Don’t Cancel Alice Walker. Hold Her Accountable.

I have been a reader and follower of Yair Rosenberg for several years. He has been an amazing writer fighting the good fight against antisemitism in the media. And he has an amazing sense of humor. He has punk'd some of the most outrageous online trolls and spoken truth to power.

His regular newsletter, Deep Shtetl has become a subscriber based newsletter from the Atlantic Magazine. You can access past issues here as well as subscribe to the newest posts as well.

Because it is a subscription-based newsletter, I cannot share the entire text. You should go read it and subscribe. Really. 

Like most Jewish educators I have been teaching about redemption and the journey to freedom a lot in the last week or so. I have also been having conversations about cancel culture over the past few months. So when I read his article about Alice Walker, I was spurred to share it. The short summary is the title of this post (and Yair's newsletter post). He suggests that "for years, the public has responded to the celebrated author's antisemitism by either sidelining her or ignoring her prejudice. We can do better.

He suggest that rather than cancelling her, which is a pretty dehumanizing and humiliating act, she be challenged and asked to engage in conversation about her posts and public statements. Read Yair's article about that here. In his current post, he suggests that we treat her (and I presume others whom we might wish cancel) as a human, one who like the rest of us has flaws and brokenness. And we should instead engage with her on these issues and give her a chance to see how her words affect others. And perhaps to begin her path to redemption and escape from the narrow places.

The newest issue is here, but you need a subscription.
https://newsletters.theatlantic.com/deep-shtetl/62460b589277230021b1dc3f/alice-walker-anti-semitism-david-icke-controversy/

Chag Pesach Sameach!

Sing a Redemption Song

I alternate between Pesach and Sukkot as my favorite Jewish holiday. I love building and hanging out in our Sukkah. Feeding people I love and celebrating with them is my happy place – and so I love the seder as well. Passover is so much more than that though.

Geulah – Redemption – is much more than a moment in our history: the crossing of the Sea of Reeds on the beginning of the walk to freedom. It is a Jewish value. We invoke it when we participate in freeing someone from captivity or slavery. Some of us remember participating in the movement to free the Refuseniks – Jews in the Soviet Union who only wanted to be free to be Jewish, to teach Hebrew or go to Israel. That was Geulah. Natan Sharansky, a former Knesset member and leader of the Jewish Agency was perhaps the most famous Refusenik.

Many of you know that I have been a mentor for Jewish professionals who participate in the immersion program at Beit T’shuvah in Los Angeles. Beit T’shuvah (literally “house of repentance”) is a residential recovery facility for people trying cope with alcoholism or ay of a number of other addictions. The immersion program is designed to teach clergy, educators and communal workers how to better recognize and help addicted folks in their communities.

A scene from Freedom Song

A few years ago, we brought Beit T’shuvah’s Redemption Song to B’nai Israel. It is a piece of musical theater written and performed by people in recovery. It tells a story of families with addicted members against the background of Passover seders and the Exodus from Egypt. It was and is an amazing show.

Mark Borovitz, emeritus Rabbi of Beit T’shuvah, refers to Passover as the second High Holy Days for people in recovery. For them to achieve Redemption, they must go through the steps of Repentence (T’shuvah). They use the 12 Steps of Recovery to help them do that. The 8^th, 9^th and 10^th steps all look a lot like how we Jews are taught to atone during the period leading up to Yom Kippur:

1. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
   
   
2. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
   
   
3. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.

So as we prepare for own Pesach seder – as we buy and prepare the food, set the table, plan how we will lead the seder – let’s also take some time to reflect. What do I need to do to make sure I reach the other side of the Sea of Reeds? How can I make sure I and the ones I love will find redemption? I suggest making a list, making amends and continue to look to our own actions. Through T’shuvah, we can find Geulah!

We all wish you a wonderful Pesach and a safe journey to Redemption. If you need any help in preparing, let me know!

L’shalom,

Ira    

The Socially Distanced Full-Contact Seder ™

Before our children were even conceived (the youngest turns 22 on Sunday) my wife Audrey and I developed what we called the Full-Contact Seder. The idea was to create a Seder that was so engaging that the children we would someday have would be an experience that filled them with wonder. Thanks to being at the seder at Kibbutz Lotan in 1989 - where we saw five little ones mesmerized by the shadow-maggid their parents performed - we were determined. And with the help of family and friends, I believe we succeeded for many years. 

We continue to make our seder with many of those same friends and when COVID-19 decided on a Zoom seder for us, we dusted it off. Here is the introduction of the planning document. I happily share the planning document which are welcome to copy or download. The comments are live on the document, and I invite your thoughts, suggestions and ideas. You can find it at this link:

Socially Distanced Full-Contact Seder ™

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Welcome to the Family Virtual Seder Planning Page!

Also known as the Socially Distanced Full-Contact Seder ™

So it took a few (thousand) years, but we finally have a seder that is fully a product of experiential learning. I was opposed to having an actual plague this year, but you all know how THOSE guys get when they start getting silly.

My understanding of the plan is that we are going to a modified digital version of the Full Contact Seder we did when all of our kids lived at home and were too young to tell us to cut it out.

Below is an outline of the 15 parts of the seder (and some of them are subdivided into more parts). Each has at least one link to a site that will explain what it is about or other relevant information. We agreed that each participating family will take responsibility for at least two of the items. That may include dealing one of them off to a child(ren) or even the one communal grandchild. If you can deal more than one off (keeping at least one for yourselves, of course) awesome! We can skip or just talk about the ones no one took!

The task for each part or sub part is to creatively express, teach or engage us in the meaning of that part of the Seder.

We are using Zoom on a professional account, so the only time limit is the patience of everyone attending (so no filibusters!). You can share your screen with the group, so if you have something prepared on your computer or on another website (e.g. a YouTube Video, Prezy or the like) there is no problem.

As soon as you decide which TWO parts (or sub-parts) you want to own, please put your name on the chart below so we don’t have two families or individuals planning the same part.

I will post prayer sheets, etc. as pdfs for all to download. If you would like to post anything, go ahead or send it to me and I can convert it and post if you prefer.

Ira

Here is the link again.
Socially Distanced Full-Contact Seder ™

#BlogExodus: Examine

My friend and colleague, Rabbi Phyllis Sommer has for many years invited people to "Blog Exodus" at this time of year. See her blog from the 11th of April: http://imabima.blogspot.com/2016/04/blogexodus-purify.html Basically, she chooses a theme a day for the fourteen days leading up to the Seder, and invites us all to write on that theme. You can do it on her daily Facebook post or on your blog.

Today's theme spoke to me at a moment when I had some time to write. The theme is Examine.

Now Examine is very Pesadik trope - next week we will clean our homes of all chametz - the stuff that has been leavened. Some will even use a feather and candle to examine the nooks and crannies in our homes so we can find the last of the chametz. We have been examining store shelves for weeks, hoping to find everything we need in order to prepare meals for a week, including one or two fairly large feasts.

But seeing the word Examine as a theme for the day makes me think about something even more intimate. It is interesting that the Israelites were instructed to make sure the lambs they sacrificed on the night of the final plague had to be without blemish, but were not told to purify themselves in any way. But much of the book of Vayikra (Leviticus) is filled with various people in a variety of situations being commanded to purify themselves as they prepared for a ritual or to reenter the camp.

My wife and I agree that Pesach is one of our favorite festivals, and it may be number one. The reason has to do with the cleaning of the house and the switching of the dishes. For me, though, it is also the idea that I need to Examine myself, and find the chametz that is inside me. I need to find the things that are holding me back from setting out on the path to freedom this year. And I need to deal with them. Some I can handle on my own. Others are big enough that I will need some help.


My rabbi growing up, Mark S. Shapiro, used to say that as hard as it was to get the Jews out of Egypt, it is (still!) harder to get the Egypt out of the Jews. We bring our chametz with us, just like packing a lunch for the road. The forty years of wandering was God's attempt to get the chametz of actual slavery - and the fantasy that somehow Egypt was better than the reality of freedom - out of our heads.

Find your own chametz - the kind that is inside you. And get rid of it. I am hoping we don't need to take a whole generation to get it done.

Multiple Intelligences?We've Known About Them Since Sinai!

My friend and Teacher Raphael Zarum taught me that the Hagadah is nothing more than a teachers guide for teaching about Yetziat Mitzrayim - the Exodus from Egypt. He brilliantly pointed out that traditional Hagadot do not actually contain the original version from Exodus, while spending a great deal of time teaching how others have taught the story - like the five rabbis in B'nei Brak, hiding underground from Hadrian's legions.

I and others have long taught the the four children (sons if you insist) in the Pesach Hagadah are there to teach us about how we need to teach the story of the Exodus to each learner in the way they will best understand. Howard Gardner came along and gave this concept a name: Multiple Intelligences.

The Jewish Week has a newish blog called The New Normal. In this week's edition, Rabbi Daniel Grossman (a wonderful teacher I know from CAJE conferences) drashes on this week's parsha, Emor, and brings a similar lesson that takes us even deeper. Enjoy, comment and Shabbat Shalom!

Even God, even at Sinai,
spoke differently to the priests and to the people. Fotolia

Moses Taught the Priests One Way, The People Another

In this week's Torah portion, Emor, we find this sentence in the very beginning:

“And the Lord spoke to Moses: Speak to the priest, the sons of Aaron and speak to them . . .” (Leviticus 21:1)
The Rabbis in the Talmud ask the question, “Why is the word ‘speak’ used twice? If every word of the Torah is significant, why does the word speak appeartwice, when once would be enough?”

The Fifth Passover Question

Full disclosure: Josh Mason-Barkin found this and posted a section of it on his blog, Yikes. Dahlia Lithwick wrote and posted it on Slate.com where she is a senior editor. I tweeted and Facebook shared his posting and contacted Dahlia for permission to re-post which she granted. Incidentally, it turns out the Lisa she refers to is another friend! There are only two degrees of separation in the Jewish world. I think the chatimah is that given the opportunity and the call to lead, people will step up even if they are not drawn to leadership naturally. 

Our first seder was led by two sisters in a room filled with 40 people including two rabbis and two Jewish educators (who were not called upon to lead happily). They were magnificent and took us successfuly from slavery to redemption. 

And they step up beautifully!

How do we choose who will lead the seder?

Who's going to lead the Seder?
By Dahlia Lithwick

Posted Tuesday, April 19, 2011, at 1:02 PM ET

How do we decide who leads the Passover Seder? Something seems to happen to all the thirtysomething Jewish people I know at Passover. They stare deep down into their own hearts, then look deep down at their own feet, and then ask—in some equal measure of panic and despair—"But who's going to lead the Seder?"

I can't tell you how many conversations I have had this month with friends who have been attending Seders for over 30 years: folks who are adept at Hebrew, familiar with every song, and are nevertheless paralyzed by the prospect of actually leading a Seder of their own. There's something about Passover that makes even the most competent among us crave some real grown-ups, while disavowing the possibility of our own grown-up-ness at the same time. It would be deeply Gen X, were it not for the fact that I'm starting to suspect it might be timeless.

I wonder if my father felt this way when my grandfather died and he and his brothers seemed to slide so effortlessly into his place. I wonder if my grandfather once felt this way as well. Maybe everyone has that sense of sheer fakery and fraud when sitting at the head of the table for the first time.

Even if this anxiety is universal, the irony is rather breathtaking, when you think about it: The word Seder means "order." Every action and word required of us is spelled out in the Haggadah with the precision and clarity of a NASA launch sequence. That so many of us feel unequal to the task of doing something so structured is amazing.

At the Seder last night, someone suggested that leading has in fact become more complicated in our time. Our fathers and grandfathers read aloud or assigned reading to others. Everyone knew the tune and the page. But leading the Seder in 2011 can involve complex choreography, the frog song, the store-bought plague paraphernalia, the extratextual readings, and other heroic efforts to be inclusive/relevant/child-friendly and compelling. The days of mumbling before the brisket and mumbling after the brisket have morphed into something requiring the timing, sensitivity, and theatricality of a performance artist.

It's true, furthermore, that whereas our fathers and mothers tended to go to the same Seder year after year, the members of our ambulatory generation have probably attended several different kinds of Seders, each of which had a slightly different take on how to get from the four questions to Dayenu. So despite the "order" there is no longer a standard format. And with every new Seder, guest, and song, what it means to "lead" the Seder becomes more ambiguous and panic-inducing.

There also seems to be a secret, lingering sense among my women friends—women who own their own businesses and publish books, by the way—that leading a Seder is still somehow a man's job. And even if you went to Hebrew school, even if you know each word by heart, even if you're as good at this stuff as your grandpa once was, and even if in every other context you are the source of Jewish tradition and learning in your household, somehow the feeling still persists among some women (myself included) that on Passover the daddies lead and the mommies ladle.

Passover is really the only Jewish holiday in which most households tap some layperson to be professional clergy for a night, and—as my friend Lisa observed yesterday—it's thus apt that this holiday celebrates one of the most reluctant leaders in all of biblical history. Here is poor Moses, begging to be relieved of the responsibility of Sherpa-ing his people from one dusty place to another—pleading unfitness, a speech impediment, and the absence of meaningful leadership qualities. And here we all are, thousands of years later, pleading unfitness, performance anxiety, and the absence of meaningful leadership qualities.

Stop me if this is starting to sound familiar.

Maybe the real lesson of Passover is that nobody—in any generation—feels fit to lead a bunch of other people, but they do it anyway, because in the end somebody has to. Maybe it's not just the story of the Exodus we are passing down from generation to generation, but the trick of leading, when all you ever wanted to do was follow.

http://www.slate.com/id/2291597/