Tagging Along With Taglit

            This week, touring Israel with my daughter, I understood our generation gap a little better, and I understood it because of Birthright Israel.

            Birthright Israel has toured 280,000 young Jews between the ages of 18 and 28 all over Israel.  Called Taglit in Israel, Birthright kept going when the Intifada scared most Jewish tourists away, and it continues today to connect a whole generation of Jews from around the world to life in Israel and to each other.  It was originally funded by Charles Bronfman and another philanthropist.  Some years ago, I took the time to thank Mr. Bronfman personally for this mitzvah, or shall we say, this set of nearly 300,000 mitzvot that he has accomplished.

            Taglit has a rule.  If you’ve already been on a youth mission to Israel in the past, you are not eligible for Birthright.  I had hoped that when my daughter Sasha was a student at Concordia University she might go on Birthright, but she had already been on a sponsored youth mission and was ineligible, to my great disappointment. 

            Last week, Sasha came to Jerusalem to visit us.  We left Jerusalem for a day to visit Tel Aviv, and among the important sights in the area of Rothschild Boulevard is Israel’s “Independence Hall.”  Originally this was the home of Meir Dizengoff, first mayor of the city.  After his death it became the Tel Aviv Art Museum, but that has grown and prospered over the years, having just opened another new wing, and long ago it left the premises of the Dizengoff home. 

            It was decided that the historic importance of the Dizengoff house lay in the fact that Israeli independence was proclaimed there.  The setting of that historic meeting was recreated, with the same dais, the same blue and white drapery and Israeli flag, the same old microphones, the same chairs, each marked with the name of the person in attendance.  After a short and moving introductory film, visitors enter the hall, receive an orientation to the history surrounding the moment, hear a recording of the event, and rise as if with the hundreds originally assembled to sing Hatikvah.  Loren and I have visited before, found it moving, and wanted to share the experience with Sasha.  This time, however, there was a surprise. 

            We arrived early, and it looked as though there would only be half a dozen visitors, when suddenly a vast group of young people with deep, dark bags under their eyes entered Independence Hall.  I whispered to Loren, “It’s got to be Birthright,” and it was.  All were from the USA with the exception of a couple of Viennese young adults, and when we questioned those around us, we learned that their experience in Israel continued daily to uplift them, but also that they were on the go from dawn ‘til dark.  We didn’t ask about their own partying habits. 

            I thought to myself, “This is Sasha’s Taglit.”  It couldn’t have come at a more appropriate moment.  Together we had walked the tunnels of the Western Wall, gotten lost in the Arab Shuk, gone to the Kotel, ambled through the streets of Jerusalem to Machaneh Yehudah public market, a market so huge it makes Jean Talon Market look like a sweet corn stand in St. Zotique.  We had visited Montefiore’s windmill and seen the early Zionist developments, then wandered through the massive and newly refurbished Israel Museum.  (The archeology wing was dedicated to Sam and Saidye Bronfman.)  We walked the steep hills of Ein Kerem and visited Hadassah Hospital, saw the Chagall Windows, and much more.  It was all wonderful, mostly father/daughter, so the time had come for Sasha to be with her generation, and there they were in Tel Aviv at Independence Hall, and in grand numbers.

            A guide stepped forward to speak, and for the next 1 hour and 15 minutes our attention was nailed to each word he spoke.  I want to convey to you the heart of his message and how he reached Sasha’s generation.

            The guide asked if anyone present had a cell phone.  Nearly every hand went up.  It’s the cellular generation, a generation in constant contact with each other by voice and by texting.  Of course, he said, from Hollywood movies, the whole world knows what number to call in North America when you need help.  What’s the number?  A chorus chanted,  9-1-1. 

            When you’re in trouble, he said, you know what to do.  You call 911.  Someone will immediately pick up the phone on the other end and help will be on its way.  An ambulance, police, fire trucks, whatever emergency need you have – 911 will reach a helping hand to get you out of trouble.  That’s the main reason we put cell phones in the hands of our children, so they can call us in an emergency, or if not us, 911.

            In 1948, Jews looked back upon the death camps and the destruction of the 6 million.  Jews looked out at DP camps across Europe.  They saw British troops blocking the way into Palestine for the hundreds of thousands of Jews who needed rescue.  They saw Arab lands cranking up their persecution of Jews after the 1947 UN resolution on Palestine creating two countries, one a Jewish state.  Those Jews who died in concentration camps, those Jews stuck in DP camps, those Jews being persecuted across the Arab world – what was their 911?  Upon whom could they call for help?

            What happened in that room in Tel Aviv, in Independence Hall, can be called the creation of the Jewish 911.  The resolution that the Jewish council passed in that hall did not create the State of Israel.  No.  Read Israel’s declaration of independence carefully  It created a Jewish state to be known as the State of Israel.  For the first time in 2000 years, there was a territorial nation in existence whose purpose was the maintenance and efflorescence of the Jewish people.

            For those outside Israel, this meant that for the first time in 2000 years, they at last had their own 911.  If you were in trouble, shried gevalt, cried for help, someone would, so to speak, pick up the phone at the other end of the line in Jerusalem, and help would be on its way.  That’s what happened in Meir Dizengoff’s old house on Sderot Rothschild in Tel Aviv.  The Jewish 911 was born.  That’s the explanation that made the moment so clear and so compelling to the young people sitting in the room, and among them, Sasha Lerner.  That’s when we rose to sing Hatikvah and tears were in my eyes.  You, too, would have wept.  

            My tears were not simply from the joy of knowing that Israel exists, strong and free, but that my daughter and I shared an understanding about Israel despite the difference in our generations, and all thanks to our cell phones and 911 -- and thanks to a very wise Taglit guide. 

More Wondrous Than Petra

    There are eight wonders of the world.  With seven of them, you pay when you visit.  With one, you’ll pay if you don’t.  I learned this last Monday when we visited Petra in Jordan.
    Petra, one of the Seven Wonders of the World, lies a kilometer or two west of the path by which Moses led the Israelites to the Promised Land.  When you leave Eilat and enter Jordan, you’re walking in the footsteps of your ancestors.  Did they skirt the Wadi Rum, as we did, marveling at the jagged, low mountains and mesas that jut straight skyward from sand dunes?  Now Israelis love to camp there.  Did they thank God that the countryside is less dry than what they traversed in Sinai, or did they peer through mountain passes, craning to get a glimpse of their land, hoping that it was not as sere as it looked.  Today’s Jordan sits on an entirely different plate of the earth from Israel, so soil, climate, and scenery differ somewhat from Israel’s Arava.  It’s desert, yes, but more like Arizona than the Sahara. 
    After turning from the King’s Highway, a four-lane between Aqaba and Amman through territory peppered with Bedouin tents and villages, we head toward Petra.  In the distance on the left and overlooking Israel, a bright white spot tops a craggy, high peak.  The purported tomb of Aaron, Moses’ brother, stands blindingly white against the blue sky, and the mountain, Jebel Nebi Harun, Aaron’s mountain, Mt. Hor from the Torah.  Not all agree that Aaron died on this 4800 foot peak.  Nevertheless, I cannot tear my eyes from it, until at last it is out of sight.  Onward we press to Petra, the abandoned Nabateaean city made famous by Steven Spielberg’s Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
    Petra demands a long downhill walk through a canyon whose colors of red, blue, yellow, green, and beige, tell-tale signs of the minerals found there, streak through tall sandstone cliffs forming a narrow defile.  Along the way, too, are tombs and sculptures testifying to a civilization as fixated on trade as it was on the afterlife.  The narrow, twisting canyon surely qualifies as one of nature’s greatest wonders, the most magnificent city gateway in all the world, ancient or modern.  When at last the end is near, a few columns of “The Treasury,” Petra’s most famous facade, can be glimpsed, hinting at a greater human presence only meters away and beckoning the traveler from the cool canyon to the ancient city’s broad street and warm sun.
    Then you stand before it, The Treasury, so named because the Bedouins in the area were sure that treasure lay hidden somewhere within.  They searched for centuries, but found nothing.  In fact, The Treasury is a tomb, like all the great facades of Petra, tombs carved into the rock, with very little room behind them, for people did not live there.  Only the dead occupied the great “buildings” 2000 years ago.  More recently, Bedouins lived in the spaces, making a life in rooms the ancients had decreed fit only for corpses on their way to Paradise.  The ancient city of Petra, capital of the Nabataean world, existed on the flat places between the hillsides.  Little remains to behold of that life, but Petra retains the way they treated their honored dead, and The Treasury is the best of many such monuments.
    We walked, we climbed, we learned from our guide, we saw and photographed, and then we made the long upward march back to the site’s beginning.  “Why do they call this area ‘Wadi Musa’?” I asked the guide, who explained that locals deemed this the place where Moses had led the Israelites when, dying of thirst, they demanded water.  God told Moses to speak to a stone, and water would come forth for the people.  Moses, however, struck the rock with his staff.  Though water flowed forth nonetheless, God told Moses that he had disobeyed and condemned him never to set foot in the Promised Land.  Then the guide smiled.  “The rock and the fountain of water are here.  Remind me. I’ll take you there after lunch.”
       We ate quickly because we wanted to see the rock, see the water source, Ayn Musa.  A mere minute from our restaurant, the guide was parking his car in front of a small, three-domed structure open to all.  I crossed the street and stepped inside.  A rock that would fit just under a table for six stood above an oblong pool where water continuously gurgled from the earth.  Ayn Musa. 
    I touched the rock, put my hand in the water, considered the Torah traditions and history behind this place, then stood back and let others have their turn.  As Muslims pass in their vehicles, they stop for minute and do as I did.  Our guide said that despite recent drought-filled years, Ayn Musa was giving more water than ever.  “I think it’s a miracle,” he declared.
    I pondered that Moses moment.  Why did it cause God to withhold him from the Land of Israel?  Years before, Moses had struck a rock, and it gave water, but that was early in the Exodus, when he was leading a slave people who had known only the rule of force.  The new generation could not be threatened by a beating.  They were free people, and just as Moses was told to communicate with the rock, so he would have to communicate with the Israelites in order to lead them.  Striking the rock signified to God that, with only 100 miles to the Jericho crossing, Moses was not ever going to become the great communicator.  He led slaves well, but Moses could not lead a free people into the Land.  We, too, are generations that understand communication, reason, feeling, but not force.
    There was another lesson to be learned at that rock.  Petra means “rock.”  Ayn Musa is also a rock.  Petra is Nabataean rock, Roman, Byzantine and Crusader rocks.  Ayn Musa is a Jewish rock.  Loren and I saw Petra’s architecture, its beauty, its stunning canyon colors – one of the 7 wonders of the world.
    Rather do I commend to you the 8th wonder of the world, better than all the rest,  the wonder of a Jewish heart that finds a fountain of inspiration in its own history.  The Musa stone is in Jordan, but it’s Jewish.  The Musa water is in Jordan, but it’s Jewish.  The stone and the water are in a Muslim memorial, but it’s Jewish, too.  Moses, the stone, the water – they tell our story, bring us a step closer to Israel, testify to our God-given need to be free and to speak our truths.
    We paid a price to visit Petra, and it was worth it, though Petra is largely a monument to the dead.  Nearby, Ayn Musa touches the eighth wonder of the world, the living Jewish heart, which must revisit the message of Moses’ rock in every generation.  It calls us to renew Jewish life and leadership in our time, to grow as free people do, through heartfelt communication, not through force.  If we Jews do not speak our hearts to each other, there’s a price to pay: the cost is our future.

The Day the Music Lived

    The day the music died - it may be a song you know from Rock'n'Roll days, but for a lot of us, the music died a year ago when Debbie Friedman, originator of contemporary Jewish music, passed away.  Saturday night, I listened to the forbidden sounds of Debbie Friedman and let my soul be rocketed upward. 
    You know Debbie Friedman's music, even if you don't think know you know it.  If you've ever been at services when we offered a "Mishebeirach for Healing" prayer, you sang Debbie's music.  If you ever attended our Shabbat Chanukah evening, you heard "Not By Might and Not By Power."  If you attended a bar or bat mitzvah at Temple or sang along to a modern Shehechiyanu,  you probably heard Debbie Friedman's compositions.  She influenced an entire generation of Jewish music and, I dare say, taught us rabbis some important lessons.
    Debbie died last year at the age of 59.  Saturday night, one year later, we marked her yahrtseit at Hebrew Union College on King David Street in Jerusalem with a Melaveh Malkah, a gathering to bid farewell to Shabbat entirely dedicated to Debbie Friedman's music.  Cantorial students and others formed a choir of voices, with guitars, drums, and piano, and the hundreds of people in attendance, of every age, but heavily weighted toward youth, all sang their hearts out.  The spirit in the synagogue was palpably inspiring and energetically uplifting.  There was laughter.  There were tears.  There were a few short reminiscences, including Debbie's own voice from a recorded interview.
    One of the MC's asked,"How many of you here can remember a special Debbie Friedman moment?"  I certainly could.  Debbie Friedman was from St. Paul, and it was at Mt. Zion Temple, where I was rabbi-ing, and in NoFTY, the Northern Federation of Temple Youth, that her star began to rise.  The Temple employed Debbie to help her get started after she returned from a long visit to Israel.  Her first album, the one that put her on the Reform Jewish charts, was partly recorded with the choir of the high school she had once attended.  Debbie sang  at my daughter Sasha's bat mitzvah 15 years ago.   For me, there were a lot of memories at that Melaveh Malkah: singing the music, sharing the yahrtseit with so many others, letting recollections flow. 
    Above all, there was the spirit of Jews united.  Her songs, largely settings of prayers, made us one as we reviewed through Debbie Friedman's music what we stand for, what we are all about.  And yet for some, her music is forbidden.  There are places where her inspiration cannot reach. 
    A few months ago, 9 "religious" Israeli soldiers walked out of an official army event because it included singing by some Israeli women.  As far as these soldiers are concerned, the voice of a woman is a forbidden temptation to lust.  They were booted out of the military school they were attending.  The Israeli in the street was infuriated at the 9, but Tsahal needs the participation of "religious"-oriented Jews.  It remains to be seen whether Tsahal can hold the line in the future.
    Of course, Debbie Friedman was a woman.  An entire segment of Israeli society will never listen to the exciting and very Jewish music that she wrote.  But wait, there's more.
    Last year, one person told a reporter, 'We're not even allowed to use any of Debbie Friedman's music in our congregation.  The rabbi forbids it because she's gay.'
    Yes, Debbie Friedman was gay, but for her, that was part of her private realm.  Her music, her life's work was not about gayness .  It was about inspiring Jews to love God and our tradition.
     Debbie herself said, "More than people need me to come out as a gay person, they need me to come out as a liturgist and a spiritualist. People are more uptight talking about God, more inhibited about God language and God concepts, than they are about sex.
    "That concerns me -- people's spiritual inhibitions. That is my agenda: that people's spiritual vocabulary is so limited, even as they're so spiritually hungry without knowing how to nourish themselves."
    Debbie Friedman was gay, but in respect to the musical inspiration she wanted to give - and did give to the Reform Movement, and through us to all Jewry -- being gay was irrelevant.  By force of her own talent, personality, and creativity, she did wonders.  Not only did she make it possible for contemporary rock and ballad music to become part of our liturgy, inspiring hundreds of other Jewish songwriters, but she filled gaps in our faith and practice.
    What Reform rabbi offered a prayer for healing until Debbie wrote her Mishebeirach?  She confronted the rabbis and taught us how to return a key spiritual dimension of caring to public Jewish worship.  When we read about the Israelites crossing the sea, we heard only Moses' song until Debbie noted that Miriam and all the women sang and danced, too, according to the Torah.  You should have seen them singing and dancing Saturday night when Miriam's Song was played.  It was Debbie, too, who helped finish off the service that was reserved for listeners only.  When Debbie sang and played her guitar, we all wanted to sing along, to clap, and to add our own fillips to the music. 
    So if we in the Reform Movement had said, "She's gay.  Her music is forbidden," how much poorer, how much less inspired, how much less committed we would all be as Jews.  Letting Debbie Friedman do her thing - and accepting and loving her as she gave us her gifts -- wrought the greatest change in Jewish worship music of the last 175 years.
    How great a change was it?  The Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music in New York City, our school that trains cantors for the Movement and for all Jews, was recently renamed "The Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music" -- named after a woman.  Named after a gay woman.  Named not after a person who endowed it with cash, but after a gay woman who endowed her soul to God and the Jewish people and whose gift was ruach, soul-spirit.  We turn down such gifts at the peril of Jewish survival.  Accepting such gifts from any Jewish person - Ashkenazi, Sephardi, male, female, white, black, straight, gay - lifts us all towards the light of Judaism's greatest teachings.  
    Forbid me from having the inspiration of Debbie Friedman's music because she was a woman?  Or because she was gay?  Thank God, that's not Reform Judaism.
[Debbie Friedman's music:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcBTze-T4o ]