Humanitarian aid arriving in Haiti? Essential goods finally delivered to Gaza?

Oh wait, it’s just the opening of the first H&M store in Israel last week…

But I keep going, religiously. For me, one of the most important functions of Judaism is to deal with the reality of these gaps, these distances in our selves. When I fall short, how do I get back to what is good and true in me and in the world? That question is what this week’s parasha, Vayikra is all about.

A surface read of Vayikra might seem to be instructions for a massive bbq - animals, smoke, blood, and fire, but dig a little deeper in the text and there’s a lot more. The parasha is essentially a list of korbanot. What is a korban? It’s commonly mistranslated as sacrifice or offerings but as the Ramban points out in his introduction to the parasha, the word means “drawing close,” from the root k-r-b, to be near. The different korbanot in our parasha are intended to be vehicles to draw close to God.

And when do we feel the strongest need to draw close? After we’ve been distant. The Torah’s word for this distance that I described earlier is: chet. Chet is commonly mistranslated as “sin” but is much closer to the word for missing a shot in basketball, להחטיא. To do a chet means to miss the mark of your potential. I don’t mean this in a fuzzy self-help way, there are times when I’ve missed the mark that have had serious, painful consequences for myself and others. Chet is real, but it’s not the end. It does not have to lead to despair or an abandonment of ideals. You can get back on track.

Religious ritual, whether korbanot, prayer, song, etc. can serve as a bridge from the missteps and missed opportunities of today to how we want to be tomorrow. They force us to confront the things we don’t like in ourselves but at also create the space to move forward. The message of Vayikra is the times we fall short are not excuses to run from our most important values and our relationships. It’s the opposite. Those are the moments when God calls for korban, the moments when we are to draw closest.

She is a great Jewish mother and tweets as @gsmaustin. What follows are her tweets and notes from the session.

Poor form. I mean, if you’re gonna cast something at the Wall, why not stones? If you’re gonna get medieval on someone, at least practice what you preach… Until then, we know it’s March Madness and all, but can someone tell these folks to give the Bobby Knight impressions a rest?

It used to be commonly held that Orthodox Jews were more interested in ritual observances—the obligations between people and God—while Reform Jews were interested in charity and justice, or the obligations among people. (No one really knew where the Conservative movement stood…)
The last decade has changed all this.

Enjoy.
(KFJ talked about a related topic in a recent post here.)

EeGADS! Extra Eclectic Gentiles Are Doing Shabbos!

Mission:
“SHABBAT IS MORE FUN IF YOU YOURSELF COME.” Meet with us Friday evenings for a little liturgy, music & meditation, poetry, prose, and prayer, BREAD & WINE…and of course a good vegetarian shabbos meal together. What more could you ask for?! Non-goyim are welcome, too. Straight friendly. We need all the help we can get! Most of us, though, are Christians, of one sort or another. For information: goyshabbos {at} yahoo(.)com

(That was fully unedited, of course.) Vegetarian queers hosting a lovely shabbos dinner? What more could you want…? Oh right, some Jews…

h/t Leah!

Sunday March 21, 11:00 am - 4pm

If you’re in Washington DC, you can be part of history and help change the future for millions of our immigrant brothers and sisters. Join tens of thousands of people of faith from across the United States for “March for America: Change Takes Courage and Faith.” Register here: http://tinyurl.com/Jewishimmigrationmarch.

National Jewish Conference Call on Immigration Reform

Sunday March 21, 6pm

Learn about the Jewish imperative to call for immigration reform on a conference call with Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), Rabbi David Saperstein (Reform), Rabbi Morris Alan (Conservative) and Rabbi Menachem Genack (Orthodox) and other leaders.

Register Here: http://www.jcua.org/immigrationcall.

National Lobby / Call In Day

Monday March 22, 9 am - 5 pm

The We Were Strangers Too coalition is helping to organize lobby visits with members of Congress. Please register at the following site if you are able to stay in town: http://changetakesfaith.org/.

For individuals who cannot travel to Washington on the 21/22, we need you to call your Members of Congress and advocate for reform. Everyone who registers for the March 21 Jewish conference call will receive an email with the information for the national call-in day on March 22.

Jewish Council on Urban Affairs, Jewish Community Action, and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society are the co-conveners of We Were Strangers Too: the Jewish Campaign for Immigration Reform.

Just days before Passover, we have a tremendous opportunity to call on Congress to fix our broken immigration system.  As we commemorate that We Were Strangers Too in the land of Egypt, we should take time to reflect on how strangers in the U.S. today are treated.  Think of these as the “plagues” of our current immigration system:

1. Keeping Families Apart: The current system keeps families apart. Mothers, fathers, sons and daughters are separated with no means of contacting one another during the detention process. Others have to wait as long as 22 years to be reunited with immediate family members who have been granted legal status.

2. NAFTA: The North American Free Trade Act has led to wealth disparities, destroyed agriculture as a means of income in Mexico and reduced wages for all countries involved, leaving citizens of Mexico with fewer options to take care of their families.

3. Low Wages: Despite the fact that UCLA’s Dr. Raul Hinojosa-Ojeda found that legalizing undocumented workers would yield $1.5 trillion to the U.S. GDP over a 10-year period and would raise wages. Undocumented workers are severely underpaid for their work and often work in unsafe conditions. (See this for more.)

4. Living in Fear: Law enforcement leaders from around the country are calling for a path to citizenship knowing the more documented a person is the more he or she will be willing to assist in the prevention and just resolution of criminal activity. In some cases health care workers are required to report illegal immigrants to the authorities- leaving many undocumented workers in fear to see a doctor- even when they or their family members are sick.

5. Wage Theft:  With no legal system to protect them, employers take advantage of workers with low and in some cases no pay for a hard days work. The net effect can be a lowering of wages for all working in some of Americas most physically demanding jobs.

6. Lack of Due Process: In 2009 more than 370,000 people were detained by the Department of Homeland Security. Even without a criminal background, they can be jailed for months at a time and denied them access to legal counsel and other basic human rights.

7. No Path to Legalization for Minors: There is no path to citizenship for people who were brought to the Untied States as minors. They are punished for the alleged transgressions of their parents and forced to return to countries they do not know.

Okay, so those are not quite 10 plagues, but through our efforts, we can help put an end to the suffering and fix our broken immigration system.

As far as kick-offs to Federation sponsored meetings go, it was pretty kick-ass. First off, one of two leadership awards was presented to Dr. Eshetu Kebede, the Haifa-side co-chair of Shiluvim (”Integration”), a program to empower and integrate Ethiopian residents of Haifa into mainstream Israeli society. Dr. Kebede took the opportunity to highlight the educational work Shiluvim has done, busing Ethiopian children into schools across the city, noting how far we’ve come in the areas of student commitment and parental support. But then he acknowledged how far we still have to travel in the third pillar of student success — relationship with teachers. And he specifically called out the racism still rampant in some Israeli classrooms, where some teachers tell their Ethiopian students they aren’t Jews, aren’t Israelis, and aren’t worthy or capable of an education.

You can imagine the shitstorm unleashed behind the scenes as the professionals involved with the project leap into damage-control mode. Sitting at a table full of Israeli educators, I could feel the tension in the room, and yet despite the discomfort, it was clear that many recognized the truth in his words. I know that there are many excellent teachers in the Haifa schools who work hard as partners in their Ethiopian students’ (and all students’) success — some of them were at my table. But that doesn’t discount the work left to be done. I hope Dr. Kebede’s call to arms will be taken seriously, galvanizing the community to continue the important work this program has begun.

After some more speeches (and another leadership award presented to Bostonian Debbie Kurinsky), the evening took a decidedly less serious turn with the introduction of Kolot Min HaShamayim (”Voices from Heaven”), an Orthodox Boys’ Choir, to be the evening’s entertainment.

Maybe it’s jet lag, maybe I needed something to relieve the tension left from Dr. Kebede’s speech, or maybe my inner USY dork simply came alive, but I was totally sold on them. Their style is best described as “Glee set in a yeshiva.” Their repertoire ranged from traditional and liturgical settings to a Caribbean take on Adon Olam and a mash-up of Kabbalat Shabbat and O Sole Mio. I didn’t have my Flip camera handy, but thankfully my Blackberry takes video. It’s not the best footage I’ve ever recorded, but I do hope you enjoy it. (And somebody, please get these guys a record deal!)

There is a lot to be said about the possibilities of Jewish film. We’ve heard about kollel guys turning the lens on themselves, Israeli filmmakers orchestrating the visual return of Jews to Poland, or Palestinian filmmakers depicting the society that excludes them.

Then there is Wallace Berman. Born on Shaolin Island in the Roaring 20s, his family made their way to California in 1930, just in time for the Depression. He was a member of many loosely organized bohemian camps. He’s often mentioned in the same catalogs as Artaud, Bukowski, and Burroughs - but like some tzadikim, he wasn’t exactly like any of them. Berman experimented with proto-xerography processes to create collages that upended conventions in postwar American art. The only film he made is called Aleph - and it brings together his interest in abstract visualizations and Jewish Mysticism.

Watch Aleph HERE.