Blowing in the wind
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It’s Veterans Day.
One of those often forgotten holidays that seem to have more resonance for generations past.
I still remember my mother in the 1950s marking the day by stopping to buy brightly colored paper poppies for my sisters and me, looping them through the buttonholes on our heavy wool coats where we proudly displayed our support.
Fast forward almost 20 years, during the furor of the Viet Nam War protest, when returning veterans were shamefully either not recognized, or worse, the paper flowers sold on street corners replaced with burning flags and shouted obscenities.
Perhaps it is the proximity to the fervor over the midterm elections, putting national policy and its makers squarely on our screens. Or maybe, just maybe, it is the reality that we are now heading into the 9th year of the war in Afghanistan, the 8th in Iraq, with America’s soldiers, and its vets, still heroically soldiering on, but I feel compelled this year to say something.
Time to acknowledge their service. Time to say thanks.
On Tuesday, I wished my students at Glendale Community College a wonderful Thursday; school is closed for the holiday, and we left with a round of applause for the one vet in our class, a polite, handsome young man who served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps including two tours in Afghanistan, and for the son of another student who is currently serving overseas in the U.S. Army, perhaps headed to Iraq.
The next day, I headed to Arizona State University. Parking my car and hurrying to class I glanced up and stopped in surprise. All along the mall, tiny red, white and blue flags had sprouted in the grass. They lined the pathways, planted several inches apart, creating what seemed to be an infinite line of old glories waving in the autumn breeze, summoning our attention.
A hand lettered sign explained that each flag represented one veteran now enrolled at ASU. I took a minute to take it all in and silently add my thanks.
What a wonderful tribute to our vets. What a wonderful tribute to our educational institutions. And what a wonderful country.
11 Nov, 2010 > Comment - 2 -
In the curve of the lulav
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So I am driving to work on Sukkot.
Late of course, running my morning lecture through my mind while keeping my eyes trained on the traffic. Stopped at an intersection, waiting for the light to turn green, I glance almost mindlessly over at the side of the road. A young couple. He, tall and slim, dressed in black, suit, hat, shoes, a fresh white shirt peeking from his jacket, almost glinting in the morning sun as striking counterpoint. She, petite, long dark hair, matched with long dark skirt, long-sleeved top. They are standing on the overpass, peering over the barrier at the cars streaming on the freeway below. And then my eyes rest on the lulav in his hand, pointing to the sky, its graceful curve seeming to sway slightly in the wind. And the cup of his other hand, protecting what must be an etrog, imagined in all its bright yellow roundness, its faint citrusy scent on his skin.
And, I think. Who would have thought? It’s nine o’clock on an ordinary Thursday morning, the cars are moving by taking people to work, to school, to the gym, to the grocery. And here is a young couple, dressed as if from another era, walking to shul even as the heat of the day shimmers off the pavement, to mark Sukkot. What a day. What a time. How very beautiful.
The light changes. I step on the gas and go. I know it is a holiday. I spent the evening before welcoming its coming with friends, dinner in their Sukkah with a multitude of grandchildren, challah smeared with honey, sweet wine and the palpable warmth of family and friendship as fulfilling as the delectable holiday meal. They will be spending the next three days in the cocoon of the holiday, no work, no cars, no cell phones and computers, no ipods, no TV. It is enviable to contemplate, the depth of their commitment, the sureness of their path, the strength of their faith.
And yet. I am not there. Not yet, anyway, even as I learn more about our tradition, intrigued by what I do not know, did not experience. I soak up knowledge like the veritable sponge, hungry to know more, yet still hesitant (or could it be resistant?) to move further on the path to heightened observance. Yet, the sight of that young couple, lulav and etrog in hand, stays with me, even as I go about my day. I can see the beautiful bend of the lulav and envision the young man as the holiday ends this week, circling the bimah with it in hand, shaking it with a fervor I have yet to know, dancing joyously with the Torah, then walking home to retire in the shade of his sukkah for a refreshing repast.
And I am envious. And proud. And grateful. I may not be there, yet or ever, but I am blessed to know of the tradition, to be invited to share in the holiday, and to feel, even if it is only a momentary shiver, its beauty and its power.
29 Sep, 2010 > Comment - 1 -
Love -- and loss
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Not much love lost looking at the photo of an adoring Marc Mezvinsky staring deeply into the eyes of his radiant bride. Mezvinsky, rumpled white tallis over dark suit, and his bride, Chelsea Clinton, resplendent in Vera Wang silk, made the front page in newspapers across the country on the Sunday morning following their July 31 wedding.
The nuptials captivated wedding-watchers for weeks, not only guessing details of the where, what and who, meaning the guest list that went from Oprah to Streisand, not, and back again, but more to the point, who would officiate and which rituals would the Jewish groom and his Methodist bride choose to incorporate into their very personal, albeit, public (more on that later) ceremony.
So the photos released by the families with the tallis-wearing groom and after-the-wedding press reports ticking off the Jewish rituals -- chuppah, ketubah, sheva brachot--
gave at least one Jewish mother pause.
It was love, for sure, but also loss.
As the after wedding commentary spun into the blogosphere like so much puffed tulle, Jews and non-Jews sprinkled enough opinions to confound even the most astute co-officiant. Too Jewish, not Jewish enough? And what were the not-as-yet-made-public Christian elements? And what does the blended ceremony, with its now mum co-officiants, mean? Or not?
And yet, the very public nature of the match, Mezvinsky, the son of two former members of the U.S. Congress and Clinton, daughter of the current U.S. Secretary of State and a former U.S. President, begs for reflection, for this was not just any bride and groom nor any wedding. And the after-the-wedding byplay raised the ante on the issue of intermarriage, with its consideration of issues from Jewish clannishness to its marker as a sign that we’ve arrived (ugh, to Joseph Berger, New York Times) to the message of welcome and inclusiveness that the very ubiquity of intermarriage seems to infer.
Ah, this is one for the sages, or not. But it is surely emblematic of the conundrum of today’s Jewish world, where we struggle to preserve our numbers by creating meaningful Jewish life with the hopes that our children will choose partners who share their commitment to Torah, chuppah and gemulut hasidim, or, at the very least, choose partners who are supportive of their choice.
For some, there is still a line in the sand, a right and wrong to intermarriage. But for most of the rest of us, there is the tortuous landscape to navigate, trying to find the right way to respond, communally and personally. I still recall a program a year or two ago in Phoenix, sponsored by the Jewish Outreach Institute, when director Rabbi Kerry Olitzsky asked the audience who had an intermarried member of their family. Almost everyone raised a hand.
And yet, while pundits remark on how remarkable it was that Mezvinsky and Clinton chose to include so many patently Jewish symbols in their ceremony, it still comes down to how they will choose to lead their lives, and their children’s, as they walk out from under the chuppah.
As Rabbi Ruth Weinberg Dreyfus, president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis told The Jewish Week’s Julie Wiener, when it comes to a family’s religious connections, there is “no such thing as both.”
And no such thing as intermarried love without loss.
04 Aug, 2010 > Comment - 2 -
Hot texts
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It is perhaps telling that Tisha B’Av, the ninth of Av, falls in the dead heat of summer. Particularly in the Arizona desert, with its triple digit temperatures, the holiday’s warning of the harm of baseless hatred (read that as intolerance and disrespect) is particularly glaring.
At home, there is the heated debate over SB 1070 as the July 29 effective date looms.
And while the controversial legislation has shone a bright- as- summer- light on the hot button topic, provoking discussion on a raft of pressing issues from immigration reform to border security, it has simultaneously fleshed out the debate and flushed out the extremists. Lord knows, they are an echo of the old Judy Collins song, on both sides now, as similar in their rush to judgement as different in their points of view. But it is the eagerness to take sides, and, even worse, to cast aspersion, and, yes, hatred, that is most troubling. There has to be a middle ground that will inspire reasoned discussion born from even grudging mutual respect and the right of both sides to respectfully, even if vigorously, disagree. So timely, is the message from the sages on this, the 9th of Av.
Too, in Israel, not a slouch in the extremism department also, where the “who is a Jew” issue is heating up these days when we remember the fall of the temple at the hands of simmering hatreds. The brouhaha over proposed legislation to consolidate ever more power in the Orthodox rabbinate to oversee conversions is troubling, most understandably so among Judaism’s more progressive streams and within its Diaspora populations, especially the American Jewish community, where its impact will most roundly reverberate. Yet as the Israeli government sorts out the issue in the coming weeks, it also begs as much for civil discourse as it provokes religious imprecation.
It is too easy to lash out at those who disagree with us -- or even those we see as clearly mistaken or even wrong -- while meeting our responsibility to speak and to act on conviction.
Here, too, the sages provide some insights when they teach that the sinat chinam, baseless hatred, of which they warn, comes from disregard for each person’s “cheyn,” translated as grace or charm. That, they remind us, really means less the affability of personality or the rightness of position. Rather, they teach, it is the regard for each person’s place in the universe.
A thought to consider, this hot 9th of Av.
19 Jul, 2010 > Comment - 1 -
Open the drawer
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It is Friday.
My challah (a Kineret frozen loaf, I admit) is rising on the stove top.
My chicken is seasoned, and ready to pop into the oven, along with a pan of veggies.
Salad is waiting to be tossed, fruit washed and cut.
There is a certain comfort that comes from the rituals of readying for Shabbat, even as a mostly secular but sometimes religious (whatever that connotes) Jew.
Serious is how most of us prefer to be called, those of us who are drawn to Jewish study and its concomitant spiritual search and flirt with ritual observance. Labels, of course, are misleading, nay patently meaningless, in this changing- as- we- speak world where anything seems to defy categorization.
And so, I read a recent article on Tablet, the online Jewish magazine, with not a little bit of interest -- and guilt. Writer Elizabeth Cohen’s essay on “Private Practice” tells of the suppressed desires of intermarried women to observe Shabbat with their children and the every so often Friday night coteries that evolve.
It is a beautifully written piece, as moving as it is achingly real, especially for those of us with intermarried children who are valiantly trying to raise their children as Jews and retain their own Jewishness. Cohen perceptively describes herself, and perhaps our daughters and granddaughters, when she writes of marrying an “a-Jewish” man. “When you are young,” she writes, “you can think you can do anything.” Even marry for love and still keep what is precious, even if is tucked away in a drawer, only to be pulled out on special occasions.
Yet, she writes, even Jewish choices -- synagogue memberships, day school tuitions and sometimes shared holiday observances (the recalcitrant spouse at the Passover table lurks in Cohen’s piece) -- do not make up for the palpable loss. Her angst is real, even as she opens the drawer of past memories and lets them escape every so often like the succulent scent of the roast chicken from the oven door. Shabbat shared is what she is missing, Shabbat with husband and children around the table, as she remembers. Shabbat as something that has a place in the rhythm of family life, not Shabbat relegated to an every so often dinner with friends, non-Jewish husbands in absentia.
And so, I began to think about Cohen’s conundrum -- and her solution -- and realized that it is not just those who have fallen in love and chosen to share their lives with men for whom Shabbat is not a part of who they are, but those of us who so very cavalierly take our Jewish identity, and that of our Jewish spouses, for granted to whom Cohen speaks.
And I feel guilty. Very guilty.
It is so easy, so very easy, especially as our children are grown and gone, to let Shabbat lapse, to forego the challah and the candles, to substitute Merlot for Manischewitz, to order pizza in rather than turn on the oven. It is so easy to miss the message and meaning of turning off for a few hours, or more, of turning inward to ourselves and toward our spouses, to learn to quiet our lives and quell our spirits.It is so very easy to put Shabbat in a drawer, along with the hand made challah covers and kiddush cups our kids brought home, depriving us of what it means to rest and renew.
So this Shabbos, I cooked. And come 7:23, my candles will be lit.
09 Jul, 2010 > Comment - 2 -
Chrystal clear
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Amidst all the brouhaha (and punditry) evoked by General Stanley McChrystal’s intemperate remarks to a Rolling Stone reporter, there is one thing that is crystal clear: the force of our words. For while the unfortunate incident raised questions of executive power, military authority and human hubris -- and provoked a necessary but tough response from the Commander in Chief -- it also provoked a telling look at the role of the printed word and its digital purveyors.
So much for the belief that the beleaguered news business is dead.
The week before the four-star imbroglio, six PJN staffers took home as many awards from the national American Jewish Press Association. They placed in categories from commentary to news to features to special sections with a show of solid reporting and writing, as much a validation of their skill as of the relevance of their product. And even as the AJPA meeting, which drew 85 publishers, editors and presenters to Scottsdale for the annual event, included its share of hand wringing amidst the decimated economy and diminished readers and advertisers, the importance of its work, and the commitment of its providers, resonated.
News organizations, glossy magazines and weekly newspapers alike, share a mandate to create an informed citizenry and to inspire critical thinking and conversation about a slew of issues that impact our daily lives, locally, nationally and globally. The newer platforms, from blogs to digital news feeds to social media, only reinforce (sometimes ad nauseum) the human need for news and information. Say what you will about the inappropriateness of McChrystal’s remarks -- and the judgement of the reporter and his editor in printing them -- it is the news organizations, with their eyes and ears on the world and their continuous flow of words, that work to satisfy the innately human need to know -- and keeps McChrystal on our screens, until the next newest story edges him out.
28 Jun, 2010 > Comment - 1 -
Right and responsibility
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A few disclosures. I am a teacher, my mother was a teacher, my daughter is a teacher.
So was my sister, so is my husband, so are innumerable friends and neighbors.
And, yes, I can still name almost every teacher I had from kindergarten into high school,from the one who taught me how to tie my shoes, to the one who invited me to sing (albeit off key) in the elementary school glee club, to the one who reached out to me when I was the new kid in class. Then, too, there was the one who inspired my love of words, the one who helped salve my math anxiety, the one who coached me through high school biology.
So, in our house growing up, it wasn’t just father (and mother) who knew best, but our teachers, those near godlike beings who taught us to diagram sentences, conjugate French verbs, and master geometry. And it was our public school system, revered by my parents, themselves products of the New York City Public Schools, that provided all that and more to my sisters and me.
My parents were fervent advocates, not only for the basic education the public schools imparted, and the inherent possibility to better their lives and then ours, but for the opportunities the school house provided to make them Americans. Where else to learn civics, and civility, how our nation got along and we got along with each other, to understand the things we had in common and the things that made us different, and to appreciate and respect both.
So I came to believe that public education was like so many things, both a right and a responsibility, an essential to the workings of our democracy and an essential beneficiary of our support. Which leads me to next Tuesday’s special election and Proposition 100.
The downturn of our economy has had dire consequences on our state budget with severe cutbacks in essential human services. Schools districts statewide are already reeling from the reductions and stand to suffer even more in the coming year. And by schools, I mean students and teachers, kids whose futures depend on those fundamental building blocks of reading, writing and arithmetic, and the skills of professional educators who work at building them day by day. And teachers who are valued not only for their ability to impart knowledge but for their wondrous capacity to inspire creativity, but who are paid so woefully little for the great responsibility with which we entrust them.
The three- year one cent increase in the sales tax will provide a temporary boost to education funding. Without it, class size likely will increase, art, music and physical education offerings will be further reduced and support services, such as nurses and librarians, will be decreased.
Our kids deserve better, our teachers deserve better, we deserve better.
At the very least, on Tuesday, go to the polls and vote yes.
14 May, 2010 > Comment - 1 -
Medium is the message
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If there was ever a doubt that the medium is the message, you should have been in the audience at Steele Memorial Hall in Phoenix on Tuesday night. Ten vibrant, young Israelis gave voice to the full spectrum of emotions, entrancing their audience for an hour or more with a medley of American show tunes. George Gershwin was the mainstay, along with choice selections from Stephen Sondheim, Cole Porter and Henry Mancini, ranging from dreamy -- Moon River -- to sweet -- Somewhere Over the Rainbow -- to romantic -- The Way You Look Tonight -- to rousing -- I Am on My Way. It was a trip down memory lane for much of the audience, who thoroughly enjoyed both the selection of the American songs and the thoroughly Israeli performers.
The group, second year students at the Beit Zvi School for the Performing Arts in Ramat-Gan, Israel, were in the Valley as part of a city delegation to Phoenix sponsored by the Phoenix Sister Cities Ramat-Gan Committee. The delegation’s whirlwind tour included meetings with city officials, city tours and a weekend trip to the Grand Canyon. The April 27 concert was the centerpiece of their visit, along with an appearance at the community Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration the Sunday before. Tina Robbins, Ramat-Gan committee chair, oversaw arrangements from start to finish along with a raft of enthusiastic volunteers who supplied food, housing and transportation with a generous helping of warm Southwest hospitality.
The students, joining the Phoenix Sister Cities Commission for lunch the day before they departed, expressed deep appreciation for the outpouring of support from the community. Noa Carmel and Ofri Green were overwhelmed with the welcome. “Everyone is so nice and warm,” said Green, who along with Carmel hopes to make a career on the stage or screen. “Very special,” is how Carmel described their visit.
But it was Ran Guzi, another member of the group, who expressed what the exceedingly talented performers hoped to convey through their music and heartfelt performance. Their songs, some sung in English, others in Hebrew, connected the American audience to the Israelis in ways that mere words cannot. “I know the songs, you know the songs, and that makes a connection,” he said. “We bring the audience closer.” The music creates a bridge, said Guzi. And he and the others in the group provided a means for crossing that bridge and accessing both the very vibrancy of Israeli life and the very basic emotions we all share. “It says something about everyone,” he said.
It is a message that comes straight from the medium -- and from the heart.
30 Apr, 2010 > Comment - 1 -