Steve and the Holy of Holies

I never owned a Volkswagen Bug, but nearly 30 years ago I proudly bought (and still have a copy) of the "Compleat Idiot How to Keep Your Volkwagen Alive" guide, first published in 1969 by an aerospace industry 'dropout'. With its 'groovy-looking' and clear diagrams of repair tasks, the guide seemed to promise a better and simpler life amid the technology -- like the motor vehicle -- that we depend on for all the best of what we can do, but that also threatens (think, global warming) to destroy us. It said, 'there's another way.' We can have material things that serve us, instead of us having to live a 'rat race' existence where we feel enslaved to those things and an obsessive need to consume and constantly acquire more and more. It said, "small is better."

Until recently, I had never owned an Apple computer. But I always admired them. They also carried with them this promise -- one Steve Jobs credited in part to the influence on him of the Whole Earth Catalog -- of a better way to live. A way that did not mean we always had to pursue having lots of complex gadgets. One that said that it was possible to own things that were beautiful -- beautiful with an almost Japanese aesthetic that found beauty in the small and simple.

This is part of why so many of us seem to mourn so much at hearing of the death of this man who was, in fact, not someone most of us knew at all. He stood for something much beyond his actual deeds. He stood for that 'small is better' belief and aesthetic. His very life was a beacon of hope for America and its future. He embodied the possibility that the great and terrible rent that came upon this country in the 1960s amid the Vietnam war -- the split between Counterculture and Nixon's Silent Majority, a split that has grown into the current great gap between Red and Blue states -- could be healed. Rather than being in conflict, the goals of the Counterculture and of commerce could come together. This greatest success of American companies in our time -- this Apple -- showed that one could made piles of money by bringing Counterculture values to life. In a sense, Jobs was a modern-day priest, someone who appeared almost magically to be able to enter the Holy of Holies of our time, a place that would have destroyed an ordinary human with its beautiful and terrible power. Jobs could see clearly things that were obscured for the rest of us. The music world despaired of finding a way to distribute music on the Internet that could also allow money to be made. Jobs, on the other hand, saw a way to make it simple -- just sell the songs individually for $1 (minus a penny) each. It seems almost obvious in retropect, but only this 'priest' could both see it and pull together the resources to make it happen.

Jobs' greatest inheritor is Google, another company that has found fantastic financial success while pursuing a sense of higher values -- especially its famous "don't be evil" maxim -- as well as pursuing simplicity in the user experience. It remains to be seen what the future of these two great American companies is and whether they will continue to uphold their values. But as we approach this Yom Kippur, we can bring a hope -- a prayer -- not just for individual existences to prosper in the year (and years) ahead, but also a hope for the nation and the world: a hope that we will find a way towards a small-is-better prosperity in the model that this 'priest' (or prophet) modeled for us. A prosperity that does not mean destroying our planet. A prosperity where we can be truly satisfied with what we have. A prosperity where every person has the opportunity to live out his or her dreams. A prosperity that frees us from violence, homelessness and pain. A prosperity that does not forget the widow, the orphan and the stranger.

Tzom Kal.

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Of course, there are other reasons we have so much emotion at Jobs' passing. First is how young Jobs was -- only 56. It shows that no matter how blessed a person might be in many parts or their life -- including the wealth needed to afford the very best of medical care -- many years are not guaranteed to any one of us (certainly, a theme with resonance on Yom Kippur).

I also feel like I _owe_ Jobs (or at least Apple computer). Apple has _taught_us so many things that we often paid them nothing for. For example, Apple taught me that a notebook computer was something I both _needed_ and could afford. I will never forget that group project session in 1993 when I was finishing up my first masters degree. Another student pulled his Powerbook 100 (see pic above) out of his bag and pulled up the group project we were all working on -- we finished it together right there and then in that student lounge instead of each having to go home (or to a computer lab) to work on our individual sections independently. It blew my mind and I knew I had to have one. I ended up buying an early IBM Thinkpad instead, a device that helped transform how I worked and thought. IBM got my money for that purchase -- not Apple -- but I never would have spent the money if the Powerbook 100 hadn't 'taught' me what its value could be. Similarly, the iPod and the iPhone taught us -- and other music device and smartphone manufacturers -- what was possible. We have all benefited tremendously. It is certainly true, however, that Apple rarely has invented anything new. I had an mp3 player by RIO before the iPod was ever released. But it never really worked right. Apple under Jobs has known how to take complicated technology and put it all together with data and media in ways that _seem_ simple -- or at least are experienced as simple by the user. They just work. They teach us how it is done.

We have our dreams -- Midrash, Jewish chaplaincy and MLK

I have Rabbi Daniel Lehmann, now president of Boston Hebrew College, to thank for showing me that Martin Luther King day can be more than just a day the banks are closed: we can treat it in the ways the Jews treat all their holidays, as an opportunity for study -- for study of Torah. Implicit in this kind of Torah study is an assumption that Torah goes far beyond the canonical texts of Judaism like the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud. It can extend to anything that connects us with wisdom and Ultimate Meaning -- that feeds our dreams as Jews of a pursuit of a more perfected, more just, world. Even to the works of an African-American preacher from Atlanta, Georgia.

King's work -- especially his famous I have a dream speech -- is certainly once such source of Torah. But, as you can see if you really study it as Torah, King gives us an example in that speech of a particular kind of dreaming much akin to our practice of Midrash. That is, King does not just put forth dreams in some way disconnected from his tradition. Rather, he spins his dreams using the images and language from that tradition -- subtly paraphrasing and quoting from the Bible and his other foundational sources to make his points, his dreams, clear.

Last week, I gave a workshop -- entitled Working the midrashic muscle -- using images to uncover the Holy in the mundane -- at the annual conference of the National Association of Jewish Chaplains. In that workshop, which I'll write more about here soon, I made the case that in order to create our own new Midrash from our own spiritual experiences, we need to bring those experiences into dialogue with our tradition -- with God, Torah and Israel.

That's really what King did, from his own tradition(s) in the I have a dream speech. Five years, ago, I created the handout you see a small version of on the right (a full pdf version you can use yourself is freely available here) for a study session I led as part of the MLK Day activities Rabbi Lehmann had organized at the Gann Academy where he was then the head of school. In the center of the handout is the text of the speech itself. On the edges are the many sources that King borrowed from in the speech, including Amos, the Declaration of Independence and Shakespeare. It's fascinating to see how he used these things to construct his speech!

[If you are going to use the study handout, I recommend you enlarge it about 1.5x onto 11x17 paper.]

On this MLK Day, I hope you can find the courage to dream. And that, in doing so, you will not be alone -- that you will have the full force of the rich traditions of your people(s), and their Holy Texts, behind you -- true dreaming, true pursuit of justice, is a shared experience!

A giant is dead -- David Lieber, a Bible scholar who united the spiritual and intellectual

One of the most inspiring figures of my rabbinical school education was Rabbi David Lieber, with whom I studied Psalms and who was the editor of the Etz Hayim Humash, a Torah text and commentary that can be found in nearly every Conservative synagogue and that has greatly enriched how we view our biblical heritage.

I was saddened today when I learned that he had passed away late last night. The funeral services will be held in Los Angeles Thursday.

Rabbi Lieber was the kind of giant of Jewish scholarship that is so rarely found today -- for Rabbi Lieber, unlike for so many current scholars, there was no divide between the academic and the spiritual. When you studied Psalms with him, it was with the tools of modern scholarship in hand. But the atmosphere in the classroom was characterized by anything but the sterility we sometimes associate with the academic -- it was deeply spiritual.

His technique was slow and deliberate. Just as it was with the ancients and the medievals, Rabbi Lieber treated every word and turn of the text like there was the possibility to uncover infinite holiness beneath it. Rabbi Lieber knew that, as brilliant as the medieval scholars were, they had unfortunately lost something that the ancients knew so well -- the Psalms are poetry. For Rabbi Lieber, the value of modern scholarship is that it -- in things like its revival of the Hebrew language as a spoken tongue -- had reawakened us to the true depths of the beauty and poetry of the text. It had reawakened us to realize that the Psalms are songs that were meant to be sung -- meant to be sung at specific spiritual times and places.

Dr. Lieber, thank you so much for what you have given me. I am so deeply grateful to The Blessed Holy One that I had a chance to learn with you.

May his memory be a blessing.

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The services will take place at 11 a.m. on Thursday at the American Jewish University (formerly, the University of Judaism) where Rabbi Lieber was long the president. He is survived by his wife, Esther, and his children, Michael, Danny, Susie and Debbie. Notes of condolence may can be sent to his wife at, 305 El Camino, Beverly Hills, CA 90212.

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I had not been aware of this, but Rabbi Lieber served as a chaplain in the Air Force. He was born in Poland and grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

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It took them a few days to get around to it, but the New York Times finally wrote a nice obit-- focusing on the contribution that the Etz Hayim was for Judaism.

Why I love Hillary

There's a scene in the movie Primary Colors where the Bill Clinton-like main character and his wife have just done an important live television interview together during a presidential campaign. One of the campaign aids is watching it amid a crowd of average folks. He gets an excited call on his cell phone from another campaign aid who asks him, "How'd it play? Wasn't she fantastic?!"

He dryly (and a bit sadly) replies, "Yeah, great. But they'd like to see her hair a little longer."

This is what Hillary Clinton has faced all of her public life. It doesn't matter how much she's accomplished, or what her strength of character is -- someone will always be judging her on whether she is feminine enough. Someone will always feel that somehow she has been "breaking the rules" and that she should have been perhaps more of a mother or just a bit more subservient to her husband. Or maybe that she should have worn dresses more often or that she should have spent more time with her hair in her earlier ears instead of just putting on a simple headband to keep it out of her eyes.

More than anything else, it's Hillary's perseverance in the face of all this that makes her a hero to me. She reminds me of the (largely Jewish) feminists who were heroes to me when I was growing up. People like Bella Abzug , or, more importantly, like my Aunt Bryna, who was such a vital support to me when I was growing up. People who not only said that they, themselves, refused to be limited by the expectations that other people had for them, but who preached to me that I didn't have to be limited to whatever the voices were that were trying to limit me as well. They spoke a narrative of liberation that told me I should have the courage to find my own path.

In choosing between Hillary and Obama, I think this is what most people are relying on -- which narrative of liberation speaks most loudly to them. Obama certainly has an inspiring one, one that speaks loudly to many Americans. But Hillary's is the one that resonates more with the struggles -- and accomplishments -- of my own life. I can remember as a young teen taking one of those standardized tests that are supposed to tell you what you are best suited to do. When it came back telling me I should become a computer programmer it felt like a punch in the gut. Like a death sentence.

I don't mean to denigrate the profession of computer programing or of other information technology (IT) professionals. My father was a proud software engineer and I've done quite a bit of IT work in my time, both for work and for fun. But that test was labeling me. It was telling me the "kitchen" where its designers thought a person like me belonged -- a place where being among people was not important. And that's not what I wanted for myself. I didn't want to me a computer programmer or an accountant. I wanted to be a part of transforming the world. I wanted to be about helping other people find their own paths to liberation. It's that call that led me to become first a journalist, later a rabbi and now a special kind of rabbi who is part of helping other people find their path to helping others (I work in a hospital as a clinical pastoral educator training others how to be chaplains and spiritual caregivers).

Hillary, like many great women of her generation, has also refused to be defined by other's expectations -- by the limits that the society in which she has born have imposed on her. It has been anything but an easy struggle for her. She has had to endure whithering criticism -- really hatred -- throughout it .She has had to make painful compromises she clearly did not want to make -- changing her last name, dropping the headband. And, perhaps most inspiring to me, she's had to overcome what many would consider a fatal disability for a politician -- a lack of the natural skill at communicating a charismatic warmth that is so much a part of her husband's success. She's a part of that great generation of American women who taught us how to throw off our chains. It would warm my heart to no end to see one of theirs finally make it to the highest office in the land.

It's time for a change. It's time for a liberation.

Al HaTzadikim (about Art Green)

The great difference between traditional Jewish prayer and prayer as Christians know it is that Jewish prayer is scripted: Instead of composing prayers for ourselves in our own heads, the emphasis is on reciting words written in a prayerbook that was composed hundreds and thousands of years ago. On weekdays, for example, the tradition demands that we say the exact same 19-blessing prayer three times a day.

The words of this central prayer -- called the Amidah -- are not left to us to change. But there is no limit on what we can think or feel when we recite them. And what I love so much about the familiarity of the Amidah is that each of the 19 blessings can all of a sudden become an unexpected opportunity for a sudden, deep outpouring of a certain kind of emotion. It's as if you drive past a beautiful lake every day. Most days you might notice it and its beauty, but seeing that is really no big deal. But every once in a while, for some reason, it strikes you just how truly incredible is the vista of this blue water with the light playing upon it and something incredible rises up in your heart that would never have happened if you did not drive past this lake every day.

Yesterday afternoon it happened on the blessing that we call על הצדיקים/Al HaTzadikim -- "about the righteous". Many times I just run through this blessing quickly, reciting its words without thinking much about them. But when I came across the words "about the righteous", yesterday, an image of Art Green came into my head. It has been, as I wrote recently, a dream of mine for so long to have the privilege of studying at the feet of this גדול הדור/Gadol HaDor ("great one of the generation"). And this week -- amid five days of learning with other rabbis here in the woods of New Hampshire -- I have had that opportunity.

I especially thought of Green when I came across the words על פליטת סופריהם (about the remnant of their scribes), which my prayerbook explains as meaning "about the wise ones who remain in Israel." This concept of a "remnant" runs strong in Judaism. There is a sense that -- amid our long and tortured, often deeply painful history -- so much has been lost. And, that it is our wise ones -- our Sages -- who remain with us that perform a great Holy task by helping preserve that which makes us "us" despite those loses.

Green is definitely one such great Tzadik of this generation, and it was such a pleasure to finally have a chance to hear some of his wisdom. One piece of that is what was chosen as the topic of this retreat: It's been about miracles, miracles and the wonders of that which God creates.

But this has been anything but an abstract discussion. It's been clear from the beginning that we're talking about miracles and wonder because of their potential to help sustain us through the challenges of our work as rabbis, especially the work of accompanying people amid great grief and loss. In other words, we've been talking about how our faith can be an element of self-care that can sustain us and allow us to keep caring for others.

This emphasis on the importance of self-care -- and the pursuit of ways of doing it from within our holy texts and tradition -- is so important, but so often neglected. It's a sign of Green's wisdom that he is willing to put so much energy into this pursuit. And, so I felt such gratitude yesterday afternoon when the image of Green came into my head. What a gift from God to bring such a Tzadik in the world and then to actually arrange things such that I should have the opportunity to learn with him! I hope it is the will of the Blessed Holy One that Green should have yet many years of teaching before him and that many students can bathe in the light that he brings us.

More Vonnegut

Here are some quotes that are coming to mind, today:

From Mother Night (which I think is, ultimately, my favorite of his novels):

"We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be."

I also like the quote the Times obit lifted from “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater”:

“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies — ‘God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’ ”

I think it must be hard for somebody who picks up Vonnegut's books for the first time, today, to really appreciate what they are about; much of their meaning came from contrasting what was within them with what was happening in the world around during the 1960s and early 70s. The Times article does a nice job of giving a sense of how the times in which Vonnegut wrote gave deep meaning (even political meaning) to a seemingly casual, throwaway phrase like "so it goes":

[“Slaughterhouse-Five,”] featured a signature Vonnegut phrase.

“Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote at the end of the book, “was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes.

“Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes.”

One of many Zenlike words and phrases that run through Mr. Vonnegut’s books, “so it goes” became a catchphrase for opponents of the Vietnam war.

Kurt Vonnegut dies

NEW YORK TIMES -- Kurt Vonnegut, whose dark comic talent and urgent moral vision in novels like “Slaughterhouse-Five,” “Cat’s Cradle” and “God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater” caught the temper of his times and the imagination of a generation, died last night in Manhattan. He was 84 and had homes in Manhattan and in Sagaponack on Long Island.

I just heard the news. I can't even begin to express the impact that Vonneget's works have had on my life. I think of him in the same way I think of Stanley Kubrick, another giant of post-World War II American artistic landscape: People call them dark. But I never saw them as dark. They may have used the tools of dark humor and satire to make their statements. But the point was the content of those statements. And I like how the Times characterizes that content -- as an urgent moral vision.

Kurt Vonnegut was a man of light, not dark -- a shining beacon of hope screaming that the world could be different and that we humans have been left with a choice of deciding whether the world should be a place of death and violence or a place of light and love. Kurt Vonnegut was asking us to choose life.

Choose life.