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Five books you need to prepare for the High Holidays

8/11/2023

It would be foolhardy for a person to walk into a gym and, having never before picked up a barbell, attempt to bench press twice their weight. It would be considered even more absurd for the same person to spend 45 minutes lifting and flexing the maximum of weights, abandon the gym, and wonder quizzically why, three weeks later, they lack the bulging pectorals and washboard abs that they expected from the promotional photos.
And yet millions of American Jews will show up in synagogue this year and do the intellectual and spiritual equivalent: show up, expect to be spiritually uplifted and emotionally re-regulated by a few hours in a sanctuary. No doubt, they may be uplifted and adjusted. But the effects are, most certainly, fleeting at best.

For the High Holidays to have their greatest impact, it’s best to come to synagogue in the right headspace — mentally prepared for the prayer-and-text marathon the shulgoer is likely to engage in. High Holidays, in the right frame of mind, can be life-changing. An aimless person can leave with direction; someone in a malaise can find new purpose.

To get the desired effect from synagogue services, it takes a little soul work. There are many brilliant spiritual works that will adjust your attitude for the Yamim Noraim (Days of Awe). Here are my favorite five for 5784. (Note: For folks who eschew the synagogue in favor of another outlet for spiritual change at the beginning of Tishrei, these recommendations work equally well. In fact, I daresay that these books may succeed at moving you even better than a sermon, a prayer or the blast of the shofar.)
As always, with matters of personal growth and spiritual transformation, your mileage may vary. Either way, the time to order one or two good books that will help a person to put in the work they need is just about now.

“On Repentance and Repair,” by Danya Ruttenberg
Getting right when you’ve been wrong is perhaps the most dominant theme of the introspective period leading up to Rosh Hashanah and culminating at Yom Kippur. But it’s not so simple as “owning mistakes and saying sorry.” Rabbi Ruttenberg has a fresh take on apology that’s also 1000 years old as she applies Maimonides’ “Hilchot Teshuvah–Laws of Repentance” to the modern world. She asks, for example, how the #MeToo perpetrators could properly atone for their errors. Ruttenberg also asks big questions about atonement for national sin, considering the Holocaust and South African reconciliation, and Black slavery in America. This book will make you approach Yom Kippur in a different way.

“Torah Without End,” by Michael Strassfeld
One way to deepen the holidays is to find a new and different read on Torah. “Torah without End” is a collection of interpretations of Torah portions, prayer passages and holidays from 93 teachers, scholars and rabbis; some you may know (Art Green, Naomi Levy, Shefa Gold) and some who may be the next generation of spiritual lights (Dorothy Richman, Sam Feinsmith, Melila Hellner-Eshed). Some of these essays are brief, but they accomplish the essential work of uplifting and inspiring — like a motivational message on your bathroom mirror. This is the kind of book you read in dashes and spurts, and fill with post-its and flags to hold the page of that thing you really liked and want to re-read again and again.

“This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared,” by Alan Lew
I imagine there are people who have read this cover to cover over a day or two. I cannot; I refuse to. In fact, in four attempts, I have never finished this book. I read four or five pages. I stop and ponder over the meaning of existence and God and human growth and obligation and fallibility. Lew is poetic and instructive and guru-esque but also deeply personal; you feel you know him. The book’s title is perfect, and yet the book really will prepare you for the High Holidays, even if you, like me, never actually finish reading it. One might argue that this book, if properly read, is never finished.

“Inspired,” by Rachel Held Evans
Held Evans’ book is part spiritual autobiography of a woman’s struggles with the faith of her upbringing, part biblical poetry and midrash workshop. She is going on the same quest that all persons of faith are on, but she brings her readers along to expose the painful and difficult parts; when she ultimately arrives at some new place, they feel like they’ve arrived too. Held Evans was a Christian, but both her approach to the Bible and her struggles with faith and misogyny are universal to the point of feeling deeply Jewish.

“Beginnings Anew: A Woman’s Companion to the High Holy Days,” by Gail Twersky Reimer and Judith A. Kates
A better subtitle for this book would have been “25 essays that re-interpret everything you thought you ever knew about Sarah, Hagar, the Akedah, the biblical scapegoat ritual and the story of Jonah.” The scholarly essays in this book were all written by women, but their intended audience is anybody interested in unreading the biblical texts so that they might re-read them in new and improved ways. The essays I found most perspective-shifting were those by Devora Steinmetz, reading Jonah against Elijah; Naama Kelman, who envisions the scapegoat’s journey into the desert as our own journey; and Marsha Pravder Mirkin, exploring the Rosh Hashanah textual selections as explorations of empathy. But again, there are many modes and methods in this book for all manner of readers. PJC
Rabbi Mark Asher Goodman serves spiritual communities in Pittsburgh and Erie, Pennsylvania. He is the author of the recent book “Life Lessons from Recently Dead Rabbis: Hassidut for the People.”

Original posted at PJC:
https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/five-books-you-need-to-prepare-for-the-high-holidays/

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Tetzaveh 5783 - We stand with the Trans Community

3/18/2023

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Every so often, it becomes valuable, or perhaps necessary, to check in with the current moment in American politics and culture and see where we are. I like learning hassidut and bringing it’s insights from the weekly parsha to you all, but some days a rabbi must look up from a 200 year old book and see what is going on around him. There are lots of things going on right now in America - some good, some bad. There is one thing that is specifically bad - and that is the scapegoating in America of one particular super-minority, and that is transgender individuals.

The trans and non-binary population in the US is approximately 0.5 percent, which is exceedingly small, until you remember that the Jewish population of the US is about 2 percent, and the Conservative Jewish population is 17 percent of all American Jews - meaning as a total population, Conservative Jews make up maybe 0.3 percent of the US population.

For individuals born with male genitalia who identify as female, and individuals born with female genitalia with a total sense that they are truly a man, and additionally for those who just don’t identify their gender as a simple binary category of either this or that, life starts off very difficult. They are dressed and identified by their parents according to their outward physical characteristics, and go through childhood, adolescence, and sometimes well into adulthood feeling like something is wrong. The process of both understanding that and then deciding to go public with it and act on it is very psychologically difficult. It comes with stigma, and shame and a lack of acceptance to an extreme degree. In 2018, the American Academy of Pediatrics revealed a study that demonstrated that more than half of transgender male teens had attempted suicide, and 29 percent of transgender female teens had attempted suicide.

If you’ve been watching the news lately, you know that state legislatures in Florida, Missouri, Kansas, Texas, Mississippi, Arkansas, West Virginia, and Utah have all taken steps to ban or restrict medical care for transgender adolescents or restrict drag shows. While Americans are looking for common sense things like gun control, better access to quality health care, a promise that social security will be there when we need it, we’ve got politicians trying to tell us who can or cannot wear a blouse, and politicians trying to tell parents and doctors what hormone blockers they can or can not prescribe. Let’s call this attack on a small, scapegoated minority what it is: an attempt to score cheap political points off the backs of an incredibly vulnerable population in an attempt to fight the culture wars instead of do what state politicians are supposed to do - serve their constituents and find common sense solutions that make their lives better.
The inflection point in America generates from a simple premise - that the culture of America can be determined by laws and politicians. Typically the politicians attempting to make those determinations of what our culture ought to be are coming from a place of Christian values, and of a particular brand of conservative Christianity that many of my pastor and minister colleagues would not agree with.

Let us be very clear: Judaism’s approach to gender and identity is not at all aligned with the restrictive bills or anti-trans positions we are seeing all across America right now. Some politicians have been proclaiming that there are only two genders, and that your gender assigned at birth is the only relevant gender for the rest of one’s life. According to Judaism going all the way back to the Talmud, this is incorrect. There are six genders according to the Talmud - zachar, nekeva, tumtum, androgynus, saris hammah, and aylonit. Those roughly translate as male, female, one that has neither set of genitals, one that has both sets of genitals, one without a functioning male genitalia, and one who presents as a man but possesses female genitalia. So the rabbis understood that gender was a spectrum almost 2000 years ago.

As time has gone on, our society has medically and psychologically understood that gender and sex are two different things - the appendages you have are not the same as what you yourself fundamentally identify as. The process of aligning those two incongruous things is much easier today than it ever was before - hormone blockers, and surgeries referred to colloquially as ‘top surgery and bottom surgery’ have never been more advanced, more routine, and more understood than today. These medical procedures - after careful, deliberate work with a series of doctors across multiple fields typically over several years - have brought great relief and peace to folks who have struggled with their sense of self for many years.

From a Jewish perspective, affirming and supporting the gender identity of a person is rooted in two huge overarching commandments. The first is that humans are created ‘betzelem elohim’ - in the image of God. One might erroneously conclude that this moral statement from the first chapter in bereshit concludes that God made a person physically one way, and therefore we humans should not change it. That is incorrect. The Jewish interpretation of betzelem elohim based on a section of Talmud called Sanhedrin is that God made humans all in the image of God, and yet each one is completely unique, for as the Talmud says ‘for humans stamp many coins with one seal and they are all like one another; but the King of kings, the Holy One Blessed Be, has stamped every human with the seal of the first man, yet not one of them are like another.’ In other words, God made humans complex, and diverse. And we celebrate that diversity as a sign of how wondrous God is. A person as they are in their own identity and humanity is as God wants them to be.
The second moral principle is pikuach nefesh - saving a life. The saving of a life is the most important principle in Judaism. If a starving person on the brink of death finds food, but it happens to be a pulled pork sandwich, they eat the pulled pork sandwich. If it would violate shabbat to put out a fire but the fire could kill a family in their home, you put out the fire. When a population is acutely and measurably predisposed to suicide - you help them. You do what it takes to affirm and protect their lives.
The politicians engaged in passing these laws often fall back on the idea that they are protecting children from harmful or unnecessary hormone therapy or surgery - that there is some pernicious woke leftist agenda encouraging otherwise happy healthy 9 year old boys to wear dresses and cut off their penises. This is, frankly, absurd. I know several trans and non binary children. I know their parents. In fact, some of you know, my younger child identifies as non binary. I AM one of these parents. No parent is encouraging anything of their children. Parents of trans and non-binary children are trying their best to navigate a strange and confusing world in which a child feels weird and different, and wants to wear their clothes different and their hair different than their parent might have originally expected. We are simply parents doing what parents do - protect and love our kids as they are, ensure their happiness, and give them what they need to flourish. That’s our agenda. It doesn’t seem pernicious to me.

The Conservative movement overwhelmingly supports transgender rights. Our movement believes that doctors, psychologists and psychiatrists are the experts on what and when it is appropriate to prescribe medicines or perform surgeries. We rabbis support families as they go through these transitions, to support and love them, and create necessary ceremonies that affirm these transitions. The Committee on Jewish Law and Standards, the Conservative movement’s Supreme Court, has issued three legal responsa on transgender and non-binary issues in the past 15 years. All affirm the role of the doctor and patient in determining what and how to go about the transition. All affirm that gender identity is fluid, and that individuals determine their gender identity, not the gender assigned at birth. The responsa are all ex post facto attempts to solve Jewish questions like what language do we use to call a trans or non binary person to the torah? If a male trans person converts, do they need the ritual ceremony of hatafat dam brit - which is normally done as a poke and a drop of blood drawn from the spot where a man would have had a non-ritual circumcision? What language and legal contract language would we use for the marriage of a non binary or transgender individual? Which set of hevra kaddisha - the men or the women - would serve for a trans person that died? There are more, but you get the idea.
The point is, Judaism accepts and affirms trans individuals. Full stop, no ifs ands or buts. Our teshuvot - our responsa - begin from the assumption that transgender individuals have a right to physically assume the characteristics of the gender with which they identify. The question of whether gender is fluid was overwhelmingly answered in our community 2000 years ago. Modern rabbinic pronouncements simply continue to accommodate trans individuals in our rituals and communities to the best of our ability.

Attempts to change, restrict, or ban medical transition in parts of the United States are against the Jewish tradition. They are an assault on parents rights, on doctors rights, on individuals rights. The people crafting the restrictions are engaged in the scapegoating of a vulnerable population, which is the kind of fascist demagoguery that gets equally thrown at other vulnerable minority groups throughout the world, like Jews. These scapegoating attacks sometimes result in hysteria and violence against the scapegoated parties. It is clear, for instance, that the rise in antisemitic conspiracy theories and hate speech in the past decade has resulted in a rise in antisemitic violence. The same will take place for the trans community - the scapegoating results in violence, like the attack on a gay bar in Colorado Springs just a few months ago.

In two verses in this week’s Torah portion, Vayakhel, the text identifies that men and women both participated in the contributions of materials and the building of the mishkan, the portable tabernacle. In 35:22 it says “Men and women, all whose hearts moved them, all who would make an elevation offering of gold to Adonai, came bringing brooches, earrings, rings, and pendants —gold objects of all kinds.” And in verse 29 it says “Thus the Israelites, all the men and women whose hearts moved them to bring anything for the work that God, through Moses, had commanded to be done, brought it as a freewill offering to Adonai.” In these two verses, the genders are specified in the text, but not the offerings of each gender - implying that the men and women were both wearing earrings and brooches. It’s not so simple to determine who wears what and what that means in ancient Israelite society. We might map our preconceived notions of gendered apparel and jewelry backwards into the past, but that is mere speculation. While there may have been conventions about gendered dress in the time of the mishkan, the mishkan itself is the collective contribution of the garb and finery of all the Israelites. And the collection - blue stones and all manner of colored gems, gold, silver and bronze, fabrics of purples and reds and blues, and tanned hides - was clearly meant to be a rich and exquisite fantasy. The mishkan was like a drag show, except that the mishkan is the one dressed up in a shimmering and glittering gown. God wants God’s holy place to be sparkling and fabulous. Think Elton John meets Lady Gaga. And of course, nobody stops and asks ‘do we think the mishkan is too masculine… or too feminine?’ Its materials are as God commanded, but its final form is according to its artisans – Oholiab and Betzalel. Gender identity is not dissimilar - our final form, our bodies and our outward physical appearance, are constantly in flux, and serve only as the current manifestation of our true selves. And how we look on the outside - our size and weight and height and attractiveness and apparent gender presentation - is of course only the merest glimpse into who we truly are as people; what we believe; what we feel; all our collected memories; and who we genuinely are and wish to be.

In Exodus 25, regarding the ark of the covenant, the aron kodesh of the tablets that contained on them the ten commandments, we learn the following:
וְצִפִּיתָ֤ אֹתוֹ֙ זָהָ֣ב טָה֔וֹר מִבַּ֥יִת וּמִח֖וּץ תְּצַפֶּ֑נּוּ וְעָשִׂ֧יתָ עָלָ֛יו זֵ֥ר זָהָ֖ב סָבִֽיב׃
Overlay it with pure gold—overlay it inside and out—and make upon it a gold molding round about.
Interesting. I can imagine why we would coat the outside of the ark with gold. But why on earth would we need to coat the inside of the ark with gold? Once the tablets of the law were placed inside the ark and it was closed, it was never opened again. Why coat the ark with gold that nobody is ever going to see? The rabbis tell us that it teaches that our outsides would be like our insides - we should be holy and pure on the outside and on the inside. Our physical manifestation should mirror our internal manifestation - beautiful inside and out. For a trans individual, the idea is similar and yet different. More so than remarking on the quality and beauty of inside and out matching one another, this text teaches us that we should respect trans individuals’ desire for their insides and their outsides to line up. They feel one way on the inside - it is right and good to support their efforts to match their insides with their outsides.

It is therefore very Jewish and moral to not only accept but to actively support trans rights in every place - at the local, state, and national levels. If you encounter conversation denigrating trans individuals, you can plainly say ‘my God and my sacred texts teach that people have a right to trans affirming health care. We stand with the trans community.’ Denigrating your fellow human is the opposite of godliness. The Jewish path in the world is not to denigrate, but rather to elevate. Gold inside, gold outside. Shabbat Shalom.

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From where does self confidence come?

2/28/2023

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A few weeks ago I was struck by a sudden sense of self-doubt. I had written something; I had taught something; I had said something; and none of the things felt all that fantastic. I thought 'ucch. I'm not sharp. I'm just meh.' Considering that the synagogues I work for always need another lesson, another dvar torah, another article, this is not a good feeling - the feeling of doubting your own ability.

I would assume almost everyone goes through this. The few folks who seemingly never doubt their own abilities are the types of person I might suggest one stay away from: cult leaders and con artists. People like that suffer from too little self-doubt, and it leads them to mistreat others. But I digress.

As the Torah turns away from the narrative story structure and into the realm of intricate details of priestly ritual and temple artifact construction, we get a little detail in Exodus 28:3 that gives an insight into human self-doubt. The Torah says "Next you shall instruct all who are skillful, whom I have endowed with the gift of skill, to make Aaron’s vestments."

Rabbi Meir Shalom of Porishov said, 'There are those that seek to serve God, but simply do not believe in the powers of themselves, and they fear to approach. They say Who am I that can enter the palace of the King? On this the Torah teaches "whom I have endowed with the gift of skill." Thus all are fitting to wear the mantle to elevate to a place of holiness.'

God made us exactly as we are - with all the capability in the world to do great things. God endowed us with the gift of skill. We should use it. And if it isn't great the first time, then we must remember that God also endowed us with the gift of perseverance. Keep pluggin' away, my friends. Believe in yourself. God made you infinitely capable and immensely skilled, so that you might achieve great things.

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