Hey, Aaron: I've been thinking about the Torah portion, Toldot, which tells the story of Jacob and Esau, two brothers who are destined from the womb to be perceived in a certain way. Esau: the hunter (read: bad guy). Jacob: the scholar (read: good guy). How did the preconceived notions affect their actual lives? Is there something in here about breaking out of preconceived notions of ourselves or others? Let me know what you think. --Shira
Hi Shira- I am really excited for Friday night, and I think there is definitely something here about preconceived notions of ourselves and where we get them from. Especially when we look at who Esau marries at the end of the Torah portion. "Esau realized that the Canaanite women displeased his father Isaac. So Esau went to Ishmael and took to wife…” Seriously- the only thing it seems Esau looked for in a spouse was someone that would his dad happy. That’s kind of crazy, right? Esau has me wondering- How much of our lives are determined by other people’s expectations of us? Whose expectations are we living out? How much should we let other people’s expectations of our lives dictate the decisions we make? --Aaron
Hey, Aaron: First of all, you have to check out this study. Yes, it’s incredibly sexist. (Chalk it up to “things a female rabbi can say but a male rabbi can’t.”) But it makes clear that we’re affected by other people’s expectations, whether we like it or not. Sometimes we can extricate ourselves (see this amazing Facebook post by Elizabeth Gilbert about “tribal shaming”), but not always. Nor, perhaps, do we even want to separate ourselves from our family, community, role models. The iconic image of the American cowboy going at it alone strikes me as lonely and even dangerous. --Shira
Haha! I'm glad you found that first study and not me. Do you think I could get away with describing it from the bima? Science based on rating women's attractiveness on a scale of 1-10- not offensive at all, right? :)
Thinking about that study though, there is definitely something pervasive about how we respond to other people's expectations of us- not just our tribes of origin. Esau seems to wrestle with others' expectations his entire life. I know it's not in this week's parasha, but Esau wasn't just worried about his parents' expectations. He spends most of his adulthood roaming the countryside with this rough-and-tumble band of soldiers (think Sons of Anarchy). I'm trying to imagine what kind of person did they expected him to be. What's the opposite of "mensch"?
Monday, November 9, 2015
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Thursday, January 29, 2015
Tuesday, January 20, 2015
We Can No Longer Abide the Silence
Delivered MLK/Abraham Joshua Heschel Shabbat,
January 16th, 2015
by Rabbi Shira Stutman
We are currently reading in the Torah about a shepherd
named Moses. One day he is off with his sheep, and he sees a bush, burning.
God’s voice comes from the bush and tells Moses to go to Egypt and help to free
his people, the Hebrew people, enslaved too long. Moses is nervous: “How will
Pharaoh listen, since I am a man of impeded speech?” (Ex 6:12).
It is humbling to try to speak on race after the year we
have just had. Or to be more precise, after the publicizing of what actually
happens year after year. People just paid more attention this year. So now what
are we going to do about it?
For a white woman like myself, silence is the easiest
option. I think of Moses off in Midian, far from Egypt with his sheep. But God
did not permit him his silence. As long as people were suffering, he did not
warrant silence. Our God is a God of grace but is also a God of justice--and it
was time for justice.
And so Moses went--but not without fear. Who am I, he
asks? He tells this to God in last week’s Torah portion, and again in this
week’s. Who am I to go? I don’t have the right words.
Tonight, let us acknowledge that we can no longer abide
the silence. We have to find our voices.
Until the media covers not only the death of 12 people at
a Paris magazine, and not only the heartbreaking murder of 4 Jews at a Kosher
supermarket, but also the death of upwards of 2,000 Nigerians the same week at
the hands of similar extremists.
Until black teenagers can walk down the streets without
fear of being stopped and frisked or shot and killed for no reason.
Until our country funds education and employment more
than it funds incarceration.
Until people of color receive a fair share of the wealth
of this rich country--rather than disproportionate wealth accruing to mostly
white elites, as it has over the past 20 years.
Until we recognize the places we are complicit--for we
are all complicit - and decide that we don’t want our wealth and well-being to
come at the expense of any other human being, ever.
But everyone in this room tonight, you already knew of
these struggles. You knew last year, too, and what good did it do us?
A small while ago, sitting with a group of friends,
telling a story I find funny, about returning a box of cookies at a local
supermarket because my kids didn’t like them. One friend, a black man, tells
another story, not as funny, about the same exact store, about how he tried to
return something but was not permitted. I make excuses--it was because he
didn’t have a receipt (he did, I hadn’t); it was because he didn’t speak to the
right person (he spoke to a few); it was because he had bought spoiled meat,
but I had only bought some cookies. (That last one really doesn’t make any
sense.) “They thought I stole it,” he finally said flatly.
And I realized too late: my job was not to persuade my
friend that this injustice didn’t happen, or to make it better, but instead to
bear witness to the very real and truly wrong thing that had happened. “That’s
awful,” I said.
I wish I had the perfect words. I didn’t. But not having
the perfect words did not give me--does not give any one of us--permission to
sit this one out. As long as there is still injustice in this country, we are
all in exile - we have not yet reached the promised land. And the reality is
that some of us are suffering in our exile more than others.
At the end of the day, we are all the shepherd Moses,
standing before God. We have a choice to make. We can stand silent on a
hillside in Midian, even as the world around us burns. Or we can listen, and
when it’s right, open up our mouths, maybe with the simplest truth know, even
when we are pretty sure we don’t yet have the right words.
And then we remember that we are not alone. We find our
Miriams and Aarons, the ones who can find the words when there are none, who
help us act when we feel helpless. Moses needed his brother and sister to speak
out to Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of slavery and through the desert,
together.
One day, maybe, we will find ourselves on Sinai like
Moses, and we will in that holy encounter discover that we, too, have the right
words to say. But in the meantime, let us muddle through together, working
tirelessly for the justice that we do not all experience but that all of
us--each and every one of us--so deeply and profoundly deserves. Tonight, may
our voices, lifted up together, inspire us to action, and may those actions
begin to bring about a world of uncompromising justice and unending beauty,
just as the Holy One intended.
Monday, January 12, 2015
Text from Last Night: The Beginnings of Oppression - Parshat Shemot
The language that those in power use to start campaigns of oppression - or worse - is remarkably similar in every generation. In this week's TFLN, explore the heartbreaking beginning of Egyptian oppression in the Torah - and its troubling echoes in contemporary life.
Click here for this week's TFLN recording.
Click here for this week's TFLN recording.
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