Category Archives: Judaism

September 9, 2013 · 8:32 am

Building Community with Soul

by Shira Sebban (Sydney, Australia)

I can no longer live a meaningful life without my Jewish community. My teenage son calls it an addiction. But my love for my community does not stem from mere habit, nor am I guided by compulsive need or blind infatuation. On the contrary, it has taken years of soul searching and trial and error to find the appropriate community where my family has been able to take root, grow and contribute.

Since ancient times, philosophers like Aristotle (Politics, 1.1253a) and more recently, Spinoza (Ethics, IV, prop 35) have argued that we are social animals. As Rabbi Hillel famously said, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? And if I am only for myself, what am I?” (Ethics of Our Fathers 1:14) In other words, “All Israel are responsible for one another” (Babylonian Talmud, Shevuot 39A, Sifra Bechukotai 7:5).

The Talmud actually defined the type of society where scholars were allowed to live: The chosen city had to include a beit din (law court), an honest charity fund, a synagogue, public baths and toilet facilities, a mohel (circumciser) and a surgeon, a notary, a shochet (ritual slaughterer) and a teacher (Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 17b). As Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Executive Director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, has explained, “in order to be a suitable place to live, a community must provide for all its members’ spiritual and physical needs” (www.myjewishlearning.com).

Yet, it was not until my own father’s death ten years ago that my longing for such community became so urgent. I had once asked him whether he would wish to be buried in the same cemetery as his parents and extended family in Toronto, Canada. “We should be buried within the community where we live,” was my father’s reply. By that time, he had been residing in Melbourne, Australia, for more than 30 years.

He was espousing the teachings of both Rabbis Hillel and Tzaddok, who urged us not to separate ourselves from the community (Ethics of the Fathers 2:5, 4:7). Indeed, Judaism teaches that those who are not prepared to feel their community’s pain and help out when the going gets tough, will not enjoy comfort in the good times either. As the Talmud warns, “The man who secludes himself from the community, which is in distress, shall not see the prosperity of the community” (Ta’anit, chapter 1).

A midrash goes even further, maintaining that removing yourself from the community is like overthrowing the world. It tells the story of the dying Rabbi Assi, who was depressed because although he had been a great scholar and kind and generous man, he had not been involved in communal matters or disputes. As he told his nephew, “I might perhaps have been able to render some service, had I not kept to myself but taken upon me the burden of communal affairs” (Midrash Tanhuma, Mishpatim 2).

When my father died, I did not know where to turn. Although we had belonged to various Orthodox synagogues in the past, my husband and I had not been able to find a spiritual home since moving to a new city some years earlier. As a result, we had flitted from one synagogue to the next, sampling a different one on each Jewish holiday but not feeling “at home” in any of them.

Nevertheless, I was touched when one of the rabbis, whom I had met in the course of my search, rang several times to see how I was faring. When upon my father’s first yahrzeit (anniversary after death), the same rabbi offered me his synagogue for a memorial service, we finally made up our minds to join his congregation – after such generosity on his part, we believed it was the least we could do.

That sense of welcome, warmth and support through both tough and good times remain major factors in why we renew our membership each year. Judaism ensures that mourners do not grieve alone, stipulating that Kaddish, the prayer for the dead in which God’s name is sanctified, only be recited publicly in the presence of a minyan (ten Jewish adults – the minimum number required for community). Celebrations also become more meaningful when enjoyed together in community.

As our sons have grown older and undertaken preparation for their Bar Mitzvah, our family has come to attend synagogue every Shabbat. Our shule of choice is Conservative (Masorti): Integrating tradition with modernity, it allows us to sit together as a family instead of banishing me behind a mechitza (partition to separate men and women).

This egalitarian ethos is particularly important to me as I do not have any daughters and would otherwise be sitting apart from my husband and sons. Nevertheless, it was several years before I felt comfortable being counted in a minyan and agreed to be called up to the Torah. Not that there was ever any pressure on me to do so – our synagogue accepts a certain variety of Jewish practice.

It also gives us the freedom to question and acknowledges our right to consider different interpretations and viewpoints. As Robert Gordis, chairman of the Commission on the Philosophy of Conservative Judaism, has explained: “Pluralism is a characteristic not only of Judaism as a whole, but of every Jewish school of thought that is nurtured by the spirit of freedom” (JTS: Emet Ve’Emunah: Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, 1988, Introduction p14).

In addition to my synagogue, the Jewish day school my children attend is another pillar of my community. Pluralistic and egalitarian too, it welcomes students of all backgrounds, who come together in mutual respect and are encouraged to work for tikkun olam, making the world a better place. So committed have I become to this philosophy that I decided to volunteer for the School Board when my oldest son was in first grade and have remained actively involved ever since.

According to Rabban Gamliel, the son of Rabbi Judah HaNassi, “Those who work for the community should do so for the sake of heaven” (Ethics of Our Fathers 2:2). In other words, the early rabbis were urging us to be ethical when we undertake communal work. As Rabbi Yehudah Prero explains, “We must act with pure intentions, with no ulterior motives” (“Community – Then, Now, and Forever, www.torah.org/learning/yomtov/holocaust/no3.html).

Humility is also an important factor: The Talmud not only regards leaders as the “servants” of the community (Horayot 10a), but also stresses that they should always carry “a basket of reptiles” on their back so that if they “became arrogant”, they could be told to “Turn around!” (Yoma 22b). In other words, never forget that family skeleton hidden in your closet!

Recognizing the frailties of human nature, the ancient rabbis resorted to divine reward and punishment as a means of encouraging ethical communal leadership: those who cause others to do wrong will not be “given the opportunity to repent”, while those who lead others to do good will be credited with their community’s merit (Ethics of Our Fathers, 5:18).

Sure, as Rabbi Yitzchak Blau has pointed out, the rabbis did not think it fair that communal leaders should enjoy heaven while their followers rotted in hell, but is there really no hope of redemption for those who lead others down the wrong path? Here scholars disagreed, with some arguing that while God would not help the wrongdoers, they were still free to repent on their own. In contrast, the medieval scholar and physician Moses Maimonides is much more damning in his assessment: for him, there is truly no hope of salvation for such wicked leaders (Hilchot Teshuva 4:1, http://blog.webyeshiva.org/teshuva/inights-in-pirkei-avot-the-implications-of-causing-others-to-sin).

Admittedly, such threats have little effect in this day and age when many of us don’t even know whether we believe in God. Nevertheless, it is still possible to contribute altruistically to and derive meaning from community based on religious civilization. Conservative (Masorti) Judaism recognizes this position as valid: “One can live fully and authentically as a Jew without having a single satisfactory answer to such doubts; one cannot, however, live a thoughtful Jewish life without having asked the questions” (Statement of Principles of Conservative Judaism, p17).

My oldest son has commented that without faith, a prayer service is just “a group of strangers singing together”. Yet, I have certainly discovered a sense of inner peace, spiritual uplift and intellectual stimulation through regular attendance at synagogue services and communal celebrations like the Pesach Seder.

To quote the writer Alain de Botton: The “relevance” of such religions as Christianity, Judaism and Buddhism “to the problems of community are arguably never greater than when they … remind us that there is also value to be had in standing in a hall with a hundred acquaintances and singing a hymn together … or in sitting at a table with neighbors and partaking of lamb stew and conversation, the kinds of rituals which, as much as the deliberations inside parliaments and law courts, are what help to hold our fractious and fragile societies together” (2012, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer’s Guide to the Uses of Religion, London: Penguin Books, p50).

De Botton – who was born Jewish but describes himself as a committed atheist – argues for the removal of religion’s “supernatural structure” before it can help solve “many of the problems of the modern soul” (pp311-312).

My soul, however, does not need to be quarantined from the full gamut of my religion in order to thrive. Indeed, I am quite happy to keep on exploring the laws and customs of my heritage and culture, practicing rituals and contemplating ideas from within Judaism. All I need is my community.

Shira Sebban, a writer and editor based in Sydney, Australia, worked as a journalist for the Australian Jewish News. She previously taught French at the University of Queensland and worked in publishing. She also serves as vice-president on the board of  Emanuel School, a pluralistic and egalitarian Jewish Day School. You can read more of her work at: https://jewishwritingproject.wordpress.com/category/australian-jewry/ http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13636  and at http://shirasebban.blogspot.com.au/

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July 30, 2012 · 10:07 am

The Inner Palace

by Ilan Braun (Le Tour-du-Parc, Brittany, France)
Little Adam sleeps and dreams
In his mother’s inner palace
Little Adam in his tightly closed fists holds Knowledge
Like a delicate full bloom flower
He knows everything about the universe
And the world above
He knows the Divine Law
From the first letter, Alef, to the last one, Taf
Little Adam knows and understands the Creation’s mysteries
All of them without exception
Why the whales sing under the rolling waves
Why the moon shines during the darkest of nights
Why the sun breeds the day every morning
Why Man and Woman like one unique being
And why this, and why that, and so much more
Little Adam in his mother’s heart
Even with closed eyes, sees All
The huge Time space before his birth, and right after
Yesterday, today and tomorrow on the same horizon
With closed eyes, he smiles
Because Angels, with love, surround him
And rock him with melodious lullabies
Till he dreams again
Alas, the long and sweet inner Night is ending
And being torn apart
Tender dreams suddenly ending
The Day is rising blinding Little Adam with too much brightness
From his mother’s heart expelled
Crying and moaning from alien pain
As an Angel, with his finger, has given him total oblivion
Here is Little Adam on his own on this earth
And forever seeking the lost Palace
Ilan Braun, a retired French journalist who wrote for L’Arche, is a poet, writer, painter and amateur historian on the Holocaust and post-war Jewish clandestine immigration to Israel. He has lived in Israel and Australia and visited over 30 countries.

You can read more of his work in Labyrinthe poétique: De la terre au ciel (Publibook, Paris, 2009) and in English (“The Oak of Tears”) in Under One Canopy: Readings in Jewish Diversity, edited by Karen Primack (Kulanu Inc. Silver Spring, MD. 2003).

For more information about his work, visit: www.ilanbraun.dr.ag

 

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August 30, 2010 · 7:05 am

On Teshuvah

by Louis E. Newman (Northfield, MN)

All of us at one time or another have had the experience of losing our way. Sometimes, perhaps when we’re traveling in a foreign place, we become completely disoriented. At first we think we know which way to head, but when we set out in that direction we discover that our own sense of direction has failed us. When we realize that we don’t have the foggiest idea where we are or how to get to our destination, we are thoroughly lost. Such moments can arouse profound feelings of helplessness and even despair.

Being morally lost likewise involves a sense of despair. We have fallen into the same patterns of hurtful or self-destructive behavior so often we feel that we’re beyond the point of being able to change. We don’t know which direction to turn in order to find our way back to a life of honor and integrity. And before long we may come to believe that, for us at least, there is no way back. I have known many addicts who have lived for years with such feelings of helplessness.

Ultimately, though, the point of all these metaphors of movement is that the same steps that led us into the ditch of transgression can lead us back to the high road of ethical living. Teshuvah—returning—is the name Judaism gives to this process of retrieving our sense of direction. Repentance is the ultimate form of return. After turning our gaze away from God and straying from the straight path, we can still find our way back. And it is as simple as taking just one step in a new direction. For turning in a new direction, by as little as one degree, will lead us over time to a wholly different destination.

Louis Newman has been thinking, teaching, and writing about Jewish ideas for over 30 years.  One of the country’s leading scholars of Jewish ethics, he is the John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies and the Humphrey Doermann Professor of Liberal Learning at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. His most recent book is Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah (Jewish Lights 2010).

This excerpt is from Repentance: The Meaning and Practice of Teshuvah @ 2010 by Louis Newman (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights Publishing). Permission granted by Jewish Lights Publishing, P.O. Box 237, Woodstock, VT 05091. www.jewishlights.com.

To read more about Dr. Newman and his work, visit http://www.jewishlights.com/page/product/978-1-58023-426-9

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January 18, 2010 · 9:54 am

As the sequoias

by Chaviva Edwards (Storrs, CT)

The first time I went to a Conservative synagogue, I was told by a friend that when the mourner’s kaddish is recited, to stay seated unless I actually am in mourning for a lost loved one. I sat there as a few of the 20 or so people there stood up on old, worn ankles, tired hips mustering the strength to stand tall in the sanctuary while reciting the prayer that does not once mention death. I mouthed the words to myself, because it was what I knew — when reciting kaddish, the congregation stood together with those mourning, each holding each other up. This is an across-the-board kind of thing, though it varies from shul to shul. I can confidently say that most Conservative/Orthodox shuls are the kind of places where only the mourners will stand.

But last night at Erev Rosh Hashanah services, the rabbi gave probably the most poignant explanation for why all congregants should stand during the kaddish. He told the congregation about an article he had read about the seqouias — the tall trees that grow thin and high. The roots of these trees are pretty much at surface level, that is, they do not grow very far below the immediate surface. So how do these trees stand so very tall when threatened to be blown over by the smallest breeze? The roots are intertwined across entire forest areas. The roots lace together, creating a strong, solid structure, a base of root upon root that allows each tree to hold his neighbor up, and in turn, to hold up the entire collection of sequoias. Without one, they all would falter.

How appropriate is this? How beautiful an analogy for why a congregation should stand, arms intertwined and souls laced together tightly in a sanctuary space with those mourning and those not mourning, simply to support one another in a time of extreme sadness? Like the sequoias, Jews, too, should interlace themselves, standing tall and help one another brave the wind that blows soft, then hard, across our cheeks.

Chaviva Edwards, currently residing in Storrs, Connecticut, is in her second year of the master’s program in Judaic studies at the University of Connecticut. In her past life, Chaviva was a copy editor for such publications as The Denver Post, The Daily Nebraskan, and The Washington Post. Alongside her master’s work, she is rekindling her insatiable desire to edit through special projects involving Judaism and Jewish topics. She is an avid photographer, devotee of her many blogs, and a Web 2.0 connoisseur.

You can find more of her work at www.kvetchingeditor.com, chaviva.yelp.com, www.twitter.com/kvetchingeditor, and flickr.com/photos/kvetchingeditor

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December 7, 2009 · 7:51 am

Following the Lead of My Radical Foremothers

by Dina Ripsman Eylon (Thornhill, Ontario, Canada)

The idea to start an academic journal on Jewish women came to me while researching the lives of Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, Mania Shochat and Netiva Ben Yehuda for an article on women in the military in pre-state Israel. I realized that despite the fact that these women were instrumental in military organizations prior to the establishment of the Jewish state, nothing about them was mentioned in history textbooks of the period. Growing up in Israel during the 1960s and 1970s, I was not aware of the contribution of any of these women, except for Rachel Yanait Ben Zvi, (the wife of the second president of Israel) even though during this time in North America, the Second Wave of the feminist movement flourished.

Confounded by personal reflections and undefined theories forming slowly in my mind, I devoured books in the fields of women’s history and feminism. I wanted to know more about complex issues like Jewish marriage and divorce, and the role women were expected to play in the family. I wanted to understand political and social structures that propagated discrimination and inequality.

Through this personal quest for enlightenment, I was introduced to the works and philosophy of the renowned novelist and author Virginia Woolf. In the late 1920s she explored the subjects of women’s history and writing. Woolf delivered two lectures on the topic of women and fiction at the Cambridge women’s colleges of Girton and Newnham. She examined women’s writing from all possible angles and famously concluded that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction,” and inevitably, if she is to write anything at all, or be written about. In A Room of One’s Own, her subsequent work, she articulated women’s inopportune historical exploits and boldly stated: “For most of history, Anonymous was a woman.”

In Israel, the question “what does it mean to be Jewish?” does not surface except for the need to affiliate oneself with either the secular majority or the observant minority. When I arrived in Canada in 1980 to pursue my graduate studies, I learned that being a Jewish woman was not limited to being merely secular or religious. Jewish identity was not inherent but actually a product of one’s self-search or desire to belong socially. Assuming a Jewish identity was a choice that many women wanted to make.

As the eminent Jewish feminist Susan Weidman Schneider wrote in her seminal work Jewish and Female, “the tension for Jewish women today comes from the struggle to stay within the tradition yet not compromise one’s identity and integrity as a woman.” Weidman Schneider described a variety of ways in which these identities are sought: changing and feminizing known rituals, “rediscovering” new aspects of Judaism that may relate to women, studying sources and texts to discern women’s input, and moreover, “transforming traditional Judaism and Jewish institutions so that they include women…”

Schneider’s book was another milestone in shaping a more defined view on the life of Jewish women in North America and helped to crystallize my feminist ideology. It was an ideology based on a determination to empower women by the only weapon I had – education.

As the founder and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism in 1997, I wanted to help create ‘a paradigm shift’ within the field of Jewish Studies and build a new one reintroducing the findings to what is considered now the ‘mainstream’ or “malestream” study of Judaism. Since its inception, the journal has gained international readership and is listed in dozens of directories and indexes. In addition to publishing prominent scholars, the journal promotes young and emerging scholars and makes it a priority to give a voice to materials that most likely would have never been published by “malestream” Jewish periodicals. The journal welcomes a diversity of points of view, conflicting or harmonizing, in order to develop a genuine dialogue.

Our primary goal is to give Jewish women an uninterrupted voice, a place where all voices are heard and listened to, devoid of any patriarchal sponsorship or censorship.

Author and publisher, Dina Ripsman Eylon has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She has been teaching various undergraduate courses at Carleton University and at the University of Toronto. For the past twelve years, she has served as the publisher and editor-in-chief of Women in Judaism: A Multidisciplinary Journal (http://www.utoronto.ca/wjudaism/journal/journal_index1.html), a gender-related publication, which has engaged and promoted new feminist scholarship in Jewish Studies. Her book, Reincarnation in Jewish Mysticism and Gnosticism, was published by Edwin Mellen Press (2003). Eylon founded the Vaughan Poets’ Circle and serves as the Thornhill branch manager of the Ontario Poetry Society.

This piece is based on Dina Ripsman Eylon’s “No More Anonymity,” which appears in Living Legacies: A Collection of Inspirational Contemporary Canadian Jewish Women (edited by Liz Pearl). It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

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September 29, 2009 · 10:26 am

The new year cometh

by Chaviva Edwards (Storrs, CT)

Tomorrow at sundown begins Rosh HaShanah, one of four Jewish new years, also THE Jewish New Year by practical terms.  We feat this weekend and then, on Oct 1-2, we consider the trespasses of the past year; how we turned our backs in the field to a G-d so presently standing before us with openness.

I want to share a bit from my “A little joy a little oy” desk calendar. Every now and again it has something fruitful and funny. I always put my calendar a day ahead so I don’t get behind or confused when editing for tomorrow’s paper. In reality, I work a day ahead. But I was poking far ahead to see what the calendar had to offer, because I won’t be here this weekend because of the holiday. For Sept. 23, the calendar quotes Rabbi Neil Comess-Daniels in his 2000 Rosh HaShanah sermon.

“… it’s time to put your hand in the hand of someone you love … and recognize that we only have a very short opportunity to be the humans upon the sand and not the pebbles. … It’s time to recognize that the real value of our lives is … experiencing the … seemingly insignificant things. It’s time to recognize that things don’t need to be the slickest … to be great … and appreciated. It’s time to repent but not wallow in repentance. … It’s time to take a stand for … what we believe. … It’s time to realize that we are as small and as very large as the pebble upon the sand, no matter how we count the years. Amen.”

I think it’s incredibly well written and speaks to the essence of the High Holy Days. I look back on the month of Elul at this point and think about a rebirth and renewal I wasn’t expecting. I’ve met someone who makes me feel alive and happy — someone who speaks to my heart without wanting to change me (Ani L’Dodi V’Dodi Li). As the new year approaches, I’m thinking about how life has handed me something precious, something to be truly thankful for as the new year approaches. Yom Kippur will give me a chance to consider the past year and some of the horrible, insane things that went on and that made me turn my eyes downward and away, into the dirt at my feet instead of the figure in the field. It’s funny how long and changing a year is and yet how we can catalogue its events like a shopping list. I intend to mark things off of the list and leave it in the dirt near my feet as I walk away from 5766 and into 5767.

In this week’s parshah, Moses sings to Am Yisrael, saying “Remember the days of old / Consider the years of many generations / Ask your father, and he will recount it to you / Your elders, and they will tell you” how G-d “found them in a desert land.” Moses tells them how G-d made them a people, chose them as His own and gave them a bountiful land. So I remember and give thanks for my people, past and present, not to mention the future of the Jewish nation.

Also something to consider: Ramadan begins on the second day of Rosh HaShanah. Two religions and nations in strife must share a day that happens to be holy in both spheres. I only hope that, with this in mind, perhaps the Middle East will sit still for a day, relishing in the gifts they’ve been given — the Jews for their Torah and Israel and the breath of life and the Muslims for the giving of the Koran to Muhammad. Neither religion or nation is blemish free. I’m not going to argue politics or history, for both peoples have committed crimes and acts that G-d would sooner mark us off than have to watch. But let us hope, and pray, that on Sept. 24 both groups — and all of those who live near — can calm their minds and hands to reach not for triggers but apples and honey.

Chaviva Edwards, currently residing in Storrs, Connecticut, is in her second year of the master’s program in Judaic studies at the University of Connecticut. In her past life, Chaviva was a copy editor for such publications as The Denver Post, The Daily Nebraskan, and The Washington Post. Alongside her master’s work, she is rekindling her insatiable desire to edit through special projects involving Judaism and Jewish topics. She is an avid photographer, devotee of her many blogs, and a Web 2.0 connoisseur.

This piece first appeared on Chaviva’s blog, Just Call Me Chaviva, www.kvetchingeditor.com , in September, 2006. It’s reprinted here with permission of the author.

You can find more of her work at www.kvetchingeditor.com, chaviva.yelp.com, www.twitter.com/kvetchingeditor, and
flickr.com/photos/kvetchingeditor

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May 25, 2009 · 8:00 am

The Truths of the Holocaust

By Lev Raphael (Okemos, MI)

Novelist and editor William Dean Howells famously told Edith Wharton that the problem with American audiences was that they always wanted “a tragedy with a happy ending.”

That longing explains what led to the recent controversy over Herman Rosenblat’s Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence: The True Story of a Love That Survived, now canceled by the publisher Berkley Books, though a film version may still be in the offing.

The story won hearts across America and its teller appeared twice on “Oprah.” As a young boy, Rosenblat wound up in the German concentration camp of Schlieben, 95 kilometers northeast of Leipzig in eastern Germany. This satellite camp of Buchenwald made munitions, and for six months (or seven according to some versions) he had wordless encounters across the barbed-wire fence with a Jewish girl hiding locally, pretending to be Christian. For that whole period, she threw him food. Fifteen years later, they met on a blind date in New York and discovered, to their mutual amazement, that he was the boy behind the barbed-wire fence and she was the girl who fed him. And so, they were married.

I missed this heartwarming tale in all its versions online and elsewhere, but as soon as I tuned in to it in December, when the New Republic reported that there were doubts about Rosenblat’s forthcoming book, I realized it didn’t add up, couldn’t add up. My parents were Holocaust survivors, and I’ve read about and studied the Holocaust for over 30 years, publishing fiction and essays about the legacy of survivors’ children. Nobody was allowed to approach concentration camp fences on either side, prisoners or strangers. The fences were usually electrified and extremely well guarded. The notion that any kind of communication like the one Rosenblat describes could continue unobserved at a concentration camp for six months, let alone six days, is risible.

In one online version of the story, Rosenblat addresses the improbabilities at their first meeting, but in doing so, further undercuts his own veracity: “Of course, you couldn’t touch the fence, because it was electrified. And even if you got near the fence, the Nazis would shoot you. Yet something on the other side of the fence caught my eye: a young girl, 10 years old, hiding behind a tree … I asked this little girl, in German: ‘Do you have anything to eat?’ I saw that she didn’t understand me, so I repeated the question in Polish. Next thing I knew, she reached into her coat, took out an apple, and threw it toward me … it actually landed in between the two rows of barbed wire, so I took a big risk crawling in there to reach it. But it was worth it. How long since I’d seen an apple!”

Given the height of the fences and their solidity, how could a little girl have thrown food over the outermost one and how could he have crawled between them without anyone noticing?

A memoirist friend of mine opined that if Rosenblat had been a talented writer, he would have taken the fence “story” and turned it into a dream sequence; after all, camp inmates did dream about food, as Primo Levi and many others have reported. Rosenblat belatedly told the New York Times, “In my dreams, Roma will always throw me an apple, but I now know it is only a dream.” Of course, a dream in Rosenblat’s memoir wouldn’t have earned it the same kind of notoriety, despite the fact that the story of anyone surviving the camps is in itself astonishing enough without having to embellish the truth.

Still, it’s not surprising that Rosenblat’s ghost writer, his agent and his editor were taken in, and didn’t ask enough questions. Ditto Oprah, who seems to be making a habit of pushing faked memoirs. Rosenblat’s story satisfies our American need for romance; our desire to find a happy ending even in the most unspeakable tragedies; our desperate and perhaps juvenile need to feel that even in the Holocaust, love and kindness overshadowed evil.

The truth is far less romantic. Anna Pawelczynska, a Holocaust survivor who became a sociologist and wrote about Auschwitz years after her liberation, observed in her book, Values and Violence in Auschwitz, that the golden rule was not a good vade mecum in the camps, where Western norms had collapsed under the Nazi onslaught of brutality. But it did exist in an altered form: “Do your neighbor no harm, and if possible, help him.”

A late cousin of my mother’s once told me that my mother saved her life in their camp by getting her some cheese when she was sick. She didn’t know how my mother managed, but she was convinced that given the miserable rations, the meager amount of extra protein was enough to help her recover.

My mother never told me this story herself, and as a story, it’s not big enough to make it to Oprah or a film. It doesn’t satisfy our need for dramatic, splashy events that can somehow turn tragedy into triumph. But it’s far closer to the truths of the Holocaust — that in the face of this rampaging evil, acts of heroism and mere kindness were few and far between, and often only in a minor key — truths that decades of memoirs, films, histories and Holocaust education courses don’t seem to have brought home.

Lev Raphael, a prize-winning pioneer in American-Jewish literature, has been publishing fiction and nonfiction about the Second Generation since 1978. The author of nineteen books which have been translated into almost a dozen languages, he has spoken about his work in hundreds of venues on three continents. His fiction and creative non-fiction are widely taught at American colleges and universities. A former public radio book show host, academic, and columnist, he can be found on the web at http://www.levraphael.com.

You can check out his latest book, the memoir, My Germany: A Jewish Writer Returns to the World His Parents Escaped, at http://www.levraphael.com/mygermany.html.

And you can view a YouTube excerpt from one of his talks at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UFhrajH-6AE

This essay is reprinted with permission of Salon.com,where it originally appeared under the title “The Holocaust memoir so heartwarming it had to be fake.”

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March 23, 2009 · 7:53 am

Shma Israel

By George  Oscar  Lee (Aventura, FL)

Hear O Israel…
This time O Lord You listen!
Did You, God, see the smoke from Auschwitz
Made of innocent souls?
Or read the sign Arbeit Macht Frei?
Did You hear the moans of murdered children?

Shma Israel, Adonoy Eloheynu
God in heavens!
Where are the millions of your chosen?
Soil covered their mass graves,
Unburned remnants of holy Torahs
The wind swept with wilted leaves.

Shma  Israel, Adonoy Eloheynu, Adonoy Echod
You are our Sovereign, look at Treblinka
At stones with engraved names of the cities,
Those are countless fingers.
Fingers pointing at Your cold skies
In mute accusation of J’accuse… J’accuse… J’accuse!

Shma Israel, Adonoy Eloheynu, Adonoy Echod
Echo of our offering ricochets
From our earthly globe
To the whole universe.
Instead of Shma  Israel
We hear only Kaddish… Kaddish… Kaddish…

_____

George Oscar Lee was born in Drohobycz, Poland. In June, 1941, he ran away to Russia, just ahead of the invading German troops, and was arrested by the NKVD.  Eventually, he was released as a Polish citizen, joined the Polish Army at the end of 1943, and participated in the Liberation of Warsaw. The author of five books, many short stories, and poems published in The Forward, Bialystoker Shtime, Slowo  Zydowskie, and Ziemia  Drohobycka, he lives in Aventura, FL.

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March 9, 2009 · 7:33 am

Caring For Our Parents

by Rena Y. Polonsky (New York, NY)

It is a short, shocking story:

“Ham, the father of Canaan, saw his father’s nakedness and told his two brothers outside. But Shem and Japheth took a cloth, placed it against both their backs and, walking backwards, they covered their father’s nakedness; their faces were turned the other way, so that they did not see their father’s nakedness.” (Genesis 9:22-23)

Noah becomes drunk and reveals himself, acting in a way that does not seem fitting for a man who is called righteous. And it is Noah’s children who are there to witness their father’s bizarre behavior, and care for him when he is incapable of caring for himself.

This strange story of uncharacteristic behavior and role reversals may sound all too real and true for a person whose parent has Alzheimer’s or Dementia. In what seems like a moment, our parents change before our eyes, doing things that seem incomprehensible for them, and we are left to care for these people we hardly recognize.

Our parents are our first role models. While pop culture and media provide us with idols and icons, our parents are real examples of strong people who do incredible and profound things–even when they are small acts–right before our very eyes.

Our parents are the ones who teach us to care and love. They are the people we expect to have answers and advice, even when we don’t want to hear it. Our parents are who we want to care for us when we are sick. But what do we do when they can no longer care for themselves, let alone us?

What happens when our parents can no longer care for themselves, but instead require us to take on the role that they have longed filled in our lives? What do we do when the parent we know is no longer the person sitting next to us? How do we explain to ourselves that the person we are caring for is still our beloved parent even if they don’t remember us all the time?

Noah revealed his own nakedness. He was intoxicated and shamed himself. Ham merely walked in on his father acting in an immature and disgraceful manner and then reports it to his brothers. The Eerdman Commentary states that “…since Shem and Japheth remedy their brother’s mistake simply by covering Noah up without looking at him, it is unnecessary to posit any acts of sexual intercourse by Ham.”

However, Shem and Japheth’s reactions do insinuate that Ham has done something wrong. Ham leaves his father in the vulnerable state and then reports to his brothers what he saw. Sarna comments that, “Ham compounded his lack of modesty and filial respect by leaving his father uncovered and by shamelessly [gossiping] about what he had seen.”

Ham sees his father in a state that we don’t normally see our parents in. Ham enters his father’s tent and is completely dumbfounded at seeing his father not only drunk, but acting in a dishonorable manner, and responds to the shock by blabbing to his brothers. Ham does not know that even though he has seen his father fall from “hero” to a regular man that he must still treat him with the greatest of dignity. And while, as the Etz Chayim commentary points out, “We lose a great deal if we come to see our parent or teacher as just another person,” we are still responsible for taking care of and honoring our parents, maybe even more so now that they have fallen from grace a bit.

Being a caregiver is never easy. We are constantly being asked to give of ourselves, with little time to take a breath and sort out our own emotions. We are overrun with the big and the little, never knowing which should take more precedence. We feel silly and dramatic worrying about how the health and well-being of another will affect us, yet knowing that it does change our lives. Being a caregiver to a parent only raises the ante on all of these emotions and questions.

When our loved ones are vulnerable, we must help to cover them and learn to accept them as human beings, just as weak and helpless as we sometimes are. Our parents and teachers are still our elders and honorable, even when they are no longer infallible. And, if we try hard enough to accept them as imperfect human beings, we may be able to see them as even greater heroes than we had before.

What’s more is that our parents are just as afraid and unsure of how to respond to their own vulnerability. Noah’s actions seem to not fit with what we know of him. Perhaps he responds to his changing status and his aging by heavily drinking because he does not know how to confront what is happening to him. Just as we must learn to accept our parents’ vulnerability, so too must we help them to adjust.

When we switch roles generously with our parents, when we become the caregiver and care for the one who has always cared for us, we have the potential to bring the greatest honor and respect to our parents.

As Ecclesiastes 3:12-13 reads: “My child, help your father in his old age, And do not grieve him as long as he lives. If his understanding fails, be considerate. And do not humiliate him when you are in all your strength.”

We honor our parents and raise them up, even when they can no longer do this for themselves.

Rena Y. Polonsky, a fourth-year rabbinical student at HUC-JIR, serves currently as the rabbinic intern for the URJ Department of Jewish Family Concerns.

A slightly different version of this essay originally appeared at Jewish Sacred Aging, an online forum for the Jewish community offering resources for exploring the implications of living a long life. It is reprinted here with permission.

You can visit Jewish Sacred Aging at: http://www.jewishsacredaging.com/Home_Page.php

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