Parashat Shoftim (Deuteronomy 16:18 – 21:9)
August 31, 2011 

Reflections on the Torah Portion – Rabbi Andy Vogel

Crowds of over 300,000 Israelis have taken to the streets in recent weeks in protests about social issues.  In the days ahead this week (usually, these protests are scheduled to convene Saturday evenings as Shabbat ends), an estimated one million Israelis are expected to gather once more to continue these protests.  During the last week my family and I were in Israel in late June, the movement began, first as an outcry against the price of cottage cheese, of all things, but then developed and grew into protests against the costs of basic needs for all Israelis: food, housing, health care, child-care and education, and large “tent cities” sprung up on the medians of Tel Aviv’s major city streets, a characteristic which caught on in other cities as well. 

    The rallying cry of the organizers has used words that echo this week’s Torah portion: tzedek chevrati, in Hebrew, or “social justice.”  (This could also be translated as “justice across society.”)  Parashat Shoftim, our week’s Torah portion, begins using very similar words, saying, “Justice, justice shall your pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land” (Deut. 16:20), originally meant as an exhortation to judges to judge fairly, but extended in its meaning over the centuries as an obligation for Jews to work to create true justice, throughout society – justice in economic terms, distributive justice, as well as retributive justice.  Israel today struggles with inequalities much like other Western capitalist economies, and this summer’s protesters have adopted phrases drawn from the Torah and from Jewish tradition to express their yearning to address the large economic gaps within society.  That Jewish values and teachings can inform Israelis working to correct Israeli society’s flaws reminds us of the power of the Torah, that perhaps its idealism is not naive, but that it can touch our lives and build a better world.

-           Rabbi Andy Vogel

To read more, click to this article from the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/06/world/middleeast/06israel.html?_r=1&scp=6&sq=israel%20social%20justice&st=cse 

Or this article from the JTA: http://www.jta.org/news/article/2011/08/08/3088900/reform-backs-israeli-protests 

Handwriting on the Wall
August 24, 2011

Construction on the separation barrier in Al-Walaje

A minor headline in today’s newspaper is especially troubling to me as I write this morning (Aug. 24, 2011).  The Palestinian village of Al-Walajeh, just southwest of Bethlehem on the border of Jerusalem, had appealed to Israel’s Supreme Court to have the route of the concrete separation barrier moved, on grounds that the wall would completely encircle and smother the village, and yesterday, Israel’s highest court rejected their appeal.  I visited Al-Walajeh during my recent sabbatical in Israel, and met with Sheerin Alaraj, a passionate and articulate Palestinian woman who serves on Al-Walajeh’s local town council, who described their efforts to win approval of the courts in Israel, and gave me a tour of the village.  First stop on the tour was the house of Sheerin and her family, which overlooks a beautiful valley and the Judean hills beyond.  But because there is an Israeli access road to a nearby West Bank Jewish settlement, the administration plans to construct large cement barrier just a few short meters from her home, blocking her view and her access to the valley and lands.  When I encountered Sheerin, her anger and frustration were clear, and yet, I also heard in her story a glimmer of hope that Israel could deal justly with their village.  Today, the newspapers report that the village’s appeals have been rejected, and so Sheerin’s is just one of the many painful stories to be told in this village.

Town councilwoman Sheerin Alaraj

Panoramic view of the house of Ms. Alaraj, which will be blocked by a concrete wall

     In other cases, Israel’s Supreme Court has bravely changed the route of the wall-barrier on humanitarian grounds.  The Israeli authorities have, occasionally, responded compassionately to appeals, and moved the route of barrier (which in some places is a concrete wall, and in others a network of electronic fences).  One such celebrated case was featured in the documentary film, “Budrus,” which shows how Palestinians used non-violent community organizing to win over the Israeli public and the courts.  There is little question in most Israelis’ minds that the barrier has proven effective in reducing terrorist attacks inside Israel.  But some Palestinians that I met held deep convictions that Israel was using the barrier to expropriate lands and effectively change the actual border in certain key spots.  I have the feeling that each case is different, depending on the local situation and geography.  Either way, the entire situation is deeply painful: painful to see Palestinians suffering and growing angrier with the construction of each kilometer, painful to hear Israel accused of using these tactics (founded or unfounded), painful to see the destruction of land and environment by this ugly wall, and especially painful that two peoples trust each other so little and that the conflict deepens and intensifies with each day’s newspaper stories.    

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/arab-villagers-lose-court-battle-against-jerusalem-fence-route-1.380325
see also:  
http://www.justvision.org/budrus
 

A New Trend among Secular Israelis

The common wisdom about Israeli Jews is that there are two kinds:  secular and religious.  If you’re a secular Israeli Jew, this line of thinking goes, you live in Tel Aviv, and have little connection to Jewish tradition:  Yom Kippur for secular Israelis means a day spent at the beach; Shabbat might include a family dinner, but singing blessings isn’t a part of it; when secular Israelis study the Bible in school-children, they primarily study the books telling about Joshua’s conquest of the land.  Religion among Israeli Jews, on the other hand, is usually stereotyped as Orthodox or ultra-Orthodox, isolated from modern society and rigidly halakhic (adhering to Jewish law).

     I discovered that some of these stereotypes are cracking in Israel today.  During my sabbatical, I experienced a number of very interesting spiritual communities and met their leaders who might describe themselves as religious, but also as secular – perhaps as somewhere in between these two poles.  Dozens of prayer communities have been formed to celebrate Shabbat evening, which do so in a creative, spiritually-attuned non-Orthodox way.  (This is beyond what the Israeli Reform movement has already created.)  One community, called Niggun HaLev (“melody of the heart”), meets in the social hall room at a secular moshav of Nahalal and 

Israeli musician Etti Ankri now sings about Jewish religious themes

uses instruments for beautiful music for Shabbat evening prayers each week; many of those in attendance would otherwise call themselves secular, but they are regular attendees at Kabbalat Shabbat services each Friday.  At least forty communities similar to this one have formed over the past decade.  One community, Beit Tefilah Yisraeli, meets on the Tel Aviv beach each Friday night for Shabbat services, and draws hundreds of people each week.

Tel Aviv's "Beit Tefilah Yisraeli": Shabbat services on the beach

      Another example:  I attended a dedication party / concert for a new Hebrew book of secular poems on prayer (!), called Kirvat Makom; in between readings of the poems, a major Israeli musician, formerly secular, named Etti Ankri came to the stage to perform her songs of the prayer-poetry of Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda HaLevi (12^th century).  I became friendly with a rabbi, formerly ultra-Orthodox, who now leads a creative Jewish renewal community on a moshav near Haifa, at Beit Oren, focusing on meditation and the human attribute of love and caring, whose Ark is in the shape of a teepee.  All throughout Israel, there is renewed interest in the spiritual teachings of Judaism, as they might apply to modern life for secular Israelis, and this phenomenon has been documented by Israeli scholar Yair Sheleg.  Perhaps soon these two dichotomous two terms, secular and religious, might one day be replaced with a new conceptual norm that will describe most Israelis: “incorporating Jewish tradition and spirituality into our daily lives.”

-       Rabbi Andy Vogel

Watch this YouTube clip of musicians from "Nava Tehilla" (a Jerusalem alternative synagogue) singing "L'cha Dodi": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhPLDLAMQLg&feature=related

Listen to this YouTube clip of "Niggun HaLev" community, on the Nahalal moshav, singing words from Psalm  98:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVO4KDDDDXI
Watch singer Etti Ankri sing her version of  Yehudah HaLevi's poem "B'chol Libi": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SK8d9gmap8M

Environmentalism at Kibbutz Lotan  (a Reform kibbutz)

 
When a small group of Israeli and American Reform Jews, most of whom were in their 20s, founded Kibbutz Lotan deep in the southern Arava desert of Israel in the mid-1980s, I’m sure that none of them imagined how innovative the kibbutz would become today.  Lotan was started some twenty-five years ago as an idealistic community dedicated to communal living, egalitarianism, the spirit of Zionism and settling the Land of Israel, and also creative and vibrant Reform Judaism.  Among its founders were guitar-playing American Jews who grew up in NFTY (the Reform youth movement) and gone to Reform Jewish summer camps, and then made the decision to join with Israelis and make aliyah to live in Israel.  Renewing Progressive Judaism in Israel was as important to the kibbutz members as growing dates and milking cows.  But no one could have predicted that their commitment to Reform Jewish values would lead them to develop Lotan into a center for cutting-edge environmental living, studies and training.

   .  My family and I visited Kibbutz Lotan in April, just before the intense heat begins (it can easily reach 120 degrees once summer arrives this far south in Israel, about a 30-minute drive from Eilat).  I had lived on Lotan twenty years ago, and still have many friends on the kibbutz.  We were amazed at the tour a young kibbutz member gave us – we learned how Lotan focuses today on “earthcare,” an ethical way of living by caring for the planet, and interprets from the Biblical verse that instructs humans “to till and tend the earth” the concept of a “permaculture” (permanent agriculture) that is sustainable in every way possible.  To build its permaculture, the kibbutz builds all its new buildings from all-natural and alternative materials, and has built an entire “eco-campus” on its grounds.  It has developed advanced ways of composting and recycling for growing food.  Through its composting and recycling efforts, the kibbutz has reduced its overall waste disposal by 70% each year.  And the kibbutz has built a training program, “Green Apprenticeships,” that provide college credit in environmental studies, teaching a new generation about local food production, ecological design, renewable energy and sustainable technologies.  In this new phase of its growth, the members of Kibbutz Lotan are keeping alive their idealism, and they continue to make Reform Judaism thrive through caring for our world.

That's me on Kibbutz Lotan: 1992 & 2011

To read more about Kibbutz Lotan, click to http://reformjudaismmag.org/Articles/index.cfm?id=1529

Mt. Arbel        

Going hiking in Israel is always a walk through Jewish history. In March, one of my daughters and I hiked up the cliffs at Mt. Arbel, a giant crevice near the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) in Israel’s north. The hike is relatively easy, but the footing is close to the cliff’s edge; and when we reached the top, we were rewarded with a breathtaking view. We could easily see the hills of the Golan Heights across the sea, and in the distance, snow-capped Mount Hermon, Israel’s highest peak; below we saw the multi-colored fields of kibbutzim and moshavim founded nearly a century ago, and small Arab villages of the Galilee. And, as in every spot in Israel, we discovered that Arbel’s cliffs conceal the story of Jews who lived (and died) here more than 2,000 years ago.

. First, we encountered the ruins of an ancient synagogue from the 3^rd century; carved into the stone is a round niche that points to Jerusalem in which the Torah scrolls were kept. Then, we learned that caves in the Arbel cliffs were places of refuge for the Jews who rebelled against the King Herod and his Roman soldiers around the year 39 BCE. Herod’s men could not force the Jews out of the caves until he devised a system to lower his soldiers down on platforms with pulleys from above and smoke out the Jews hiding in the caves. Later, in the great Jewish Revolt (66-70 CE), Jews again hid in these caves. Finally, shortly after the State of Israel was declared, a group of Jews originally from Romania reclaimed this location by founding a moshav (collective settlement) in 1949, and live there today thriving off of small industry, orchards, a dairy, and tourism.

Friday, April 15, 2011
Erev Pesach
Jerusalem

Dear Members of Temple Sinai:

I offer you my greetings from Israel, and wishes to you all for a very happy Pesach holiday! As you can imagine, preparations for Passover throughout Israel are very exciting, with school children out for a 2 1/2 week vacation period and many people traveling, the whole country cleaning and preparing for Seder, much discussion of which restaurants are kosher for Passover, and much of the population speaking the language of freedom from liberation.

My family and I will be telling the story of the Hagaddah in Jerusalem this year -- so the final line of the Seder, "Next year in Jerusalem!" is a literal reality for us. In truth, however, Israelis have added a key word to that line, so here at the end of the Seder we will say, "Next year in a Jerusalem Rebuilt," with the clear implication that not just Jerusalem, but the entire world, is still far from our dream of completion and perfection, that we still have much work to do to reach our vision of Tikkun Olam, a world repaired and liberated. Yet, we taste of that dream as we retell our people's ancient story of redemption from slavery.

From our sabbatical experience in Israel, my family and I wish you and your dear ones a very happy Pesach!

- Rabbi Andy Vogel

March 15, 2011

Haifa

Greetings from Israel! Our family is well, and truly enjoying our stay in Haifa. During this week before Purim, I want to share with you my blessings from Israel, and share a few reflections from my sabbatical here, which continues to be a wonderful, relaxing and renewing experience.

I have just finished a 5-day bicycle journey as a fundraiser for the Reform movement in Israel. Over five days, about 30 bikers and I pedaled our mountain bikes about 140+ miles from the town of Modi’in to Masada, past kibbutzim and small moshavim, through orchards and vineyards, flowering almond trees, green, green wheat fields (who knew there was so much wheat growing in Israel?), past archaeological sites, and across the round, brown Judean hills, and finally, down rough, empty desert paths toward the Dead Sea. Nearly all of our ride was off-road, on bumpy tractor paths and rocky dirt or gravely roads, with little bits of highway biking here and there. The whole ride was wonderful, challenging, difficult, through sun, heat, cold and rain, and extremely beautiful at every turn.

In addition to allowing me to see up close how beautiful Israel is in a way that can't be seen when traveling by car or bus, the 5-day ride was a fundraiser for the Israeli Movement for Progressive Judaism (IMPJ; i.e., the Reform movement in Israel). We began the ride at the Reform day school in Modi'in, run by the Reform "Yozma" congregation there, meeting 250 children offering us blessings for a safe ride at their Sunday morning Havdallah ceremony. A day later, after a ride through the town of Sderot which borders the Gaza Strip, we met the regional coordinator for the Reform movement's activities in the south of Israel, who spoke passionately about how the IMPJ is introducing a joyous, pluralistic Judaism to more secular Jews in that part of the country. We had the opportunity to meet leading Israeli Reform rabbis at a festive dinner in Arad another night, which I enjoyed, and I became friendly with an impressive group of 18-year old 

Israelis (who participated in the bike ride) who are spending their "gap year" before their army service in the Reform Movement's "Mechinah" program, studying about progressive Jewish values and volunteering in Jaffa. And I was privileged to join a great group of riders of all ages and skills with whom some nice friendships developed. It was a great week. (If you’d like to contribute and sponsor me retroactively to support our Israeli Reform counterparts, you can do so by clicking to this link: http://www.riding4reform.org/Eng/2011/Pages/PaymentInstructions.asp#CreditCardDonations , or send in a check to: Riding4Reform, Israel Movement for Progressive Judaism, 13 King David Street, Jerusalem 94101, Israel. Thank you to those who choose to contribute!)

“Israel is a country for the children,” one of our Israeli friends explained recently, and no holiday exemplifies this more than Purim, which begins this coming Saturday night. (I can only imagine the wonderful wackiness that must be enveloping Temple Sinai again this year, as it does every year when the Purim celebrations and much-loved shpiel holiday approach in Brookline.) In Israel, we have seen Purim madness take over the country; for nearly a month, stores everywhere have been jammed with parents buying Purim costumes for their children, and children have been wearing their costumes on the streets in preparation for the holiday. At school, our daughters and their classmates are asked to come to school wearing different silly-themed clothing for each day, and it seems that the entire country is busy preparing mishloach manot, gift packages of food for one another, and for the country’s poor via community centers and old age homes. Even many Arab Israeli children, who are not Jewish, choose to dress up and participate in the costume celebrations, a fascinating example of assimilation here in the Middle East.

But Purim’s festivities are of an uneasy kind (the silliness in the story of Esther barely succeeding to reveal Haman’s wicked plot is an anxious one, after all), and my joy was punctured this week, however, by the awful events of the weekend. Of deep concern is the horrifying earthquake and tsunami in Japan, and the nuclear crisis that is developing, and of the unimaginable loss of life and destruction there. Closer to home, here, we were troubled by the brutal terrorist murder of a family of five in a West Bank ideological settlement over Shabbat; Israeli newspapers showed their portrait photos on the cover pages, and also debated the Netanyahu government’s pledge to build more settlement housing in response to the killings.

As we I pray that the cycle of violence and reprisals will one day come to an end, and that the calm that has characterized our sabbatical in Israel thus far will continue. Haifa, the city where are living, is a city of co-existence and “shared-existence” between Jews and Arabs, and between people of many faiths, and we are proud to be part of this city’s multi-cultural heritage. As I reflect on the meaning of Purim for myself this year, while I am in Israel, I’m moved by the bravery of Esther and Mordechai to stand up to hatred, as the Megillah scroll tells it, by their example of speaking out and not remaining silent, and by the reminder issued, or perhaps hinted at, in the speech of Mordechai to Esther, that all Jews are inter-connected and responsible for one another, and by Esther’s willingness to act on this idea and take risks to preserve life and human dignity. When we hear the Megillah read this Saturday evening in an Israeli Reform congregation here in Haifa, we will be affirming these universal values, even amidst all the silliness.

I hope you and your dear ones are well. From our sabbatical time in Israel, my family and I ask God’s blessings for you and your family, for life and health and a joyous Purim, filled with “light, joy, gladness and honor.”

- Rabbi Andy Vogel

January 18, 2011 Haifa
Greetings from Israel! Our family has been here in Haifa for almost two weeks now, and we are adjusting well to our life in Israel. We have settled into our home here in the French Carmel area of Haifa in a charming old, stone house (after living in a temporary apartment in the center of town), and we are delighted to wake each morning to our partial views of the Mediterranean Sea, after hearing the howling of jackals each night from the green valley below our street. (We are told there are dozens of these wolf-like animals dwelling among the bushes in the dry stream-beds all throughout Haifa.) Our daughters are beginning to feel very comfortable in their daily routines at the Leo Baeck School, an all-Hebrew Jewish day school (there are virtually no American children there) which is the flagship institution of the Reform movement in Israel, and are valiantly waking up each morning to put on their school uniform T-shirts and attend their classes entirely in Hebrew. The school, its teachers and students have all done a wonderful job welcoming them, and both our girls are working hard to use their language skills to absorb what they can from classes, tefilah and school assemblies, and to chat it up with new friends. We are very proud of them both.

These first two weeks in Israel have provided me with many moving impressions and new thoughts. My days have been full, not only with the initial logistics that moving to a new country require, but also with many reflections about being a Jew living in Israel. I am absorbed with the Israeli political scene, which shifted dramatically this week with Ehud Barak’s departure from the Labor Party, with the much-needed rainstorms drenching us, with a hike that provided Martha and me with up-close views of the recent devastating Carmel fires, to name just a few. We have attended a friend’s art opening on faith and the Holocaust, seen an Israeli folk-rock concert, participated in impromptu alternative Erev Shabbat services housed in a small community house, and visited an Arab early childhood development center, one of a number of Jewish-Arab social service projects in this city that fascinate me. Yesterday, we attended the exciting dedication of a new Jewish-Arab interfaith dialogue and “shared existence” garden and grove in Haifa, supported by 50 Jewish, Muslim and Christian clergy members, as well as the Haifa municipality, to promote cooperation with one another and stand against racism and discrimination.

But a pervasive occupation of ours has been with Hebrew itself, with our ability to communicate in Hebrew, and with the way that modern Israeli society has clothed itself in the modern Hebrew language in all ways. I am blessed each day with the opportunity to conduct my daily business in Hebrew – with the school’s principal and our girls’ teachers, with the cell phone salesman and the guy serving us falafel, with Sergei from Belarus who came to install our internet cables, who told me he fled to Israel 16 years ago. In this country of immigrants, I am reminded that each person here, or their parents, took on the task of mastering spoken Hebrew, to rebuild his or her life, and make a better future for his or her children in the Jewish State. Reinventing of Hebrew 100 years ago from a sacred tongue for of holy study and prayer into a language for daily life was a brilliant move by the early Zionists; I am amazed to learn new vocabulary each day, just by paging through the Hebrew newspaper or by operating our Israeli TV remote control. Each day we spend in Haifa, our family is immersed in the renewal of the Jewish people’s ancient language, and, it has become simultaneously both ancient and modern. While we American Jews primarily encounter Hebrew in the context of our synagogue, if at all, its richness as a modern spoken language today, and its beauty in Israel is so evident to me each day.

We miss our family at Temple Sinai very much, and hope you are well. We think of you often (especially during these awful 68-degree days we must endure here - !), and will keep in touch.

B’shalom,

Rabbi Andy Vogel

Haifa