Alef: The NEXT Conversation

A Jewish Relationship

by Emily Comisar

This year I went to Yom Kippur services for the first time since I was in college. The experience overall was surprisingly moving, but there was one moment in particular that has given me much to think about in terms of the way that I relate to my partner.

For the part of the service that we beat our chests and recited our communal and individual sins, the congregation I attended added some flaws — in English — that were meant to speak to our modern lives. Along with over 1,000 other Jews I recited “for condemning in our children the faults we tolerate in ourselves; for condemning in our parents the faults we tolerate in ourselves.”

As a more eloquent way of stating the golden rule, this sin should have been obvious but I was blown back off my seat. Not only is the admission of condemnation applicable to parents and children, but all of the other people in my life as well. It is especially true of my relationship with my significant other who, upon being asked, said he didn’t think that I had ever expected things of him that I didn’t expect of myself, but how many people would say that out loud anyway?

Compromise is a part of every relationship, but when each of you comes from very different backgrounds, the road requires much more thoughtful navigation. Although I often balk at the mere insinuation that intermarriage is going to be the end of the Jewish people, I find myself continually asserting (perhaps over-asserting) my own culture, history, and set of rituals in our shared home. We prepare a Rosh Hashanah dinner and break-fast celebration for the new year. We light the Hanukkah candles all eight nights (and he has even learned the first words of the blessing). We host a second night Passover Seder. We do all of those things, on top of talking about Judaism, Jewish people, and what it means to be Jewish.

I am so proud of being Jewish that on our fifth date, I gushed for maybe twenty minutes about how much I love the concept of Shabbat. But, all this reflection makes me wonder if I’ve actually made room in my life for the things that make my partner who he is as well. I don’t have to give up who I am to fully embrace who someone else is too. Being someone who makes New Year’s resolutions at Rosh Hashana and on January first I find myself beholden to try something new. 5772 isn’t just about being who I am – it’s about experiencing someone else’s traditions too.

Photo by CarbonNYC, licensed under Creative Commons.

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Activating the Jewish Community at Occupy Wall Street

A Q&A With Activist Dan Sieradski

By Sarah Pumroy

Over the last three weeks, lower Manhattan has been filled with thousands of people protesting against economic injustice, greed, and corruption. These folks are Occupying Wall Street, and “we are the 99%” has become their battle cry.

Occupy Wall Street has started to gain greater momentum as protests pop up in other U.S. cities and as labor unions, environmentalist groups, and the Jewish community join the cause.  Dan Sieradski, a new media activist and Director of Digital Strategy at Repair the World has organized a Jewish presence at the protests, beginning with a Shabbat dinner potluck on September 30th and a Kol Nidre service on Friday, October 7th, for which more than 500 people RSVPd.

We asked Dan a few questions about the protests and why he’s decided to rally the Jewish community.

What’s happening at Occupy Wall Street and what motivated you to get involved? What made you want to activate the Jewish community?
Occupy Wall Street is a nonpartisan, broad-based protest against economic injustice in the U.S. and abroad, involving thousands of demonstrators, hundreds of which are occupying a park near the financial center in lower Manhattan, sleeping there each night. The protest is a call for accountability on Wall Street and in Washington, for getting corporate money out of politics, and for restoring fairness to our economic order. As a person whose parents are presently enduring bankruptcy and the loss of the house I grew up in due to the present economic downturn, these demonstrations clearly hit close to home and resonate strongly with me.

I was very active in the New York City anti-war and anti-globalization activist communities earlier in the decade. While protesting against the Iraq invasion, I was part of an affinity group — a small cluster of activists that engaged in direct actions that sought to disrupt America’s march towards unjustified war. After spending several years in Israel doing coexistence work and several more working in the Jewish nonprofit space, promoting progressive Jewish causes, I fell out of touch with most of the activist community in New York City and found myself far more connected to the Jewish community, eventually coming to see it as my affinity group. Therefore, as a Jewish person connected to both the Jewish prophetic and social justice traditions, I felt that the best way for me to play a role was to help bring out the Jewish community to support the demonstrations.

On Yom Kippur, we read Isaiah 58 which compels us to fast, not merely by refraining from eating, but by feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and housing the homeless. I can think of no better way to express those values than by standing in solidarity with the thousands of protesters calling for justice down on Wall Street.

We are all familiar with the stereotype of the Jewish banker. Do you think Americans see Wall Street as Jewish? What are the implications of that?
There is no question that Jews are over-represented in all areas in which they take a strong interest, finance being one of them. In addition, Jews were for centuries forced into usurious trades by antisemitic governments which prevented them from engaging in artisan trades, and have therefore excelled within the field. So there is an undeniably strong presence of Jews in the financial industry. As a consequence, Jews therefore also feature prominently among the most corrupt and despicable bankers on Wall Street, much to the detriment of the Jewish people.

While it is understandable that people would associate Jews with banking because of this over-representation, when people start theorizing grand Jewish conspiracies to exploit and impoverish non-Jews, or when they make grandiose claims about Jewish banking families ruling the world, and other such nonsense, they are not making an ethnographic analysis, they are perpetuating Jew hatred. We Jews have a responsibility to hold our fellow Jews accountable for their misdeeds, particularly when those misdeeds reflect poorly on the greater Jewish community (see Bernie Madoff). However, we must also be vigilant in combating the demonization of Jews and the tarnishing of an entire people for the misdeeds of a few among them. By being present at the protests, one message I hope to make explicitly clear is that not all Jews are greedy bankers, and we’re not all down with what’s happening on Wall Street.

Outside of the formal Jewish gatherings you’ve organized, have you noticed a strong Jewish presence at Occupy Wall Street?
Last night I was talking to one of the folks staffing the welcome table and mentioned to him the plan for Friday’s Yom Kippur service. “Gut yuntiff,” he proclaimed! “A lot of folks down here are Jewish.” I don’t doubt it. Nearly one in five New Yorkers are Jewish. And Jews, again, are always over-represented in areas in which they take interests, social movements being one of them. Therefore it would not surprise me at all to find a significant Jewish presence on the ground in Zuccotti Park. On my regular visits over the last few weeks, I have encountered at least a dozen friends from the Jewish non-profit field, as well as several Israeli activist friends who were involved in the Israel tent protests this summer, as well as in joint-resistance work in the Palestinian territories.

You’re well-known in the world of Jewish communal work. What has the reaction from the Jewish world been?
The response has been pretty great. With the exception of a few detractors, I’ve been getting lots of supportive emails from folks thanking me for pushing this issue onto the Jewish communal radar and keeping it there over the past few weeks. If the response to our Kol Nidrei service is any indication, people are definitely on board with the Occupy Wall Street agenda.

Do you see a connection between Occupy Wall Street and this summer’s Israeli tent city protests?
Absolutely. They are part and parcel of the same movement towards social and economic justice we are seeing spring up all over the world. Everywhere you look, the 99% is getting shafted by the 1%. Israel’s protests, just as with other protests throughout the Middle East and Europe, are indicative of a sea change and really a tidal wave of opposition from the public to decades of policies that have impoverished working class people that have been accompanied by the stripping away of their civil and human rights. The movement here and the movement in Israel are both towards the same end: Putting people over profits and ensuring corporate and government responsiveness and accountability.

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Photo by david_shankbone, licensed under Creative Commons.

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Oreos for Yom Kippur

by Rachel Thompson

On Rosh Hashana, we are inscribed in the book of life. On Yom Kippur, the book is sealed. During the time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we are told to repent for our sins, make amends for our wrongdoings…pound our chests in public and feel hunger.

I always thought that the order seemed wrong. For me, it made more sense to say sorry before moving forward, but what I’ve come to learn is that it’s a cycle.

When I was a kid, I thought that, my avinu malkainu’s wiped the slate clean… absolved me of the sins I committed against my brother, my parents, my friends, myself… and the sins I committed against god… like the sin I committed moments before when I ate an oreo from the synagogue day care center while I was supposed to be fasting, or the sin I commited when I played cards with the kids during the particularly tedious parts of the service. When I’d make it back inside, I’d thump my chest with the best of ‘em – thinking that I was wiping the slate clean

These days, I think a little more critically and a little less literally. I understand now that saying sorry and thumping my chest doesn’t absolve me of my sins, what it does, is mark a point in time when I have acknowledged my mistakes and vow to avoid these same errors in the future.

We’re not a blank slate, we’re constantly evolving beings. We set intentions, we set goals, and when we fall short or take a rocky path, we can always step back, focus our energy on learning from our mistakes and move forward with greater purpose.

On Rosh Hashana, I set some goals for myself. I’ve already run off the path, but that’s ok. On Yom Kippur I will make amends for the mistakes I have made during the last year– and I’m going to keep doing that. This Holy day teaches us that it is never too late to say sorry. Never too late to make a new start.

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May we learn from our mistakes, May we be empowered to make a fresh start when we need one, and May we all be sealed in the book of life.

Photo by mihoda, licensed under Creative Commons.

 

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05: Death and Tragedy

This week we introduce Issue #5: Death and Tragedy

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CandlesIt may seem strange to have the first issue of the new year focus on death and tragedy. The beginning of a new year is typically a time for excitement and enthusiasm, an opportunity to create new beginnings and improve ourselves through resolutions. But the American New Year, or in general, the secular observance of the new year in the Gregorian calendar, is a moment in time, a clock striking midnight. In that second, one year is completely gone and a new one is suddenly upon us. This concept, however, sits in stark contrast to our observance of the Jewish New Year – a period of 10 days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur that serves as a time to embark on a process of repentance, reflection, and renewal.

While it is nice to imagine that a singular instance can bring about all the change that hope for, the reality – and particularly the Jewish reality – is often not so simple. While this is the perfect time to start over or try again, it is also a time to ponder what we have lost and learned, and to use the lessons from our lives to help us become better people for the coming year.

We have all experienced loss. Many of us have lost grandparents, parents, or friends. As Jews we are also affected by the vastness of our collective historical death and tragedy, underlined most violently by the Holocaust. Just as the Jewish New Year is a 10-day stretch that takes us from one of the most joyous Jewish holidays (Rosh Hashanah) through to the most somber (Yom Kippur), grieving, healing from that grief, and growing from it, is all part of a very similar process, one that isn’t an instantaneous transformation, but is rather one that takes time.

In this issue, we explore death and tragedy as a way of reminding ourselves that, as Jews, we have a responsibility to remember those who have come before, even as we celebrate the possibilities inherent in the concept of a new year. We’ll look at how death has affected some us, maybe changed us, or in certain cases, not affected us at all. Although this is an incredibly vast topic, we hope these stories will shed light on how we experience death and tragedy through a Jewish lens.

- Alef

Photo by jpc101 licensed under Creative Commons.
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Death and Tragedy Posts:
Grave Recollection
Clear
Inglourious Basterds
To Mom With Love
Sitting Shiva in the Land of Oz
My Jewish Jeanne
January 14

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