Prayer, Prayer on the Wall.......

One of my "academic" interests revolves around the First Amendment's religion clauses. I will tell you that I approach these clauses a bit differently as a pulpit rabbi than as I did as an attorney or professor, and from time to time I will blog here on some developments in the field and my feelings about them. I read Melissa Rogers' blog and 'Religion Clause' by Professor Howard Friedman religiously (pun intended) for their excellent coverage of newsworthy items impacting freedom of religion and establishment clause cases and news.

So in that vein, something struck me last week in synagogue as we were reading "A Prayer for Our Country." It goes as follows:

"Our God and God of our ancestors: we ask your blessings for our country, for its government, for its leaders and advisors, and for all who exercise just and rightful authority. Teach them the insights of Your Torah, that they may administer all affairs of state fairly, that peace and security, happiness and prosperity, justice and freedom may once again abide in our midst."

Does anybody have a problem with that prayer?

I do. What bothers me is the line "teach them the insights of Your Torah". The insights of the Torah! We want our leaders to observe the Torah? We want them to govern this country based on Torah law? I thought we had a separation of church and state. Is this what we really want? And any particular insight?

I know, let's teach President Obama an insight from this week's Torah portion. You know, the one about observing Shabbat as a day of rest. Good idea, says the President and Congress. Let's make Saturday a day of rest. Everyone must rest. No business may remain open. No government services.

What do you think? Or maybe there would be greater support if we make that day Sunday. Thanks Torah! What a great idea!

Need I go on? Should we perhaps force everyone to keep kosher? Or perhaps this would be a great starting point, great impetus to learn the insights from the New Testament or the Koran or the Bhagavad Gita, or the Vedas, or from Zen Buddhism?

The prayer that I found which is used in Catholic Churches ends with the line "and the restoring of all things in Christ."

My point? If we are offended by that last line, if we want to maintain the US as religiously neutral, maybe we should be careful what we say in our prayers as well!

As they say, be careful what you wish for. It may come true.

Shabbat Shalom!

Mazal Tov Avi Melech

Avi Melech Botwin had his bris the other day. Mazal tov! Another Jewish child brought into this world.

There's just one problem. Avi Melech isn't Jewish.

If you don't know who I'm talking about that's ok. I'm talking about the Showtime television show Weeds. I love the show. It has great humor, social satire, writing, acting, etc. And I especially love the Jewish content. Through the years there have been references to unveilings, shiva, Shabbat dinners, Yeshivah study, bar mitzvahs, and so on. There has even been authentic dialogue in Hebrew with the correct pronunciation of the blessings and the reference that you need ten Jewish men to make a minyan. And the explanation of the name Avi Melech was perfect.

But despite all this, the Jewish aspect somehow always turns into comedic stereotypes, like the most recent episode where the bris turns into another excuse to eat bagels and whitefish.

So I'm a bit torn by this. The attempt to bring mainstream Jewish traditions into the show and have it seen by a wide audience is most welcome. But while certainly hilariously funny and on point, does it always have to involve some stereotypical Jewish humor??

And then let's face it. While the idea of a bris is nice, the fact is that neither parent is Jewish. Last I checked that means the child isn't Jewish. But hey, why miss a good opportunity to eat some bagels and whitefish!

Your thoughts?

You can't make this stuff up!

More from David Bernstein on the HRW controversy (here's his full post)

"Are Human Rights Watch Officials Just Thin-Skinned? (No!):

In a previous post, I criticized Human Rights Watch Director Ken Roth's characterization of the criticism HRW receives regarding its coverage of Israel. Roth wrote, in an email to Jeffrey Goldberg, "We report on Israel. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception." I've also noted that (at least according to NGO Watch, and to my knowledge), HRW has never officially recanted or apologized for any of the errors or distortions critics have identified in its reporting on Israel.

There are two possible explanations for the above. One is that HRW is implicitly hostile to Israel and its supporters. The other is that Roth and colleagues are just arrogant you-know-whats who don't take criticism well, and would react the same way regardless of the source of the criticism.
It was therefore enlightening for a reader to point me to a prior controversy involving HRW and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. HRW criticized Palestinian officials for urging civilians to serve as human shields. Anti-Israel commentators, led by rabidly anti-Israel activist Norman Finkelstein, went ballistic.

So how did HRW react? Did Ken Roth say, "We report on Palestine. Its supporters fight back with lies and deception." Did Middle East director Sarah Leah Whitson accuse HRW's critics of racism? Not exactly. HRW instead issued an abject apology. In fact, if you try to find the original press release on its website, you instead find a page that first has the lengthy apology, and only then republishes the original press release.

You can't make this stuff up!"

The original post can be found at volokh.com

Twas The Shabbat Before Tisha b'Av.....

Here's an excerpt from my sermon this week. If you'd like to receive the full sermon please e-mail me. (RabbiMichaelSimon@gmail.com)

Wednesday evening begins the observance of Tisha b'Av, the commemoration of the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem as well as countless other tragedies which have befallen the Jewish people. In light of the destruction of the first Temple, the prophet Isaiah chastises the Jewish people for their behavior. He compares them to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah!

The crimes that caused God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah were economic, judicial and social crimes, not sexual ones. Those cities had failed to create a just and fair society.

And in Isaiah's time, the time preceding the destruction of the first Temple, no one was concerned that there were people who were hungry or were forced to live in the street or had no work while others lived in great wealth. Sound familiar?

Isaiah compared the leaders of the Jewish people to the leaders of Sodom and Gomorrah, in that they both cheated the poor and perverted justice. And the people were similar to the people of Sodom and Gomorrah in their evil actions as well.

So what does the story of Sodom and Gomorrah have to do with Tisha b'Av?

The answer is that the Sodom and Gomorrah story gives us a window into which we might view and perhaps understand a little better not only the reasons for the destruction of the Temples, but a way of applying them to our own times as well.

Isaiah reasoned that the way to avoid some of the destruction and despair that has overcome the Jewish people, especially on Tisha b'Av, is to build a more just and fair society.

So Tisha b'Av comes around also to remind us of the work we still have to do, individually and collectively, to make ourselves and our society better. And it reminds us that if we don't repent and change our ways and make ourselves and our society better, then we will be punished. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed as were the Temples.

In just seven short weeks we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah, a time for introspection, cheshbon nefesh, and teshuvah. But we need not wait for Rosh Hashanah to begin this process. We needn't even wait for the beginning of Elul when we sound the shofar each morning.

No. Tisha b'Av reminds us that we can and should begin right now. It's a reminder that if we have faith in God, if we begin the process of teshuvah; and most importantly, if we erase corruption and unjustness from our society; then we will know that the world envisioned by God and the prophets, a society marked by justice, honesty, and love for one's fellow man, will be a world which we must all strive to create, a world and a society which will endure and prosper and which will never be destroyed.

Shabbat Shalom to all!

A Story You Won't Find In The MSM

For the past few weeks over at the Volokh Conspiracy (http://www.volokh.com/), Professor David Bernstein of the George Mason University School of Law has been following the story of how Human Rights Watch has raised funds in Saudi Arabia by essentially appealing to the need to combat "pro-Israel forces." The bottom line is, as always, that Israel alone is singled out for criticism. But read Professor Bernstein's posts and you can see the lengths to which HRW has gone in order to defend its actions and accuse Israel's supporters of engaging in lies and deceptions. Professor Bernstein has done an outstanding job of following through on this story and deserves our thanks.

Here is a snippet from his latest post. "And after Whitson's several minute-long exhaustive survey of Israel's alleged sins, she spends all of approximately twelve seconds on Hamas and Hezbollah, and this is the total of what she said: "of course there are also violations of international humanitarian law by the armed groups that are fighting Israel, namely Hamas and Hezbollah, but of course there are armed groups that have been in conflict with them [sorry this isn't coherent--ed.]. And that's something Human Rights Watch has documented." That's it.

After the exhaustive list of Israel's alleged crimes, no mention of

Hamas's suicide murders
Hezbollah and Hamas's indiscriminate (really indiscriminate) lobbing of missiles into Israel
H & H's use of human shields, use of civilian establishments for military purposes, and failure to wear military uniforms
the kidnapping and murder of Israeli soldiers
Hamas's reign of terror against Christian Palestinians
Hezbollah's threat to democracy in Lebanon
Syrian and Iranian state sponsorship of terrorism
Hamas's murder of Fatah supporters

and so forth and so on."

Here are a few links to read more on this story.

Prof. Bernstein's Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124528343805525561.html).

Jeffrey Goldenberg in the Atlantic (http://jeffreygoldberg.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/07/fundraising_corruption_at_huma.php)

JTA article about this story
(http://blogs.jta.org/politics/article/2009/07/21/1006677/daniel-levy-apologizes-for-hrw).

One Small Step For Man......

Did you ever stop and realize that there are a number of similarities between what happened to the Israelites in the desert and the Apollo 11 story. You see, the Torah, like the Apollo space program, is also about getting man to reach a particular destination. The Torah actually gives us two in fact. The first is a physical destination; reaching the land of Israel. The second is a spiritual destination. Having us become closer to God and better people by observing God's commandments.

And just like man could not have reached the moon without all the effort and manpower of so many who worked on that project, so too, the Israelites could not have reached the Promised Land without the efforts not only of Moses and Aaron, but like the Apollo program, through the efforts, manpower, trial and error, and even death, of many people, all of which had to have occurred in order for the Israelites to reach their destination, the Promised Land.

And that is perhaps one of the reasons why the Torah goes out of its way to tell us the names of the daughters of Zelophehad; Machlah, Tirzah, Hoglah, Milcah and Noah. The Torah wants to remind us that we must never forget the people, large and small, who enabled us to reach our destination; the people who helped shape our laws and society. And so these five women are specifically mentioned in order to impress upon us the important lesson that every person who is involved in making our society better, or more just, is deserving of recognition.

We weren't around thirty five hundred or so years ago to witness the events that were described in the Torah. But we were alive, and can recall, the miraculous events of forty years ago, when man achieved the impossible and walked on the moon.

But what we can take away from both historical events is that there are many small steps that need to be taken by man in order to make that one giant leap for mankind. We learned that we can't just snap our fingers and like magic walk on the moon or conquer Canaan. It took a long time to get to both places with many steps and missteps along the way.

We still have many more goals to achieve, many more moons to conquer, many societal ills still left to eradicate, more tikkun olam yet to accomplish. But we have learned, both from Apollo 11 and from our Torah, that if we are patient, if we allow ourselves to take those small steps, and if we recognize the efforts and sacrifices of all those who helped us get there, then we too will be able to make what hopefully will be many more giant leaps for mankind.

The Eagle Has Landed

On July 20, 1969 man walked on the moon.

On July 20, 2009 I landed on a blog

So what am I doing here? Good question. I'm here because many people claim to be interested in what I think. So this is as good a place as any to express those thoughts in a way that is shorter than a sermon but longer than a tweet.

What will I blog about? Judaism of course. Israel. Religion in general. Share with others some websites of interest. And of course the New York Rangers!

Thanks to all who have encouraged me to do this. You know who you are (ok thanks is not the right word. The right word is more like why are you making me do this!)

And I will leave you with this comment by my so-called friend Marcy Morris when I told her I was starting a blog......"hahahhaha. i actually laughed out loud to that one"