The Jewish Observer

The aftermath of Kristalnacht found the various segments of the Romberg family scattering in various directions. From this point forward, each family unit lost contact with the others, focusing on their own survival. The war years would see some die and some survive. No significant contact would be made until a decade after the war, and then only the families of 2 brothers finding each other. But Magie Furst almost made an unexpected link with a lost cousin.

Magie is Bert Romberg’s older sister. Like Bert, she is my father’s first cousin. Born in 1929, Magie is only a year older than Bert, but that year makes a huge difference in the details that she remembers from her years in Germany. While she certainly does not have the same depths of memories as my father (he was born in 1923), she has clear recollections of Nazi oppression and the impact on her family.

She remembers the night their father, Alfred Romberg, died. He had developed heart problems and had had a series of incidents (I guess a doctor would call them infarctions). She remembers that the doctor told her mom that one more incident would likely kill him. And it did. The night of Alfred’s death was chaotic, with Sida crying, a cousin of hers who had come to help take care of the kids during Alfred’s illness, was trying to comfort someone. A pall settled over the house. Realize, this would leave Sida alone with two small children and a farmer’s supply business to run – while dealing with Nazis demonstrating outside the store to discourage customers from patronizing a Jewish business.

For the funeral, Uncle Karl Romberg (I will interview his son Ralph in San Francisco in July) came from Essen as well as Uncle Siegfried Romberg. As Magie’s family was one of only two Jewish families in Astheim, the funeral procession walked to another town to a small synagogue and then to yet another town where there was a Jewish cemetery. Nazi onlookers threw stones at the procession as well as the usual racial epithets.

After Sida moved with the children to Eschwege, Magie remembers Nazis goose-stepping to loud oompah music. She remembers the chaos of the Jewish school she and Bert attended – short of teachers because many had already fled Germany. She remembers that on Kristalnacht the synagogue was damaged and the children stopped going to even that chaotic sham of a school.

Magie also remembers a summer when Sida sent she and Bert to Essen to be with other members of the Romberg family. This is important because it shows that much of the family knew about each other and were in contact at least until Kristalnacht in November of 1938. In Essen they stayed with Uncle Oskar Romberg, whose second wife was a Catholic woman, the red haired, exotic, Margaret. Their daughter Doris, who I will be meeting next week, was just a baby. Magie remembers Oskar as a small but jovial man, a lot of fun. With him they visited a lot of his brothers and sisters, Tante Ella, Uncle Emil, and Uncle Siegfried – Rombergs all. It was a summer of family warmth and happiness – at least for the small surviving children of Alfred Romberg. It was possibly the last time that this much of the Romberg family interacted together until our family reunion in April of 2012.

There is one relative Magie does not remember being in Essen or hearing anything about – her uncle Walter Romberg – my grandfather. Perhaps Walter really was the black sheep of the family (I have heard that a few times). Or perhaps the fact he lived in Cologne and was raising 4 children of his own with his second wife (my father was the only child of Walter’s first marriage) just kept him from seeing family centered in Essen. We might never know.

The rest of Magie’s story very much parallels Bert’s: the escape from Germany on the Kindertransport, living with a foster family in England, having her schooling supervised by the Jewish orphanage, the brushes with the Nazi air war over London, and the eventual voyage to America are part of both Bert and Magie’s history. The big exception is that Magie’s foster experience was very difficult in the manner the family treated her.

Once established in New York, Magie met and married Harry Furst in 1948 and they married in January 1949. Harry was another German Jew, but one well connected in the German Jewish community that was established in the mid to late 1930’s in Washington Heights, Manhattan. One of the popular personalities among the young people of the German Jewish crowd in Washington Heights was a fellow named Teddy Tobar. Teddy seemed to know everyone, and gave many Saturday evening parties in the late 40’s and early 50’s.

Sometime in 1949, not long after they were married, Harry took Magie to one of Teddy’s parties. At the party she heard that there was someone there named Romberg. She does not know why she was timid about inquiring about him, but afterwards Harry told her he spoke with him. He was from Cologne and in the furniture business. As it turns out, that mysterious Romberg was my father. At this party in 1949 Magie was only a few feet away from taking the first step towards putting the Romberg family back together again. This time with the son of the uncle that no one seemed to mention in Germany.

Teddy Tobar, by the way, was a good friend of my father’s going back to his days in Germany. I met Teddy several times. He was a real character and I remember he looked a lot like Yogi Berra, the catcher for the New York Yankees. Later in life, Teddy took up photography as an art. One of his photos hangs in my office at Temple Israel.

So in a random party in 1949 my father was the cousin almost found. How our lives would have been different growing up being part of the larger family, I cannot tell. Instead of a uniting of cousins, it was just a near miss.

Happy endings are not like those depicted in story books and adventure stories. True, the really well written books or movies make us sweat through the trials and tribulations of the hero. But we know there will be a happy ending, and what is more, we know the story is not real. So the emotional journey, however skillfully portrayed, is fake. In the end no real people were impacted, no lives were changed other than through the enjoyment of a good story. What about when a happy ending is real? What about those stories lived by our friends, our families? Have you ever seen someone and known, just known their life had turned out well? And after realizing it turned out well, did you wonder at what cost they purchased their happy ending?

My first family interviews were yesterday in Dallas, Texas. Bert Romberg is the cousin who actually found the rest of us. Bert also organized the family meeting in Dallas last year. He is an intelligent, thoughtful person who is also a kind, caring soul, very involved in the Dallas community. He mentors students at a magnet high school for the performing arts, helped to found a chavurah in Jackson Hole, WY, where he built a vacation home. He and his wife Terry are long time active members of a Conservative congregation in Dallas, yet he is known around the Jewish community. In fact, one of my rabbinic colleagues from Dallas, upon hearing that I was going to meet Bert for the first time last year exclaimed to me, “you are really going to like him!” And I do. I try to speak to Bert at least once every few months. He is a person whose judgment I really trust in that if I needed to confide in an older wiser head, Bert would be at the top of my list. His Jewish values reflect my own Jewish values. He understands the challenges facing the Jewish people in the same terms I do. No accident, I think, that we have turned out to be related.

He had a successful career, starting as an office clerk for a scrap metal processing business based in NY in 1955. At that time the firm had maybe a couple of hundred employees. When Bert retired in 2000, he was the Chief Operating officer of the company which by that time had about 20 thousand employees and did business all over the world. He and Terry raised three great daughters and have in many ways been the glue that holds family together. His ending, by any standards, is a happy ending; indeed, a great ending.

Bert told me his story in slow, measured tones, using thoughtfully constructed sentences.

Bert was born in Astheim, Germany in 1930. His sister, Magie, is a year older than him. Their father, Alfred Romberg, was one of the few Jewish commissioned officers in the Kaiser’s army in World War I. In addition, he is the recipient of the Iron Cross, highest order. He was wounded in battle and his wounds stayed with him the rest of his life. He married Sida Rothschild in 1927. Alfred moved to Astheim to work in Sida’s family’s rather successful farm supply and feed store. Astheim was a smaller town with only two Jewish families.

Bert has no memories of his father. Alfred died in 1934 from a combination of complications from war wounds and heart problems. Magie, Bert’s sister does remember demonstrations by the Nazis out side of their store. They were called all manner of names and the Nazis urged the locals not to buy from the Rombergs. So when things got very bad by 1936, Sida sold their assets for whatever she could and moved her and the children to a larger town and Jewish community, Eschwege. Realize that from 1934 onward, Bert’s mom was essentially alone in managing her two children.

After Kristalnacht, November 8, 1938, Sida was desperate to at least get the children out of Germany. A series of Kindertransports, specially arranged transports to get Jewish children out of Germany, began in December 1938. The Quakers of England started the program and got the British government to support it. Sida was able to arrange passage on a Kindertransport for Bert and Magie in May 1939. She also had a bit more luck. At the same time, a cousin of hers in London was able to sponsor her passage with the children to England as well, and she acted as an adult chaperone on the trip. On the train ride out of Germany the SS shouted at the Jewish children, demanding they turn over their valuables and calling them Jewish dogs.

But upon arrival in London, the cousin told them he was bankrupt and had sold his house. Sida would be able to work there as a maid, but the children were placed into foster care, each with a separate family. Bloomsbury House, an English Jewish welfare agency, took charge of placing the children and seeing to their education. Magie’s foster placement was very difficult. The father was abusive. They expected her to work as a maid and a cook along with going to school and trying to get along in a new country at 10 years old.

Bert’s had a better experience in foster care, even though he moved around a bit from family to family, part of that was to avoid the Nazi bombings of London and the industrial town of Coventry. Indeed, one foster family Bert kept contact with even into the 1990’s, hearing from the couple’s children when their parents passed. But where Bert really shone was academics. He excelled in school, not only academics but in making friends and participating in English life as well. Both Magie’s and Bert’s educations were supervised by a Jewish orphanage, but it was Bert who was able to lift himself through education. In fact, he was one of only two children connected with the orphanage to earn a scholarship that would have covered all levels of British education he wished to pursue – through college and even institutions like Oxford.

From May 1939 until May 1945, Bert and Magie lived apart from their mother and apart from each other. Each had scrapes with German blitz of London, the bombings that tortured the British for the first 3 years of the war. Finally, in 1945, Sida heard from her sister who had made it to New York, that she could sponsor the family to come to America. But Sida faced a difficult situation with Bert. He could never have the educational opportunity in America that he had in England. Yet, she needed to be in America, where she could once again have the support of family and live a life free of fear. So she gave Bert, then not quite 15 years old, the choice. It was up to him. He could stay in England and follow his mother and sister whenever he finished school, or go with them immediately. Bert chose to go with his mother and sister and forego the scholarship.

At this point I asked Bert a question. I asked him what pushed him to give up the education and leave with Sida and Magie. He could have followed later. At that moment he began to sob. He wiped some tears away and said quietly, “I did not want to be separated from them any more.”

We had only been speaking for about 90 minutes, but it really hit me that for the better part of 6 years, the entire time they lived in England, Bert had lived apart from his mother and sister. From age 9 to 15 his only families were foster families. Whatever scholastic success Bert ever had became insignificant as I realized he had lost a childhood. In Germany it was impossible to have a normal childhood, and in England, even kind caring foster families could not be a substitute for his family. What an emotional price Bert paid for his life.

Sacred moments really cannot be planned. They just well up and suddenly you have experienced something holy. When Bert softly cried I saw the holiness of his life, and the emotional price he paid to earn it. It was an honor to sit with this good soul at that moment. The Shoah is a tragedy in which many deserving people did not survive. But Bert Romberg did, and did so in a way that honors everyone who lived through those years.

It’s a funny thing about families. They all contain those members that you wish were not your relatives. Some might be plain toxic, in other words, trouble makers. Some might be cold and distant, or some might be just plain weird. The last is what generally made up the relatives we knew from my father’s side of the family. For years my brothers and I could not stand having to be with a particular group of our dad’s aunts, uncles and cousins. All of these relatives were related through our dad’s mother, i.e. her siblings nieces and nephews. We had no family from our dad’s father’s part of the family for a simple reason. Our father’s parents were divorced by the time he was about 2 years old. Our dad did not know his father. He met him once, when he needed his signature on the papers to leave Germany in 1939.

Our mom’s family was very small. These were the relatives we felt close to; our grandparents, aunt and uncle and their children – our cousins. So we grew up feeling our family was very small. Between our mother’s small family whom we loved and the preponderance of dad’s family who were whackos – well – it was a small family. All of that changed August 22, 2011.

That was the day we were found by the part of our father’s family that no one ever knew about. A fellow by the name of Bert Romberg sent an email to my mom claiming to be my father’s first cousin. My mom, fearful this was some kind of scam, forwarded the email to me. I called Bert and within minutes it was clear that there was an extensive family that we never knew existed. Bert was indeed my father’s first cousin as he was the son of my grandfather’s brother – one we had never known about. The little bit that we knew about dad’s father, Walter Romberg, matched up with everything Bert told me. Suddenly, our grandfather became a real figure with real family that included a second wife (with whom he had 4 children) and 12 siblings. Suddenly we could trace our family back to 1785 when Nathan Moses, my great, great grandfather was born.

I asked Bert how he found us. Here is that story. One of Walter Romberg’s siblings, Oskar Romberg, never left Germany. He had married a Catholic woman and survived the war. He had 4 daughters with her, 2 before the war and 2 after the war. In 1959, on a business trip to Essen, Germany, by chance, my father found his Uncle Oscar and met his family. Anne, Oskar’s 3rd daughter, born in 1947, was a young girl dreaming of coming to America to study English when her family met my father. She wrote him a letter and he responded to her. In the summer of 2011 Anne was going through some papers and found the letter from my dad. She immediately contacted Bert and told him to try and find Rudolf Romberg. Bert did an internet search and found my father’s yartzeit notice from my parent’s synagogue. He then wrote my mother.

Within days I was getting emails from Romberg family members in Germany and different parts of the US. Three weeks later an envelope arrived from Germany and it contained my dad’s letter to Anne. I recognized not only his handwriting but the stationary of the business he owned when we lived in West Virginia. My brothers and my mother began to email and speak with our new found relatives and soon we all realized that we had to arrange a meeting. On the weekend of April 27, 2012, twenty eight Rombergs met in Dallas, Texas, many for the first time. Anne, from Germany was there, as well as relatives from all over the US. By the end of the weekend my brothers and I were asking each other, “Why couldn’t this be the family we grew up with?” They were an amazing, warm, interesting group of people.

Audrey and I took an instant liking to Anne and as we were planning to be in Italy for a wedding in June 2012, it was decided that we would also visit Germany so that Anne could show us around some of where our family came from. We visited Anne that June, meeting her sister Doris and nephew Toby as well. Anne took us to Lengerich, where Nathan Moses Romberg lived and is buried. A little Jewish cemetery still exists in Lengerich, overgrown but unharmed. You have to get the key from the town hall to enter. So I was able to say kaddish at the grave of my great, great grandfather. We saw a house, kept as an historical landmark, that he lived in.

Anne had already started to do some research on the Romberg family and had uncovered some good records in Lengerich about Nathan and his descendants. As I have looked over the records, and spoken to various family members, the journeys of different segments of the family through the Holocaust and World War II are diverse and amazing. Even more amazing is how all these family members, who had lost contact with each others by the war, found each other, often quite randomly, during the decades after WWII. Bert contacting us was just he latest piece of a much larger puzzle. I realized that our family’s collective history is a great reflection and a refraction of Jewish history from the war years.

These stories need to be collected and preserved. So here I sit in a hotel room in Dallas, Texas, where in two hours I will begin a process of interviews to put together the family history. I do not know what all I might uncover in the next two months, but it promises to be very interesting.

I enjoy being friends with whom I love; sharing good times and celebrations. Years ago it was our children’s b’nai mitzvah. Now it is time for the weddings. I was not a rabbi when all of our children were 13. I am now. That means I look at the wedding not just as a joyful moment for our friends and their children, but as a rabbi analyzing the professionalism of what my colleagues are doing. I try not to let this detract from celebrating with friends, but I guess it is unavoidable. Kind of like a classical musician attending a concert, who could not help but analyze the music and offer criticism.

I am kind of tempted to do a cheesy ripoff of the great Dickens novel and say, “it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.” There, I did it. How else to describe the pair of weddings I witnessed the past two weekends? I am so very fortunate to attend the sacred moments of dear friends. But a wedding has more at stake than a concert, however. It creates a memory that the new couple will look back upon for their entire lives. So as I began, it was the worst of times, it was the best of times.

Let’s do the easy part and discuss the best of times first. This was the wedding of a former student of mine who himself is now in rabbinical school. His parents are close friends of ours. The rabbi was superb. The traditional wedding liturgy is beautiful in its simplicity and content. The highlight is the sheva b’rachot, the 7 wedding blessings, which increase in expressions of joy as they progress. At this wedding, conducted by the bride’s family’s rabbi, the couple elected to create their own vows. The rabbi let the simple beauty of the liturgy take a central role, giving space for the couple to creatively express their love for each other. Hardly a dry eye was the result. The rabbi then proceeded to add just enough of his personal reflections and humor to complete the ceremony and make it very personal. His connection to the family and his appreciation of the groom were sincere. The result was a holy moment on which all present will look back upon years from now and smile.

Now comes the hard part, looking at wedding number 1. This was also the son of dear, long time friends. It was officiated by two clergy, a rabbi and a priest. OK, I know what you might be thinking – that I am objecting to an interfaith wedding or to a ceremony that tries to blend two traditions that I frankly find unblendable (not really a word so I have just invented it). I have thought a lot about both of those possibilities before writing this. I do not object to the marriage at all. Even though the bride was nominally Catholic (it was her parents who insisted on involving a priest), she is a thoroughly delightful, bright, accomplished young lady who truly is a great match for our friend’s son. Even more, it was clear that despite the goofiness of the ceremony, these two are so happy to be together nothing could dim that or lessen its value. No, in the end, all of my difficulty came from what the rabbi represented – a shallowness and a lessening of the rabbinic calling.

For the rabbi behaved less like a rabbi and more like a character in a skit from Saturday Night Live. She over enunciated the Hebrew (even mispronouncing some). Waved her arms in dramatic gestures, made grandiose statements about love, and clearly did not really know the bride and groom, but was putting on a great show of intimacy and knowing them. The couple found this rabbi on the internet. She is one of many who make a living (who am I really to criticize how people put food on the table?) conducting any ceremony, anywhere, for anyone (not just weddings but any religious ceremony). She advertises how beautiful the wedding moment is and how all couples, regardless of religion deserve to have that wonderful, sacred moment.

Exactly!

The sacredness of the moment comes from the sincerity expressed during that moment. So I wonder how a wedding officiated by someone found on the internet, which tries to force together two very different traditions essentially just to please a parent or a grandparent. The first wedding I described was authentic. It was grounded in a 3 thousand year old tradition, making good use of that tradition yet giving the couple the space to express themselves. All of this raises a question; how does the interfaith couple have an authentic ceremony?

I think there are a few different ways. First, choose a religious tradition, at least for the ceremony, and let the clergy of that tradition just do the best wedding he/she can do, with appropriate adjustments to the couple’s situation. The best service any clergy can do for a couple is to know when it is not appropriate for them to officiate. The elements must be genuine. A second possibility is to have a religiously neutral officiant, like a judge or notary – especially if the family has a close connection to someone who fits that description. A secular ceremony conducted by someone who knows either family is far preferable to a “rent-a-clergy.” Another choice is for the couple to write a ceremony and have a close friend conduct it. It is easy to get licensed to do weddings online, which sounds counter to what I have been saying, but if a close friend does this and conducts a ceremony crafted by the bride and groom, that is also far more real than what I just witnessed. Other clergy might disagree, but religion does not have to be part of a wedding ceremony for it to have deep meaning for the couple. And IF religion is part of the ceremony, my humble opinion is it should be an authentic presentation of the religious tradition. It should be used if and only if this has meaning for both bride and groom.

But most disturbing to me is the denigration of the rabbinate as authentic teachers and representatives of Jewish tradition by creating sham ceremonies. In the name of making people feel good, of being accommodating, of trying to be everything to everyone, a rabbi (or any clergy) dilutes the power and sincerity of the moment. Rabbis are supposed to be teachers. We can sometimes teach best by telling a couple why our participation in a particular ceremony is not appropriate. Being a rabbi sometimes means accomplishing more by lessening ourselves.

It is of no surprise, and I feel speaks very well of the couple in the wedding we witnessed, that they realized the silliness of what happened in their ceremony. They did what they felt was necessary to please parents, and I know their fate as a couple does not hinge on the rabbi’s performance. They will look back at the experience and laugh over a funny story. That’s great, but wouldn’t it be better for them to look back at their wedding ceremony and smile over how meaningful it was for them?

We have lost our sense of proportion over what causes hysteria. Please, after reading the following do not think that I am trivializing school shootings or any other tragedies that have occurred over the past decade or so. I am just trying to put some things into perspective. The consequences of the tragic events that have afflicted our country are not only the deaths and injury to a variety of innocents, but what seems to be the death of common sense as well.

I am sure you have read numerous reports of the insane applications of zero tolerance policies in schools. Just in the past few months a 6 year old girl was suspended from school for talking about shooting a friend with a “Hello Kitty” bubble blowing gun. A 7 year old boy nibbled a pop tart into the rough shape of a gun and waved it around was also suspended; as well as two 7 year old boys who pointed pencils at each other and make shooting noises. While purists can find justification for the strict application of zero tolerance rules for all of these situations, really isn’t the suspension of these young children just getting hysterical for minor incidents? As Kathleen Parker pointed out in a recent column, could the teacher not just say, “cut it out,” and perhaps use the incident as a teachable moment about appropriate behavior?

Our propensity for hysteria is also evident in politics. To listen to the reports on Fox News, the Obama administration is riddled with scandals. Three are getting gleeful play on right wing news outlets: the IRS requiring a longer questionnaire from Tea Party groups to acquire non-profit status; the secret subpoenas the Justice Department issued for private phone records of Associated Press reporters; and the ongoing investigation into killing of the American ambassador to Libya in Benghazi.

Let’s look at each of these for just a moment. Certainly it is wrong for the IRS to single out one group over another. The fact that the groups the IRS required to submit longer applications for non-profit status are ideologically opposed to the existence of the IRS, is no excuse for treating them any different than other groups. Lost in the hysteria, however, is a simple question: why do any political groups deserve non-profit status? The intelligent conversation that should emerge from this situation is a review of who gets non-profit status. Instead, we will get a drum beat of how the administration is targeting those with whom it does not agree. Instead of realizing that the IRS sometimes overreaches, and the administration is not plotting the overreach, we will get hysteria from right and left wing media (condemning or defending Obama, depending on their perspective).

The subpoenas by the Justice Department are disturbing. They raise questions about the relationship between government agencies (CIA, military) and the press. They raise questions about the boundaries between the need to protect American citizens and our protection of society’s liberties such as the existence of a free press. But I must ask; where was the hysteria over the loss of so many personal freedoms with the passage of the Patriot Act? Why is this the incident that pushes the media into a frenzy?
The Benghazi questions are being spun by some into a scandal worse than Watergate. To my mind, the administration’s handling of Benghazi, not only the preparations that led to a lack of security at the consulate but also the handling of the aftermath is more Keystone Cops than Nixonian. This is bad and embarrassing, but not sufficient cause for hysteria. Like the previous examples, it seems to be media exposure that lends fuel to the hysteria surrounding the incident. I am not saying that any of these examples of government mess ups are justifiable or in any way correct. They are just not worth the hysteria the media stokes over them.

So I have a theory. As information becomes more and more available; that is, as the media becomes more and more ubiquitous, the size of the crisis (or perceived crisis) that causes hysteria becomes smaller. In other words, the bigger the mouthpieces, the smaller the issue needs to be to cause people to go into panic mode. Allow me to give an example.

On October 30, 1938, significant stretches of the US and Canada went into panic mode over a supposed invasion of the United States by Martians. Orson Welles, did a special presentation of his radio show, Mercury Theater, for Halloween by presenting an updated version of H. G. Wells novel “The War of the Worlds.” Presented on CBS radio as a series of “newscasts,” the broadcast began as a presentation of music by “Ramon Raquello and His Orchestra.” The program was “interrupted” by reports from the supposed landing site in Grover’s Mills, NJ. Welles timed the first “news report” to coincide with the time a large part of the audience tuned in after a break in a popular program on NBC radio, so many listeners did not catch the disclaimer that this was a dramatic presentation. The result was that panic ensued. Jack Paar, later the host of television’s “The Tonight Show,” was hosting CBS radio in Cleveland and fielded panicked calls from listeners. When he assured them it was just a dramatic presentation, many accused him of concealing the facts. Throughout the northeast and eastern Canada, folks began to leave their homes thinking the Martians had landed. If you wish to listen to the original broadcast in its entirety, just go on YouTube and type in “Orson Welles War of the Worlds.”

We can laugh about this now, but understand in pre-World War II America, during the Depression, with few electronic media outlets (only radio, no TV and certainly no internet), the supposed landing of aliens from space was not only a very big deal – but at least for a few moments – believable. An investigation into the IRS in 1938 would not have created this kind of hysteria. Neither would the bringing of a bubble gun to school or boys pretending to “shoot” each other with pencils. During a time with limited media outlets (radio, newspapers, telegraph) the cause of hysteria would have to be something amazing. For another example please see the Halley’s Comet panic of 1910. However, during a time in which everyone is able to receive and broadcast information at a whim, the really big things are fast easily debunked (it would not take long to learn a Martian invasion was a hoax). So the everyday occurrence, the things that should not cause a problem, are taken and escalated into crises. Every small thing becomes a reason to panic. It is how we are continually entertained by the news. The small becomes big.

There is a common denominator between the great panics of the past (Martians, comets about to collide with the Earth) and the small ones of today (children pretending to shoot guns in schools, the usual screw-ups of the government and its many agencies). Whether big or small hysteria causes us to abandon common sense and lose our focus on the things that will really make a difference.

I want to know, really, why the shock over the election of Mark Sanford to represent South Carolina’s first congressional district. Democrats/liberals seem to be stunned that a person who cheated on his wife while governor, misused state funds to visit his mistress in Argentina, and tried to cover up the whole mess by saying he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail; would win handily by a 10% margin. Folks in the liberal media (MSNBC for example) have a really fun time pointing out the hypocrisy of avowed Christians in South Carolina who are so high minded about morality yet seem quick to forgive Sanford for his sins by voting for him.

Republicans/conservatives, on the other hand, are gleeful of this victory as sign that voters are just plain sick of Obama, liberal politics, and a congress dominated by Nancy Pelosi. If the last surprises you, Sanford’s big campaign bit was to debate a cardboard figure of Nancy Pelosi as the representative of all things he was against in Washington. Conservatives (who I am guessing are mostly Christian) are touting Sanford’s victory as a triumph of redemption. Sanford has admitted his sins and taken a few years to do his penance. As Christ forgives (so goes this narrative) so too must the voter who truly cares about American values forgive to counter the liberal/Democratic scourge in DC.

Political analysts have taken variations on the above narratives to try and parse how Sanford beat Elizabeth Colbert Busch, the sister of comedian Stephen Colbert. No need to recount any of those theories, as I have a very simple one – tribalism. We tend to support our own. It is no secret or any surprise that most congressional districts are rarely in play at election time. They are heavily liberal or conservative, black or white, Republican or Democrat. Imagine an election in Berkley, CA between a morally flawed Democrat and an ethically pristine, moderate Republican. It does not matter that the Republican is honest, ethical and not a right wing Tea Party member. It would not matter if the Republican supported some bi partisan initiatives such as immigration reform. The congressional district of Berkley, CA will vote for the Democrat every time.

This is tribalism. In the case of elections it is political tribalism. We make excuses for people we see as members of our “tribe.” Unless the transgression is unspeakably violent, we will justify our support for one of our own. We will rationalize bad behavior through a range of mental gymnastics. This is important in order to understand a lot of behavior that has existed in the Jewish world. It also helps us understand some of the angst in the Jewish world over the shifting ground we find ourselves navigating.

A great example is Israel. For most of my 58 years criticism within the Jewish community of Israel was muted and very qualified if it happened at all. The only really vocal critics of Israel were Jews who had for the most part left the Jewish fold. Committed Jews who criticized Israel risked being labeled as “self-hating” Jews. I am guilty of accepting questionable behavior by the Israeli government under the justification that Israel faced special circumstances. Yes, for decades I have supported a two state solution to resolve the conflict with the Palestinians, but my default position has always been to support Israeli government, no matter who was Prime Minister, to give them the benefit of the doubt – because of my ingrained tribalism.

Because of the Jewish historical narrative of constant persecution, Jews become defensive when a member of our tribe is under investigation for crime, or accused of wrongdoing. If that person’s guilt is beyond a shadow of a doubt, we will either moan about how this person’s behavior is “bad for the Jews” (see Bernie Madoff) or maybe take a perverse pride in the cleverness that person showed in pulling a fast one over the eyes of “the goyim.” God forbid that person wrongs other Jews or steals from Jewish concerns (see Bernie Madoff). Such a person is beyond redemption, not necessarily for the crime but because it negatively impacted other Jews. This is all tribalism.

When the kosher meat processing plant in Postville, Iowa was investigated and shut because of hiring illegal immigrant workers and for employing children in dangerous jobs, many Jews were more concerned about the impact on the price of kosher meat than the ethics of the illegal acts. This is all tribalism.

But the breaking apart of Jewish tribalism is causing angst in the Jewish world. The younger generations are less prone to cutting the Israeli government a free pass just because it is Jewish. Yiddish is pretty much dead as a spoken language, and we look back fondly at what once was the Yiddish theater or the Jewish radio stations of the 1930’s and 1940’s. Young Jews see these as cute anachronisms. Indeed, as we move farther from the immigrant generations, the ethnic/tribal pull of Judaism weakens. Conversely, what I find very interesting is that among non-Jews interest in Judaism even to desiring to convert is increasing. (OK, I admit this is anecdotal based on my 12 years in Tallahassee, but I bet the trend holds beyond my experience). My generation and older is far more tribal than my children’s generation and younger. We bemoan their lack of loyalty to our “tribe.” They see us as too hung up on ethnic ties and not concerned enough with issues of justice, or happiness, or the need for all to just accept each other. I like differences. Younger generations seem to fight differences.

My guess is that the same dynamics that are breaking up Jewish tribalism are slowly eroding political and cultural tribalism. The backlash to this erosion is expressed in movements like the Tea Party or the radicalism of the NRA. But in many areas of our country tribalism is alive and well. Just check out district one in South Carolina.

One of the hottest You Tube videos of the last few weeks, at least in Jewish circles, has been the “save the date” rap video of Daniel Blumen. This production, done to the “Welcome to Atlanta” rap song, features a young Daniel rapping away about his big day. Featured in the video are Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, Frank Ski and the mayor of Atlanta. Oh, I forgot, the rabbi of The Temple in Atlanta, where the bar mitzvah took place appears as well, high fiving the almost of age rapper. It is important to mention the rabbi, because since the video hit You Tube, he has been inundated with calls and emails questioning the appropriateness of his participation in what some feel is a production that denigrates the whole concept and rite of passage called “bar mitzvah.”

If you want to see another bar mitzvah invitation with even more ramped up production value, watch the You Tube video of Jorel Hoffert (yes, he really is named after Superman’s father). His is to the Queen songs “We will Rock You” and “Bohemian Rhapsody.” Jorel is half Asian and half Jewish. His father is a music producer and that experience shows up in the level of sophistication of the production. Anyone who was offended by Blumen’s invitation will be horrified by young Jorel’s. One scene shows him sitting on the toilet. In another he is pointing to his crotch singing “I’ve got some chutzpah.” Finally, in the “Bohemian Rhapsody” segment of the video he sings “I’m just a young boy hoping for some money.”

If you want to see either invitation, just Google their names.

Comments posted on both young men’s (and I use the term “man” loosely here) You Tube offerings are mostly positive, people pointing out their creativity and as one person wrote, “There is nothing wrong with infusing more fun into a 3 hour service in an ancient tongue.” True enough, these are invitations to the event, not the event itself. So the first question I raise is this: have our b’nei mitzvah ceremonies become so boring, so bereft of meaning that that the event is now to be judged by the entertainment value of the electronic invitation? I am just asking.

And both of these invitations are creative. Adapting the lyrics to the tunes is no easy task, and I bet that Daniel and Jorel both had a hand in the writing. Some of the visuals combined with lyrics are definitely entertaining. My only criticism of the production values is that both are way too long – over 3 minutes of adolescent prancing around in each. Thank God they were not trying for a full 15 minutes of fame.

Am I offended by the content of the videos? Not really, well, OK, I don’t like watching a kid on the toilet or pointing to his crotch or emphasizing the monetary rewards of celebrating a bar mitzvah; but I cannot say I am offended. Should the rabbi of the Temple in Atlanta have been in Daniel’s invitation? Why not? Or more accurately, how could he have ever said no? At least the young man has enough of a connection to the rabbi to even ask him to participate. I suppose we should be grateful for that. No, for the most part the contents were clever and other than being disappointed that two of my favorite “Queen” songs were kind of butchered, I cannot say I was offended.

But, (isn’t there always the but?) the whole thing makes me wonder about parents and children. I do not see much difference between producing these internet invitations and the bat mitzvah party of Lisa Niren of Pittsburgh in 1998. She loved all things about the movie “Titanic” so her father recreated the Titanic in the ball room of a hotel. The recreation of the luxury liner even included steaming smoke stacks as well as the famous picture of Kate Winslet on the prow of the Titanic but with the girl’s head super imposed. The movie played continuously through the party and the seating area for the children was called steerage (an editorial comment on where children should be kept perhaps?). This whole affair was rumored to cost 500 thousand dollars – in 1998! Nor do I see much difference between all of this and the creation of a bust of the bar mitzvah boy out of ice or chopped liver (done by some families when I was growing up).

None of this offends me. It all just makes me a little sad, because of the implications of overindulgence of children by parents. I cannot really judge the Blumens, Hofferts, or the Nirens just by one video or one newspaper report about a party. But I do question what kind of children are being raised in families who pamper their children to this degree. What are the lessons being taught to the kids? Are they learning any boundaries of propriety? I do not have an answer regarding these families, but I do ask the question.

When a child becomes a bar or bat mitzvah it means they have attained the age of taking responsibility for Jewish actions. We know that for most, their Jewish actions will be based on what the parents model for their kids. What, exactly, are these parents modeling? I want to know if young Daniel or young Jorel has been taught to observe any mitzvoth? Have they served meals at a homeless shelter? Have they done something to demonstrate concern for something or someone other than themselves? If the answer to this is “yes,” then by all means, the videos and parties are just for fun. But if not then by making them the central focus of this rite of passage, a valuable teaching moment is lost. And that is just the wrong way to observe this rite.

Buried under the media coverage of the tragedy at the Boston Marathon last week, and the subsequent manhunt, was the defeat of a number of gun control measures in the Senate last Wednesday. Most telling of all was the defeat of a provision to expand required background checks to people purchasing at gun shows and on the internet. This provision was an attempt to prevent those with mental illness and criminal records from buying guns through these currently unregulated avenues.

In the aftermath of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT last December that left 20 children and 6 adults dead, the background check legislation was the one piece that seemed to have a chance of passage. Indeed, one could see problems with most of the proposals floated, by both the right and the left, but tightening background checks has been supported by the vast majority of Americans in poll after poll. A recent CNN poll indicated that increased background checks were favored by 86% of Americans, and a Washington Post/ABC poll showed that 86% of gun owners supported this as well. This all means that the NRA, who purports to represent gun owners, is out of step with their own constituency.

But not really.

One has to remember that gun owners, sportsman, and recreational shooters are no longer who the NRA represents (see previous blog post “It’s Not About the Guns” from February 20). No, the NRA is merely a shill for gun manufacturers. Their opposition to background checks, along with their congressional allies, purportedly arises out of a concern that they would not work, only lawful owners would comply. In addition the old hue and cry over the curtailment of 2nd amendment rights is raised as though this misinterpreted amendment was a direct decree from God and not the pens of 18th century humans, who could have no concept of the consequences their writing would bring. Both of these objections ring very false.

The bill proposed by senators Manchin (D, W. VA) and Toomey (R. PA), while targeting gun shows and internet sales, exempted gun transfers between family members and friends. This exception, designed to attract support from NRA types, is the main flaw with the legislation. But no provision will ever suffice for the NRA and its minions. The only way for any industry to grow is to expand sales. The expansion of gun sales is at cross purposes to creating a safer community. ANY impediment to selling a gun is going to be opposed by the NRA because it is the safeguard of profits for its backers.

Despite the flaws with this particular background check bill, if it would even prevent a tiny amount of killings, dropping the number of deaths by guns from 30K to 29.5K, it is worth enacting. Kowtowing to the NRA’s radicalism is costing human lives. Are they really worth the increased profits of gun companies? The Talmud teaches us that “to save a single life is as if one has saved an entire world.” Extending and strengthening background checks, even if imperfectly, seems a small price to pay for any lives saved.

What about 2nd amendment concerns? There is legitimate debate whether the 2nd amendment is a guarantee to all citizens to own weapons or just to maintain a citizen militia. Even the Supreme Court, however, while holding the 2nd amendment establishes the rights of citizens to own guns, does not strike down the government’s authority to regulate that ownership, much like we regulate owning cars. For our political leaders to not step up and begin a process to curb the uncontrolled distribution of guns is more craven than the NRA’s blatant lobbying for gun manufacturers. Senators and congressmen are elected to represent the best interests of the people – and 86% seem to agree on what is their best interest. It seems just plain wrong for Congress not to be on board.

President Obama was right. Their actions were shameful. I would characterize those senators blocking expansion of background checks as dancing on the graves of the 26 killed in Newtown in December. Shame on them.

A bill is making its way through the Florida Senate, SB 58, whose stated intent is to limit the influence of foreign laws in American courts. This sounds benign enough on the surface, but upon examining the bill, and its sponsor, multiple red flags appear. Lawyers will point out that legislation of this sort presents problems of interference between the branches of government. After all, don’t our judges know what is or is not admissible into their courtrooms? Should they not have the latitude to decide what is relevant to a case? Further, there is the question of how a state can enforce a law that affects federal courts. But all of this is for the lawyers to argue. For me, there is a question of intent behind this law that reveals a rather scary mind set.

The bill is sponsored by Senator Alan Hays. He previously introduced a bill, that failed, which mentioned Sharia law in particular. When asked to give an example of Sharia law influencing an American court, his response was to compare his legislation to inoculating against a disease. In other words, he had no examples. His legislation is born out of his fear of a word – Sharia – which given the history of the past 12 years in the United States has become a rather radioactive word.

Sharia is to Islam what Halachah is to Judaism and Canon law is to the Catholic Church. A key difference, however, between Sharia and Halachah on the one hand, and Canon law on the other, is that neither Islam nor Judaism have a central institution or leader whose interpretation of law binds all members of the faith. The Church is an ecclesiastic authority headed by the Pope, and all Catholics have an obligation to follow the law as interpreted by that authority. Whether they do or not is another issue, but the authority exists.

In Judaism the authority of each rabbi in his (or her) community is to be respected by other rabbis. There is certainly a long tradition of fierce debate and argument over the application and interpretation of Jewish law among rabbis, but once a rabbi makes a decision for their community, visiting rabbis are obliged to respect that decision. This ideal is not the reality, as there are fierce divisions between the various streams of Judaism; thus an ongoing argument over whose interpretations are authentically Jewish. This just underscores the fact that NO rabbinic authority can claim to speak for all Jews. Even within denominations there is politicization over the exercising of authority. The Orthodox rabbinate in Israel, for example, is not recognizing conversions by all American orthodox rabbis – to the consternation of the American orthodox rabbinate. Further complicating this scene are the ethnic differences between Jews from various regions. The minhagim (customs) of Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Greek, and Yemenite Jews, just to name a few, are very different. There is no unified Jewish voice on halachah.

The same can be said of Sharia law. Interpretation of Sharia varies in Islam according to the stream (e.g. Sunni and Shia), according to geography and according to time. All of Islam agrees that the Quran and the teachings of the prophet are the law, but the interpretation of verses of the Quran depends on the cleric and the perspective of the group he is leading. Islamic law, like Jewish law, is a living organism, that is evolving with time. New circumstances require new insights into the divine word of each religion. What is fair for Americans to ask, and what Moslems (and Jews) can answer is this: what is the relationship of your religious law (Sharia, halachah) to American law?

For Jews, halachah holds sway for religious ritual, but for criminal, tort and civic law the law of the land prevails. Most Jewish authorities see no conflict between the basic values, basic ethics that drive halachah and American law. We see them as compatible. The American Islamic community takes a very similar perspective. American Moslems see the underlying values and ethics of Sharia reflected in the underlying values and ethics of American law. There is no need for the United States to adopt Sharia law as basic American values make it possible for Moslems to practice their religion freely in the United States. In some areas where Islamic law allows a practice that is not in accordance with American law, the Moslem community does not ask for an exception. An example of this is polygamy, which is allowed under Sharia. It is rarely practiced but it is allowed. American Moslems happily conform to American law.

So what drives Senator Hays and others who seem so afraid of Sharia? It is a conflation of all of Islam under one heading – one that defaults to the harshest applications of Sharia. What is lost on Senator Hays, and those who fear Sharia, are the many Moslem scholars who see these applications (or misapplications) of Sharia as shallow, literal, and not moral. Ironically, Senator Hays, in his arguments for his bill, heavily quotes Rabbi Jonathan Hausman, rabbi of Ahavath Torah in Stoughton, MA. Rabbi Hausman aligns himself with the Dutch politician Geert Wilders, who, among other things, wanted to make the construction of mosques in the Netherlands illegal. Hausman has spoken at an affair co-hosted by the JDL – the Jewish Defense League – whose founder, Meir Kahane embraced the physical expulsion of all Moslems from Israel and the West Bank before his murder by an Arab gunman in 1990 in Manhattan. It is not surprising that the most radically violent wing of the Jewish world would characterize the entire Islamic world as violent radicals (that is, after all, what radical Moslem groups do – characterize all of the Jewish world by the actions of its most radical elements). What is disconcerting is that an American politician would draw on the fringe of any group to support a law that could have devastating effects on Americans of all types.

That is what makes the mindset so scary. When we react to the cartoon version of a word/concept/belief as opposed to making the effort to research and understand it, the result will be destructive; not only to the party it is intended to harm, but to others in society as well. To pass a law for which there has been no demonstrated need, just a reaction out of fear and ignorance, creates a potential for harm to be done to all Americans.

Post script: In doing some research for this post I have been struck by the many parallels and similarities between Jewish law, halachah, and Islamic law, Sharia. More on this to come.

I admit I was not excited about the topic of last week’s “Faith, Food, and Friday” session: “The Church of Facebook, Worship in the Digital Age.” After tackling issues such as same sex marriage and the intersection of faith and politics, this seemed a tepid topic; potentially a real snooze. Moreover, what could I add to the conversation? I see social media as useful, but not something I enjoy using (OK, stop snickering as you read this blog). I am competent but not an expert in the use of computers and the internet. I am not a Luddite who wishes for the good old days of manual typewriters. I like the conveniences that computers provide (like everyone else I cannot imagine doing my work without one). So I wondered what could generate a real discussion around religious organizations using modern technology? Boy was I wrong.

Let’s start with Dean Inserra, pastor of City Church, which uses all cutting edge technology and social media to engage and promote the church. He is blunt with his comments that churches (or synagogues) that do not recognize how the social networks and internet have changed community and communication are doomed to fail. He aggressively tweets, texts, posts on Facebook to get out his message of the Gospels. Rather than fight congregants who bring their iphones to church, he engages them through their iphones as they use their Bible apps to follow the Biblical readings and sermons. Don’t fight the presence of technology, he says. Use the technology as a way for them to participate in the service.

I have colleagues who agree with Dean completely. At a synagogue in Miami Beach, one young rabbi conducted High Holiday services and urged worshippers to text their feelings which were posted on a screen in the front of the sanctuary. Other colleagues are using the new prayer book app to conduct Shabbat services, displaying everything on a large screen in the front of the sanctuary thus eliminating the need for siddurim (prayer books). Here is where I find I have something to say. Is all of this just utilizing technology to better engage Jews in services, or, are we losing something that is essential to being Jewish? Maybe I am just showing my age, but I believe the latter.

Shabbat (the Sabbath) is supposed to be a time that is radically different than the rest of the week. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel expresses this beautifully in his book, “The Sabbath.” Shabbat is to be a “palace in time.” It is that time in which we acknowledge that we did not create the world, and ultimately, have little or no control over the world. It is a time to disengage from the material, mundane activities that occupy our work week, and to slip into a different mode. I must ask this question: how do we create that palace in time by using iphones – those devices that so absolutely control our existence the rest of the week?

I do not mean to be insulting to my Christian friends, but Christians do not have the same sense of the deepness of Shabbat, the real spirituality of experiencing Shabbat, as traditional Jews. Shabbat is supposed to be a taste of the Garden of Eden, of paradise. It is a powerful thing to not engage in the mundane for 24 hours, to stop spending money and to stop using “things” to manipulate the world. This is an essential Jewish contribution to the religious world. When someone enters a synagogue for Shabbat services, why do they need to be in touch with the rest of the world via electronics? What is so important (other than a doctor on call e.g.) that one cannot at least turn the phone off if not leave it at home? The experience is supposed to be “otherworldly.” Tweets and phones ringing are decidedly of this world, not of paradise.

So I have made the decision not to make use of the latest technology in services. I have a funny feeling about even projecting things on a screen during Shabbat. The one compromise I do make is to utilize our sound system simply because of the mitzvah of allowing the elderly and those with hearing difficulties the best chance to hear and participate in the service. Judaism is a religion of sound much more than sight. Our music, our chanting is compelling. Each service contains a teaching of Torah – where sound is crucial. How do tweets and apps enhance the Shabbat feeling at all? Where is the disengagement from the mundane and the attempt to focus on the divine?

I must also pose a final question. How much of the use of technology in services is an expression of our own ego, our own obsession with the latest gadget or tool or program? I worry that the tolerance and use of iphones in services, even to follow the liturgy, feeds our self absorption at a time we need to be reaching beyond ourselves. The liturgy has its own power. The music has its own power. Torah has its own power. None of them need enhancement, at least for the duration of Shabbat.

I agree that social media, the internet and all it has to offer are crucial to communicating with congregants and potential congregants. For six days a week our institutions should use all means to get out our message, to engage the community. For six days a week we should be as savvy in the use of social media as possible. But on Shabbat, just let it rest.