יש לבבות ויש לבבות.

It is now almost fifty years since I visited Israel with my Jewish youth group. I sometimes feel as though I have spent all that time coming to terms with with that experience: occasionally by confronting my memories directly, often by trying to suppress them.

Yesterday Judy gave me a coffee table book with beautiful photos of Machu Picchu paired with the poems by the 1971 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Pablo Neruda of Chile. It is not insignificant that Neruda was poisoned by the fascist regime of General Augusto Pinochet just days after the coup d'etat in which they overthrew Chile's democratically-elected government. It is not insignificant that this coup took place with the connivance of the United States, nor that Neruda was one of many thousands murdered by the junta.

The introduction to the book of photos and poems was written by the novelist Isabel Allende. It is not insignificant that she is the cousin of Dr. Salvador Allende, the social democratic President of Chile, whose second election in 1973 was the reason for that fascist coup. It is not insignificant that years of violence followed the overthrow of Dr. Allende.

In her opening lines, about Machu Picchu itself, Allende wrote:

Hay ciertos lugares donde viven los espíritus atrapado entre piedras. Esos lugares, construidos por hombres antiguos y hoy abandonados, fueron tan sagrados, que su energía continúa vibrando durante siglos. Es casi imposible pisar esas piedras si sentir el clamor del pasado y la tremenda fuerza allí concentrada.

The translator offers us this

There are places where spirits live trapped among stones. Those places, constructed by ancient man and today abandoned, were so sacred that their energy continues to vibrate through the centuries. It is impossible to walk on those stones and not sense the clamor of the past and the enormous force concentrated there.

I read those words and was immediately put in mind of a reading our group leaders offered us that summer long ago, when our group first visited Ha-Kotel Ha-Ma'arvi, the Western Wall, for Friday evening prayers. In Hebrew it reads:

.יש לבבות ויש לבבות. יש לבבות אדם, ויש לבבות אבנים.  

.ויש אבנים ויש אבנים. יש אבני דומה, ויש אבנים-לבבות

A serviceable translation is: 

There are hearts and there are hearts. There are human hearts and there are hearts of stone. There are stones and there are stones. There are silent stones and there are stones which are hearts. 

I should say right here that — at the time, that very night — I didn’t find what they described. In my journal I read 17-year old me reporting that I found only stones, an object, a retaining wall. But the passage had its impact. The me of today remembered that poetry and not my reaction to it. I had to pull that old journal down from the shelf to be reminded that I didn’t find hearts or souls in those stones.

But even rereading that journal entry, the me of today was curious. Who wrote those powerful words about hearts and stones?

I found that they come from an essay by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, written in 1937, and called “Behind Our Wall.” That title is from a line in the Biblical Song of Songs (2:9) which reads: 

“My beloved is like a gazelle, or a fawn. There he is, standing behind our wall, looking through the windows and peering through the lattice.” 

The imagery suggests a veil between us and what we look at, unable to touch. And that date means that it was written before partition, when Jews still had access to the Wall. When I visited, that access

was newly restored by the conquests of the Six-Day War. So the spiritual significance of praying at the foot of the Temple Mount was strongly overlain with a secular triumphalism. Photos of heavily-armed Israeli soldiers praying at the Wall in tallis and tefillin were popular among American Jews at the time. I remember those images in coffee-table books.

So who was Rav Kook? Why he was the spiritual leader of Gush Emunim, the settler movement. He was an affiliate of the Brooklyn racist, Meir Kahane. Kahane’s Israeli political party, Kach, advocated the complete ethnic cleansing of the State of Israel. It was banned by the Israeli government as being too racist. Rav Kook's yeshiva became a center for the most intolerant, land-grabbing, anti-Arab elements in religious Judaism.

I suppose I could conclude that people can be more than one thing. But I go back to Rav Kook’s own words: “There are hearts that are like stones.” So I conclude, instead, that he was — however unintentionally — describing himself. And that the same "spirits" that murdered Pablo Neruda along with Chilean democracy are destroying homes, olive groves and lives in the occupied West Bank. That the same "heart" that inhabits the Western Wall of Rav Kook's imagination, inhabits the 400+ mile barrier that the Israelis have built to imprison the Palestinians of the West Bank. It is a heart -- and a wall -- of stone.

Èpater le Bourgeois

The other day I saw this photo of an acoustic band rehearsing posted on Facebook. It is from 1969 or 1970 and I am the fellow in the white t-shirt with the banjo. I was 17 or 18.

I saw it because some of the others in the photo, still friends, began reminiscing fondly about this band and our performances. I had a different reaction.

I am proud of some things I did as a teen. I am proud of protesting the Viet Nam War. I am proud of organizing some of those protests. I am proud of having run for the Board of Education in the town where I lived and went to school. I am proud of helping organize an unauthorized student meeting in our high school which led to a walkout.  I am proud of participating in that walkout. I am proud that a member of the school administration told me that the other participants would be suspended, but that I would be expelled. I am proud of working to convince the 800 or so suspended students to simply ignore the suspension and return to school.

I am proud of working on a lawsuit against our school superintendent to defend students' rights to print and distribute independent, non-school-sponsored publications. I am proud to have written first drafts of briefs for our attorney. I am proud of printing and distributing an independent, non-school-sponsored publication. I am proud that we won that suit.

I am proud of leading people in public song during rallies. I am proud of leading people in public song during synagogue worship. Singing together is breathing together is bringing people together. This band was often the opposite.

Our most important performance, the one that sticks in the memory of everybody commenting on Facebook, was at a Battle of the Bands at our high school. Battles of the Bands privileged volume, shredding guitar solos, driving beats, and -- generally speaking -- hard rock. We came out with washboard, washtub bass and acoustic instruments. We had a crowd of ethereal dancers. We had grossly-offensive original songs which finally drove a large part of the audience, particularly the young women, to simply leave the auditorium. The most important part of that performance was our desire to outrage convention. I am not proud of that.

I would love to excuse myself by saying that I was young. But so were the people who walked out on us. I have spent a lifetime raising teens to be adults, as a high school teacher and principal. Would I have been proud of my students for publicly performing original material that was designed primarily to disgust their classmates (and that was, in fact, disgusting)? Or would I have been proud of them for publicly signaling their disapproval?

I look at that photo and I see a group of highly-privileged young people. I know that all of us were more than one thing, more than just people who took that privilege for granted, more than just people who engaged in outrage for the sake of outrage. But my memories of that photo conjure more shame than pride. I have taught hundreds of teens. I am proud of so many of them, for so many things. I would not be proud for any of them to see video of that performance at the Battle of the Bands.

Harvey Weinstein, Savannah Greywind, Donald Trump, Pocahontas

On November 25, 1960, the women known as the Mariposas - Patria, Minerva and Maria Teresa Mirabal - were stopped on a mountain road and assassinated  by leading officers in the Dominican secret police on orders from the dictator, Rafael Trujillo. The sisters had been unable to end Trujillo’s murderous regime in life, but their deaths were too much for the nation and only six months later Trujillo himself was ambushed and killed. Since 1999, that anniversary has been recognized by the United Nations as the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

This fall the #MeToo hashtag spread widely after charges emerged of serial sexual harassment and rape by Miramax Films executive Harvey Weinstein. Weinstein was fired. Other offenders were named, including comedian Louis C.K., Senator Al Franken, TV anchor Matt Lauer, philosopher Tariq Ramadan, writer Leon Wieseltier, journalist Charlie Rose, and many, many others including President Donald Trump who famously boasted of being able to get away with sexual assaults.

But those are all famous people. What about violence against women who are not well known? What about violence against women by men who are not well known? What about the hugely disproportionate levels of violence against Native American women?

This fall, North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp introduced S. 1942, also known as Savannah’s Act to provide protection for missing and murdered Native women. The bill is named for Savannah Greywind, a 22-year old Ojibwe woman who was kidnapped, murdered, and had her fetus stolen this summer by a white couple.

On some reservations the murder rate against women is TEN TIMES the national average. In North Dakota alone, there have been HUNDREDS of disappearances of Native women. The rapes, kidnappings and murders are fed by callous disregard for Native women and by racist sexual fantasies. It is protected by jurisdictional problems preventing Native police departments and courts from arresting and convicting white people for crimes on the reservation or against Native people. And it is multiplied by the presence of man camps serving extractive industries.

In the North Dakota petrostate, tens of thousands of out-of-state men live away from their families in barracks, working in the pipeline and fracking industries. These unconnected men are paid well enough to support flourishing organized crime in narcotics, gambling and prostitution. Prostitution means sex trafficking. Some kidnapped Native women are held by criminals who charge other men to rape them. Other Native women are kidnapped and murdered by men from the camps.

Senator Heitkamp makes none of these connections. She is a prominent supporter of extractive industries, especially oil. She served as a board member for the Dakota Gasification Company, which transforms lignite coal into synthetic natural gas. She supports the Keystone XL pipeline. She describes opposition to fracking as “junk science.” And she was one of only two Democratic senators to support Scott Pruitt, long-time enemy of the EPA, as Administrator for the EPA!

Senator Heitkamp’s connections to the energy industry mean that it doesn’t matter how serious she may be about her commitment “to combat crime, violence & human trafficking in Indian Country” and to the #NotInvisible hashtag. She can denounce violence against women, but cannot even see the man camps that incubate that violence. Nor can she see the underlying, toxic ideology that links extractive industry with rape culture: violence against Mother Earth and violence against women and girls are all features of toxic misogyny.

All this brings us back to President Donald Trump, the Racist/Rapist-in-Chief. This week he chose to wrap up Native Heritage Month by “honoring” Native code talkers in front of a portrait of Andrew Jackson, notorious for his murders of Creeks, Seminoles, Cherokees, Choctaws and Chickasaws! Then he chose the occasion again mock Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” The historical Pocahontas was a teen victim of kidnap and rape by British colonists in Virginia. The imagined Pocahontas of US mythology was a beautiful young “princess”, the original model for the sex fantasy that continues today, FOUR HUNDRED YEARS after her abduction.

#EndViolenceAgainstWomenAndGirls has to be more than a  severely-underfunded day on the calendar of the United Nations. It has to be every day. #MeToo has to be more than a campaign exposing celebrity predators in the news and entertainment industries. It has to protect all women in their homes and in their workplaces and on the streets. #NotInvisible has to be more than a way to call attention to the disproportionate levels of violence against Native women. It has to identify the sources of that violence in rape culture, in racism, and in extractive industry. We owe these things to our mothers.  We owe these things to all women.

זיכרונו לברכה

Four weeks ago my mom phoned from her nursing home to tell me that my dad was refusing to eat. I think she wanted me to call him and tell him that he must have his lunch, but -- given his compromised hearing -- I couldn't see any chance of that happening at all, and there had to be a reason for his refusal anyway.  Prophet and I got in the car and drove to New Jersey to see what was going on.

When we got to his room, we found my dad asleep in his chair. He was in the most uncomfortable position imaginable, but I didn't want to awaken him just because I happened to walk in, so I sat down to see what would happen. Prophet had no such qualms. He immediately leaped into my dad's lap and began kissing him, licking his face enthusiastically. You might think that a 90+ pound dog would not be welcome in the lap of a frail 91-year old man. But if you thought that, you didn't know my dad. He woke up with a smile and then began laughing in enjoyment. After Prophet climbed back down, we had a nice visit. My mom came in a minute later and was happy to see his good mood. My dad tried to eat some soup (without much success) and then he went to the gym with the physical therapist.

The next day the home informed my sister that it was time for my dad to move from assisted living to the nursing care floor. We began arranging for him to be my mom's roommate. Before that could happen, though, they determined that he needed an emergency room visit. He was transported by ambulance to the hospital and admitted as an in-patient. He was kind of happy about that. He felt that the doctors could figure out what was wrong with him and make him better. He was joking with the nurses and asking questions about the wiring of his hospital room. That's right. He engineered that entire wing of the hospital.

By Saturday he wasn't speaking. His eyes would open halfway, he would pick up his head as if to say something, then close his eyes and put his head back down.  I held his hand and told him that we had everything under control. I told him he had done everything right, that we were all okay, and that we would take care of my mom. It didn't seem to reassure him. He remained agitated, as if he had something important to say, but that he could get it out.

Sunday he was no longer opening his eyes. It looked to me now as though he was just trying to get a breath of air. It looked as though he was drowning. It occurred to me that this was what was happening the day before, too. My daughter sat with him for hours, telling him what was going on with her and with her family. The hospital staff acknowledged that their treatment was not making him better, only more uncomfortable. They asked if we wanted to switch to "compassionate" care, meaning they would try to ease his discomfort. We agreed.

He left us the next morning. I had asked the rabbi of their synagogue to visit my mom. The rabbi got the word of the changed purpose of his visit just before going into my mom's room. She really appreciated his presence and his words. She was not happy that my dad left before her.

I remember that day as a flurry of minutiae. Phoning the funeral home to figure out if he had prearranged. (He had not.) Phoning multiple cemeteries to figure out the reference to burial plots in his will. Arranging communication between the hospital, undertaker, cemetery and rabbi. In between, though, I had time to look through the autobiographical writing my dad had been busy with the last
few years and sorting through old photos.  I put up a post or two on Facebook to let people know.

Meeting with the rabbi was a kind of catharsis. My brother, my sister, my wife, and I all got to share some reminiscences. This rabbi arrived at my parents' synagogue around the time they were no longer strong enough to go to Shabbat service every week, so he didn't really know them (or us) He had heard my mom's reputation as a pillar of the shul, leading the bikkur holim committee and the interracial justice committee,  as well as running the Meals on Wheels program for the entire town. (Which she continued doing until she was older than most of the elderly recipients.) My dad, though, was a stranger to him. We explained that dad - who was never bar mitzvahed - had served for years on the synagogue's ritual committee, probably so that he could be an usher and not have to sit down!
We told him about dad doing the electrical engineering for Newark Airport, the lower level of the George Washington Bridge, the third tube of the Lincoln Tunnel, and the B&O lift bridge over the Arthur Kill. And we told him that dad designed the wiring for the room he died in at St. Barnabas Hospital.

The funeral home was less happy. Most of that visit had to do with reviewing the contract and paying. Somebody had to check my father's body (to see if it was really him?) so my wife and I did that. When I was a boy my dad was six-feet and imposing. Over the last twenty years, he has grown shorter and weaker. In his coffin, he looked smaller than ever. But he didn't show as much pain in his face as he had the last two times I saw him.

Riding in a limousine is not something my family does. We never did it for the funerals of any of my grandparents. My siblings and I never went to a prom. But it occurred to me that transporting my mom from her nursing home to a cemetery in one of our cars was probably a bad idea. So we all drove to the nursing home and then rode down to the cemetery for the graveside service in a limousine with my mom.

The ground was wet. We stayed a distance away while the workers pumped water out of the grave.
During the funeral, the workers kept a carpet suspended over the grave's floor so we wouldn't see it filling back up with water. When my dad was in his seventies, he frequently served in an honor guard for funerals of veterans. Apparently the armed forces were stretched so thin that they couldn't provide active-duty servicemen for the wave of departing World War 2 vets. The US Navy provided an honor guard for dad, though. They read a proclamation, played taps, took the flag from the coffin, and presented it to my mom.

The rabbi's eulogy was thoughtful, reassuring, and showed that he really listened. He told stories about my dad's care for my mom, love of us, professional reputation, and skeptical mind. And he framed these within a story about the questions each of us will be asked when we appear before the Throne. And, of course, he sang El Malei Rahamim.

The crazy part of that day was that we ran back to the Bronx after dropping off my mom and then back out to New Jersey again. Prophet was in his crate all day because a crew of tradespeople were doing work in our house, so we wanted to let him out and feed him before returning to have dinner with friends who couldn't make it to the funeral, and then going to the nightly minyan at my parents' synagogue. Under different circumstances, people come to the home of the mourners to visit, and pray minchah and maariv.  I was certain that my mom would be too tired for all that. But I also knew she would feel better if we - her children - said Kaddish. So my brother, my sister, my brother's wife, Kaddish-sayers. Several of them knew my parents, so that was nice. The service itself? Not so much. Loud-mouthed mavens insisted on racing ahead of the person who they themselves had asked to lead.
my sister's boyfriend, my wife, and I all went to pray with the regular

The next day we had invited people to my mom's room at the nursing home to pay their respects and the rabbi came and led minchah. That was a much better experience. And I wrote the rabbi thanking him for everything:

I may not be able to express my gratitude as clearly as I would like, but I think it’s better if I try while everything is still fresh in my mind:  

You listened to us so carefully and heard us so clearly. You summarized the most important points and folded them by means of stories into the framework of another story about the questions we will be asked before the throne. You understood and conveyed - subtly - the differences between my mother’s commitment to belief and to observance and my father’s. You included everybody. You drew in a secondary motif about the prophetic voice, my father’s name, and the name of our dog.

All this is qualitatively different than my experience with graveside rabbinical talk in my youth. But it is also orders of magnitude deeper and richer than my experience of graveside rabbinical talk today.

I also want to thank you for the suggestion that we attend the regular minyan last night at Temple Beth Shalom. Jon, Hilde, Zaydah, Doug, Judith and I all went.  I think it was reassuring to my mom.

Each time I have made a request of you, you responded immediately. I appreciate that more than I can say.

 We skipped Friday and Saturday in observance of the Sabbath. Sunday the room stayed full with family and with friends of my mother, brother and sister. I led the minchah, which I think went okay. My mom was happy, anyway. She said she was glad I still remembered how to do it.

Several of my friends expressed some disappointment that we hadn't invited them to the funeral or the wake. Explaining how we did things seemed beside the point, so we invited people to our home
the following Thursday. A good number of people showed up, too, including people who traveled from Brooklyn, Manhattan and parts of the Bronx that are inconvenient by bus and train.

I keep looking at old photos that remind me of my dad when he was younger and stronger and a giant to me. I keep reading his self-deprecating stories. I keep discovering myself in tears without any apparent external trigger. I guess this will last a good long time.

לשנה תובה

This morning I am thinking about fire and flood, earthquake and hurricane, war and genocide, impunity and extrajudicial murder.

The new moon rose here in New York at 6:56 this morning. The fall equinox is Friday afternoon at 4:02. Today is the 29th of Elul on the Hebrew calendar, so tonight is Rosh HaShanah: new year 5778.
I take a moment to wish my friends and relations a happy and healthy year, but I am stuck on the horrors facing the people of Burma, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Ukraine, St. Louis, California, Texas, Florida, the Virgin Islands, and so many other places.

On Rosh HaShanah, we recite the liturgical poem Unetanneh Tokef, which says that everyone of us passes before God on this day.  That, like sheep before the shepherd, we are counted and evaluated and our destinies are determined. The poem says our fates are written in a book:

Who will live and who will die? 

Who will live a long life and who will die before their time?

Who will perish by fire and who by water?

Who by sword and who by beast?

Who by famine and who by thirst?

Who by earthquake and who by epidemic?

Who by strangling and who by stoning?

Who will rest and who will wander?

Who will live in harmony and who will be harassed?

Who will enjoy tranquility and who will suffer?

The prayer concludes: "But Repentance, Prayer, and Charity Avert the Severe Decree!"

I think not. I think we can resist official impunity and police murder. I think we can resist the selfishness that denies global warming. I think we can resist xenophobia and homophobia and white supremacy and misogyny. I think we can even resist earthquakes by fighting against fracking.

The world is much bigger than we. Hurricanes will continue. So will tectonic movement. But we can look out for each other instead of ignoring each other's suffering.

L'Shanah Tovah.

The Farmer and the Cowman Should Be Friends!

Act II of the Rogers and Hammerstein 1943 classic Oklahoma! opens with the song "The Farmer and the Cowman."  The song highlights the adversarial relations which, in the imaginative Oklahoma of the play, constitute the full spectrum of human difference.  In the universe of this musical, everyone -- with the sole exception of the Syrian pedlar Ali Hakim -- is white.  I wrote in a previous post about the many seemingly exclusive Oklahomas we encounter in art.  John Steinbeck, Ralph Ellison, Woody Guthrie, S.E. Hinton, Lynn Riggs, Fus Fixico, Will Rogers... encountering their works one after another would lead the audience to think Oklahoma is not one place at all.

I remembered the song only last week.  It reminded me again that this monster success (over 2000 Broadway performances) isn't just a story.  It purports to be the story.  Consider these lyrics:

Territory folks should stick together,

Territory folks should all be pals.

Cowboys dance with farmer's daughters,

Farmers dance with the ranchers' gals.

One would be forgiven for thinking these white people were the people of the "territory."

Oklahoma was admitted to statehood in 1907. The play takes place just before that. The first thing to note is that the town of Claremore, where the action takes place, was not in the Oklahoma Territory.  Claremore was in the Indian Territory, which was merged with the Oklahoma Territory to form the state of Oklahoma.  Claremore is the seat of Rogers County, which straddled the line between the Cherokee and Creek Nations. So where are all the Native people in Oklahoma!?

Congress called for a special census for the new state, so we actually have population figures for Claremore, Oklahoma in 1907.  There were 2064 residents, of whom 16% were Native American and 10% were African American.  Where were all the Black people in Oklahoma!?

This is what academics like to call "erasure." It doesn't just take place in imaginative works, either.  Between 1890 and 1907, in the Creek Nation alone, the white population went from 40,674 to 144,457! Overwhelming the Creek people with white emigrants, legislatively privatizing Creek land through individual allotments so that the surplus could be sold, and then stealing the allotments themselves all constitute erasure in fact. By all means, check out Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann or And Still the Waters Run by Angie Debo.

The farmer and the cowman? How about the banker, the real estate dealer and the murderer? They were friends.

Speaker Ryan, do your job!

Sixteen years ago, in the weeks before 9/11, the Dream Act was introduced to give immigrant youth who had grown up in the US the opportunities to pursue higher education and military service without fear of deportation.  From its conception the Dream Act was a bipartisan bill with both Democratic and Republican support.

Why hasn’t Congress passed it? Why isn’t it a law yet? Why are we relying on Donald Trump to renew an executive order by Barack Obama to create the DACA policy in the absence of any activity by Congress on this subject?

Our youth have been held hostage by politics. Nativist senators filibustered, frightened by the possibility that opponents to their right would mount primary challenges, accusing them of giving “amnesty” to “illegals.”* Also, President Obama’s existence on this earth led Republican leadership to follow a policy of opposing everything he favored, often hesitating to express opinions on new issues until he had taken a stand they could disagree with!

Now President Trump is on the verge of setting a six-month deadline for dismantling DACA. This would throw the question of immigrant youth back into Congress where it has always belonged. Speaker Ryan is begging him not to do it.  It would force Speaker Ryan to actually do his job and entertain bipartisan debate on a critical issue of public policy.

I believe the votes exist to pass the Dream Act.  I believe our immigrant youth deserve the opportunity to live their lives in public — outside the shadows — and to contribute to the wellbeing of all of us. I believe our youth shouldn’t have to worry that their careers are dependent on the next shift in the political winds. I believe Congress should do its job and legislate.

Speaker Ryan! Senator McConnell! You wanted the title of leader? Do your jobs and lead.  Stop equivocating about what the president should or should not do. Pass the Dream Act. 

*(The coinage “illegal” as a noun to describe a person has been a particularly effective way to demonize and criminalize immigrants, including those with green cards. But I don’t get how “amnesty,” which was one of the cornerstones of Ronald Reagan’s immigration reform, became such a scary word. Don’t public libraries offer amnesties?)