Muslim Atheist Christian Jew and African American Living and playing Together For Humanity (Not in) Retreat

The setting was a cottage in the Blue Mountains, complete with a wood fireplace in the lounge room. The cast of characters included; a 21 year old female African American, a student of criminal justice; a 26 year old Australian, a Muslim man of Lebanese heritage; myself, a Jewish man more than twice their age; three women with young children including a Catholic teacher, of Croatian heritage; an atheist social worker of Hungarian heritage; and a Hijab wearing Muslim of Cocos Island and Anglo heritage; as well as another male teacher, of German and Peruvian heritage. This was the Interfaith, Intercultural Together for Humanity retreat.

Instead of talking about our work, we lived and played our message of building inclusive diverse community. Not only are there foods that the Muslim participants and I are forbidden to eat; for me, even the cooking utensils need to be Kosher. So I used a sandwich-maker to cook Kosher and Halal pumpkin and eggplant, lentil burgers and scrambled eggs. The three males cooked dinner one night, with the youngest, a newly married man, cooking a delicious pumpkin soup. As is so often the case, despite the men’s efforts to clean up during and after cooking, the women unfortunately ended up with the lion’s share of the cleaning up.    

Prayers were done quietly in another room, with people disappearing at various times. Otherwise, religion came up informally. We played a game together called ‘Apples to Apples -Jewish Children’s edition’ that I sometimes play with my kids on a Saturday afternoon. Each participant got 5 red cards that had a word on them that is part of the world of a Jewish child. The play involved selecting one of these cards to match with a green card that contained an adjective. I wondered if the unfamiliar cultural references would make the game fail or provide a glimpse into my world and spark cross-cultural conversation. Fortunately, it certainly turned out to be the latter.

In our game, one of the red cards referred to the festival of Shavuot. The card sparked a conversation about how my family celebrates Shavuot, with a dairy meal with blintzes with mushrooms and cheese, and lots of ice cream. Often, Shavuot afternoon is spent in front of a live wood fire, just as we did in our mountain cottage. Another card referred to queen Vashti, who refused to appear naked before her husband’s drunken friends to show off her beauty. This led to sharing perspectives on women standing up to unreasonable men. Perspectives on gender politics were exchanged, along with personal and family stories, late into the night. We learned a lot about each other’s’ families. Some of it was funny, some of it was sad. While I sensibly went to bed at 11, others talked till 1 am.

Names were the topic of another conversation. One man’s migrant German father was insistent on assimilating his family into Australian culture. Rosario became Sharon or Shazza. And a ‘fat lot of good’ it did for the high school aged son, who was emphatically told he was a ‘wog’, and not Australian. Worse still, despite his grandfather having been a partisan who fought Hitler, the bullying of the grandson included giving him the nickname Nazi! It was even printed on the back of his year 12 jersey.

We had a great bushwalk in the mountains together. But I also went back into the forest alone. My heart was filled with a feeling of connectedness, and my mind was mulling over a disturbing story from the weekly Torah reading, about a man who was put to death for collecting firewood on the Sabbath (1). Like the altruistic bunch in the cottage, according to the sages, this man was an idealist (2). The context of his collecting these sticks was that he was 'in the desert' (3). His people had failed to have faith in God’s Promised Land, so they were condemned to never leave the bleak desert and see the realization of their dreams (4). In that case, they reasoned, there was little point in continuing the practices that lead to a better world. Just throw in the towel and forget about the Sabbath. One man, our wood collector, wanted to be test case for the Sabbath, to show that the practices must continue and he was prepared to die to demonstrate that the Sabbath was still to be taken seriously. He is praised for his effort (5).

There are reasons to be pessimistic about the degree to which the human family is ever going to achieve the “Promised land”, of true acceptance and affirmation of all people, in all our diversity. It often feels more like a long term stay in the desert than an imminent arrival in the lush forests of the Blue Mountains. However, regardless of where we are right now, or what the short term prospects are for achieving our dreams, we can and indeed we must continue to live and play this vision. 

Notes

1)    Numbers 15:32-36.

2)    Midrash, cited in Tosafot, on Bava Basra 119b, Dibbur Hamaschil Afilu.

3)    Numbers 15:32.The fact that the text mentions their presence explicitly despite this being obvious is pointed out by the Chida in Torat Hachida, 66, p. 91.

4)    Numbers 13:1-14:35.

5)    This interpretation is based on the Midrash above and the Chida in Torat Hachida, 66, 71, 72 p. 91-93.

Driven and Depleted, Reflections on Orientations to Work

“And the fish in the river died, and the river stank” (1). This is a description of a plague upon the Nile river, at a time that the Hebrews were dehumanised and driven to perform hard labour. In our own time, the depletion of the Darling river system and the death of over a million fish at Menindee is devastating for the people who live near and depend on the river. While this blog post is about depleted human beings, rather than rivers I see a parallel between the ways in which we are taking too much out of rivers and humans. In this blog post I argue that the stresses of modern life can be reduced by de-emphasising materialistic striving and replacing it with a more spiritual and accepting worldview.

I was moved by an article by Dr. Anne Helen Petersen on How Millennials Became The Burnout Generation (2). She describes depleted people. Simple tasks can make millennials feel overwhelmed. “I was deep in a cycle of “errand paralysis.” I’d put something on my weekly to-do list, and it’d roll over, one week to the next, haunting me for months. None of these tasks were that hard: getting knives sharpened, or vacuuming my car. A handful of emails — one from a dear friend, one from a former student asking how my life was going — festered in my personal inbox,... to the point that I started calling it the “inbox of shame.” 

Petersen argues that: “Burnout and the behaviors and weight that accompany it aren’t, in fact, something we can cure by going on vacation. ...it’s not a temporary affliction: It’s the millennial condition. It’s our background music. It’s the way things are. It’s our lives.”

What is going on? Some of the elements in the article by Petersen are the following: 

Purpose: This generation has been “trained, tailored, primed, and optimized for the workplace — first in school...— starting as very young children”. (3)

Expectations: Millenials have great expectations that emphasise individual fulfillment and success: A students told Professor Petersen: “I want a cool job I’m passionate about!” For millenials the job needed to tick 3 boxes; “employment that reflects well on their parents (steady, decently paying...) that’s also impressive to their peers (at a “cool” company) and “doing work that you’re passionate about”. More broadly, there were expectations that the current generation would be better off than their parents’ generation in terms of health and finances. Many millennials have realised that this expectation is not being met. “One thing that makes that realization sting even more is watching others live their seemingly cool, passionate, worthwhile lives online”.  

Work Conditions and rewards: Apart from the distortions created on social media, there are real injustices in the ways that many modern workers are rewarded for their hard work. The nature of the work itself is exhausting for many people. There is a tendency to work 24/7, replying to emails in bed, is one example of this. “The exhaustion experienced in burnout combines an intense yearning for this state of completion with the tormenting sense that it cannot be attained, that there is always some demand or anxiety or distraction which can’t be silenced”. 

How does one respond to this situation from a Jewish perspective? 

Judaism insists that beyond values like progress, and success in the “market”, lies a higher spiritual purpose to life. To protect the earth (4) in addition to working it (5), “The doing of justice, the love of kindness, and to walk discreetly with your God” (6); It is about righteousness (7), and holiness (8) and behaving in way that contributes to the “glory of God” (9). Of course, one does not need to be religious to live for a higher purpose. 

Like life in general, education must also be oriented toward a higher purpose, preparing children for this purpose rather than for work. The Lubavitcher Rebbe taught that education focused on work-readiness was spiritually similar to what the Egyptians tried to do when they threw Hebrew boys into the Nile. The Nile was an Egyptian God and the source of their livelihood. The Rebbe railed against those he believed were “throwing Jewish children in to the river of the customs and mannerisms of the land, ...which to their mind gives them “Parnasa”, their livelihood” (10). 

The disregard for secular knowledge can certainly go too far. Good Jewish schools combine Torah education and excellent secular education. Their students learn; how to be good, well functioning people, good Jews, as well as the skills and knowledge required for the workplace. 

The virtue of diligent work in highly prized in Judaism (11). However, let us not deceive ourselves that preparation and hard work always deliver wealth. Expectation is a great source of misery. It is utter rubbish to believe that if you expect something “the universe will give it to you”. In fact the evidence proves that exclusively positive thinking can reduce your successes  (12). Instead we are encouraged to aspire to equanimity- the ultimate virtue (13), happily accepting whatever outcome we get (14). Not easy, but worth aspiring to. 

Freed of expectations we can try to ‘go with the flow’ rather than be driven at work. We are instructed to rest on the Sabbath but in six days we should do “all our work” (15). This means that on Friday when we finish work, we regard it as complete and avoid thinking about on the Sabbath (16). Any work not done in the previous week is irrelevant to the week that passed. It is next week’s work! The psalms said it best “It is a falsehood for you, early risers, delayers of sleep, eaters of bread of tension! Indeed He [God] will give sleep to those he loves” (17). 

To change our individual thinking and habits is not enough. Pederson reflects on the fact that despite seeing injustices in the workplace, “we didn’t try to break the system, since that’s not how we’d been raised. We tried to win it”. The Torah demands that “justice, justice you shall pursue” (17). Perhaps we can start with replenishing ourselves by orienting ourselves to a more spiritual sense of purpose and a balanced pace of work and life. The next step is to engage with our communities and politics to ensure that people, the rivers and natural environments that nurture us are all cared for effectively. 

Notes

1. Exodus 7:21
2. https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/annehelenpetersen/millennials-burnout-generation-debt-work
3. Malcolm Harris cited in Petersen 
4. Genesis 2:15
5. Ibid and Job 5:7
6. Micah 6:8
7. Genesis 18:19
8. Leviticus 19:2
9. Pirkey Avot, 6:11
10. Likutei Sichos Vol 1, p. 111-112
11. Genesis 29:7, and 31:39-40 and many other sources in the oral law
12. Kappes, H. and Oettingen, in Lomas, T. (2016) The Positive Power of Negative Emotions, Piatkus, p. 48
13. R. Bachya ibn Pakuda (Chovot Halevovot, Sha’ar Yichud Hama'aseh, ch. 5), p. 44 in Feldheim edition,  The Baal Shem Tov, https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/145431/jewish/Tzavaat-Harivash-2-3.htm 
14. Pirkey Avot,4:1
15. Exodus 20:9 
16. Mechilta cited in Rashi
17. Psalm 127:2
18. Deuteronomy 16:20

Eruv, An Angry Intercultural Misunderstanding And A Democratic Contest

It's the morning after a big night of democracy and I was still quite emotional about it. Two hundred of my neighbors attended a meeting at my local council to be part of a tense and dramatic debate about the “St Ives Eruv". “What is that?” many would wonder.  Apparently the answer to that question was hotly contested.

For some of my neighbors it is a highly divisive threat to the community, for others it's offensive infrastructure. For me, and for many Jewish members of the community, it's a technical religious solution to a practical problem, particularly for young Jewish mothers and their families. According to Jewish law, one should not carry anything in public areas on the Sabbath. For centuries this has meant that men and children went to the synagogue on Saturday morning for several hours of prayer and community while mothers of young children and babies stayed home, as pushing a pram or carrying a baby in public on the Sabbath is not permitted. Today's young women think of themselves as full members of the community and they are not happy to stay home, they also want to visit family and friends and to be included in community prayers on the Sabbath.

The solution to this problem has been the creation of a symbolic set of doorways, called an “Eruv” which would mean that the area encircled by these symbolic doorways would be deemed a great big courtyard, allowing them to push their prams and carry children. With the abundance of power poles in the area and the wires between them the simple addition of plastic conduits on the side of the poles completes the Eruv.

A few years ago an Eruv was proposed to the council, our local government authority. A website was created that referred to the Eruv simply as a wall. The council refused permission. I respect the democratic process and accepted the decision of our elected officials at the time. The organisers of the Eruv pursued the legal process further but eventually received legal advice that they didn't need council permission to proceed. The Eruv went up, allowing women to join their communities for prayers on the Sabbath..

Recently, the Eruv saga took a wild turn. A new application was lodged with council and some residents framed their opposition to it a leaflet. They claimed there was a real “risk of an Eruv morphing into a religious enclave”  Furthermore, “By the very nature of an Eruv, the process of segregation, as opposed to integration must take place.” And it was “establishing a modern version of the ghetto...and eventual expulsion of secular people who live within the Eruv.” These claims were essentially repeated to the packed meeting at Council.

The original translation of Eruv as a wall probably contributed to this misunderstanding. However, a big part of the problem was that opponents of the Eruv relied on internet research to understand their own neighbours’ religion and culture, rather than talking to them directly. One local Rabbi has challenged his congregation to reflect on how much or how little effort we as a Jewish community make  to connect with our neighbors. On the other hand, we heard at the meeting from a warm-hearted Jewish teacher and mother named Megan who actually knew the names of all the diverse people who live on her street.. She talked passionately about how the Eruv helps her connect with the wider community, rather than being divisive. A young lady who was not Jewish passionately echoed Megan’s sentiments.

It was hard to tell which way the tense meeting would go. One opponent argued that the original refusal was the decision of the umpire and must be respected. One councillor argued that this was all about human rights. An Anglican minister argued this was about religious freedom. Another councillor argued this was not about tolerance or rights, it was about plastic conduits! I think asserting that “the issue is categorically not what the other person is saying", is one of the most annoying tactics to use in a conflict, cross cultural or otherwise. Clearly for the 200 people in the room is was about needs, process and principles, not just plastic.

A stand out comment was made by a councillor who had lived near a mosque in the inner city. He talked about how he made friends with the people at the Mosque and there were no problems. In response to the concerns about a religious enclave and objections to the plastic conduits, he asked rhetorically, “really?!”

In the end, the vote was eight for the Eruv and two against. There was a great feeling of joy in the room for those who won.

I approached an elderly Jewish woman who had spoken against the Eruv on the ground that it would create a Ghetto. I listened to her politely. She told me to get with the times, and embrace the modern idea of assimilation. I held my tongue. I wanted to say that in fact in these times, we longer expect people to hide their differences. This conversation was on Tuesday night, Australian time. By the next morning the results of the US election were known and it seemed she was up to date with the Trump era while I stuck in the past age of Multiculturalism. I don’t accept that this is the case. Trump’s attitudes to women and certain non-whites, in my view, represents a fading (yet substantial) relic, still putting up one last fight. Practically all the speakers against the Eruv were angry, people of advanced age. The world has changed to embrace difference, but we need to fight to keep the change and foster greater acceptance of diversity or at least tolerance. On Tuesday night on the North Shore of Sydney, we had one very sweet small victory. More to come!   

I dotting, Inactivity and Inspiration

The process for choosing a leader for the largest faith community in the world has begun in Rome. I would like to think that what would be uppermost in the minds of the selectors is identifying who is the most compassionate, most committed to justice and charity, most devout, tolerant, spiritual, sensitive, wisest, boldest, noblest visionary candidate. I would imagine there are other practical qualities that are being considered seriously, such as something as mundane as management skills for example. This is a good time to think about the role of spiritual and moral leaders of significant faith or values based institutions broadly and for me personally. In particular, beyond vision and guidance how important are management skills to implement the vision and the ability to run a compliant, accountable organisation? How much of a priority is to be still and to contemplate? All of these issues are deemed to be important in the Torah reading this week in the portions Vayakhel-Pekudei[1].

The first conflict is between the priorities of action vs. stillness. Moses has a temple to build and there is great excitement, should this activity pause for the Sabbath rest? A robust argument could be made for action to take priority. Surely, ‘since the temple symbolised God’s presence among the nation, its creation should take precedence over the Sabbath. Perfection (would presumably) lie in action rather than rest. Action seems a much more eloquent witness of faith than merely the absence of work[2]’. This argument is repudiated in God’s command to Moses in the midst of the discussion about the temple that the Sabbath rest must be observed[3]. Lesson one inverts the famous action oriented saying to advise us: “don’t just do something, sit there!”, at least for one day out of seven.

The tension between institution building activity and quiet contemplation plays out in a lovely Midrash that presents it as a conversation between the Sabbath and God. The Sabbath says “Master of the World, you created me from (the time of) the six days of creation and you sanctified me, now you are instructing the Jews about matters of the tabernacle but my name you don’t mention. Perhaps, out of the love Israel has for making the tabernacle they will desecrate me”. Immediately, God turned to her and told Moses to write about the Sabbath in this portion that deals with the work of the tabernacle to show that it’s construction does not override the Sabbath …[4]” I take this as a message that while “doing” and building is important, a spiritual endeavour must include an emphasis on retreat and reflection.

While quiet time helps us stay true to ourselves, building institutions is really important and exciting work that occupies many page of the Exodus. After Moses went up on the mountain and was with God for forty days and nights, not even eating or drinking[5] as he received the law and the most amazing revelation at Mt Sinai, he goes on to build a physical building to contain the vision, the relationship with God and the message.

I think Moses would have hoped this could be his focus, but this is not to be. He has the scandal of the Golden calf. What an incredible let down, by the people he was so committed to helping. These were the people who were meant to be on his team. What have they done?! Yet this too is part of leadership, to support the flock and be there for them in their struggles with their human frailties.

Photo by Mrs. L. http://www.flickr.com/photos/nosmoking/ 

Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0 Generic 

(CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Creative Commons License.

After the drama of the Golden Calf, Moses deserved a holiday. Instead he threw himself into the construction of the Tabernacle. Yet, another challenging task was still ahead of him, the extremely practical and mundane task of accounting for the donations. Moses is focused on the following bits of information. “the gold of the waving was twenty nine talents, seven hundred and thirty shekels in the holy Shekel[6]The silver of the community numbers was one hundred talents and one thousand seven hundred and seventy five shekels in the holy Shekel. One hundred talents of the silver were used for casting the sockets of the Holy and the sockets of the dividing curtain; one hundred sockets out of one hundred talents, one talent for each socket. And out of The one thousand seven hundred and seventy five [shekels] he made hooks for the pillars, and he covered their tops and banded them…” and on and on it goes.

According to commentary, a bookkeeping error meant that Moses was very worried about a 1775 shekel discrepancy which is the reason for the word “the” in the preceding verse, after that particular bit of expenditure was identified. Moses was elated when this accounting problem was solved[7].

This work is not fulfilling or exciting yet it is required. Like Moses, I embrace it and accept the great importance of doing right and being seen to be doing right. The compliance, governance and audit responsibilities all come with the territory and are part of the sacred work. Once these are attended to, other matters of worship and vision can be realised. This is as true for me as it is for the next pope.

---

[1] Exodus 35:1-40:38

[2] Abarbanel cited in Leibovitz, New Studies in Shemot Exodus, p.655

[3] Exodus 35:1-3

[4] Midrash Hagadol cited in Torah Shlaima, Vol 23, p.3

[5] Exodus 34:28

[6] Exodus 38:24

[7] Midrash Tanchuma 7