Beyt Tikkun

The basic theme of Tisha B'av (the commemoration of destructions that happened to the Jewish people throughout our history  and observed this year on Saturday night July 25 and all day Sunday July 26): There is a karmic order to the universe, so when we distance from God and Her message to us to live a life of social justice, love and environmental sanity, we are eventually repaid either with environmental dysfunction or human dysfunction. For us as humans this year we have the overwhelming dysfunction of not having stopped the systematic destruction of the environment, the persistance of racism which is now more out of the closet this past year though the media attention barely touches the depth of harrassment and violence African Americans and immigrants face in the U.S., the vast inequalities of wealth and power in our political system, and for Jews, the failure to repair the damage Israel did last summer in Gaza, the attempts by the Israeli government to displace Bedouin and other Palestinians in the desert south of Hebron (most recently at Susya)f, the commitment by the government of Israel to not allow a Palestinian state to arise and its continued human rights violations against Palestinians, and the attempt by American Jewish organizations along with Prime Minister Netanyahu to prevent the nuclear deal with Iran from being implemented by the U.S. So we've pasted below a few responses, first from the most significant religious activist in Israel, Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human Rights in Israel, plus some wise words from Rabbi David Seidenberg when we consider our responsibility to mourn what is happening to the earth's life-support system,  and then some statements printed by Tru'ah, the rabbinical human rights organization in the U.S. Please read them and grieve with us all the ongoing distortions that we face. We will deal with these in more detail on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we take collective responsibility for the pain and cruelty and environmental destructiveness of our globalized system of materialism and selfishness. Join us if you can (info at www.beyttikkun.org) --Rabbi Michael Lerner  rabbilerner.tikkun@gmail.com "JERUSALEM HAS GREATLY SINNED"  OR "ZION WILL BE REDEEMED THROUGH JUSTICE"? WHY I WILL BE IN SUSYA ON TISHA B'AV Rabbi Arik Ascherman A rabbi came to talk to us about Tisha B'Av when I was a boy at summer camp.  He told us, "If you don't fast on Yom Kippur, you are not a Jew.  If you don't fast on TishaB'Av, you are not a mentsch (a decent human being).  I don't agree with either half of this sentence, and I am not sure he did either.  He was trying to tell us that anybody with a modicum of humanity must surely empathize with the terrible sense of loss and destruction Tisha B'Av evokes.  Who can read Josephus' description of the rivers of blood without feeling  the horror? The destructions of our Temples on this date, first by the Babylonians and later by the Romans, led in each case to exile and the loss of national sovereignty. In the last few days, some have been simply incredulous and outraged when I said that I would be spending Tisha B'Av amidst the demolished caves and threatened tents of Susya. How dare I defile our sacred pain with the pain of others?   If I am a mentsch, how could I do otherwise - especially if I still have a chance to prevent yet another expulsion of these victims of serial demolitions? Could there be any more meaningful way to obey the Torah's command, "You shall not oppress the non-Jew living among you, for you know the feelings of the non-Jew living among you, having yourselves been resident aliens in the land  of Egypt" (Exodus 23:9)? Demolitions and expulsions by Israeli forces thankfully do not approach the level of cruelty and death described by Josephus or practiced by many modern day regimes.  A Palestinian friend related to me that the traditional sweets of the recent It El Fitr holiday had seemed to him covered with the blood of Arab brothers and sisters being slaughtered in Syria, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere. However, for the Palestinian family whose home is demolished or the community that is wiped off the map, the trauma and anguish on individual or communal level is the same as what we recall on a national level on Tisha B'Av.  And here, WE are responsible.   Mourning the loss of Theodore Bikel z"l two days ago, I know it was our responsibility that led this incredible mentsch, who played Tevye in "Fiddler on the Roof,” more than any other actor, to express the incredible pain he felt knowing  that the descendants of the real life Anatevkas were expelling the Negev Bedouin from their homes and demolishing them. He asked that I visit when I was in Los Angeles this last June, and requested that I show his other visiting friends the video clip he had done for us on this topic. (He also expressed the hope that, as soon as he recovered, he could produce a similar clip on the plight of African asylum seekers in Israel.) If we are mentschen, how can we not empathize with and take responsibility for the terrible sense of loss and destruction among each of the hundreds of Occupied Territories Palestinian families per year whose homes are demolished, and the over 1,000 Israeli Bedouin families per year whose homes are demolished in the Negev?  Shouldn't we be overwhelmed by the sense of impending doom in entire communities that may be wiped off the map, such as Susya, Um El Khiran, Wadi El-Na'am and El-Araqib?  By the way, as we mark 10 years from the disengagement from Gush Quatif, the pain felt by settlers who lose their homes is the same pain.  However, without even getting into issues of land ownership, the settlers are an influential part of the majority in the polis, the democratic body that allowed them to settle, and has decided to move them.  Palestinians are entirely disenfranchised, while the Israeli Bedouin are a minority that will be "democratically" outvoted every time. This disenfranchisement was sadly perpetuated by Israeli High Court Justices Rubinstein, Hendel and Sohlberg in their ruling on RHR's petition to remedy one aspect of this patently unjust situation.   Continuing with my reflections of 20 years with RHR, I recall rebuilding the Shawamre home in Anata on the three days leading up to Tisha B'Av in 1997/5757, and the redemolition two days after Tisha B'Av. I have always wondered what Jeremiah, the prophet so associated with Tisha B'Av, would have said about the injustice being perpetrated in his home town.  On Tisha B'Av 2005/5765 it was incredibly difficult and incredibly meaningful to both fast and engage in the hard physical labor of rebuilding the village of  Khirbat Tana which had recently been almost entirely razed.       Rebuilding the Shawamre family home So yes, I will be in Susya at the demonstration on the eve of Tisha B'Av tomorrow(Friday) and  I will sit in the dirt of Susya on Tisha B'Av itself.  I will participate in the weekly vigil of the 85 times demolished El-Araqib at the Lehavim junction on TishaB'Av afternoon.  Please contact me if you would like to join me on this Tisha B'Av journey of reckoning, 050-5607034, ravarik@rhr.israel.net. There is no rebuilding going on at 13th annual ICAHD rebuilding camp in Anata on Sunday, or I would be there as well. On Tisha B'Av in Susya, I will pray that in the coming years we will not be remembering Susya with the words mourning found in the Book of Lamentations we read on Tisha B'Av, and not need to say of ourselves: "Jerusalem as greatly sinned. Therefore she is become a mockery.  All who admired her despise her, for they have seen her disgraced." (Lamentations 1:8). As I put on tefillin Tisha B'Av afternoon, symbolizing that we turn from despair to hope, I will pray that our actions will prevent the destruction of Susya, of Um El Khiran and of the other threatened Palestinian and Bedouin villages.  I will pray that El-Araqib will be rebuilt and restored. Reading the second chance given us in the Tisha B'Av afternoon Torah reading and the words of the Tisha B'Av afternoon Haftarah "Observe what is right and to what is just for soon My salvation shall come" (Isaiah 56 1),  I will know that it is our obligation to make real the prophecy we read the Shabbat preceding Tisha B'Av: "Zion will be redeemed through justice, and they that return to her through righteousness" (Isaiah 1:27) If you happen to be visiting Israel at the moment, please join our demonstration in Susya tomorrow. Wherever you are, please write to your elected officials, and politely express to your local Israeli embassy your demand that Susya be accorded the basic human rights we ask for ourselves, and that must honored in all who are created in God's Image. Remind them that it is unacceptable that the State now tries to deny that Susya ever existed, even though the unabashedly pro-settler former State lawyer Plia Albeck wrote a 1982 legal opinion saying that Susya was a village surrounded by 3,000 dunam (750 acres of land they owned).  It is outrageous that their attempts to obtain a master plan allowing them to build legally was rejected by the army's planning committee with no Palestinian representation on the grounds that it would be "unfair" to make them live there and so that there not be a Palestinian village so close to the Susya settlement (Actually, not that close).  Let them know that it is irrelevant whether or not Susya residents have homes in Yatta. Remind them that although the Shreitakh family living in Yatta has a letter from the then Israeli defence minister attesting that their lands next to the Susya settlement were private Palestinian lands, they were unable to protect those lands from Yatta. The Susya settlers have now planted them over.  Ask that, if they have human decency, the grandchildren of those expelled in 1948, who are also the children of those expelled in 1986, will not be themselves made into refugees a third time. B'Vrakha, Arik Here is a draft letter including the basic facts about Susya.  You can personalize this by writing of your feelings and ethical values. Dear ________, We are writing to express our extreme concern and distress that Israel is poised to demolish the S. Hebron Hills village of Susya.  The residents of Susya were expelled from their homes in 1948 and 1986. Now, a third generation seems about to suffer the same fate. The  question regarding Palestinian Susya is not one of land ownership, but the fact that Palestinians have no planning and zoning authority for their lands and communities in Area C.  Your government's claim that there never was a Palestinian village is contradicted by testimony from your own officials. In 1982, government lawyer Plia Albeck, openly sympathetic to the settlement movement,  wrote of the existence of the village, and that they owned 750 acres of surrounding lands.  Also in 1982 the settlement of Susya was established nearby. They were expelled from their homes in 1986 when their village was made into an archeological site because of an ancient synagogue located in the village. In other locations, residents have not been expelled when a specific structure is declared an archeological site. The residents moved into caves on their farmlands.  Although the Israeli High Court returned the residents to their homes after an expulsion in 2001, the Israeli army had  demolished their caves, filled in many of their water cisterns and denied access to others.  They couldn't repair their caves.  The Israeli army's Civil Administration makes planning decisions for Palestinians without Palestinians having any authority regarding the future of their communites.  It rarely approves building plans initiated by Palestinians. They had no real chance to build legally.  In 2011 settlers and Regavim appealed to the Israeli High Court, asking the Court to require the army to carry out extant demolition orders against the village.  However, the village was given a chance to one more time try to legalize their community by submitting a master building plan to the Civil Adminstration of the army. The plan was cynically rejected on the ground that it would be unfair to force the residents to live in an isolated community lacking infrastructure. The fact is that elctricity lines and water mains pass by the village, were the residents allowed to benefit from them.  A settler representative at the hearing to evaluate the plan gave another reason.  He stated that the hearing was a farce because the committee couldn't possibly allow a Palestinian village so close to the Susya settlement. Rabbis For Human Rights is representing Susya in an appeal of the rejection of the master paln. That appeal is scheduled to be heard on August 3rd. However, top army officers arrived in Susya on July 12th to announce that demolitions would be carried out before the August 3rd hearing because of settler pressure.  Your government's actions do not reflect a desire to treat Palestinians justly and fairly. Please accept Susya's professional master plan proposal, and please change the planning system to allow Palestinians true authority over planning their Area C communities. Sincerely,  (your signature) To send your letter to Israeli embassies, go for their addresses to : http://www.science.co.il/Embassy.asp ******************************************* Rabbi David Seidenberg's wise words on the environmental crisis: For the ancients, the choices were to believe that the destruction was God's punishment, or that God simply had no more interest in what happened to them. It is easy to imagine why people would choose a punishing God over an uncaring God... "There is however another way to look at the motif of divine punishment. According to Jeremiah, the reason for exile was that Israel had not allowed the land to rest every seven years during her Sabbatical or Shmita year. 490 years without Shmita equals 70 years of exile. However, this idea is found nowhere in Eikhah, where the identification of the people with the land is total. "What does this mean? The Torah portrays the land as a subject, with interests, rewards, and rights that take priority over our needs. Especially in the laws of the Jubilee and Shmita years (Lev 25)—and in the consequences that are supposed to befall the people if they do not observe these laws (Lev 26)—it is clear that God is ready to take the side of the land of Israel against the Jewish people. "Humanity as a social order, as a species, and all the more so as a collection of individuals, has no moral standing when its interests conflict with the intrinsic interests of the land, who will "enjoy her Sabbaths" (Lev 26:34,43), even if that means the people are exiled or wiped out. From the divine perspective, the human social order has value or validity only when justice encompasses the land as both a moral subject and a covenantal partner. What has intrinsic value is not humanity but justice, which is humanity’s potential. "The Torah outlines six curses for not observing the Sabbatical year, which describe how the relationship between the the people and the land can unravel, marked by who eats what or whom. "The thread of this progression is woven in and out of Leviticus 26, but here is what it looks like when we pull it out: (1) "you will sow your seed for emptiness, for your enemies will eat it" (v.16); (2) "you will use your strength for emptiness, and your land will not give her produce" (v.20); (3) "I will send out against you the animal of the field and she will make you childless" (v.22); (4) "you will be gathered (i.e., like a harvest) into your cities...and I will break the staff of bread against you" (v.26); (5) "you will eat the flesh of your sons and your daughters’ flesh you will eat" (v.29); (6) "you will be lost in the nations and the land of your enemies will eat you" (v.38). "Two of these curses involve children being eaten – first by wild animals and then by their parents. This image is repeated in Eikhah, and it is the strongest connection between the text of Eikhah and the Sabbatical year. "Because the Jewish people was in exile for so long, the last curse ("the land of your enemies will eat you") does not sound like the worst. Because we love our children, it is the fifth that sounds the worst. But symbolically, if the land eats us, this represents the final step: a complete reversal of the right relationship between people and land. "In an age when we have good reason to believe that our ecological "sins" are coming home to roost, the connection between disaster and divine retribution may not seem so farfetched. If we sympathize with this idea, we can read Eikhah as an invitation to change our lives, towards justice for all people, for all species, and for the land herself." ********************** 2 articles from" Truah, the rabbinic call for human rights" Words and Deeds A d’var Torah for Parashat Devarim and Tisha B'Av by Rabbi Denise Handlarski Last year at this time, we were hearing the distressing news of the conflict in Gaza. Coinciding with Tisha B’av, which this year occurs in the week to come, Jews everywhere were mourning, and beginning to argue with aching hearts about Israel, and about justice. Parashat Devarim begins with Moses addressing “all Israel.” Rashi suggests this is so all of the community knows what has been spoken and is included. No one should be exempt or set apart because the community is responsible for ensuring that everyone follows the same rules -- everyone is responsible for everyone. I am a rabbi in the Humanistic Jewish movement, and we believe strongly in the power of self-responsibility and actualization, but also the value of community. We need to take ownership of our own behaviour, but are we also responsible for the behaviour of our fellow Jews? Not all of them, not literally. However, our behaviour as Jews does reflect upon one another, even when we disagree. And we often do. I, like many others, feel proud when I see Jews standing up for just causes. I feel they are somehow representing me and what I perceive to be the most important Jewish values – tzedakah and tikkun olam. Yet, I am embarrassed when Jews speak as Jews, often speaking as though on behalf of all Jews, when they advocate for policies and governments that are harmful. When Shmuley Boteach speaks as “America’s rabbi” against the Palestinians, or when Benjamin Netanyahu says he speaks for all Jews and then uses anti-Palestinian rhetoric as a tool for re-election, I cringe. When rabbis and community leaders claim halachic authority or appeal to “tradition” to speak against rights for women and for LGBTQ people, I scowl. The challenge is that when I speak out for justice, it is as a Jew as well as a concerned human being in the world. But I do not and cannot speak for everyone. Last year, I was sometimes proud and sometimes horrified at how members of my Jewish community spoke about Israel, about Palestine, and about the ongoing conflict. There were moments when I heard other Jews – colleagues and friends even – calling for or justifying terrible violence. When the Jewish voice sounds hateful, it is hard to understand how we can conceptualize ourselves as one people, one voice. But we hold the dream ofAm Israel in our hearts. We value the concepts of nationhood and peoplehood, even as we struggle with them. Tisha B’av gives us the chance to speak about destruction and rebuilding. What we have lost, but also – crucially – how we have evolved. The Talmud tells us (Yoma 9b) that the Second Temple was destroyed because Sin’at Chinam (groundless hatred) was endemic to our people. We have both perpetrated hatred amongst one another and towards other cultures, and we have certainly been the recipients of groundless hatred throughout the ages. It is always my hope that Jews, having experienced the terrible effects of anti-Semitism, will stand up for other marginalized groups. I grew up in a South African Jewish community, and I was always perplexed when Jews could support racist apartheid practices and rhetoric as though their own experiences had taught them nothing. Groundless hatred has harmed us, yet we sometimes hate and harm as well. Some Jews feel the pain of the past, the many calamities inflicted on Jews for which we mourn, and they resort to feelings of vengeance and violence. They become the purveyors of baseless hatred. On Tisha B’av, we need to reflect on the prejudices we carry within us, and we need to concern ourselves with the losses of our own people and the losses of others. We need to take the lessons of Jewish history and apply them to our present day – where is there hatred and how can we stop it? Where is there destruction and how can we foster creation? We are all entitled to our own independent views. But what Jews say to the broader public reflects on other Jews, and so it is important to be thoughtful about how we represent Judaism and its values. Although we can understand how the wounds of anti-Semitism can lead to a wish for retribution, we must not succumb to the politics of hate. We redeem ourselves and one another when we offer each other mirrors and models of ethical, just, and loving behaviour. We have a responsibility, like the Jews at Sinai, to watch out for each other. “All Israel” needed to be present for the guidelines of how to live as a people in its own land. We should seek that kind of presence for and with one another, even when we disagree. Denise Handlarski is a rabbi at the Oraynu Congregation for Humanistic Judaism in Toronto, Canada. T’ruah Summer Rabbinical Student Fellow Mackenzie Reynolds writes: "Since the shooting at Mother Emmanuel AME, my grief and rage about the violence of racism in our country has grown. As we move into Tisha B'Av, I have found myself needing a space to mourn not only the destruction that has targeted Jews, but also the destruction that has targeted black communities. In our multi-racial Jewish communities, it is not possible to attend to the mourning of one without attending to the mourning of the other. But where was the Tisha B’Av service I was looking for, that would meld these two griefs? This week, my co-fellow Bryan Wexler highlighted the resonance between eicha – how, and ayeka – where, and I knew that it was time to take action. Not how can there not be a service that does what I need it to, but wherewill we go to do the mourning our Jewish communities need to do today? And so, with Kolot Chayeinu, Jews for Racial & Economic Justice, and T’ruah, I have created the where I needed in Lament: A Tisha b’Av Service about Racist Violence and Destruction . New Yorkers are invited to join us in body, and everyone else is invited in spirit." Mackenzie is a student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. She and her five co-fellows are spending the summer with T’ruah studying Jewish texts, strengthening their capacity to be human rights leaders, and interning at social justice organizations across NYC.  Demand an Impartial Autopsy for Sandra Bland! Sign Judy's Petition Çare 2 petition Dear R.A., On Friday, July 10, Sandra Bland, a 28-year old black woman from Chicago and an outspoken adversary of police brutality, was pulled over by police in Waller County, Texas for improper signaling of a lane change. But Bland wound up on side of the road, pinned down by an officer. She was arrested on charges of assaulting a public servant and was found dead in her jail cell 3 days later.How in the world does this happen? Please add your voice to demand answers through an independent autopsy of Bland's body. The Waller County Sheriff's office said her death "appears to be self-inflicted asphyxiation," or suicide by hanging. But Bland's family says this absolutely could not be true -- Bland was excited to start a new job and a new life in Texas. These circumstances are incredibly suspect and frankly horrifying. The officer who arrested her had been fired in a previous city for racist conduct, and a video of the arrest was released days later in which Bland says to the officer: "You just slammed my head into the ground. Do you not even care about that?" The FBI and the Texas Rangers are investigating this case. We need to make sure we keep the pressure on, to get answers for Bland's family and to make sure proper justice is served. Please sign the petition today to demand an independent autopsy for Sandra Bland! Thank you.