“Blessing Over Jew!!” Rabbi Zecher’s Shabbat Awakenings

Welcome to Shabbat Awakenings, a weekly reflection as we move toward Shabbat.Last week at Shabbat I shared these words and now share them with you.  You can listen to it as a podcast here.

On my way to a Temple Israel youth group retreat, a few weeks ago, I turned on a podcast to accompany me down to Sandwich. It was Shabbat. I had just finished the Bat Mitzvah with Cantor Stillman. I was in my own car so I could have listened to anything, but I decided to play something from a podcast that often offers something amusing about Judaism or being Jewish. And it was Shabbat, after all.

On this day, however, there was no joking.

The focus of the podcast was actually about an uncomfortable conversation between a former football linebacker and a former Israel envoy for combatting antisemitism– which may seem like an unusual pairing, but it wasn’t.

Emmanuel Acho, had created a digital series called “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man” and then went on to turn it into a best selling book. His premise is that building allyship comes from removing oneself from the silos we find ourselves in. Instead if we seek understanding rather than marginalization, we discover the common enemy is hate not those in another silo. His approach reminded me of our use of brave conversations, but that is a different sermon.

He had reached out to Noa Tishby a long time before October 7 because he had seen antisemitism growing in the Black community and he wanted to understand and to learn. His goal was to become a true ally and model it for others.

So, I listened to the podcast and how they engaged in challenging topics and discomfort in their discussions. They admitted that after October 7, the conversation had become so fraught that they stopped talking to each other.

And then realized they needed to keep talking.

So they decided to write down their conversation into a book. But what should they call it? And here is where I found their decision intriguing.  The working title was “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jewish Woman” as a parallel to Emmanuel’s previous book.

But that is not what they ended up with because they wanted something more provocative. At first I didn’t understand why the title they chose could rouse a strong reaction.

Here it is: “Uncomfortable Conversations with a Jew”

I guess it depends how you say it.  Jew! Jew. Jew?

It doesn’t seem like a dirty word, but history teaches us otherwise.

There are so many choices from. Take Shakespeare, for example.  Though very few Jews lived in Shakespeare’s England, having been expelled long before. Shakespeare’s portrayal of Shylock in  The Merchant of Venice reveals a specific attitude through the soliloquy of Shylock as he resists the treatment of the Venetians toward him in his eventual quest for revenge:

I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions; fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means…

He was arguing for that which the Jew had not received. The Jews’ reputed status existed even where they no longer lived.

Elsewhere and in another time, the misconception of “dirty Jew” made belonging impossible. And jew as a verb connoted miserly behavior.

In our time, there is Daniel Pearl, of blessed memory, held captive by Islamist militants in Pakistan 22 years ago whose final words included, “I am a Jew” before he was brutally murdered on camera.

In his honor and memory, a collection of essays were gathered by his widow and friends to fill a book. It was a celebration, a source of pride of being a Jew, even as it was the cause of Daniel Pearl’s death.

Noa Tishby felt that pride to be a Jew even as she considered it provocative. To be called a Jew or to be in the JEWish orbit brings its own weight, responsibility, and possibility for experiencing the world in what is far different from a negative association or fear.

And yet, I want to recognize that there are many people walking the streets of our cities and towns to this day, on college campuses and throughout our country and world, who walk in fear for their safety, who have to hold Shabbat services in unmarked places, who hide their kippot under hats, who feel it is impossible to say, “I am a Jew” out loud and in public, even though they feel great pride.

And there are also Jews who proclaim their Jewishness in public ways and feel the strength by being in community even when there is no one else around.

Both are true at the same time.  To be a Jew today brings its own benefits and challenges.

So, what does it mean to be a Jew today?

This is the very question, Noah Feldman poses in his newly published book, “To Be a Jew Today”. Finished after October 7 and informed by the heart aching, world tearing, soul crushing events of October 7, he is willing to further an understanding of the idea of a Jew.

In the introduction, he dispels judgement of a bad Jew by recognizing that if Maimonides could be called a “bad Jew” not only by Dominican Inquisitors of France but also by leading rabbis of the time for his volume entitled, Guide to the Perplexed, then anyone who might decide they are a “bad” Jew will be in good company. Feldman wrote: The feeling of  being a bad Jew is…archetypally Jewish and simultaneously a misreading of the Jewish way to engage in the world…A bad Jew is just a Jew expressing irony and self skepticism and maybe a little guilt. In other words, a Jew.

Feldman weaves through the book what is quintessential to the life of every Jew: Struggle. Our namesake, Jacob wrestles with the angel in the middle of the night on his way to encounter his brother, a potential precarious reunion. In that moment, the angel changes his name to Yisrael, explained as the one who has wrestled with beings both human and divine –and here is Feldman’s translation—are able.

We are able to struggle because struggling defines Jewish existence, even when it is contentious because the multiplicity of opinions. It is what animates our tradition as we pursue any understanding of the divine or call ourselves godless which Feldman provides as one of the four belief patterns.

To be a Jew is to complexify and perplexify (a word I just made up) that speaks to the path of the Jew to delve into perplexity as a way of parsing beliefs, Israel, and the Jewish people. These are also the three sections of his book.

Struggle with theology, Israel, and all of us who are part of this community is also what allows us to embrace the idea of being a Jew.  Some parts of the book and what he says also causes the reader to struggle. It certainly did that to me. The resolution cannot be the goal rather it is the worthy path of struggle we take.

And here I end with a favorite Hasidic story: two people were lost and upon finding each other on the path, each admitted confusion about the way to go. And so they resolved what to do.

Let us look for the way together.

That is what it means to be a Jew. We need one another in our discomfort, our pain, and the beautiful life we lead together supported by community and our magnificent synagogue of Temple Israel of Boston.

Shabbat Shalom שבת שלום

THIS SHABBAT AT TEMPLE ISRAEL:

• We gather for Qabbalat Shabbat at 6:00 p.m. INSIDE to as we celebrate our Confirmation class and the naming of Tova Weil. Join us onsite or register to join on Zoom, or log on via Facebook Live, or our website.
• Torah Study gathers onsite or Register to join on zoom at 9:00 a.m. beginning with a short Shabbat service and Torah reading followed by an engaging study and conversation. All levels and abilities are welcomed!
• Gather online to say goodbye to Shabbat with a lay-led Havdalah on Zoom at 8:00 p.m

I continue to value the many comments you exchange with me through these Shabbat Awakenings. Share with me what you think here. Your email goes directly to me!