So much to learn

Today was a great day. I spent my morning having coffee with Rabbi Alissa Wise who currently works at Mayan doing some amazing work with young, Jewish women. We met for coffee upstairs at one of the local Starbucks. What I loved about this morning with Alissa was all that I learned from her. I like to think of my self as being relatively enlightened. Well, don't we all, really. I like to imagine that I pay attention to issues of class, culture and privilege. And I am constantly surprised at how much more there is to learn...all the ways our systems favor the privileged.

Today, I was bowled away by an underlying reality of charitable giving and tax shelters. When someone makes a large donation to a charity, that money is sheltered from taxes. Those unpaid tax dollars never make it in to the general fund, never come to support government programs addressing our social well-fare. Instead, those who can give enough to shelter their money get to decide through their giving what issues are important, what issues get funded. If I have a million dollars and I decide the most important issue of the day is the national foundation for belly-button lint (or whatever thae cause may be-something serious or something frivolous) then I divert funds from the tax pool which might fund health, education, food assistance, literacy programs, hunger and homeless programs etc etc and put all that money into cause X.

Another example how privilege functions in our society today.

Thank you Alissa to opening my eyes to another unintended side effect to an originally compelling incentive to get people to donate more funds to charity.

So much to learn, so much to learn...

A reflection on Christmas

I thought today would be different. I thought today would feel urgent or festive. Instead, Mt Sinai feels empty. And I am surprised. Only one patient brought up Christmas. It was with a sigh of longing that she would miss being with the family this year. I guess I expected more of that or more families crammed in to rooms making holiday merriment. I guess I hoped Christmas would be bigger than illness and death.

And I guess it may not be. Today was, in effect, a day like any other. More red and green perhaps, more flowers perhaps...but little else.

Although, the bright side may be that the hospital is empty because many people, staff and patients alike, are home celebrating with their families and not working or recovering. I have heard that statistics say more people are released at the holidays because they are motivated to be with the people they love. I have also heard that more people who are alone take their lives because the expectation to be with loved-ones this time of year is intense.

I feel it too-the pressure to be with others. It is this force which brought me in to work today. I thought people would really want people...I really wanted people. Maybe this is how we developed the Jewish Christmas tradition of Chinese restaurant Christmas. We, as Americans, are surrounded by messages of be with family, be with others. But this is not our holiday. And so we have developed our own ritual as we have internalized the messages of Christmas.

Another scene in the hospital...an Orthodox Jewish woman is here and I know because every time I am on her floor, it is teaming with Orthodox Jewish men while their female relations crowd around the bed of their ill in a cramped hospital room. This is what I expected to find today-but everywhere. I walked by this scene like a do often as I make my way around the hospital. But today, it reminded affected me differently than usual. Today, this crowd of people showed me a story of what religion offers us-each other. It is through Christmas, visiting the sick or the Pu-pu platter which bring us together. These rituals and holidays further strengthen our relationships with those we know and love as well as to those who are part of our tribe, whatever tribe that may be.

I love Christmas because for me, it means warmth, joy, celebration and caring. Today was a great day at work because the spirit of Christmas was here even though it looked like a room full of Orthodox Jews.

Cancer

One of my patients is sick. Someone I have known a while, who I have a standing relationship with...he's sick. He has had cancer a while but tonight when I saw him...well, now he is sick. Sick with cancer which will likely kill him.

I did not want to talk to him about his death. I did not want to play chaplain. I wanted to pretend the reality away. The reality is, someone I care about is dying.

I want to fight, but the fight is not mine to have. I want to smile it away, but it does not work like this. I can not polly-anna my way out of someone else's cancer. This one, this patient, will be tough. This will be on my watch I suppose...

I face a lot of dying but this dying is harder because it is not someone else's, this dying is mine in a different way.

And it is harder because I have seen the transition from well to less-so. I saw him healthy and now I see him as his health has taken a step back. It may still return, but the abandonment of health has happened once. And once is all it takes. Poor health is like a lover that cheats. You can forgive the affair but you can never forget that it happened, the trust—if it happened once, it can happen again.

And in this case, it likely will.

God and my Subway Card

This morning I lost my subway card between my house and the platform, when I retraced y steps (thirty minutes later) I actually found it...

Do I believe in God? Yesterday? Edie and I were talking about spirituality. She asked me to define spirituality. I answered, where you feel the power and control is in the world. Somewhere on a continuum between self and God/the unkown. Edie commented—I think you are talking about theology more than spirituality.

She had a point. I thought about it all day. As I spoke with patients and the whole time I thought, who do you think is in charge of your state of being? Of your health? Of your wellness? What role do you play? Do the doctors play? Do I as your chaplain play? Where does God fit in?

I struggle with what I think. Do I think God left my Subway card there? That somehow, it was God that coerced my metrocard to fall from my pocket on to the sidewalk of my street so that I would have to go back and look, so I would be saved from some other experience? So I would be rerouted to a different path, a different destiny? Was my card required as a prop in someone else's life?

Or is it simply, the dumb card fell on the ground and I got lucky-just chance-nothing more-that no one else noticed it or picked it up. Going back and retracing my steps was just what happened. No meaning. It was me, I dropped it, I went back, I did not give up and just buy a new card, I left early enough this morning that I had the time to do this, I had a conference I could be late for (since the first part was just serving breakfast.)

I do not know

What is my theology? I reject that I am solely responsible for my fate and destiny. Maybe I am uncomfortable being that responsible. That means it is ALL on me and I am quite frankly scared of that. I do not feel qualified to be the sole driver.

And yet, I am not ok assigning the responsibility for my life and its direction to someone or something else. And even less comfortable assigning the responsibility of my life to God.

What I do believe...there is something out there greater than we are, but I think we are a part of it too. I think that the “something greater” out there is a feeling, an energy or a power? Which is generated by the goodwill, the connection, the love and relationships between people. It is the Buber I-thou. When I connect to another person or to a group of people, I bring God in to the world, I find God in the world, I create God in the world. Not in an, I am so powerful and arrogant to say that I make God. This is not what I mean. I mean, people also have the power to make God, to create the spark.

This what we do when we meet one to one.

Does Godliness control my life? No, I do not think so. But it influences it. I seek out the God in the world, I love to create God in the world. I said to someone yesterday, I thrive on suffering. It was a tongue-in-cheek thing to say. But it is true on a deep level. My soul is nourished by the connections I make with people and I find that connection easiest to create in a place of suffering.

What does it mean in my life? I have been thinking of my theology of pastoral care. If meeting people, helping people, connecting with people makes and creates a God in the world, then I am seeking a deep meeting when I sit in a room. I believe, beyond the doors of the hospital, in people meeting one to one, people of all stripes and colors, because if they connect, they being God in to the world.

The more people we meet, the more human beings we know, the more people in the world we truly see...the more God we brings. The more God we bring, the more committed I believe we will be...must be to creating a more peaceful, less fractured world.

And as I move ahead into the rabbinate, this is what I am seeking out, this is what I want to do. People often call me a prophet because I have a love for social justice. But truly, it is a misnomer. I do not have a passion for justice, I have a passion for meeting, a passion for people, a passion for connection and belonging to one another. We may call tha social justice, we may call that tikkin olam...but truly...the justice happens second to the meeting of the people, second to creating God in the world.

And now, if someone would just hire me to do that...

Last night on the Subway

Yesterday, Cassi was looking for a story for a curriculum she is working on. She wanted a story whose moral was it takes a village to do social justice, or at least, this is what I was understanding she was looking for. We talked about a few ideas and I went on my way.

As I walked to the subway last night, I noticed two young women struggling to the platform. Both were dressed in hip, contemporary clothing. One was leaning heavily on the other. I assumed one, if not both were drunk or one woman was injured and limping. I stepped on to the train.

At some point, I realized that people were walking towards my end of the subway. I looked up, and there were the two girls. One sitting, the other knealing before her, comforting her. A pool of liquid sloshing about the train below. The sitting girl, Katie, had just vomited all over herself, into her purse, on her coat, the floor, and...on her friend. Vomit and its stench began to pervade the train.

The two girls were a tableau in an ever-growing clearing of empty space on the train. I turned to th crowd and said, anyone have some tissues. Everyone said no except one man. He rifled through his things for them. I approached him, thanked him and explained that the girl who had just thrown up would really appreciate it. I brought the pile of tissues to the girls and helped clean up. The friend, knealing before Katie was saying, it's ok, I am your best-friend, this is ok, we're almost home, it's ok! And Katie kept saying, I'm so sorry, so sorry.

Katie looked awful-very white. And she was clearly mortified. I chatted with them for a few moments...and then...another woman came over. She too offered tissues and comfort. And then...another woman...three people on a late-night train all stepped in to intervene with a vomiting woman.

It was beautiful. As the train approached my stop, I stepped back and marveled at what people could do together, what several strangers on a train could come together to do to repair a small temporary tear in the fabric of the world.

I stepped of the train, my faith in humanity slightly renewed.

My turn

Today, as I walked through the back staircase of Mt. Sinai, traveling between floors, I thought, when I am a patient or a family member, I should remember that this is how the docs and other medical folks get around.

I think thoughts like this often. When it is my turn...I will...

These thoughts have no value to them-positive or negative. I do not feel morbid about them, just shickingly realistic. I feel like I am watching the sneak preview on a film, except I seeing the version where I know too much. My experience of this movie will be different because I alrady have seen the spoiler.

Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman wrote (in an article I recently read whose title I am forgetting) how illness, health, death, birth, weddings, funerals, life cycle events of all shapes, sizes and varieties are all places we visit in life's journey. He posits that the power of visiting the sick is it is a requisite destination along the way and, just as we (perhaps reluctantly) watch slides shows and look through photos on facebook of other people's trips, we also visit the sick, attend the funeral of our loved one's loved ones, dance at the wedding of your coworkers daughter and so on. We get a sneak peak of what these events will be like when it is our child's wedding, our parent's funeral, our health which has failed.

What strikes me is the certainty I feel that being here on the other side (as patient or family member) is inevitable. Am I clairvoyant? Am I having a vision of my future? Or is this just a natural aspect of this work? I hope this is normal because if there is some disturbance in the force and I am sensing something that will happen...well, that just freaks me out a little bit. Quite frankly, whatever my future my be, I don't want to know in advance.

Really, that would spoil all the fun.

Getting Away With It

I tend to live at a break-neck pace. I find I am at my happiest when I am scheduled (arguably...over-scheduled). My mom likes to say "You burn the candle at both ends." And if a candle had three or four ends, I would burn it from there too. But it suites me and I am happy with all the wonderful things I get to do. Somewhere along the way, I have absorbed an ethic that says one should always be occupied. Something akin to idle hands doing the devil's work. If I am not doing something, I think I must be doing something wrong.

At Mount Sinai, where I am a chaplain intern, I have a list of patients to visit. I make my way from room to room, floor to floor trying to visit. Some days, everyone is out of the room and I leave many business cards and notes saying, "sorry I missed you." Some days, I get to see one person and the conversation is so long that I do not get to even poke my head in on anyone else. Some days, I might see someone who affects me so profoundly that I simply need a break, need a time out before attempting to visit another patient. Then, I am most adrift, looking for paperwork to file, an errand to run, a coffee to drink.

Somewhere else along the way, I came to value achieving (arguable, over-achieving). I could drink in life, lap it up, but if I am not chugging it down, something feels amiss. At work, I am afraid someone will find out that I do not see everyone. I feel like I am somehow slacking off, shirking responsibility...If every moment I am not on-task, then I must be OFF-task.

But this is not the nature of chaplaincy. And truthfully, I can see how the nature of chaplaincy is forcing me to be...slower, more focused and maybe even more reasonable. At work, I have to learn quality not quantity. I have to find a way to make peace with less actually truly being more. Walking out in the middle of patient x's painful story
in order to go make sure I have time to visit and check off that I saw patient y, is not only obviously asinine, it would be damaging to abandon someone in a moment of vulnerability like that.

Slowly I am learning that slowing down is not failing, slowing down actually means the potential for deeper, more meaningful and (not even worth arguing) better.

And yes, I am submitting this to my supervisor who will now know for sure-most days I do not actually get it all done. And truly, that is a true success.

Atheism on the Subway

The Subway always gets me thinking.

I got the the platform this morning and realized I was sadly without reading material. Wasted opportunity to get some work done on the train...So when I saw a discarded AM New York on the ground at the 59^th street station while I was waiting for my 4/5 Express downtown to 59^th street, I picked it up. There was an article on Godless New York. An anonymous donor is running a $25,000 ad campaign-posters in the MTA Subway stations which read “1 Million New Yorkers are Good without God. Are You?” Apparently the goal is for atheists in New York to know they are not alone.

And of course, public outrage ensues. The article offers the opinions of many New Yorkers who are righteously indignant at this affront. How can we even suggest that there is no God? They wonder...

On to the train I step...

No, let me rephrase. The morning 4/5 express-ride is an exercise in gymnastics and personal space amongst other things. Those waiting to get on the train cram in. And it is as if the moment we are on the train, we forget the anxiety of being outside the train wondering if we will fit in to the cramped car (and I won't lie, Holocaust cattle cars are often floating in my head...) There are some structural problems with the cars. There are not many polls or things to hold on for those of us under 5'5” unless you are standing immediately next to a door.

This morning, I oozed onto the train with hundreds of fellow New Yorkers. Tens of New Yorkers stood behind me, pressing to also be amongst the chosen few who could cram on in to the train and move ahead on their journey towards work, home or whatever their particular and important destination. Standing at the corner of the entrance was a very large, very short woman. I called in to the train, can everyone in the middle step in so the people outside can get on? One woman, with ample room to move simply looked away. The large, short woman gave me a cold hard, angry stare. I looked at her and said, please?

I am too short to reach anything other than here and I simply cannot move.

Someone taller could have stepped around her and moved in to the train, others could have given her the death stare and socially urged her to step in further. Someone could have said, yeah, please, come on guys, let's make some room...

None of that happened.

And I started wondering, who cares if you, me, anyone believes in God if we are unwilling to risk or bare discomfort for the sake of our fellow man standing before us and asking politely?

The Yom Kippur Sermon from Laramie Wyoming, 99% recycled material...

NOTE: What a difference a year makes...In rewriting and redelivering this sermon, I had that great JEwish moment of understanding why we come back to do things again...because we can never actually redo anything-just doing it the first time changes who we are...I am not the same rabbi I was a year ago, I am not the same person. Last year I thought it was so cool to deliver a sermon which felt like I was actually saying something to a packed room of 700-1000 people.

And this year, I cried during my own sermon as I looked in to each face of each of the 40 people sitting in the small Lutheran chapel in Laramie Wyoming while I told them, we are all going to die. God forgive my arrogance. Thank you for reminding me humility.

Words are more than just black ink on a page. Words have meaning and power and I find these words here, even a year later, still have a power over me...

Forgive the formatting, this is similar to what the text looks like when I deliver it and I do not have a version which is paginated in a more normative fashion.

Happy New Year, I hope we all were inscribed for a long, rich and beautiful life.

Yom Kippur Sermon, 5770, Laramie Wyoming:

We are all going to die.

Not just us,

but the people we care for as well.

And, not only will our deaths come,

but they will come on a time table not set by us,

not according to our schedule.

None of us want any of this to be true,

but it is.

We build our lives ignoring these facts.

With great arrogance and flippancy

we do things like plan for the future.

We make commitments we cannot necessarily keep when we say see you tomorrow.

We don't know.

But we insist on making this contract with God

We agree to the following terms:

Everyone in the world

-especially me and those I care for the most-

will die old.

We will die peacefully.

We will die in our sleep outliving the people we should outlive,

having accomplished all that which we wish to accomplish.

This seems to us like a fair death.

We sign on to this contract but this agreement is one-sided.

No one,

no thing

is signing on the other side of the page.

And when this contract is broken,

we get very, very upset.

When someone dies young,

suddenly, or painfully, we claim

"this is not fair! This is not right"

But no one other than us agreed to these terms.

Since there is no contract-

no rules have been broken

we alone feel this is “unfair”

Our Yom Kippur liturgy

is designed to remind us

of the end of our lives.

We recite the same psalms and

say the same penitential

and confessional prayers today

which are said at the deathbed.

We do much to feel like we are approaching death.

We abstain from eating and drinking.

We abstain from physical intimacy

Many do not adorn themselves in any manner,

do not bathe or brush their teeth.

We treat our bodies as if they do not exist.

By the end of the day today,

we will feel a bit closer to death.

Some will choose to not wear leather and

to wear only white.

Some wear white, cotton robes called kittels.

These are worn in traditional Judaism at Yom Kippur, one's wedding, and in one's burial.

We do all of this to practice for the day

when we do stand in judgment before God,

for the day that will inevitably come,

when we die.

We are forcing ourselves to ask,

how have I lived my days thus far?

Have I really lived at all?

We are about to read from parashat Nitzavim

found in Deuteronomy.

This text occurs at the end of Moses' life.

He is giving the Israelites their final charge

before entering Israel to conquer it.

The people are re-committing to the covenant with God,

not just for those who were there but for those not there as well, meaning for us too.

The portion has a simple message;

you will sin and make mistakes

(we are people, this is what we do)

but we can always return to God,

we can always tshuv, turn, change or repent

The portion closes with the following lines:

יט הַעִדֹתִי בָכֶם הַיּוֹם, אֶת-הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֶת-הָאָרֶץ--הַחַיִּים וְהַמָּוֶת נָתַתִּי לְפָנֶיךָ, הַבְּרָכָה וְהַקְּלָלָה; וּבָחַרְתָּ, בַּחַיִּים--לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה, אַתָּה וְזַרְעֶךָ.

I bring to bear witness of all of you this day, the heavens and the earth. The life and the death I give before each of you, the blessing and the curse. Each of you, choose life so that you may live, each of you and your descendents.

But how can we choose life?

Death is inevitable.

Opting out is not an option so

what on earth does this mean?

Recently, I seved as a chaplain in training at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in NYC working with the pain and palliative care unit. I spent a large amount of time this summer with dying people and their families. One morning, I went to work and went straight to see Andy, a twenty-seven year young man and his huge extended family. Cancer brought him from good health to his last day in three short months. By the time I arrived, he had already died. I spoke with his mother who just looked at me and said, but he was so young?!? It is so unfair.

I could tell you many stories of the unfairness I encountered there, but I don't need to bring stories from New York. You know the unfairness of death right here in your own community. Lori Schneider, Deborah Wasser, and others who all died too young, too soon.

When my father's Dad passed away about three and a half years ago at the age of 85, he said he felt his father's death was sad, but fair. I wondered, what makes a death fair? His response was that death is fair if you have done all you want to do. “Death is never fair,” I replied “because there is always more we want to do-including just live another day.” My dad then revised his thought. “I think it was fair,” he explained, “because my father had said all he had needed to say.”

I think there is more fairness when that happens. The fairness is not about doing all you wanted to do because that is impossible but perhaps, death is more fair when someone dies knowing they have said all of their I’m sorries and their I love yous.

Have you said all of yours?

But I think fairness in death

is not only about having done enough

or said enough.

It is more than that...

One of the chaplains at Sloan Kettering, Jane,

said to me,

you know,

the greatest lesson I take from this place

is the constant reminder to live-

the reminder to live my life

the way I want to have lived it when I die.

Repeat this...

I think this is what today's Torah reading is about,

why we read this today on Yom Kippur

In our Torah text, God says,

“This life and this death I give before each of you, the blessing and the curse. Each of you, choose life so that you will live, each of you and all your descendents.”

God is not setting before us a choice of bodily living or dying. That is not up to us.

The choice is in the kind of life we will live.

The text makes an analogy-

life is a blessing and death is a curse.

This cannot be referring to actual life and death

since we know of lives that do not feel like blessings,

deaths which are not curses.

But there exists this tension between life and death,

blessing and curse.

We cannot pretend death away.

By ignoring that there is an end to our existence,

we could put off until a rainy day the person we should be now.

But,

if all we did was constantly face the reality of the limits of life,

our deaths could consume us

and would rob us of the essence of living.

The choice here is in how we walk this balance.

In our text, we read the words,לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה

so that you will live.

This could also be translated as,

for the sake of being or in order that you will be.

I feel the text is telling us-

being is living and

choosing it a blessing,

living means choosing a life as the person you can be;

as your best possible self.

Death means choosing anything else:

Complacency, laziness, and plain old stubborn refusal to change

causes a kind of death

and brings with it

the curse of living a life unfilled

seen most clearly in the death which feels so unfair.

I never got to be the person I wanted to be,

I never truly got to live.

In my conversation with my father,

he added the following:

He still feels sad that his dad is gone,

he still misses him.

We all do.

He told me,

“There is more I would like to have done with him

but that is the lesson that I have had to learn and to live with.

I could have done more to be the son I truly wanted to be.

And I still can.”

We the living can bring fairness to death.

When we let death remind us to live,

to truly live,

to be and become the people we know we can

and want to be,

then,

THEN death is fair.

Two words show up over and over

in this morning’s Torah reading:

Shav and hayom.

Change and Today.

The repetition of shav,

turn, change

reminds us again and again,

we can always change.

Just because I WAS one way yesterday

does not mean that I have to be that same way

tomorrow.

And hayom,

today

Today,

meaning these words

were not not just said to the Israelite people then,

but they were said to us TODAY

as we prepare to enter the New Year.

Today is the day,

now is the time.

Tshuv hayom,

Change TODAY

At the end of the day,

we will stand before God and

seek out God's forgiveness

for our sins.

We will open the ark,

this plain pine box

reminiscent of a coffin.

It causes us to remember,

death is coming and

we do not know when,

where, how or even why.

Staring into that openness,

that abyss,

we are reminded of the unknown of what lies beyond.

That vastness asks us,

When you look back on your life,

how do you want to see it?

Who do you want to have been?

Who do you want to be that you are not yet being?

Shav, shav, shav

it repeats-turn turn turn-

change now, right now,

Today BE the person you want to be

before the gates close.

The life and the death I give before each of you today,

the blessing and the curse.

Each of you,

choose life so that you may live,

each of you and your descendents.

The Problem with Dying

This week another patient died. I am a chaplain intern at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. Patients are going to die. That is, for many, what they go there to do. And yet, I am startled. A man, an old man (93, I believe). Died. He did not suffer, he was healthy and more active than I am until two weeks ago. Then a stroke, I think, and this week, we terminally extubated him. I watched as the doctors did what they do. And then we ushered in the family so they could be with him while waiting for him to die.

I can't imagine sitting in a room with someone I love and waiting for them to die.

And I went home that night, just completely thrown. And, to make matters worse, I was thrown by the fact that this man's death threw me! I wrote my sermon on death and dying. I have now delivered it twice. I know we all die, I know it is normal and natural. I know it happens whenever it happens. And I know I have no control over that. I have made my mental peace with Death.

But my heart refuses the whole endeavor.

Somewhere in me, I cannot seem to defeat the inner five year old who folds her arms over her chest, stamps a black-pattened-leather, mary-jane clad foot on the floor and cries, "this is not fair! I do not deserve this."

And I know neither how to explain to her that yes, it is unfair and that she might as well just learn to live with it not do I know how to best Death and make it succumb to MY rules of life and living.

And I am angry because Death is a problem which cannot be solved, nor can I, at this point in my life, reframe it so that it is not a problem, but more of a challenge to navigate or-quite simply-just one of life's many truths.

Recently, in a my class Visions of Reform Judaism, I read an article by Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman (my hero). In it, he pointed out that one underlying metaphor within Judaism is "the journey." If life is a journey, then, like corss-country road trips, there are requisite stops along the way. When you drive America, you have to go to the Grand Canyon, Mount Rushmore, The White House, Lincoln Memorial etc. On our life road trip, we must stop by at "sickness" "health" "joy" "sadness" and so on. We must also stop by at "death."

And I both long for and dread the day when not only do I know this in my head, but I also know this in my heart. When the death of another does not so startle me. When I can get through a day at Mount Sinai and not consider the day which will one day come when I am in a hospital somewhere wrestling with the life and death, sickness and health of my self, my parents, my brother and his family, my friends, my neighbors, my congregants...the list goes on.

But when the day comes that I am inured to death and no longer traumatized by its surprise, I will sleep through the night, I will walk out and just go on with my day, I will not think about the loss to the world and to those who loved the person, and I...I will be just a little less human, a little less soft, a little less warm.

Chaplaincy in the land of Social Justice

Recently, during a coffee break with Rabbi Brent Spodek from American Jewish World Service, we began chatting about the overlap of social justice and being a chaplain. Rabbi Spodek's essential question, as I recall, is how can being a chaplain be an act of social justice.

Here is my vision, I can see chaplaincy as an opportunity to do more than just social action (as in direct service work like going to a soup kitchen and serving a meal)but to create true social change.

But what is this thing, chaplaincy in the first place? I am a chaplain at Mount Sinai hospital in New York City. My job is to sit with people and bear witness to their experiences, especially bearing witness to people's suffering. Here is the hope, like any heavy load one carries, it is easier when two people are shouldering the burden than just one. The goal of sitting with someone is not to solve problems, but to make their portage less burdensome.

In social justice/social change world...well, I think being a chaplain opens up a space for some true social change. Beyond just helping those who are burdened (and PS, we are ALL burdened by something) to carry the load, there is something which acknowledges the humanity of another human being, which validates someone else's sense of self worth just by asking, are you ok?

My assumption and understanding, there are people in the world who are in pretty terrible life circumstances. People do not wake up in the morning and think, I want a really hard, miserable life full of suffering and travail. No, what happens is if you hear enough messages from your family, your community, the media, strangers on the street and other subtle sources of input that you, are worthless or even just worth LESS, eventually you will believe it.

At the soup kitchen, we teach the kids, imagine the homeless person on the street who is not only in a place to need help, is not only asking for help, but is spending the day being ignored by almost everyone who walks by while in the middle of doing one of the hardest things people ever have to do (which is admitting we cannot do it all alone and HAVE to ask others for assistance). Imagine how fundamentally invisible-ing that feels, how profoundly terrible it feels go through a day, let alone a life of being unseen by all other people in the world. (Imagine going through a day without anyone even saying hello to you...) Now what would happen for that person to just simply be acknowledged?

People out there say, well why don't those who are in need just pull themselves up by their boot straps and change, make their situation in life better? Well, what if you do not even know that you deserve better? What if you cannot even imagine better? What if you do not even know that your boots have straps to pull?

This is the power of being a chaplain in creating social change, as I can see it.

And it feels like an appropriate and powerful role for those who are the "haves" to play in the lives of those who are the "have nots."

Imagine if that tv show where the really sexy host from Home and Garden TV built a new house not for the most deserving but for the seemingly LEAST deserving. What if we assume that the hardest, meanest people are the ones who hurt and suffer the most? What if that show validated THEIR humanity, their suffering and misery? Can you imagine, in a certain supported social context, how an act that that (the giving of a home to someone who is constantly told by the world you deserve nothing and so we give you nothing!)would change that person's life and the lives of others around him or her? Assume for a moment, our symbol least deserving person, consumed with his/her own pain takes it out on those around him/her through various kinds of violence (emotional, spiritual, physical) what would happen to our crime rate our abuse rate or jobless-ness rates if people everywhere who formally felt like nobodies suddenly knew that really truly they are somebodies? Somebodies who deserve better.

Somebodies with boot straps to pull up...

Vulnerability-Getting to OK

I wonder, sometimes, if anyone is actually ok.

It seems to me that everyone is walking around carrying a whole heck of a lot of secret baggage. As far as I can tell, the rules of the grown up game are carry as much as you can stoically, and then pretend as hard as possible that you are not weighed down by it all.

Why is it so hard, so non-normative, to be less than totally ok. I think we all look at people who are "having a tough time" with pity and sympathy. But secretly, perhaps, we envy those who finally get to publicly declare, damn, I have had enough and just for this moment I cannot carry it all alone. I can't do this right now!!

As if doing this secret portering of our own mishugas were a laudable achievement.

And while we stand there and offering comfort to the fallen soldiers amongst us, those unable to carry the weight, we part-pity, part-envy them. Envy that they are strong enough to admit the difficulty, strong enough, brave enough to throw in the towel, even if it is just for a moment.

Recently, one of my Rabbi mentors said to me, being vulnerable is hard. We test the waters with people-let the guard down a little, see if it is ok, let a little more of the secret baggage (my language not hers) show, and little by little, we let people in as we see that they are safe. But the trouble is, the more vulnerable we are to another human being, the more frightening the relationship is because the more vulnerable we are to the pain that can happen when there is a mis-step (and the mis-steps in REAL relationships will come), when someone leaves, when someone dies.

There is no conclusion here, no wisdom I have to offer. Just these thoughts on the absurdity of it all. The pretense of "everything is fine," the posturing of having it "all together." This need to look perfect-it drives our economy (beauty industry, fad diets, clothing, products, fashionable coffees and various home goods which communicate an air of "I am ok, see, I have an especco machine). It is the reason we have tv-to watch other people fall apart and to live vicariously through them, to watch other people juggle and be in awe and wonder, and from them we learn-keep going, keep making it look good.

What would happen if as a world we said HELP!! This is too hard!! What would happen if we decided that really, panty hose are uncomfortable no matter how nice your legs look in them and so we just are not wearing them anymore. What would happen if we said, truly, the stuff which is weighing me down has so much power over me BECAUSE I pretend it is not there. What would happen?

Maybe just maybe we really would then be ok...

(PS, Mom, I TRULY am fine, I just am thinking about all of this after a tough day at the chaplaining at the hospital and hearing all about the things that people hold as secrets...When people ask, why me?? As if they are being singled out when truly, it is all of us. We all suffer, we all are burdened and we all...well, most everyone at least, feel like we are the only ones. When really, look to your left, look to your right. That person, they too are sloppily, precariously, and tee-totteringly carrying their own mangled, tangled set of stuff often refered to as "my life")

Rosh Hashana Day 5770-Health Care

Rosh Hashana Day Sermon
Laramie Wyoming

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear Wo-orld, Happy Birthday to you.
As we have read repeatedly in this morning's special Rosh Hashana Liturgy, Hayom Haraat Haolam. Today is the birthday of the world. This is the time of our High Holy Day season where everything is new and reborn. In these 10 days from Rosh Hashana to Yom we live a mini life moving from birth today to death at Neilah, the conclusion of Yom Kippur.

I don't know about you, but I like birthdays. But not all birthdays are the same. Just last week my nephew, Sam, turned six. This is a big year! He is starting kindergarten and has a lot of responsibilitied being the older brother to Lexi, almost three and Jack, just 7 months. Sam's birthday is a big deal. It is a day that is all about Sam. But this year it was a big deal and all about Jack instead. You see, my sister in law, Rebecca, tripped and fell. People trip and fall all the time but this fall was different. She had been walking about with baby Jack in the snuggly, you know that backpack turned frontwards for people to carry infants conveniently hands free while still providing the snuggly, close to the heart-beat feel. Down she went, and Jack did too.

Now I do not want to hold you in too much suspense. Jack and Rebecca are both, thank God, fine. The ambulance came and they both were cleared at the hospital. It was a scary few hours, though. My father was sharing some of the details with me a few days later-about how the doctor at some point said, well, we think everything is fine but we can do a CT scan on Jack just to make sure. And of course, my brother, Josh and Rebecca said yes.

I asked my dad if the doctor felt the CT scan was necessary or just precautionary. And he said, what difference does it make? Why would any parent say no? And I said, Dad, it is a luxury even to ask that question. For some people they may not be able to say yes. My father grew upset at this. Let me be clear Rachael, I love my kids and no amount of money be worth their health. Dad, I replied, what if doing the CT scan is a choice between being sure everything is fine and having the money to afford a roof over the heads of everyone in your household? What if doing the CT scan means sacrificing your home and not doing it might mean sacrificing your child?

I cannot help but pause here for a moment and consider Isaac and Abraham. Abraham also faced a decision between the lesser of two evils-between sacrificing his son and sacrificing his God. I am not trying to rescue Abraham here. I do not know, nor does the text tell us, what Abraham was thinking or feeling. Like in the conversation with my father, choosing between the CT scan for one child and money for rent for the whole family, Abraham was facing an impossible choice. My dad and I considered a hypothetical situation. But it is not a made-up, inconceivable scenario. It reminds me of Angela's storyhttp://stories.barackobama.com/healthcare/stories/186876# which I found in a collection of health care tales gathered by the president.

Angela writes, I am not sure what exactly to write or how to even begin explaining my story. I like a lot of other American households fall into a range where I make too much for Medicaid or Chips. I am a single mother of 3 amazing young men. We did have insurance while their father was serving in the Military but even that system is flawed as we had to travel 3 hours to another state to get a simple check up for a cold or to coordinate with the primary care provider for all referrals. My oldest son Malachai has what is diagnosed as...basically a brain aneurysm that has not bleed, or "popped" yet. I moved into a house 4 blocks from an emergency room in case that ever happens. His health care is a necessity for prevention of his death. To go to a local pediatric neurologist without insurance has typically costs about 9,000 every 3 months for "observation".It requires a cat scan, pediatric neurologist, Pediatric cardiologist,physical fees then to top it all off..the wonderful credit card charges associated with charging this care. This is why he can no longer go. $36,000.00 dollars a year for him to have adequate local care. Now their father has been let go from the Navy due to down sizing & weight restrictions. No more insurance at all. I am a single mother with 3 boys, I make 40,000 a year but I have 3 children to house, clothed, feed, support. I have a mortgage to pay and income taxes are scary. ...I simply can not afford the $932.00 a month plans for the coverage me and my children need. ...I believe, I believe in families being allowed to receive help with health care and the debts occurred obtaining it. ...what ever the people of this countries families are going through. In the end that is what we are, what we have, and typically how we live. As a family. Whether it is our mothers, brothers, our children, our friends, the people walking down the street. We all have one underlying factor. We all experience the same things, same feelings, at one point or another in time. We all need help. Rich, poor, middle class. I believe it is time to do something about it. I will not lie, I have little hope these days that the things I need to get accomplished will get accomplished in time. It seems it will truly be longer before the change trickles down to the families like me. Who make too much money for help, but not enough money to afford the care...All this I have written equals one thing in its entirety. It is time for a change.

I know I am a stranger to this community, but I will assume that we can agree that people should not be making choices like this one. As Jews we learn over and over again in the Torah, care for the widow, the orphan, the poor and the stranger. Even if this is not us directly, the responsibility to provide care is still ours. Like I was saying last night, I think we can do better than this.

So what do we do? Knowing that something is wrong, wanting to help is a great start. But it can feel so overwhelming, how do we help make it better? It seems to me, just like Abraham, just like Angela, in order to get, we may have to give; we may have to give up some of what we have, for the sake of the bigger picture.

Let’s pause here for a moment to sit with this idea. I do not think most people like thinking about giving anything up. I know for me, I like my time, my freedom, and my stuff to do with as I please. The idea of giving any of those things up is hard.

But who are we if we do not give, if we do not respond? We can do better than silence. We can do better than nothing.

So what do we do? I do not have THE answer but I have some ideas. I want to know yours as well. I think the first thing we can do is we can not look away. We have the technology to read stories like Angela's on line. This tool will tug at our heart strings, make us care and, perhaps, inspire us to act. And isn't that what we need to do? It is a simple act, to bear witness to the hardship of others. By reading stories, asking questions, sending letter to those who are hurting we at least can say, you are not alone.

That to me feels better than nothing.

We can share our own stories. Who hear in this room knows someone or is someone who is personally affected by the state of National Health Care? (Oause for hands to be raised). If you think you do not know someone, you know me. I have just applied for medicaid and government subsidized health care because my school's health insurance at $400 a month is simply too costly. Last year when I was on the school's health plan, I could not afford to go to the doctor because I was paying so much in premiums that the co pay was just too much! As I looked at my finances for this year, I felt worried that I could not afford it all without taking on additional work which would interfere with my ability to complete my studies. So I am now someone on medicaid. I found it very difficult to apply. I felt embarassed, ashamed that I could not do it all. But then, I felt grateful and lucky that a program was out there that could help me out until I can do it all.

What is your story?

I think we can still do better than this. People like me, people with incredibly low incomes are pretty well covered. But what about the Angelas of the world? The working poor who hold two or three jobs to make ends meet, earning just enough to get by but too much to qualify for the assistance they so need so that they too can do better.

For them, we get involved. You can call Senator Mike Enzi who "told a Wyoming town hall crowd that he had no plans to compromise with Democrats and was merely trying to extract concessions." http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/08/26/mike-enzi-gang-of-six-rep_n_269447.html and ask him to do more than just be a road block, but to also be a beacon to change. Have a lobby day and go lobby your representatives, host a health care shabbat and invite others in the community to bear witness, share their stories and to take action together, do a health care audit on this community and find out what is happening here in Laramie, find other organizations within this community already doing this work and join them.


Right now our nation has made a huge sacrifice. We have given up quality health care, we have sacrificed National Health. We can do better than this. Maybe it is time to give up something else, our time, our stories, our commitment.

All good sermons, Jewish tradition holds, end with a nechemta, a happy ending. And the happy ending here is up to you. We are all part of this broken system. We believe it is not working. We know we can do better than this.

What will the nechemta to Health Care be? It is up to each one of us to decide.
Shana Tova

Erev Rosh Hashana-because we can do better....Judaism and technology

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova. Welcome to 5770! (look around) Can I ask you a question?? Why are you here? What is it that has brought you to this room on this day? I mean, I know it is Erev Rosh Hashana, but many people who are Jewish are NOT here, so I am wondering, why you are. This is a question I have been asking myself lately. And I am looking to you, my community, to help figure some of this out.

(Take answers)

I think what really got me thinking about all of this is a recent lecture I went to with Rabbi Irwin Kula, author of a book called Yearnings and Executive co-director of CLAL, The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Rabbi Kula suggested that Judaism is akin to all other modern technologies. We use it because it helps us to get a certain job done. If the technology does not work, or if we like a different technology better, then we do not use it. Think of eight-track tapes, audio casettes, and CDs. They let us listen to recorded sounds like music. That is their job. Eight tracks work great but casettes were a smaller and less costly technology so we moved on to those. Same thing with CDs and now, we are moving to mp3 and ipods for all of our listening enjoyment.

When Rabbi Kula said this, I sat back in my seat and said, Huh. If our religion serves a certain function in our lives and my JUdaism is the technology I use to get a certain job done...but lately I have been feeling like the technology needs some updating...I first have to ask, what is the function Judaism serves? What job is Judaism trying to get done? But what is that function? What function does being here serve?. (Comment on some of the answers)


I think Judaism and all aspects of it help us get a certain job done. Over time, the role of religion in our lives has evolved and we have used or different aspects of it differently. But the need we have may not be changing over time. Coming from New York City, I frequently ride the Subway. One morning, I looked up and saw two advertisements right next to one another. The first said, Tired of unwanted blemishes? Come see Dr. Zizmor Plaastic surgeon. This rainbow colored ad is decorated with the smiling face of a middle aged man wearing a white lab coat, with tight, shiny skin. You too can look like this, the ad suggests. You too can feel this good. The second ad was a plain white background with a lot of text. The top of the page in large letters read, "This Ad will make you Happier than any other on the Subway." Given that New York City Subways are rittled with ads, this is quite a statement. The ad was for some Institute of Philosophy and its claim was if you know philosophy, you will no longer need people like Dr. Zizmor to be happy. You just will be happy using philosophy as a technology instead of technologies like plastic surgery or other cosmetic aids.

It struck me, as I checked out all the ads and all the people riding the subway, and all the fashion, communication devices, conversations, postures and poses; all these different technological advances of different kinds contained within this one car. The job they were getting done was "make me happy." But is Judaism just another one of these technologies? Maybe that is what it is all about, maybe that is why we are here tonight, to find some kind of happiness. Maybe this ritual of these 10 days will help us find greater happiness.

When I think about though, my Jewish life has more of a purpose than finding happiness. What about you, do you find that as well? Is being here only about feeling good? Or are you seeking something more? (Take answers??)

Over the last 5770 years, Jews have produced some powerful ideas. One of our greatest, and most controversial, sages and philosophers was Rambam, Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon. He lived in the 14th century in Egypt and then in Spain. He tried to bring Judaism, Philosophy, math and science all together. Because people found that philosophy, math ans science worked better for them to get the job done. For Rambam, also known as Maimonides, he saw that Judaism could offer more than the secular studies. In chapter 27 of one of his books, the Guide to the Perplexed, he explained that the purpose or function of the whole Torah can be boiled down to 2 things known as Tikun haguf, or repairing the body and tikun hanefesh, repairing the soul.

Tikun hanefesh, repairing the soul means providing people with a basic sense of the truth of what life is about, what reality is and what our place is in it. Basically, Whatever the job is to get done, Torah has a truth to teach about how to do it. Tikun ha guf, repairing the body, does not mean the physical human body. The body being the whole of humanity. The body politic if you will. Repairing the body takes two forms, the first, simply to get people not to damage one another. We do not simply follow your immediate impulse because sometimes they hurt other people and that is not ok. Torah tells us not to shame one another, not lie about each other, to honor our parents, do the right thing, and love our neighbors as ourselves.

The second way Torah repairs the body is by teaching positive and descent virtues that make for a good community. Care for the widow, the starnger and the orphan. Give to the poor and the destitute, do not murder, do not covet, do not steal, do not lie.

For me, I am here because I believe I can do better. I think we all can do better. I want more from tonight, from this adventure to Laramie Wyoming than just an experience, than just to walk away feeling good. I want these 10 days to change my life, your life and the whole world. I beieve that being here reminds me to work harder, inspires me to strive for me and gives me some tools to get there. Judaism tells me that the way to do this is to start with the relationships in my life, the relationship I have with God and the relationship I have with myself. I want tonight, these days to give me the tools to look at where I have been less than my best self and seek out forgiveness from those I have harmed so that I can do better in the future. For me, there is a job to get done of repairing much of the broken-ness and sadness in this world beginning with the broken-ness and sadness within myself. I am here to remember and learn with and from you how to do this. For me, I am here tonight to repair my body. I have hurt others, I have hurt my community. I am here to repair my soul, to reconnect with the values and truths of the world which my living Judaism teach me, teach us all. These days will give the technology which will help get from where I am now, to something better than I am. I think I can do better, I think we all can do better. And, we have the technology.

Why are you here? As we begin the journey of 5770 together, what brings you here to this place at this time? What will Judaism give you? How will your fellow service go-ers, your time in this room, your conversations with me and each other serve you to help you get your job done?

Shana Tova.

The one thing I ask is to be welcomed in to the house of God all the days of my life (Achat Shaalti)

Tonight, at the end of services, this was the prayer. And I had, for me, an unusual moment. Yes, this is what I am asking for. I am asking to merit being a guest in God's house every day of my life. And what I mean to say is, that every day I merit this.

I am at Kallah, Hebrew Union College NYC's opening retreat weekend. I returned from 3 months of travel last night. I was welcomed in to my apartment by a sea of cockroaches and wonderful friends who took me in late at night and have helped me through a challenging re-entry to my home. I sat through the evening services with more interest than usual, but certainly not engagement in the prayer.

But tonight was different. Tonight, I was in my own community again. I so often feel estranged from these people, this place, but tonight, this was my home. Tonight, I looked around the room and was conscious of many different people and their many different lives. I felt the connection I have to most of them. I care about their cares, I worry about their worries, I celebrate their celebrations. The prayer felt different. I heard the songs of maariv as warm and comfortable, comforting. I this was not something happening around me, like it usually feels, something I am witnessing, something I am sitting through. But more like something I was a part of even if I am apart from the actions. I am still connected to the happening, part of the experience, a member of this community.

Then Rollin, one of the cantors for the evening's prayers, began singing this song. Achat Sh'alty m'et Adonai, otanu evakesh....One question of you, Dear God, of you I do request....Shibty m'beit Adoai kal yamei chayyai. Place me in God's house all the days of my life. Yes, I was singing and praying. Yes, I want to earn that honor, merit having a place in God's house. If there is such a place, if there is such a thing, I want to be living a life which earns that.

The conversation after services left me feeling unsettled. We discussed the future of Judaism. Rabbi Larry Hoffman and Dr. Steven Cohen panel-discussed where we are going. And I felt two things were missing. If the future of Judaism for the Reform movement is involving ourselves with Jews on the margins, then I worry that Rabbinic school is not preparing us to be rabbis there. And secondly, I felt we were talking a great deal about how to perpetuate Judaism. But not enough about WHY to perpetuate Judaism. If Judaism is dying and involement is waning, so be it!

No, I do not feel that way. I do feel as human beings we all have a mission. Judaism offers an approach to that mission. To me, we need to perpetuate Judaism as long as there are injustices in the world. If there is a wrong, then it is my duty because I am a Jew (and I am not saying only Jews have this duty, I am simply saying, I only know it because of my Jewish experience) to respond. That was missing tonight. Keep Judaism going so we can what? Have more programs to keep Judaism going? That feels silly to me. I think we need to keep Judaism going to keep fighting to merit a place in God's house all the days of our lives. I do not think of God in these terms, really, it is an idea, an ideal to live up to. I think Judaism is about being people who are ethical, moral, caring, compassionate and involved. That is the mission, this is the enterprise. The continuity will happen if that is happening. The relationship with God will happen, if that is happening.

I believe this to be true. Other wise, what am I doing here?

Parasha Re'eh and Health Care

Here I am, the second to last Shabbat in Minnesota. I preached tonight and spoke about health care. It was a different sermon for me (pasted below) in that I did not shy away which some times I do. I had a moment, like when I gave my senior sermon, when I sat down, I knew something-something had happened. As I came to the end of the sermon, I felt like I was saying something that maybe mattered. That I was using my voice and my position for something bigger than me. I felt very small and almost cried. When the ark opened for Alenu, I looked at the gorgeous Torahs in the Temple Mount Zion ark and I asked them and the ideas contained within, "Did I make you proud tonight? Did I share your message well?" I wonder often where being Jewish and social change really meet and tonight I felt like I was there in the intersection. It was powerful and humbling...

Here is the sermon I gave to the Mount Zion members. Mount Zion is working on a health care campaign for getting child care for all. I was asked to speak on health care so I did. They are currently part of a "40 days to health care" initiative and I was billed as part of that. There were about 70 people at services tonight. Many I have met during the last six weeks.

"The health care debate is toxic, revealing a lot about us as a nation. And it feels embarrassing — like the whole world can see our underpants..."


You might have heard Brian Unger, satirist, and National Public Radio correspondent say these words this week.[i] In a witty and insightful report, Unger went on to point out many of the ways in which the Health Care Debate looms so large for us as a nation.


"First, most of us can't describe accurately the details of the health care reform now under debate. That makes us look stupid or too busy to care. Second, most of us can't describe accurately the health care or insurance we currently have, so that makes us look kind of stupid, too, or lazy. Some of us don't care about people who don't have health insurance, so that makes us seem unsympathetic or super lucky...A lot of us are a combination of these things: too busy, lazy, a bit stupid perhaps, lucky, unsympathetic, in-denial, really rich, hypocritical, selfish ... and patriotic. We're having an identity crisis when it comes to caring about the nation's health, which makes me think what we really need is psychotherapy. But, sadly, that's not covered under most health plans, if you have one at all."

I recently sat down to coffee with Mount Zion Temple President, Jean King. She taught me a little something about some of her professional work regarding creating social justice and tikkun olam. She explained a model for how to approach change. Imagine, if you will, a graph. The x axis measures what we are knowledgeable about when making social change. The y axis measures the agreement to the approach amongst involved parties for a chosen plan. When we know what to do and we all agree on the approach are most successful. Issues like Health care are in chaos land. We neither really know what will work to change the system nor do the involved parties agree on how to attack the situation


Health Care Reform is crazy and it is making us crazy too. It seems no one, not the policy makers, not the doctors, the patients, the money people, friends, neighbors and even the gal who sells you coffee in the morning can agree about any aspect of our national albatross.
Perhaps there is another way to approach the question. What do we all agree on? Perhaps we can all agree that the system we have now is not working for pretty much anyone and begin our work from there.


This week's Torah reading, Re’ah, might offer some wisdom and insight in to a possible approach to take. Deuteronomy[ii] says, "You shall not act at all as we now act here, every man as he pleases, because you have not yet come to the allotted haven that Adonai, your God is giving you." Torah tells us, getting what we want is good, it is the ideal. But if you want to make that happen, then you cannot just do as you please. Torah continues[iii]. “If, however, there is a needy person among you, one of your kinsmen in any of your settlements in the land that Adonai your God is giving you, do not harden your heart and shut your hand against your needy kinsman.[iv] Open your hand generously, and extend to him any credit he needs to take care of his wants[v]. For someone else to have what they need they need to get it from you. We all want Health Care Reform. I might even be so bold to say, we all want health for everyone. And to get that, we may have to give up some of what we want for the sake of others to have what they need.

Let’s pause here for a moment to sit with this idea. I do not think most people like thinking about giving anything up. As Unger points out, "To many, health care reform is scary, like someone's building a halfway house for criminals right at their doorstep. It's a N.I.M.B.Y. ("Not In My Backyard") issue evolved into a N.O.M.B.O. ("Not On My Back, Obama") issue." Not only is change scary, and easier said than done, we do not especially want someone else telling us we have to be paying for it. I know for me, I like my time, my freedom, and my stuff to do with as I please. The idea of giving any of those things up is hard.


But when I think about it, I suppose I have to choose between the well-being of others and my comforts because, as Torah points out, I probably cannot truly have one without giving up some of the other. That choice, that incredibly difficult and painful choice, is for each of us to make in our own way, in varying degrees.


So what do we do? What do we sacrifice for the greater good? For some of us this might mean that we give of our money to pay higher taxes to cover health care fees for those who cannot afford them. However, quoting Unger again, “Most of us don't understand that we're already paying for people who don't have health care.” The current system forces the uninsured to utilize costly emergency rooms upon becoming truly, truly sick when an insurance-covered doctors visit would have prevented them from ending up so ill in the first place. If we give up some money the under and un-insured could gain a real health care plan, some respect, fewer missed work days, and all around healthier lives.


Not such a terrible sacrifice.


For some of sacrificing might mean that we give up our time and for example, organize to push for policy change. This might seem overwhelming. We may not know what exactly is going on. We may not know where to begin. One could perhaps, see Adele Brown after services and get more involved in the Mount Zion Child Health Care Campaign or, read the sheet in the back of the room with information from David Axelrod at the White House about the policy on the table right now. It seems that by sacrificing some time, we get to work on something potentially nation-changing and life-saving. We get to build beautiful relationships with other people right here in our own community. We get to be those people who did something who make it better. We no longer have to feel so ignorant about what to do and how to do it. We get to DO instead of sitting still feeling overwhelmed. We find our own power and we fight for something we believe in.



And wouldn't that feel pretty fabulous. Maybe this sacrifice is not so bad either.


Giving up some of our personal freedoms may be the hardest sacrifice for some of us to consider making. Freedom, I believe, means choice and often means comfort and convenience. What are some of the choices we make that we might consider sacrificing? I look once again to Brian Unger for inspiration."[In Kash for Klunkers] our government is offering us $4,500 to buy a new car. Can it also offer humans incentives — say, a tax break — to join a gym? ...buy produce from local farmers? Reward [public] schools that teach kids how to eat right and exercise? You know, kind of like that class we used to offer kids called "gym."." Unger has some great ideas but they all mean sacrifice of freedom, sacrifice of choice, convenience and comfort. Joining a gym means giving up the choice, comfort and convenience to sit on our duff all the time. Not to mention, working out is hard! Buying local means giving up the choice, comfort and convenience of buying from Walmart, Super Target, Cub, and even Whole Foods. Rewarding schools for having gym class means giving up the choice, comfort and convenience of thinking that gym is a joke and the only way to succeed is by excelling at math. These sacrifices may be harder to make, but the rewards may be even higher. By setting an example for others, by treating ourselves better, we may find we are not only wishing for but leading and benefiting from a movement for better health for all.


Right now we have already made a huge sacrifice. We have given up quality health care, we have sacrificed National Health.. Maybe it is time to give up something else.


Someone said to me this week that fixing health care may be beyond us. But I disagree.

I think fixing health care or any of our world's ills is on the backs of each of us. We are talking about systems which are not working right. Those systems are not out there in the ether, we are those systems. When we pay our share of the exorbitant price of health insurance, we are part of the health care system. When we vote in the elections of the officials making the policies, we are part of the health care system. When we do yoga, bike, play ultimate frisbee, stay home when we do not feel well, get a good night's sleep, wear sunscreen, avoid junk-food, we are part of the health care system. When we nod and say yes, our American health care does not work and it needs to be better, when we tsk-tsk upon hearing about higher taxes to pay for it, we are part of the health care system. Fixing the health care system is not beyond us. It is us.


System change, as Jane’s model points out, is difficult and complicated. If we think that the system and its functions are beyond us, then we have given up.


All good sermons, Jewish tradition holds, end with a nechemta, a happy ending. And the happy ending here is up to you. We are all part of this broken system. We believe it is not working. It is on each of us to sacrifice something-be it time to organize and push for social change, money to pay for the cost of making health care different and hopefully better, or even some of our freedoms by becoming healthier people eating better, exercising more, and sitting still less.

What will the nechemta to Health Care be? It is up to each one of you. Shabbat Shalom.



[i] air date: August 10, 2009 on National Public Radio

[ii] Deuteronomy 12:8-9

[iii] Deuteronomy 15:7

[iv] modified JPS translation

[v] ORT translation found on www.hebcal.com

Some thoughts on the Exodus

I think I am absently borrowing a lot here from a book I read about all of this a few months back. I by no means intend to plagiarize Michael Walzer's Exodus and Revolution which was a great read....

The lessons of Egypt and the wilderness-Exodus as social change Model

I am often curious about why Jewish liturgy repeats phrases like, "because I, your God, freed you from the land of Egypt" and "Remember you were slaves in Egypt." Here is a framing that is speaking to me very loudly these days...

1. We, the oppressed, called out to God, an external force, for aid and assistance.
1a. That external force hears us and remembers the oppressed people

2. We needed an external force to help us find our own voices and to harness our power
2a. But initially, the oppressed people could not do it alone but the motivation for change and the modality of change was internally shaped by the oppressed more than the external power coming in.

3. God did not do it for us, but rather offered scaffolding for us to grow, develop and learn our own skills as self advocates-especially Moses.

4. It took us a whole generation to make the mental shift from slaves to free people

5. By coming in to Israel we became more than just free people, but a people with a responsibility for ourselves and others

6. The total trajectory is from slaves to free people to leaders with great power and great responsibility.

7. By helping the oppressed to help themselves, the oppressed then become free to function on their own and are then obligated to hear the oppression of others in need, help them to find their own voices, scaffold them in their transformation from slavery to freedom to agents of change.

8. And PS-God gave up a lot to be that external force. Being that power was not always fun and it meant self sacrifice (we are the stiff-necked people). For us too, we too need to remember that helping others and fighting oppression means discomfort. Regardless of that price to pay, we are still obligated (And hopefully even inspired!) to hear the voice of the voiceless and do what needs to be done.

An image of a Synagogue Community Doing Justice

This is excerpted from an email I sent to a dear friend in an ongoing conversation about different ways to bring Justice Work in its various forms into a synagogue so that it could more fully live out being a Justice Congregation...Ok, blog readers, your comments on how this sits with you would be very very appreciated!!


"Oh, but I had an idea about the social justice congregation. What if it was "beit praying with our feet" and Saturday morning services looked like this (for example). Psukei, birchot hashachar, shema, social change action (like everyone picks up their phones and calls 3 members of the synagogue or 3 politicians about one policy piece or 3 local food establishments to ask about their worker's labor rights-like each seat in shul would have a piece of paper on it with the three names and numbers with a script written on it (and on any given day everyone would be making the same sorts of calls just to different people so all health care one day, all inreach one day etc etc) and then Alenu, Kadish, Ein Kelohenu (I am not sure if Amidah would still be included...)..."

What do you think?

Stories of iritation and agitation

My body is irritated. My chosen mode of transportation here in the twin cities is bicycle. It is wonderful. Yesterday I rode the high bridge over the Mississippi River. That was really cool! Today Elyse, my friend’s sister-in-law who is giving me a place to live for the summer, showed me to the bike paths of Minnesota which are just gorgeous. I have ridden twenty-five miles in two days and have another 10 to do tonight to get home.
But oy, my under-carriage is sore! My body is irritated.
Today, I was talking with the person in the office working on foreclosures and housing issues. We were talking about the one-to-one. I asked him what he thought a successful one-to-one looks like. He said, when the other person is so agitated that they shoot up out of their chair and run out the door to go change the world. And I thought, Yah! I want to make people do that…but then thought about what that means…
Agitating people. It is the nature of creating change. Change does not happen until the status quo becomes so uncomfortable that staying as is means MORE uncomfortable than the discomfort of that necessarily accompanies change.
The conversation in the office continued. There is a dynamic tension between building relationships and agitating others. The one on one works to do both. This is a continuum. In pure organizing or on a shorter campaign, agitation is king. But in congregation life where a rabbi, for example, needs to not only agitate a congregant but also facilitate that same congregant’s baby naming, wedding and or funeral, the relationship may have to take precedence over the agitation for the rabbi to keep their job or to be effective as a service leader…
Wait, does that have to be true? I mean, can we be adult enough that I, as your rabbi, can, with full transparency, piss you off for the greater good on Monday and then offer you comfort for that agitation at services on Friday night? I mean, why not be both? Isn’t that my job as a rabbi…

Isn’t that our responsibility to one another as people?

What would the world look like if I felt it was my job to not only tell you when you are being self-contradictory, hypocritical, unnecessarily self-defeating, and then also hold your hand while you undergo the process of not doing that anymore?
I want my people to feel like it is their job to that for me…you all have my permission to do so.

Hmmm, on to the next task, how do I get right with, get comfortable with, actually putting discomfort in the world? And, will I be willing to take responsibility for it too?

Shoosh, this is a tall order…

Because really, my inner honest person (also affectionately referred to as inner bitch) knows the words to say. Does my inner softy also know the words? I think she does. Now, can I truth them both to work together and get along for the sake of what could then be possible?

So bottom line is this...irritation and agitation are not the same. There is no greater good to the soreness I feel sitting here right now from all the biking. That pain for pain's sake (I am building my callous which is not a greater good but more of a necessary evil). I think if I ONLY anger then I am irritating. If I also comfort and guide, then I am agitating. If the greater good is the reason, then the ends justify the means.

Right?

I am working all this out in my head. Am I just rationalizing??