Category Archives: Judaism

Fourth Phase, Health, Judaism, Politics, Shadow Mountain

Peace?

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Thursday gratefuls: Tara. Fantastic Four. Shadow, the early riser. The U.S. military. The Middle East. War. Peace. Negotiations.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Snow

 

Kavannah: Shleimut.   Being present to myself.

Tarot: Ace of Vessels     My emotions need recharging from the deep waters of my soul. I am the stag.

 

One brief shining: Today they begin, the bone scan, the echo, the pet scan. Two cts. Is my body strong enough to withstand the trial? How we will know if the treatment I’m getting works. This bone scan against that one.

 

Not looking forward to the next week and a half. My life has pauses, then bang, bang, bang. More blood tests. More diagnostics. Since last May, the pace of surveillance has ramped up. A lot.

More scheduling. More rides needed. More information over my transom than I can keep up with. A lot.

Meanwhile, the world.  Crazy. Real estate developers as diplomats? A President against foreign intervention starts his second war this year. Israel a hegemon.

A headline says Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler may devolve into niche makers of the last gas fueled cars as China rises in building ones fueled by electricity. Many self-driven.

Climate change supercharges hurricanes. Ate our mountain winter. Sea levels go further into Miami. New York City. Thwaites Glacier rests precariously on warming Antarctic waters.

What about measles? Polio. Even covid and the flu. A polio survivor. I remember the line at age 8. Thurston Elementary. About to get a shot. The vaccine. How indignant it made me. Not fair.

Vaccines don’t work? Says the cabinet secretary, Robert Kennedy. Thanks to the polio vaccine, twenty four years later. 1979. Polio eradicated in the U.S. Measles outbreaks increasing.

The context of my old age.

Where can we find peace? Not in the clanging of the MRI or the cool gel of an Echocardiogram. Nor in bloodwork or office visits. Certainly not in the newspapers I read every morning.

A touch on the arm. Shadow’s tongue licking my hand. Tara sitting with her legs draped over the chair arm. Shadow and Eleanor playing, bumping, running.

The Mule Deer does that visit my front yard often. Dining on grass. Delicate. Graceful as they move across my field of view.

Ruth offers to drive up. Make me French toast. Even bacon. Gabe asks me to offer him fun facts about himself. He can’t think of any.

No matter. The craziness. The tests. No matter.

Even in the midst of external chaos. Teshuvah. Return to the homeland of your soul. I am a writer, a lover of nature, human partner to Shadow, curious, resilient. A friend and a brother and a cousin. A Jew named Israel.

I also love. My Ancient Brothers. My synagogue friends. Mozart. Shadow Mountain home. My life.

Peace lies not on the newspaper pages. Not in lab results or treatment protocols.

Peace lies in being who you are.

No matter what.

Family, Fourth Phase, Friends, Judaism, Korea, Politics, Shadow Mountain, Travel, US History

Is it time to go?

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Tuesday and the Moon of Tides

Monday gratefuls: Tara and Eleanor. Arjean. Costa Rica. Iran. U.S. Israel. Gaza. Lebanon. War and peace. Mark in Hafar.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Tara

Kavannah: Shleimut. My lev, calm. Clinical trial decision made. Living into the next.

Tarot: Knight of Vessels, Eel. My spirit, strong. My decisions, made. Old, not dead.

One brief shining: While I sit in peace on Shadow Mountain, Shadow gnaws a toy, asks for breakfast. Mary roasts in summer heat. Joe and Seoah shiver in a cold Korea. Everyone seems further away.

 

A conversation U.S. Jews. Is it time to leave? Is this a Weimar moment after Adolf took power? Friends Marilyn and Irv looked at land in Costa Rica. Decided not to go. Irv said he loved the mountains. Too old to leave.

Tara and Arjean. Have hired a property manager. Are cleaning out 27 years of stuff.  Move to Costa Rica sometime in June. Stay in AirBnBs as they scout for a place to settle. A year or so experiment.

Two times when I almost left the continental U.S. 1969. Got the call for my draft physical. To Indianapolis with all of my money and all my possessions. (not much) Would have moved to Canada like my old friend Mike Hines.

Turns out psoriasis worsens when wearing wool and in hot, humid climates. Army uniforms. Wool. Vietnam.

As I left the place where I’d had my physical, a serious man told me: “You cannot enlist in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, or the Marines.” I asked him, “Are you sure?” When he said yes, I said, “Thank god.”

Second time. After Kate died. Joe and Seoah. Planned then to retire after Korea and move back to Hawai’i. Cleared out the house and garage. Researched places on Oahu where Kepler and I could live. Checked out synagogues. Studied my budget.

Jon died. I couldn’t leave Ruth and Gabe.

My sister and my brother, Mary and Mark. Long time expats.  Mary now in Melbourne and Mark teaching ESL to young Arab men. Joe and Seoah: Hawai’i, Singapore, and Korea. Nine years

State Department urges Americans to leave the Middle East. Mark stays. Hafar has no military targets. He lives among the Saudi citizens. Not in an Aramco US compound. An old Saudi hand at this point.

I’m the stay at home of a far flung family.

When is it time to leave?

 

For me. Not yet.

Judaism, Poetry, Politics, US History, World History
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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Sunday gratefuls: A restful Sabbath. Tara’s home. Eleanor will come. Iran. Israel. U.S. Khamenei. Morning darkness. The power of myth. Rumi.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  Superman

 

Week Kavannah:   Shleimut.   The alignment of the inner self with outer actions, bringing a sense of completeness to life.

Tarot: Six of Arrows, transition

My inner world. Moving to the clinical trial and to a focus on draft 2 of Superior Wolf. With confidence.

One brief shining: Fusing the clinical trial decision with the ongoing evolution of my writing style. A sail like the Six of Arrows, full with the winds of agency, of growth, of resolve.

When I was in college in the last millennium, I met four students who identified as Persian. 1967. Street theater. Guerilla theater. Their Tehran was a place of deep culture and tradition. Long standing Persian culture in contemporary dress. A place of creativity contained and encouraged. They inspired me, then involved in a theater minor and modern dance.

At each turn of Iran’s fortunes, from the self-coronation of the Shah to the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis and to this morning’s headlines, I go back in time to those vibrant students. Their Iran has always stuck with me, especially as the cold hand of Shia dogmatism tried over and over again to crush it.

Talk about civilizational erasure. Bearded clerics. Covering women. Killing dissenters. Funding resistance to Israel and to Sunni Islam. Hezbollah. Hamas. Houthis. Persian culture in a burkah.

Khamenei assassinated. A part of me is so happy. I imagine those students, now in their old age, feeling an opening, a moment for theater of the people. A theater of liberation, one opening possibilities. How I wish I’d stayed in touch, remembered their names.

Part of me grieves his death. Not as a rigid dogmatist, but as a man. His life stopped.

Yet another part of me gets a thrill seeing the muscular actions of the U.S. and Israeli militaries. Taking the fight to Iran instead of suffering blow after blow from terrorists funded by Iranian oil. Take that, fundamentalists. Oh, to live in a world of black and white. Good U.S. Bad Iran. Too old for that.

I admit it. I don’t know what to do with those parts of me. A long time anti-war activist. Fighting American imperialism decades before our own authoritarian grabbed power. Ironic. Work for self-determination. Vietnam. The Lakota. Persians in a closed and throttled Islamic state.

I will not even use war metaphors for cancer treatment. Not a fight, or a struggle, rather a wounding. Needs healing, not gun-boat metaphors.

The problem? A pre-emptive war with no defensive justification. Gun-boat diplomacy. Reactionaries succeeding. Naked imperialism. Might makes right. It doesn’t.

In this frame? A more intellectual reaction. I’m appalled. No matter the apparent rewards, reinforcing the king is bad. Bad for the U.S. Devastating for nations around the world. Don’t catch his attention.

We contain, as Whitman said, multitudes. I see mine in reaction to this brutal smackdown. The dominant male in me. Yes. Yes. Yes. A patriarchal part of me. One I know to not entrust with the steering wheel. In there though.

Dawn arrived on Shadow Mountain. Shadow got fed.

 

Family, Friends, Holidays, Judaism, Politics

Close. Yet. Unaffected.

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Imbolc and the Moon of Tides

Shabbat gratefuls: Class with Jamie and Luke. Cardio. A transformation grid. Shadow, a sweet girl. Iran. Israel. Gaza. The West Bank. War and peace.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

Sparks of Joy and Awe:  The Night Sky

 

Week Kavannah:   Yetziratiut. Creativity.   Feedback on my new writing style.

 

Tarot: King of Vessels, Heron

One-legged I stand beside my inner river, feeling joy, fear, inspiration. Purim. Starting the trial. Writing.

One brief shining  Life pushes things together: Warren’s sister dies. We celebrate Purim.  Explosions wrack the Middle East.  Iranians die. Dawn comes to Shadow Mountain. YHWH echad.

Shadow Mountain continues its snowless winter.

Trump strikes Iran. Executive power abused as royal decree.  He uses, like the neo-royalist he is, American fighter jets and bombers, aircraft carriers, to enforce his personal grievances. No checks. No balances. The sound of bombs shattering ears.

My brother, Mark, in Hafar, Saudi Arabia, lives 156 miles from Iran. Just across the Persian Gulf. He says there are no military targets nearby.

A similar situation. In 2005 I helped Joseph move. Late August. While we carried boxes into his Breckenridge apartment at 9,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains, Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. I felt lucky. 9,000 feet above sea level. In the heart of the continent. Lucky and a bit, what? Guilty. Privileged. Distant.

Close. Yet. Unaffected.

This sabbath I write at my own mountain retreat. Far from D.C. Far from the Persian Gulf.  In my country’s name ordnance falls from the sky. Persians seek shelter in Tehran. Jews seek shelter in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem.

I seek shelter. From my own government. Find it in the One.

Warren’s family grieves. His sister died this week. Pneumonia. MS. A creative heart stilled. I’m far from that, too. St. Paul.

This Monday evening. Purim. Drink until you can’t tell the difference between Haman and Esther. A celebration of a female hero who stood up to Haman, the Persian royal vizier who would destroy the Jews.

Kate loved dressing up for Purim. She would wear a coat she made for Joseph, a coat of many colors, and a floppy hat. Our first Purim at Congregation Beth Evergreen, 2016, my mouth dropped open.

Dan Herman, then president of the board, came in carrying a case of beer on his shoulder. Others brought several bottles of wine. A bar in the sanctuary. All through the service congregants would go to the bar for another beer or more wine.

Groggers, noise makers, sounded every time Haman’s name came up in the megillah, the scroll of Esther. Their grating sound joined with boo’s.

This sabbath, this Rocky Mountain day, I watch the candle burn. Will study Torah at 10. Relax.

Persia. Iran. Jews. A long, long story.

Mark teaches English to young Arab men. Close. Yet. Unaffected.

A scribe adds to the scroll.

 

Fourth Phase, Garden, Judaism, Minnesota, Paganism, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant.

I flew with hawks

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Thursday gratefuls: Tom and Paul. Tara. Dr. Bupathi. Shadow and her doughnut. Clergy. My time in the ministry. A life lived in pursuit of love and justice.

Rene Good. Alex Pretti. Say their names.

 

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Religion

Week Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov. Gratitude.

I chose this because Tom and Paul are coming. Ruth, too. And, my 79th birthday. And, for life, my precious.

 

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Tarot: Five of Bows, Empowerment

“By facing and defeating our greatest fears, we empower ourselves and grow more resilient and effective against adversity…The empowered individual ultimately has the capability to influence and affect the outcome of events and change perceptions.” Parting the Mist

One brief shining: In 1976 I wore a monk’s robe, a child’s wooden necklace with a cross around my neck. I knelt and a crowd of clergy and elders lay on hands until the hands of those closest to me rested on my head. From layperson to ordained clergy.

 

Those hands felt heavy. I could feel a charge pass from them to me. The laying on of hands. Ancient. Primal.

Political radical. Warrior and priest. I stood with the people of Stevens Square and with the descendants of John Calvin.

An out of body experience: Reverend Buckman-Ellis. “If clergy are usually more priest or more prophet…” I was more prophet.

Yet I prayed. Led worship. Served communion. Baptized my son and his close friend Alex. Studied the scripture.

Until I couldn’t. That day when my spiritual director said, “Charlie, I think you’re a Druid!” I wasn’t. I crossed over from Christian to pagan. Mother Earth my altar and sanctuary.

Kate. Radical Kate. She let me retire from the ministry with dignity. Falling into her life, she was my dear and glorious physician. A synchronicity.

With dogs and vegetables, flowers and honey, our life went against the grain. She my weeding ninja. Me, her gardener. No need for a robe, a title. A spade and a trowel, yes.

Yet I also wandered the natural places of Anoka County. Honing a pagan’s blurring of the lines between creature and plant and landscape. I flew with hawks. Bloomed along the Rum River. Religious.

Until late in my journey, I decided to blend my pagan life with those who escaped from Egypt, who wandered in the desert. Immersed three times in warm mikveh waters. Came out a Jew.

At last. With my Hebrew name, Israel, I became what I always was. A god wrestler. Uneasy with answers. Kate’s path. Then mine. Now one.

 

Judaism

Teshuvah and Tikkun Olam

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Imbolc and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Sunday gratefuls: Ruth. Mary. Tom. Paul. The Ancient Brothers on Judaism. Snowless Winter. Joe skiing. Eating Mexican on an Army base. Korea. Cold and Snow. Minneapolis. Resistance. Staying in the fight. Teshuva. Tikkun Olam. Tzedek Elohim. Mitzrayim. Religion. Horticulture. Street politics. Dogs. Art. Kate, always Kate. AI.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Gardening

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Hakarat Hatov. Gratitude.

  • Literally “recognizing the good,” it is the practice of acknowledging the positive, often overlooked aspects of life.
  • Core Principles: It encourages focusing on what you have rather than what you lack, recognizing the humanity in others, and appreciating the natural world.

Tarot: Page of Vessels, the Otter

  • Playful Energy: The otter represents a need to be curious, lighthearted, and to find joy even in simple things.
  • Creativity and Imagination: This card often signals a time to tap into your creative potential and allow your imagination to flow.
  • Adaptability: Like an otter navigating water, this archetype encourages flowing with life’s changes rather than resisting them.

One brief shining: As I follow the flow of my life toward birthday 79, I can slip into the water like an Otter, perhaps Maxwell Creek, perhaps Kate’s Creek, perhaps the headwaters of the Mississippi, and feel the current take me, a surge of joy, an ongoing struggle to stay alive, a pool of calm with Shadow and Shadow Mountain home, an embrace of friends and family all carrying me toward the world Ocean where I will become yet another wave.

Torah being read at a Bar Mitzvah

Judaism: My Ancient Brothers have asked me to talk about Judaism. I feel honored. But. How to capsulize this ancient faith, make it come alive for them?

Rabbi Rami Shapiro’s book, Judaism Without Tribalism, will be my guide. In the flensing of institutional accretions Shapiro leaves us with a skeletal view of religion, what it truly supports without the encumbrance of orthodoxy, dogma, belief and how each religion so considered can provide us with enough poetry to live by.

Rami, though a Reform Rabbi, leans into a Reconstructionist perspective when he discusses his own Judaism. A Judaism that rejects the notion of Jews as a chosen tribe. This is Judaism without tribalism. Like Mordecai Kaplan, the founder of the Reconstructionist movement, he rejects an assumed superiority-tribalism, while finding Judaism as culture, as a civilization valuable and well worth preserving.

He says Judaism has two key ideas to share, ideas that can help Judaism fulfill its mission to be a blessing to the whole world. Teshuva and Tikkun Olam. That is, Teshuva, the individual, interior journey of returning to the homeland of your soul, your Buddha nature, your authentic self, and Tikkun Olam, the exterior journey, which focuses on repair of a broken and divided world.

The Jew has several tools from within the tradition that supports both. Among them are Shabbat which releases us from the restrictive narrowness (mitzrayim) of daily life and immerses us in our sacred nature. Zedakah, the just use of money and capital. Gemilut chasadim, the practice of loving-kindness. And,  kavanot, setting our intentions toward righteousness.

There is more, much much more, but this gets at the nub of why Judaism has become my spiritual home.

Judaism, Politics, US History, World History

Greenland

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Yule and the Moon of Deep Friendship

Wednesday gratefuls: Tom recovering. Dick Arnold. Ellen. Jamie. MVP group. Death. Kate, always Kate. Jon. Regina. Pronoia. Shadow and her treat ball, her bones. Mussar. The Dog run. Our Snowless Winter. Christopher and transcranial magnetic stimulation. Hafar from afar. Mary down under with animals that attack. Murdoch. Annie and Luna. Eleanor.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Greenland

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah: Daat.    The Bridge Between Mind and Heart

“If Chokhmah (Wisdom/Inspiration) is a seed and Binah (Understanding/Analysis)  is the soil that develops that seed into a plant, Da’at is the nervous system that carries the vital life force from the brain to the rest of the body. It is the point of transition from “thinking” to “being.””

Tarot: Ten of Arrows, Instruction

  • Focus on the “Why”: Connect your current hard work or training to a larger guiding principle or long-term goal, much like following a “Pole Star”.

One brief shining: Thresholds, liminal spaces, liminal moments like dusk and dawn, a babies first breath, that moment when liking turns to loving, when a thought passes into understanding and action, like death on a cold Evergreen night when it came for Dick Arnold.

 

Rabbi Jamie’s dad died Monday night. He went to sleep around eight p.m. and when Ellen, his wife, went to check on him he was cold. Dick’s death has hit the congregation hard.

Dick, as Tara noted, lived in the back ground. A master carpenter, a licensed consulting psychologist, and an accomplished golfer, Dick specialized in showing up. When shelving needed putting up. When Tara needed help working with drywall. When LGBTQ+ youth needed a psychologist.

Had we gone to Israel on our ill-fated 2023 trip Dick and I would have been roommates. His funeral takes place Thursday at 11:00. Shiva minyan Thursday night.

Just a moment: Our President, denied the “Noble” prize, admitted in a letter to the Norwegian Prime Minister that he could now think about things other than peace, like seizing Greenland.

I can’t improve on this Robert Reich piece sent to me by his Substack:

“Friends,

It could be a Monty Python skit from forty years ago: A demented U.S. president demands the Nobel Peace Prize (which he initially spells “Noble”), after converting the name of the Department of Defense to the Department of War and abducting the president of a Latin American country by force.

When he doesn’t get the Prize, he says he’s no longer in favor of peace and decides to invade Greenland. When Greenland refuses him and Denmark and the rest of Europe make a fuss, he goes into a rage, raises tariffs on Europe (which are really import taxes that cost Americans dearly) and threatens war on NATO. The president of Russia is delighted.”

A five-year old playground bully who will brook no dismissal of even his most outlandish wishes and wants, red tie guy had better retake that cognitive test followed by one gauging e.q.

 

Far Right, Judaism, Letters, Literature, Politics, Reimaging revelation, Torah

Permanent Things

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Tuesday gratefuls: Shadowy kisses across my pillow. Vince as snowplower. Tom’s enucleation. That wooden bowl. Ruth’s wrist. American Beauty, Gabe and mine’s favorite Dead album. Mary in the upside down. Star Trek: Discovery. Yale Program for the Study of Anti-Semitism. T2V: Terrorism and Targeted Violence. C-REX, center for research on extremism.

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Facts

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Wholeness. Shleimut.                                                “The concept of shleimut extends beyond the individual, applying to relationships (finding a life partner with whom one feels complete) and the community (mending societal cracks to achieve collective creativity and flourishing).”

Tarot: Two of Arrows, Injustice

“False conclusions and unjust decisions, based on disinformation and motivated by fear, greed, and prejudice, can cause innumerable problems. Either mistakenly or deliberately distributed to pervert the course of natural justice and the revelation of the facts by those who fear the truth and wish to manipulate the situation for personal control or gain, this propaganda will not survive honest, wise, and impartial scrutiny.”   Parting the Mists

One brief shining: Ana came cleaning, portable vacuum on her back, two twisted kleenex in each box, toilet paper folded to a point, careful dusting, a big smile, so many years now and we barely know each other since I’m gone when she comes, but, not yesterda;, not Kate’s way who got to know housecleaners as friends, me I prefer not to be home.

 

Funny how things come to you. Sometimes slowly. So slowly. Other times, sudden burst of insight. The stimulus can be Proust’s madeleine, or Leo Strauss’s desire to hunt down the esoteric message in classical texts of political philosophy.

In my ongoing pursuit to understand the true nature of forces opposing my own world view, a significant number of roads lead to Leo Strauss. You may not have heard of this twentieth century political philosopher. He influenced many far right intellectuals (no, that’s not an oxymoron) with his insistence that the roots of political philosophy be found in classic texts of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, and others.

He and his students sought permanent things, or things in human nature that persist from age to age and effect us in the political sphere. “By “the Permanent Things” [T. S. Eliot] meant those elements in the human condition that give us our nature, without which we are as the beasts that perish.” The Imaginative Conservative.

When I read that Strauss insisted his students seek an esoteric or hidden layer of meaning in classical texts, my mind went immediately to the kabbalists. They look for occult meanings in the Torah.

Sure enough, the Straussian method could be applied to Torah study and undoubtedly has been. I offer this not strictly for how it ties conservative thought to the methods of the kabbalists, but mostly for its illumination of the inner world’s mysterious ability to sharpen our awareness in unexpected, intuitive ways.

 

 

Dogs, Friends, Judaism, White Supremacy, World History

Time to Leave?

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Yule and the Moon of New Beginnings

Thursday gratefuls: Tramadol. Snowblower away. Eleanor playing with Shadow. Shadow, “What threshold?” Tara and Sinterklaas. Puerto Rico dreaming. Vincent and the politics of youth. Veronica. Francesca. CBE’ers in NYC. Mamdani. Democratic Socialism. Greenland. Cuba. Colombia. Mexico. Can Canada be far behind?

Sparks of Joy and Awe: Arjean’s bread

Life Kavannah: Wu Wei    Shadow, my Wu Wei mistress

Year Kavannah: Creativity.   Yetziratiut.   “Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.” ― Pablo Picasso

Week Kavannah:  Patience.  Savlanut.  “Adopt the pace of nature: her secret is patience.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tarot: Back at it soon

One brief shining: Opened the Dog run door to let Eleanor and Shadow out into the larger backyard, Shadow’s first time out there since her return, each chasing the other, around and around, Shadow leading, Eleanor behind, then some wrestling, going their separate ways for a bit, coming back together,  jumping on the Dog run fence, wanting back in and after being let in, needing to go back out. Kids, eh?

 

Tara and Arjean may move to Puerto Rico. Arjean, a dual Dutch/naturalized U.S. citizen, has had it with being associated, even by residence, with Trump, et al. The nature of his work requires him to stay within the U.S. and Puerto Rico feels as far away culturally from the mainland U.S. as he can get. Tara loves beaches, so…

Makes me wonder how many others have fled or are considering it. I know the conversation has happened among many Jews across the U.S. To be clear Arjean is not Jewish. Friends at CBE have looked at property in Costa Rica. Many others wonder when the tilt toward sanctioned bigotry becomes dangerous enough to force a move.

Jews have had to have these conversations often throughout the centuries. In Russia. In Spain. In Germany. Austria. Hungary. Poland. Even France. A CBE friend’s great-grandfather, a rabbi in Warsaw, had three sons. In the 1930’s he sent one son to South Africa, one to Brazil, one to the U.S. Over time he dispersed his congregants to the places where his sons had gone. Prescient.

This long history of forced removal, whether by governments or fear for personal safety, remains a key, a defining part of the Jewish experience. My older friends here have decided, as have I, that we’re too old to flee, start over. We’ll remain and do our part in resisting.

What about Ruth and Gabe though? Their generation. Their Jewish life has been upended by something else, the Israel/Hamas war. Many of them have taken the side of the Palestinians against at least the IDF and the Israeli government. Some have gone further, declaring themselves anti-Zionists, some even questioning Israel’s right to exist.

Here though is the always paradox. When the anti-Semites come, they don’t care if you’re Orthodox, Reform, or secular. They don’t care you’re anti-Zionist or pro-Palestinian. All they care about is Jewishness. Very like ICE and people who look somehow Mexican. This is the old, old story.

 

Commentary on Religion, Judaism

A Bonus Post from Rabbi Rami Shapiro

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I’m going to replace my New Year’s resolutions with the Five Remembrances from the Upajjhatthana Sutta (“Subjects for Contemplation”).

The Upajjhatthana Sutta is also known as the Abhiṇhapaccavekkhitabbaṭhānasutta. I mention this only in case you need to impress people at a New Year’s Eve party. Delivered orally some 2500 years ago and written down in Pali around 29 BCE, the Upajjhatthana Sutta is famous for its teaching of the Five Remembrances:

  1. It is my nature to grow old. There’s no escaping growing old.
  2. It is my nature to fall ill. There’s no escaping illness.
  3. It is my nature to die. There’s no escaping death.
  4. Everything and everyone I cherish shares this same impermanence. There’s no escaping my being separated from them.
  5. Thoughts and feelings are beyond my willful control. My actions alone belong to me. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions.

These Five Remembrances aren’t resolutions; they are facts. You don’t have to accept them any more than you have to accept gravity. They are simply what is so.

Memorizing and reflecting on the Five Remembrances is said to deepen your appreciation of life and your compassion for the living. In my experience, it also eliminates the haunting question “Why Me?” When I remember that everyone suffers, there is no need to ask why I’m suffering. Not distracting myself with the story “Why Me?” allows me to address the problem at hand more creatively.

If the Buddha were a Jew, I imagine he would have ended each of the Five Remembrances with the Hebrew word titmoded: deal with it. There’s no escaping growing old—deal with it. There’s no avoiding illness—deal with it. There’s no escaping death—deal with it. There’s no escaping impermanence—deal with it. There’s no escaping the consequences of my actions—deal with it.