Not a week goes by when there is not some news item about Israel or the middle east.  This week, as we commemorate Israel's fallen defense forces during Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) and transition into the celebrations around Yom Ha'atzma'ut (Independence Day), I think it's worth taking a few moments to reflect on the beginnings of the State of Israel.

Israel is a unique mixture of ancient roots and modern formation:  Through much of the book of Breishit/Genesis, we witness God's promise to Abraham and his progeny that their relationship with God's land will be part of an eternal covenant.  This element of our brit/covenant with God is so essential to our being, we have turned daily to face that land as we pray no matter where in the world we are: South African Jews face north, the Jews of Scotland turn south, Jews in Tokyo face west and we here in Rhode Island face east during prayer.  The element of The Land is so central to our brit/covenant with God, that our rabbinic literature has embroidered and elevated the nature of The Land in order to foster this ongoing love for God's Land: the fruit is sweeter, the animals healthier, milk and honey (actually date syrup!) flows with abundance.  These images inspired us during millennia of exile.  Jews in Europe would leave a small patch of wall unpainted in the upper corner of a room in their homes to show that life is incomplete as long as we are living anywhere but The Land.

Since 1948, the Land of Israel has transformed into a modern polity, the State of Israel.  In 66 short years, a breathtakingly beautiful and raucous and fragile and steadfast and ground-breaking and brilliant and bewildering and inspiring democracy has emerged.  For a moment, let us put aside the contentious issues of the day and remember how the State of Israel took shape.  What follows is the proclamation issued in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948, the 5th of Iyar 5708.  So much has happened since that day, and with the support and pride and involvement of Jews all over the world, the State of Israel will continue, with God's blessing, to thrive, grow and contribute as a respected nation.


Provisional Government of Israel
Official Gazette: Number 1; Tel Aviv, 5 Iyar 5708, 14.5.1948 Page 1
 The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people.

Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books. 
 
After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom. 
 
Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, defiant returnees, and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood. 
 
In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country. 
 
This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home. 
 
The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people--the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe--was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations. 
 
Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland. 
 
In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations. 
 
On the 29th of November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. 
 
This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State. 
 
Accordingly we, members of the People's Council, representatives of the Jewish Community of Eretz-Israel and of the Zionist Movement, are here assembled on the day of the termination of the British Mandate over Eretz-Israel and, by virtue of our natural and historic right and on the strength of the resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, hereby declare the establishment of a Jewish state in Eretz-Israel, to be known as the State of Israel. 
 
We declare that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel."  The State of Israel will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations. 
 
The State of Israel is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel. 
 
We appeal to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the community of nations. 
 
We appeal--in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months--to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. 
 
We extend our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East. 
 
We appeal to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream--the redemption of Israel. 
 
Placing our trust in the Almighty, we affix our signatures to this proclamation at this session of the provisional Council of State, on the soil of the Homeland, in the city of Tel-Aviv, on this Sabbath eve, the 5th day of Iyar, 5708 (14th May, 1948). 
 
DAVID BEN-GURION
Daniel Auster Mordekhai Bentov Yitzchak Ben Zvi Eliyahu Berligne Fritz Bernstein Rabbi Wolf Gold Meir Grabovsky Yitzchak Gruenbaum Dr. Abraham Granovsky Eliyahu Dobkin Meir Wilner-Kovner Zerach Wahrhaftig Herzl Vardi Rachel Cohen Rabbi Kalman Kahana Saadia Kobashi Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin Meir David Loewenstein Zvi Luria Golda Myerson Nachum Nir Zvi Segal Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman David Zvi Pinkas Aharon Zisling Moshe Kolodny Eliezer Kaplan Abraham Katznelson Felix Rosenblueth David Remez Berl Repetur Mordekhai Shattner Ben Zion Sternberg Bekhor Shitreet Moshe Shapira Moshe Shertok

Thanks to our TY member and Cohen School teacher, David Wasser, I had the pleasure and challenge of speaking at the Moses Brown TEDx event last night.  My mission:  to sum up some aspect of my journey to Israel with Imam Farid Ansari and Reverend Dr. Donald Anderson . . . in 12 minutes!  This is my TEDx talk . . . an apt topic, indeed, for this week's Torah portion as we contemplate the significance of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and their offspring for our own lives.



A rabbi, an imam and a minister get on an airplane:  sounds a bit like a joke . . . mostly we three companions have been on a journey of exploration and bridge-building and assumption blasting that has literally taken us places we never expected to go . . . . together.  So, not a joke, but a lot of laughing has been involved.

The imam is Imam Farid Ansari a six-foot-something American born black guy who is an ex New York City cop and now serves as the spiritual leader of the Muslim-American Dawah Center of Providence and is the head of the Rhode Island Council for Muslim Advancement.  

The minister is the Reverend Dr. Donald Anderson, a few inches short of six foot American white guy from a family of Swedish immigrants who is a born and bred Rhody, an American Baptist Minister and is the Executive Minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches.
I am Amy Levin, a nice, short, middle-aged Jewish lady from New Jersey. 

We three learn from each other all the time . . . we meet for diner breakfasts and scheme together and debate with each other and inch by inch have edged away from assumptions and caution to trust.  Through the friendship and integrity of these two men have taught me that it’s ok to question my long-standing assumptions and to step out of my safe space.

My first ten years of life, my family lived in a mixed catholic and black neighborhood of East Orange, New Jersey.  On my way home from elementary school, the Catholic kids from the parochial school that lay between my public school and our garden apartment, used to chase me into the neighborhood alleys calling me "dirty Jew" and scaring the bejabbers out of me.  Christmas and Easter were not happy associations for me, they were, instead, reminders of my "different-ness."

My husband, baby daughter and I moved to Israel in September 1981.  The first week we were there, I walked past the main department store in downtown Jerusalem.  The window display declared in huge letters and lots of sparkle:  Shanah Tovah!  Happy New Year!  Referring to the impending holy day of Rosh Hashanah . . . . Not the secular calendar date of January 1st.  I wasn't in Kansas anymore.  I wasn't in suburban New Jersey anymore.  I was part of the majority culture for the first time on my life!  I relaxed in a way I never had back in the States.  Now the people around me were going to be celebrating my holidays, school vacations were going to coincide with my festivals, restaurants were going to be kosher wherever I went . . .

Being not-the-minority was a revelation.  Through the twenty years of living in Israel, which included lots of economic and social challenges, I never lost the sense that I was where I belonged, I was in my place and the people around me were my people.


 . . . . For the most part . . . I was living in a rather siloed culture, in the middle of western Jerusalem. But I did have a few encounters with my Arab neighbors ... Before the first intifada (which began in 1987), my daughter and I would encounter Arab moms and kids from the Arab village across the road at the playground that lay between a Jewish and an Arab neighborhood.  The kids played together.  One day,  a young Arab mom offered me a fresh almond from a little bag she brought to the playground.  But encounters like that disappeared . . . a fence was built alongside the Arab side of the playground . . . when the intifada began.

After the intifada began . . . our apartment building was at the edge of our Jewish neighborhood.  Across the street was a bare hill and in the valley over that hill was an Arab village.  And one evening, coming home late from work, I got out of my car and a rock came sailing over the hill at me.  And another one.  It took me a minute to realize what was happening . . . and then I ducked behind my car and yelled (in Hebrew) “I didn’t do anything to you!”

So, my inclination was to stick to my Jerusalem:  the part of the Jerusalem that speaks Hebrews and closes school for Hanukah and empties the bread shelves during Passover.  For the girl that used to be chased home being called “dirty Jew,” it was a whole new experience being surrounded and protected by “my own.”

And then a dozen or so years after leaving Israel, I’m sitting at a Providence diner with a minister and an imam . . . not my natural comfort zone people.    We began with the premise that all three of our faith communities are co-existing in Rhode Island and we should try to deepen the interfaith conversation since we’re all here anyway.

Our diner conversations led to join press conferences where we have stood together for mutual respect between our communities, compassion and peace in the Middle East.  We brought an exhibit about the history of Islam in the United States to Rhode Island. 

And then we we were invited to speak at a symposium in Jerusalem about green and sustainable pilgrimage.  We were billed as the “collaborating clergy” . . . as we planned our presentation we began to realize how far we’d come, how much trust had grown between us and how odd it seemed that our collaboration was such an extraordinary thing that we had to be imported to Jerusalem from Rhode Island to explain how we do it.

Rhode Island, with Roger Williams’ legacy of religious liberty, is a very conducive place to build bridges between religious leaders and religious communities like those that Don and Farid and I have built.  

The first place we visited was a baptismal site on the western bank of the Jordan River . . .   As we followed the slope down toward the river we came to a wooden boardwalk on which several groups of Christian pilgrims from Africa and Asia and Latin America and Europe were each gathered, readying themselves for immersion in the Jordan.  As an Israeli living in Jerusalem, I would note the turn from winter to spring by the sudden spurt of tour busses on the streets . . . including those carrying Christian groups . . . but I’d never witnessed the reverence of Christians for the Holy Land that I had only experienced as my Jewish Holy Land.  

We then moved on to the mosque of Nebi Musa . . . which is Arabic for mosque of the Prophet Moses . . . which should sound a bit like the Hebrew the Navi Moshe . . . . and Don and I watched as Farid reverently bathed his feet and disappeared inside the mosque to pray.  Farid emerged from the mosque, and we returned to Jerusalem.

Even though I am the one with the Israeli ID card, each of my travel buddies had connected to places in my land to which I could only be a visitor.  I had been so focused on our role at the symposium, our travel arrangements and accommodations, that I really hadn’t thought that much about what the experience of moving through Israel with a faithful Muslim and a faithful Christian would be like.  That first day, I gained an appreciation for the significance of this land in the faith traditions of my friends . . . but I still held on to a sense of ownership, I felt as though I was offering the gifts of unique experiences to my friends.   

Over the next few days, as we engaged with the participants of the symposium, I became the humble tourist:  Don and Farid were embraced and welcomed by the Christian and Muslim communities of Jerusalem’s Old City and villages on the West Bank of the Jordan River . . . they went to places I could not go and they came back with beautiful stories about warm welcomes and meals at family tables.  I wasn’t the only one welcoming them to Israel and showing them around any more . . . I was sharing the privilege and watching their spiritual enrichment from the sidelines.

Don and Farid showed me facets of my own country that I had totally missed because of politics and wariness and my own enjoyment of being part of the majority for a change.  

Abraham, the biblical Abraham.  His name, translated from the Hebrew means “father of many peoples.”  We keep forgetting that.  I was trying to own Abraham in a rather exclusive deal until I travelled to the land of Abraham with two other of Abraham’s children:  there is so much more truth in the expanded family of Abraham’s children, of Jews and Christians and Muslims.  The Torah recounts the moment of God’s blessing to Abraham:  the original Hebrew is:  vnivr’chu b’cha kol goyei ha’aretz . . . all the nations of the land will be blessed through you.  All the nations of the land . . . 

It’s more than ok to let go of the assumptions that you may think are providing you with a sense of security and a sense of place.  Find yourself some out of the box true friends and give yourself the gift of a new perspective and a new humility.

There are a number of hugely significant moments in this week's parashah/Torah reading:  from Avram's stunning act of faith in response to God's literally out-of-the-blue call: "Lech l'cha" / "Take yourself off to the place I'll show you . . . " to the first iterations of the covenantal promises of progeny and land.  This is a touchstone parashah.

With so many founding principles and themes in this Torah reading, we often don't focus on an interesting dynamic of these early Breishit/Genesis chapters:  God is changing or determining the names of everybody in the nuclear Avram/Sarai family.  Avram becomes Avraham.  Sarai, his wife, becomes Sarah.  It is God who determines the name of the child Hagar will bear to Avram (Ishmael) and it is God who determines the name of the child Sarah will bear to Avraham (Yitzhak/Isaac).

Anyone who has been blessed with the opportunity to name a child has felt a tremendous sense of responsibility. as well as promise for the future and the potential of this new life.  There are so many elements we want to weave into the names we choose for our children:  our hopes for their future; qualities we hope will be integrated into their personalities; channeling the memories and the love of relatives who have not lived to see and hold this new child . . . .

There is something endearing about this image of God as the "namer" in this family.  Not since the Eden generation, has God claimed the role of "namer."  Indeed, God tasks Adam, the human, with the task of naming much of creation.  (Breishit 2:19  "And Adonay God fashioned from the ground every animal of the field and every bird of the skies and brought it to the human to see what Adam would call it.  And whatever the human would call it, each living being, that would be its name.")

The fact that God has taken back the role of "namer" at this moment signals the uniqueness of the relationship with this family.  Even though we first encounter Avram and Sarai with perfectly serviceable names, God wants to mark them with names of God's choosing.  There is a sweetness in these acts of naming.  We are witnessing God's hopes for each one of these family members, the qualities they will display, their relationships with God and with other humans, are all rolled into these new names:  Avram as Avraham will establish many peoples to carry on the tradition of this new relationship with God; Sarai (meaning "princess") becomes Sarah . . . the meaning of her name does not change, but the letter "hei" added to her name is understood to represent the name of God, thus making her a partner in the covenantal enterprise;  Hagar's son is blessed with the name Yishma-el, promising that God will hear him throughout his lifetime; Sarah's son is to be called Yitzhak which evokes the joyous (and incredulous) laughter of his parents as they contemplate his birth.

We and our Christian and Muslim friends in the "Abrahamic faiths" are the legacy of these four people, named by God.  May we, too, embody those hopes of God to be treasure our common ancestry as the descendants of spiritual royalty, and be blessed with God's listening ear and bring joy to those who love us.

My dream was to issue a joint statement of compassionate concern for the residents of Israel and Gaza and a rejection of the connection between terrorism and faith with my Christian and Muslim colleagues here in Rhode Island.  My fellow dreamers were the Reverend Dr. Donald Anderson, Executive Minister of The Rhode Island State Council of Churches and Imam Farid Ansari, the President of The Rhode Island Council for Muslim Advancement.  I am, as many of you know, in addition to being Torat Yisrael's rabbi, also privileged to serve as President of the Board of Rabbis of Greater Rhode Island.

On a Thursday in November, as the ink was barely dry on the Israel-Gaza cease fire, the three of us gathered with additional colleagues and together forged the statement below on the left.  I had the privilege of following our joint statement with my own personal statement at a press conference on December 3rd.  My statement is on the right:

This week's parashah / Torah portion opens with the rather peremptory divine command:   וַיֹּ֤אמֶר ה' אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛  מֵֽאַרְצְךָ֥  וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖  וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ
"God said to Avram: get yourself out from your country, from your homeland and from your father's house to the country I will show you."

No, "hi, my name is . . . ."  No, "I've got an interesting opportunity for you."  Not even an "Ahum, let me introduce myself . . . ."

Just "get up and go."

As stunning as God's opening to Avram is, the patriarch's response is even more breathtaking:
So, Avram got up and went as God commanded . . . and took with him his nephew Lot and his wife Sarai and all their possessions . . . .

For this tremendous act of faith, our tradition lauds Avram (at the end of this week's Torah reading, re-named Avraham / Abraham) as "the faithful servant of God."  In this week's haftarah, God refers to Avram as "my friend."  Over and over, we will see Avram/Avraham respond unquestioningly and with alacrity to every command of God's save for one:  to warn the residents of S'dom and Amorrah that they are facing destruction.  At that moment, Avraham, the faithful, unquestioning servant, challenges God's judgment.

But at this moment of "you don't know Me, but get up and leave everything and everyone you know and I'll make you a great nation" Avram simply does.  And we hear no protest from his wife, Sarai either.  The text leaves room for us to posit that they may have been of one mind.  Getting up, going, not knowing to where.

We need to pause for a moment in the narrative to appreciate the depth of courage this took:  My son and daughter-in-law, both raised in Israel in bi-lingual homes, moved to the States over the summer so that my son could go to graduate school.  Aryeh and Michal both speak and read English.  They've both visited the States to meet American relatives.  They knew before they landed that they had a maternal back-up-system in place should anything go awry.  and yet, I watch the irm confront all sorts of cultural challenges.  Things are just done differently.  Organizations work differently.  People's expectations of exchanges are not the same. 

Aryeh and Michal are way ahead of the game of cultural transition compared to Avram and Sarai:  Aryeh and Michal spoke the language, could look up New Hampshire on a map, had a welcoming committee at the airport . . . Avram and Sarai simply left home and had no idea where they were going and what would happen to them.  And yet they left.

Lots of people have faith.  Few of us who describe ourselves as people of faith would be willing to simply place our fate and future, and the well-being of our families in the hands of the Unseen.

When I moved into a new neighborhood in Beit HaKerem, Jerusalem, when I became the rabbi of the Masorti congregation there, I became friends with my upstairs neighbors:  the American basketball player Billy Thompson, his wife and young children.  Billy was playing basketball for the Jerusalem Ha'Poel team at the time.  Having a 6ft. 7in. upstairs neighbor was very handy when it came to building my Sukkah!  

Billy and his wife are passionate Christians.  Their faith is very deep.  When Billy's unrenewable contract with Ha'Poel expired, he and his wife prepared to return to the States.  He had no offer from his previous NBA team or any other.  We were having coffee one day and I asked:  "Aren't you nervous?  Just packing up and going back to the States with no job? No means of supporting yourselves?"

With perfect calm and tranquility Billy replied: "God will show us where we are to go and what we are to do."  This wasn't a sound byte for a Christian radio station, this was the way these people lived their lives.  I found myself wondering if, under similar circumstances, I would be as sanguine about placing my life and the lives of my family members in God's hands.

Avram and Sarai (and Billy and his wife, for that matter) found that stepping out into the unknown and trusting to God to show them the way to a fulfilling and meaningful life worked out just fine.  Perhaps opening ourselves to a little of that kind of faith will enrich and deepen our own lives . . . 

The implications of one verse in this weeks's Torah reading are vast:  
D'varim/Deuteronomy 16:30    Justice, you shall pursue justice, in order that you will live.
                                                                                                                       דברים טז, כ צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ 


The verse is phrased to convey emphasis and focus:  the repetition of the word צֶדֶק / tzedek  draws our attention to the importance of the word and also to the possibility of understanding that word more than one way: tzedek can be translated as "justice" and tzedek can be translated as "righteousness."  The verse, therefore, exhorts us to pursue both justice and righteousness by virtue of this repetition.


Then there is the choice of verb:  תִּרְדֹּ֑ף / tirdof / you shall pursue.
There are so many other verbs that might have worked here.  We might have been commanded  to advance justice and righteousness, to elevate justice and righteousness, to embrace justice and righteousness . . . but instead the verb driving this mitzvah leaves no room for any passivity:  we are to pursue justice and righteousness.  And we are to pursue justice and righteousness in order that we might exist.  

It is in response to the challenge of this mitzvah that I approach the campaign to eradicate circumcision taking place now within the German court system.  For all that German government leaders like German Justice Ministry spokeswoman, Anne Zimmerman, have pledged to prepare legislation protecting religious circumcision in German (practiced by both Jews and Muslims), the fact is that this week a legal complaint was filed against a rabbi in Germany who serves as a mohel, for perpetrating bodily harm on an infant by performing a circumcision.

In the meantime, circumcisions continue to be performed within both the Jewish and the Muslim communities of Germany.  Indeed, we might conjecture that this move is more an anti-Muslim than an anti-Jewish effort since there are so many more Muslims living in Germany than Jews (estimates put the Muslim population of Germany at something over 4 million people and the Jewish population of Germany at a bit over 110,000 people).  Nonetheless, the court action in Hof was directed at a mohel.  There is no equivalent of a mohel in the Muslim world: circumcisions are generally performed by doctors.  

The German legal process is following standard procedures and the prosecutor's office in Hof, Germany, will devote a great deal of time in the next few weeks determining whether they should press charges.  In the meantime, pressure on official levels is being levied on the German government to move quickly to protect ritual circumcision within their borders and government leaders are not unaware of the concern felt all over the world.

Two days ago, the AP reported:
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle weighed in while on a trip to Liechtenstein, saying that "Jewish and Muslim traditions must be allowed to be practiced without legal uncertainty."
"We cannot risk Germany's reputation in the world as a country of religious tolerance," he said. "From my perspective it's necessary now to rapidly come up with clear regulations."


But the Torah does not command us to sit back and wait for justice and righteousness to unfold, it commands us to pursue justice and righteousness.  To that end, I encourage you to write a short note to Germany's Ambassador to the United States and let Mr. Ammon know that we Jews in the United States are concerned that this issue be resolved in a just manner very soon.  You may write to:

The Honorable Peter Ammon
Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany
2300 M Street NW
Washington, DC 20037

You should, of course, phrase your note to reflect your own understanding or and concerns about the matter, but here is a draft of a note which you may use "as is" or edit to your own taste if this is helpful:

Dear Mr. Ambassador,
One of the blessings of being an American Jew is the fact that I and the rest of my co-religionists are able to observe the tenets and practices of our faith here without fear or self-consciousness.  The Jewish practice of circumcising our newborn sons at the age of eight days has been observed by every generation of our people in every place we have lived for over 3000 years.

To posit that we, as a people, have been perpetrating bodily harm on our precious sons for millennia is absurd.  To allow German citizens to threaten the religious practice of Jewish and Muslim adherents within your borders should be anathema to your government and your people.

I write to you in the hope that you will find a way to convey my expressions of concern to your government and to let them know that we in America, individuals, communities and national organizations, are all waiting anxiously to hear that the religious practice of circumcision will be protected within your borders by irrevocable Germany legislation.

With blessings of peace, "l'shalom"
___________________

"If your brother falls low, and his hand falters beside you, then you shall strengthen him--sojourner or resident--and he will live with you." (Leviticus 25:35)


This past Wednesday, I attended the fourth annual Interfaith Coalition to Reduce Poverty Conference.  Each year at this conference, we receive the most up-to-date statistics available on Rhode Island's poor:  adults and children.  We also are given the opportunity to learn from experts in the field of fighting poverty in order to make more effective our own state-wide efforts.

This year's topice was:  Why Are People Poor?  The Systemic Nature of Poverty in Rhode Island. A panel of three leaders in the fight against poverty on the national level spoke:  Reverend Peg Chemberlin, Immediate Past President of the National Council of Churches, Rabbi Steve Gutow, President and CEO of The Jewish Council for Public Affairs and Imam Mohamed Magid, President of the Islamic Society of North America.  Reverend Chemberlin's presentation included encouragement to act despite the prevalence and the momentum poverty has gained:  "Pick something and do it.  Don't be overwhelmed.  Have a work plan."  

I learned Torah from Imam Magid:  He taught a midrash from the Muslim tradition in which a poor man comes to Abraham.  Abraham asks the man, "Do you believe in God?"  And the man responds, "no."  "In that case," answers Abraham, "I cannot feed you."  The man turns away and God says to Abraham:  "I've fed that man for forty years even though he does not believe in Me.  I send him to you for one meal and you turn him away?"  Abraham ran after the man, apologized and invited him to a meal.  The poor man turns to Abraham: "You say God sent you to run after me to apologize to me and to feed me?  That is a good God.  I will believe in such a God."    Imam Magid challenges us:  "If you want to say you believe in God, show me what you have done to take care of God's creation!"


Rabbi Gutow shared with us the shocking trend that poverty is decreasing in the developing world and increasing in the developed world. In other words, it is in the societies with the greatest resources that the numbers of those living in poverty is increasing.  Rabbi Gutow concluded:  "The world will be a better place if we do this work.  The world will be a worse place if we don't do this work."

I am sickened by the realities of poverty right under our noses here in Rhode Island:  In 2010, there were 142,000 Rhode Islanders (14% of the population) living in poverty.  The poverty level is defined as around $11,000 of income per year for a single individual and approximately $18,000 dollars of income per year for a single parent and two children.  Of those living in poverty, 43% were living in extreme poverty . . . which means people living on an income less than half of the poverty level figures above.  In 2010, there were 42,221 children in Rhode Island (19% of our State's children) living in poverty.

This week's Torah reading, all the force of our tradition, God's expectations of us, all compel us to do more than read about the poor.  We cannot click our tongues and make compassionate noises.  We must all act.  I invite you to contact me if you are ready to move beyond heartfelt compassion to action. 

In the meantime, here are two opportunities for involvement:
Join the Interfaith Advocacy Project and become a Legislative Ambassador.  You will be trained to be an effective advocate, you will learn about Rhode Island's legislative and budget processes and about poverty-related issues being considered in the current legislative session.  Contact Reverend Donald Anderson, Executive Minister of the Rhode Island State Council of Churches if you have the time and the communication skills to take on this kind of role. 

Sign a petition.  The federal government is seriously considering cutting funding for SNAP, the newest food stamp program for families.  This is happening at a time when more and more vulnerable citizens are losing their food security (literally not knowing where there next meal is coming from).  A third grader recently told her teacher that she did not have breakfast one schoolday morning because "it wasn't my turn."  Please follow this link and add your name to mine:  www.bread.org/snapworks.

Parashat Hayyei Sarah (Genesis 23:1 - 25:18)

Parashat Hayyei Sarah, is a parasha of transition. Each of the members of Avraham's family is transformed during the course of these few chapters: Sarah dies, Yitzhak and Rivkah meet and marry, Avraham dies, Yitzhak is acknowledged as the next in the chain of covenanted patriarchs, and Yishmael comes to bury his father and himself becomes the father of nations.

The most powerful moment of the entire parasha is contained in one verse: "His [Avraham's] sons Yitzhak and Yishmael buried him in the cave of Machpelah . . . . (25:9). How significant, after all the jealousy, banishment, and competition, that these two half-brother are named in the same breath -- and come together to bury their father.

The moment is fitting tribute to Avraham -- for aside from his unshakeable faith in God, his other great attribute was as a seeker of peace and compromise. He made peace with Lot (13: 7-9). He bargained for the lives of the inhabitants of S'dom and Amorrah (18: 23-33). He made peace with Avimelech (21: 22-32). He wanted to resist sending Hagar and Yishmael into the wilderness (21:11). Aside from his successful military campaign against the kings who invaded from the east, we see Avraham as a gentle man, avoiding conflict and treasuring life.

I cannot help but sense the spirit of Avraham inspiring his two sons to seek peace themselves -- between the two of them, and in their relations with others. For all the animosity that their births and subsequent histories could have engendered, we hear of no conflict between the brothers themselves -- and according to the Torah itself, they came together in quiet dignity to bury the father who loved them both.

In these times, when peace between the children of Yitzhak and the children of Yishmael seems so tantalizingly close and then so heartbreakingly far, we should all emulate our ancestor Avraham, the seeker of peace and compromise.

The Birkat Hamazon (Blessings After Meals) is one of the most beautiful pieces of liturgy we have. We express our gratitude for the abundance of blessings God has bestowed on us -- sustenance, land, a spiritual center, hope for the future. There is a section of the Birkat Hamazon in which we ask God to provide us continued guidance, an honorable living, freedom of spirit, and ultimate deliverance. There is room here, I think, for one more request -- one that expresses the ethic demonstrated by the sons of our peace-seeking patriarch, Avraham:

Harachman, hu yashkin shalom bein b'nai Yitzhak uv'nai Yishmael.

May the Merciful One cause peace to dwell among the children of Yitzhak and the children of Yishmael.