But what if you believe, like I do, that the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem in ancient times was, from a historical point of view, the best thing ever to happen to the Jewish people?

Had we remained a temple cult, we would probably have long ago been relegated to the dustbin of history by now, like so many other sacrificial cults. Had we not internalized our culture and our faith, built a temple in the mind and carried it around the globe, the greatest achievements of the Jewish people would never have occured. And of course, we are no longer in exile. Any Jew who wants to go move to Israel (for now…of course, the Orthodox Rabbinate in Israel might problematize the whole notion of who gets to be a Jew pretty soon).

So why do we mourn?

Anshel Pfeffer argued in Haaretz last week that we shouldn’t. He wrote:

Mourning on the Ninth of Av in this day and age flies in the face of both secular Zionism and religious Zionism. It contradicts the right of Jews around the world to decide where they prefer to live. The exile is over, and the temple has not been rebuilt because we don’t want to do it.

There is plenty to mourn in the world for Jews and non-Jews alike, although the Exile is no longer one of those things. I believe Diaspora is a blessing, for all peoples. It made me who I am. It made my parents and grandparents. It made artists and thinkers and scientists and cultures. It is not a thing to grieve.

We can mourn violence. We can mourn the continued abuse of our planet and our neighbors in defiance of God and common sense. We can mourn that Israel, the nation to which we returned, is far from perfect, but to mourn that which made us a global people is to mourn that which created me.

I am a product of Diaspora. I just can’t bring myself to mourn my own existence.

“I still struggle every day to discard my past ideas,” said Pawel, a 33-year-old ultra-Orthodox Jew and former truck driver, noting with little irony that he had to stop hating Jews in order to become one. “When I look at an old picture of myself as a skinhead, I feel ashamed. Every day I try and do teshuvah,” he said, using the Hebrew word for repentance. “Every minute of every day. There is a lot to make up for.” [read the story here]

I just stumbled on a Hasidic proverb in Pico Iyer’s “The Open Road” that this story brought to mind:

“You must invent your own religion or else it will mean nothing to you. You must follow the religion of your fathers, or else you will lose it.”

Friday night, Jews all over the world light candles. Usually two, sometimes more.  If it is your custom to light candles on Friday nights, think about dedicating one to something that matters. It’s an ancient way to consecrate a moment.

Tonight I’m lighting one for the victims and survivors at Fort Hood in Texas. Mindfulness is one tool we have to combat mindless violence.

What are you lighting one candle for?

…it doesn’t matter whether God is a benevolent father looking down on us all, or a delusion of the mind. It doesn’t matter whether the Exodus happened or not. What matters is that we possess technology that can transform the self, open the mind, unite a community, motivate ethical action and bring forth tears when your heart is broken. Before you light candles, you’re thinking of your mortgage; afterward, you’re thinking of your kids, or the meaning of life, or something else that actually matters. That’s what counts. Of course, if the Passover story, or the Yom Kippur myth, helps you do those things, great. If not, drop them. It’s the transformation, not the myth, that matters.

I am drawn to this idea that Jewish ritual provides a set of tools for transformation, a time-tested set of tools that has built a civilization in which are contained countless ideas and worldviews, and which has seen the rise and fall of many different creeds and many more nations. The reason generation after generation has carried on Judaism and constantly sought its renewal–from the Hasidim to the Reconstructionists–is that this set of practices might just work.

One can find spiritual power in a sunset, one can build a community around The Jonas Brothers, one can base an ethical world view off the collected works of John Steinbeck, but for durable tools to do any or all of these things, Jewish practice (however you build it) has proven quite effective at doing all of these things for quite a long time under a lot of different conditions. The Orthodox believe Torah and Jewish ritual have value because they are the word of God. That works for them. I believe it has value because it works for the Orthodox and the non-Orthodox alike. It provides a set of principles and practices that reflect the best of humanity and certainly inspired other great religious traditions. It does not lay sole claim to the truth, and is not the only path to “the good life.” But it is a good path to the good life.

Rooting Jewishness in a living Torah–a living, evolving, and useful spiritual practice–not only ensures the continued survival of Judaism, but uproots it from the troublesome ethnic chauvinism that cuts African and African-American Jews out of the picture, that devalues Sephardic traditions, and it cuts through the nationalist politics of Zionism that too often value F-18s over ethics. The ritual are a set of tools, a spiritual technology that, when applied, serves a variety of functions, both social and personal. It is adaptable, upgradable, expandable, and people are always tinkering with it, finding new and unexpected uses. Even better, it’s Open Source. Anyone can study it and engage with it. In fact, that’s a requirement. In that way it’s more like Linux that Mac OS X.

This isn’t all New-Agey nonsense. Look to the year 622 BCE, when Josiah declared the discovery of the Law Moses had recieved, the Book of Deuteronomy. It was then that Judaism went from an oral tradition to one of written laws. Many at the time feared that codifying the relgion into the written word would destroy it, would turn the text into an idol, that the scribes would inevitably corrupt the word of God or that the dynamism of the Israelite religion would be lost. Writing the Torah was a revolutionary act, just as, a century later, Ezra the scribe would revolutionize Judaism again by making the Torah the center of the religion, rather than the Temple, and just as assimilated German Jews and scholarly Polish Jews would revolutionize it again in the Mid-18th century in their own ways. Each of these acts was transformative, revolutionary, and hotly contested. Judaism has never been only one thing, and has constantly sought to reinvent itself for the times. Seeking out the why behind the ritual is part of Jewish tradition since the beginning, and this sort of questioning makes the religion live. If American Jews can be exposed to the phenomenal utility of Jewish ritual, perhaps even the most secular, assimilated among us can find their place in the continuum of Jewish life.

When Christopher Hitchens declares that given the emergence of “the telescope and the microscope” religion “no longer offers an explanation of anything important,” Eagleton replies, “But Christianity was never meant to be an explanation of anything in the first place. It’s rather like saying that thanks to the electric toaster we can forget about Chekhov.” (via NY Times)

It reminds me of the debate between Hitchens and David Wolpe, in which they seemed to be having two different conversations. Hitchens insited on discussing the failings of people as they (often violently) asserted their religious convictions, and Wolpe was discussing the powerful role religion itself can play in the life of people. It is no coincidence that the children I met in war zones who were faring better than others, tended to be the ones with faith, usually (though not always) religious faith. None drew on the scientific or technological accomplishments of humanity to keep them going. In fact, those accomplishments often fueled the conflict, as the quest for precious minerals to build our technology made war lords of anyone with a gun. The longing for money and power has killed far more people than religion. Purely religious wars are few and far between, and have much smaller body counts than those fought for wealth. Faith can be the antidote to the lust for material gain and can be a powerful force for good, but only when it is embraced with knowledge and with reason.

Ignornace, secular or divine, is never good for anybody.

There is shift in the debate about homosexuality in the world right now. The discourse is changing in the political and religious sphere as people realize that the old bigotries just won’t do anymore. Fank Rich has an Op-Ed in today’s NYTimes about the waning days of anti-Gay bigotry in enshrined in U.S. Law, as a reaction to the delightfully stupid and amazingly hateful video by the National Organization for Marriage, The Gathering Storm (I’m not going to link to it).  Even Karl “the gays are coming to take your guns, vote Republican” Rove’s disciple, Steve Schmidt senses the shifting winds and has thrown his support behind marriage rights for all. And in the sphere of faith, even Rick Warren is backpedaling toward less bigotry.

So, what about the Jews? Haim Watzman at South Jerusalem has a piece up about And Thou Shalt Love, a short film about a gay Orthodox Jew who cannot abandon either of those parts of himself (for more on this, of course, everyone should see Trembling before G-D, and look at the other resources on their website).

I am especially fond of this line of the post, which sums of the problem facing Orthodoxy in all religions around this issue:

What is certain is that the process must begin by the acknowledgment that current halachic attitudes to homosexuality create an injustice that the halacha and that the community of believers cannot tolerate.

The Orthodox have to find a way to square the reality of homosexuality as a valid expression of love with their own belief systems, and this will no doubt take some time (how long did it take to resolve the number of plagues issue, after all? Rabbinic arguments are eternal…), but it is a debate that must happen because, as Watzman puts it, the current condemnation“cannot be tolerated in a system that is meant to be the practical expression of God’s immanence in the world.”

There are plenty of halachic arguments out there. Rabbi Bradley Arston, dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies wrote an argument (pdf) that was accepted by the Conservative Movement some time ago, and his website has a plethora of further writings on the subject.

The key point that Rabbi Arston makes, and one that is echoed in Jay Michaelson’s long piece on reconciling being gay and religously Jewish, is that

Encouraging sexual responsibility and stability among homosexuals can only strengthen family values and traditional communities for all.  Lacking any compelling reason for stigmatizing monogamous gays and lesbians, the clear moral imperative is to take a bold stand with these innocent and seeking Jews rather than with those who would oppress them.  We must find a way to draw these people into the fabric of Jewish community, with the goal of bringing them  to a life of Torah and mitzvot.

Now, as always, we must remember the fundamental goal of Jewish law: “Clearly justice is the ultimate value to which God’s will must conform; any dichotomy between them is unthinkable.  The demand of ethics and the command of God are one.”

“The demands of ethics and the commands of God are one.” Right there is the reason that all people of faith should not only support equal rights and dignity for GLBT people, they should be leading the charge.

(in the political sphere, Israel is reaching out internationally to gay rights groups to bolster its case against Iran. This is a pretty good idea and far more hepful than calling Iran the next Third Reich)

Today there are around 600 million Pentecostals worldwide, the vast majority of them in developing nations, and Africa is a hotbed. Pentecostalism is not so much an organized religion — it has no central authority — as a set of beliefs and practices that can be adapted by local entrepreneurs. It is perfectly suited to harness the modern forces of global crosspollination.

The article explores the global ambition of movements like the Nigerian Redeemed Christian Church of God which seek to break all national, racial, and ethnic boundaries to ensure that “the church will one day claim an adherent in every family on earth.”

Compare this with the also rapid growth of the indigenous Jewish community in Africa, emanating from Uganda, but growing in Nigeria and South Africa (not to be confused with the African-American Jewish community, which is also growing). The largest number of converts to Judaism, Rabbi Bradley Artson of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies notes, come from the 7th Day Adventists. While the Christian iteration of rapid religious growth in Africa has growth as its goal, the Jewish version has no stated goal, like Judaism everywhere, does not seek converts, and seeks only the resources to sustain itself. If the passionate, conservative, and wealthy Christian movement in Africa reflects the future of global Christianity, then perhaps the evolving, and growing, Judaism of the Abayudaya of Uganda reflects the most sustainable form of Judaism, being deeply committed to interfaith cooperation and mutual respect for all faiths. This model of Jewish living, non-nationalistic, committed to Torah, but by no means dogmatic, might just provide the tools for an awakening among disenfranchised Jews in America, if its lessons can be harvested.

Lastly, for another NY Times piece about the tiny Jewish community in Manama, Bahrain, and how the King has taken unprecendented steps for an Arab ruler to reach out to Jews and to try to bring back expatriates.

“This seems to be very much to us a country that stands against extremism and against the threat of a nuclear and terrorist-sponsoring Iran,” said Mr. Isaacson, of the American Jewish Committee.

There are many such small and beloved Jewish communities around the world, though few so deeply embraced by their country’s leaders. The question this raises of course, is one of power. Is it easier for gentile nations to treat their Jewish communities well when they have no power? Is it when Jews weild power that anti-Semitism rears its head? Are we loved only when we are weak?

HuffPost has a list of their Top 5 Passover Traditions from around the world. I like the literalism of the Jews of Gibraltar:

4) GIBRALTAR: In the British territory of Gibraltar, the tiny island off the coast of Spain, Jews actually mix the dust of bricks into their charoset dish, a symbol of the mortar used to hold together the brick walls the Jews built in Egypt, according to Hillel.

Don’t know where to have a seder? In Peru and don’t know where to go tonight? Chabad can help you. Chabad is hosting seders for Jews all over the world today, and they have a helpful global search function for those looking for a place to go. They are holding seders in Mumbai again, but the location is not being publicised and is only by word of mouth, because of security.

Of course, as Passover is a time to celebrate our freedoms, we have a religious duty, I believe, to remain aware of those for whome freedom is not yet a reality. There is no shortage in the world right now, from gays in Iraq, to anyone in Somalia, the Baha’i in Iran (or gays, or dissidents, or women, or secularists), migrant workers in the United States, most Palestinians, and on and on. We also must be aware of the rising tide of anti-Semitism in the world right now, and use this holiday to reflect on what we, as Jews, can do to combat all of these ills. While there is not political solution to anti-Semitism, and our historical examples of dealing with it have mixed results (the assimilated were killed in the Holocaust with everyone else), our tradition does offer an ethical solution. We must care for the stranger, for the neighbor, for the world. We must remain committed to justice and to mercy and know when  the latter trumps the former, and we must do it even when those around us hate us. Hamas has a vile ideology, yes, and sadly many celebrate them, but that does not mean we are free to abandon our principles in fighting them. There is a literary example of Jews who abandoned their beliefs when circumstances were very hard, one we reflect on tonight. They ended up wandering in the desert for 40 years because of it. Let’s learn our lesson from this season, let’s remember when we eat our bitter herbs, that for so many, there bitterness has not ended.

This is beautitful. A group of children from Jenin refugee camp playing music for a group of elderly Holocaust survivors. The act of doing something kind and creating something beautiful for someone else can be extremely empowering for young people, and doing it for a group considered ‘the other’ in a conflict has an amazing power to heal wounds and show the best of the moral traditions of a people.

This is crap. Palestinian political organizations condemn the concert, basically because they think any act of peaceful expression related to Israelis is subversive and must be validating the Occupation. The director of the camp’s  Popular Committee, stated that the concert was an attempt to use the children to “destroy the Palestinian national spirit in the camp.”  I have no words to respond to that statment. The man’s idiocy and knee-jerk hatred speak for themselves.

These children from Jenin said a great deal about the human spirit with this concert, which I believe is a far more effective criticsm of any Occupation than the crap coming from the politicians.

The Jewish Week reports on a wonderful once , a once-in-a-generation ritual (every 28 years), Birchat HaChamah, “which will unite scattered Jews around the world the morning before the first seder, when the first sliver of the sun appears over the horizon in each of their gathering places.” In New York, events are being spearheaded by a variety of liberal Jewish organizations, including Hazon, a group that places environmental concern at the core of their Jewish practice. As their mission statement puts it, their goal is “to create a healthier and more sustainable Jewish community — as a step towards a healthier and more sustainable world for all.”

This is just the kind of thing that I find makes Jewish religious practice so special. It is deeply in tune with nature, is infinitely expandable to fit a variety of political, communal, spiritual, and personal needs. As the Jewish Week article notes, this celebration is “Part of a general return to Jewish tradition in non-Orthodox circles and a growing concern with ecological issues, the ritual has come to serve as a symbol of Judaism and environmentalism. It’s solar energy with a Jewish twist.” Even as the community is deeply divided about Israel, there are certain rituals that can unite us, even if we don’t always agree about the meaning. Part of building community is constructing meanings, and, happily, in the Birchat HaChamah celebration, previously little known outside of Orthodox circles, a very wonderful consensus is growing.

Or it could end up a bunch of  Seeker-Moms doing Yoga on a roof.