations and opinions is being lost to the larger culture’s problems with incivility. Recently, the Charedi Orthodox deputy mayor of Jerusalem, Eliezer Rauchberger, was the keynote speaker at a national convention for Israel’s Real Estate Appraisers Association. He canceled at the last moment when he saw the event was being held in facility owned by the Conservative movement. He took the opportunity to condemn those who affiliate with the Reform and Conservative movements, calling them heretical. He sought to embarrass and shame others rather than be inclusive. (Hint: That’s not in line with the commandments.)

These are “distant” stories, but, closer to home, we’ve just demonstrated both sides of this civility debate in Winnipeg. Limmud supports the wide diversity of Jewish opinion and, as such, organizers of the learning event in Winnipeg invited Lex Rofeberg, a rabbinical student, educator and activist to speak. Rofeberg’s Limmud and Shabbat dinner topics weren’t controversial. His lecture subject was Digital Judaism, a topic that’s long overdue. (Parts of Winnipeg’s Jewish community look like they still use the abacus compared to other communities when it comes to this topic.)

Some people, however, disagree with Rofeberg’s Israel activism. Instead of respecting the right of others to hold a different opinion, they use their social media bullhorns to protest. These voices were loud in this case. It seems they had the attention of those with deep pockets who donate to support Jewish events. But, being loud, bullying others and manipulating funders doesn’t mean they were right.

Jewish tradition teaches us that minority voices deserve to be heard. It teaches us to respect others’ right to an opinion and to behave appropriately. These aren’t just Jewish values, they are our country’s democratic values. We should be flexible and resilient in our responses, not quick to condemn others.

Canceling Rofeberg’s Shabbat Across Winnipeg lecture (even though Rofeberg wasn’t going to make any comments about Israel or politics) was described as an action that would maintain shalom b’bayit, peace in the home. That’s another aspect of derech eretz many of us invoke as we try to hush shouting children. Limmud Winnipeg, by contrast, continued to support Rofeberg’s appearance at its event.

I missed this real-time drama. My kids go to bed early, so we eat Shabbat dinner at home. I’m not on Facebook. I didn’t get to Limmud this year. However, based on what I’ve read and heard, I’m saddened that some Jewish institutions bowed down before the social media bullies and donor dollars, and withdrew their support for the event.

Can we learn from people with whom we disagree? Of course. Does shaming others whose opinions differ with yours have a place in Jewish discourse? No.

North American Jews emphasize education. With that learning comes the ability to do analysis and think critically. We’re lucky to live in a country that allows us to voice those differing opinions. Shame on us, Winnipeggers, for bowing down to bullies who would silence that discourse – all for a little peace on Shabbat. We should know better. We should support healthy debate about things that matter to us. As adults, we should be able to behave appropriately and peacefully on Shabbat regardless.

We lost an opportunity to be our best selves – thinking, discussing and disagreeing while we break bread together. That said, I believe our community will have many opportunities to do this better in the future. The research indicates that younger Jewish community members may have different views – including those on Israel’s politics – than their grandparents do. It’s time to listen respectfully to one another.

Can only live in the now

It’s sunny today as I write this, and there is a lovely breeze fluttering the leaves on a tree outside my window. I am reacquainting myself with myself, pleasuring in the solitude. Writing this story for you (and myself) is a minor distraction.

Knowing ourselves can be scary, but we can get over that. We are not so bad after all. Look at all those good things we have done (rah! rah!) despite the weaknesses we know we have, and how they compare to the aspirations we have had for ourselves. It doesn’t mean we don’t have to try to be better, to achieve more, but facing our failings can make us be kinder to others.

My bride feels that I am amazing in my capacity to forgive myself for my errors and weaknesses. But I know, and I have told her, that she, and most people, are too hard on themselves. I believe it has something to do with the constructs we build up in our minds as to what we believe is success, the goals we set. Then, given the unpredictability of life, we are disappointed when we don’t realize all of them.

But these things we dream of are not real. They are something way out in a potential future. Only the now is real, only the now is what we can change. Often, when we get to the anticipated future, we no longer want what we aspired to. We have changed our mind as a consequence of our life experiences. Our pleasures may really arise from the incidentals we realize on our path, what we encounter in our nows. They may turn out to be what we treasure above all.

So, I forgive my errors as lessons learned, and aim for my goals as a spectrum rather than a single point. And I forgive my blunders as an excess of enthusiasm. I know my enthusiasms can be fierce, as I believe that we really have to want what we want to have some chance of getting there.

We all know that people are watching what we do. A lot of what we think about ourselves is motivated by what we believe other people think about us. And we worry about that at times. It can seriously affect our behaviour. As I have gotten older, however, I find that I am not so much worried about that. The person I am more concerned about is me – that’s the guy I have to come to terms with.

We cannot fail to develop in ourselves, unless we are sociopaths, some ideas about what are the right things to do in life. We absorb it from our parents, what we read or see, what our friends have said or done, and the “inner us” watches and measures everything we do, and passes judgment.

We know when we have violated what our inner judge has said is the right action. Nonetheless, we sometimes, thinking or unthinking, follow our own selfish self-interest. But, often, we are motivated to act in opposition to our short-term interests and according to the larger values we have absorbed.

When we do the wrong thing it stays with us. Our judge is difficult to escape. He or she is there every time we encounter ourselves in our thoughts. We have many ways to distract ourselves from what it is telling us, and that escape may tempt us powerfully, but we cannot know ourselves if we are not in touch, fully acquainted, with that inner self. We cannot be at peace if we are not in harmony with that inner self or judge.

We all know people who publicly espouse the public good and privately pursue the private good. We see examples of that every day on our television and internet screens, our newspapers and magazines, our trips to the grocery store or the community centre. Could we live with ourselves if we were that kind of person? Does it take self-delusion?

Most of us aspire to being the kind of people our children could respect, and we have taught them the lessons we believed would help them on their way. We all have had our aspirations to achieve positions and places, situations in life that we feel are appropriate for the kind of people we truly are. Hopefully, we are happy with the portion that we have earned and been given (as no one makes it on their own, or without some luck).

It is only in our solitudes that we truly confront the people we are, without pretension. Some people are able to be more like their real selves in public, but most of us present to others the person they believe others want or expect to see in us. How fortunate we are if we have those in our circle with whom we feel free to be the person we really are.

Deep in our heart of hearts, we know of all the compromises we have made with the principles we truly believe in. They weigh on us. We have corrected where we could along the way. For what remains undone, which cannot be fixed, we have to find in ourselves the generosity to forgive ourselves, and others.

This moment is the “there” we have arrived at, even if it is the life we did not necessarily aim for. This incidental is the real thing. We are really alive only in the now in which we find ourselves.

Max Roytenberg is a Vancouver-based poet, writer and blogger. His book Hero in My Own Eyes: Tripping a Life Fantastic is available from Amazon and other online booksellers.