Radbam August 31st, 2010

Recent studies indicate that clergy of all denominations are experiencing burnout in unprecedented numbers. Use of antidepressants and rates of obesity and addiction grow as life expectancy diminishes.  But this is not a whining lament for the pace of clergy work and depth of commitment.  Those who heed this sacred, rarefied calling embrace the sacrifices of self and family that the vocation requires.  These studies seem to indicate that something else impacts both the well-being of active clergy and the consideration of many to pursue spiritual leadership.

G. Jeffrey MacDonald followed up on the Times op-ed page with a piece, “Congregations Gone  Wild.” Based on his book, Thieves in the Temple: The Christian Church and the Selling of the American Soul, MacDonald laments significant changes in congregational demands upon clergy–expectations which ease access to faith communities and traditions, but compromise both timeless theology and clergy integrity. The need to pander to unchecked consumerism and unqualified comfort through theo-tainment, new age therapeutics and insubstantial sermons challenges even the most seasoned veterans to strike a balance between meeting people where they are and inspiring them to attain what they’ve yet to experience.

MacDonald decries the pressure on clergy to conform or leave, to respond to the whims and vagaries of the transient cultural moment or exit the profession unceremoniously and often bitterly.  The prophetic call “to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable” seems to have given way to the marketer’s mantra of “if it sells, all is well.”

While MacDonald’s world view may skew through the prism of personal experience, one wonders what these larger studies and trends portend?  What do you think? Have the standards and sensibilities of faith devolved so dramatically in recent years?  Do we want different things from faith, tradition and clergy than our parents wanted? Are these differences a diminishing of the quality and caliber of the faith experience, a concession to our atrophied attention spans and need for instant gratification?  Or are these changes the inevitable condition of life and history? Blog back to me at goodgodforus.com.

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Radbam May 31st, 2010

The history of Muslim triumphalism promulgated through an “edifice complex” is a staple of history.  A brief tour of churches repurposed as mosques (and back again) in Spain and the dominance of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque atop the former Jewish Temple Mount testify to the potent symbolism of designated real estate.

So it is unsurprising that there is discord and reservation at the prospect of a Muslim community center being built near the site of the former Twin Towers so ignominiously downed by Muslim extremists.  Historic scars bind to contemporary fear and not-yet-diminished tragedy to preclude the more rational, let alone idealistic benefits of such a project.

Echoes of the Nazi march on Skokie abound as lofty principle meets unmitigated pain in a contest for our national character and vision for a better future.  The group sponsoring the project, the Cordoba Initiative, eponymous for the multicultural center of medieval Spain during its Golden Age, seeks to bridge the ever-increasing chasm of distrust and disconnect plaguing relations between Islam and the West.

We certainly and understandably concede to the families of those murdered on that horrific fall morning an anger and grief that defies larger perspective .  But we do not look to that limited and lamentable group for insight and inspiration in reconciling conflict and re-envisioning a different kind of world.

Though Europe has struggled with successful integration of its immigrants, a remarkable and perhaps electable model and approach has emerged in the Netherlands.  PM candidate Job Cohen (secular, but unapologetically Jewish) blazes trails of connection and inclusion within a famously tolerant Dutch society paradoxically enamored of xenophobes and nativists.  And though the United States has more securely and enduringly blended a melting pot of diversity into unified national purpose than the Continent, this current culture clash in Lower Manhattan reveals a need for continued efforts and vigilance.

Imagine a Muslim community center within blocks of a fully constructed (perhaps when messiah comes) 9/11 memorial at the Tower site, a testament to both an ability to transcend the constraints of the past and a powerful recognition that the great foe is not faith itself, but rather the agenda-driven perversions of fundamentalism.  It is a dream that is palpable and possible.  But perhaps, not yet.

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Radbam May 26th, 2010

My interview with Connie Martinson is on Shalom TV this week.

I was the guest of Connie Martinson of Shalom TV discussing Good God: Faith for the Rest of Us. It is being highlighted on ShalomTV this week. It will be available via Comcast OnDemand until May 29th .

• For Comcast Users  who want to watch, on your television, navigate through these menus:
• Go to Comcast on Demand Channel 1
• Goto TV & Entertainment Menu
• Go to Shalom TV it’s on the second Page
• Go to Judaism & Culture
• Go to Good God Author & watch the interview.

For any questions check ShalomTV’s help page.

Or Watch Online:

If you read this after May 29th, or don’t have OnDemand, you can  Watch the video here.

For more information:

• Shalom TV

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Radbam May 17th, 2010

Kagan eyes the glass fence

In the languid Summer of 1915, Leo Frank, a gangly, socially awkward Yankee businessman was dragged from his holding cell and lynched by a mob comprising leading members of Georgia’s plutocracy.  It was a nadir in the American Jewish experience, a potent reminder that the insecurities inculcated during millennia of European pogroms and persecution remained warranted despite the prospects of freedom in this new Promised Land.

Yet the uniqueness of America’s vision for all was affirmed a scant few months later, as Woodrow Wilson nominated Louis D. Brandeis to the Supreme Court.  There was the virulent anti-Semitism from expected and surprising quarters, and the garden variety, blue blood, subtle aspersions cast throughout the confirmation process. Brandeis’ tenure brought not only a revitalized progressivism to the court, it ignited in him a passionate embrace of  identity and its national aspirations in the emerging movement of Zionism.

The nomination of Elena Kagan evokes the usual, and some idiosyncratic criticisms from both the Conservative opposition and the unrequited Left. But her seemingly inevitable confirmation will mark a milestone in court composition.  For the first time, this bastion of the protestant-anglo-androgenic establishment will be comprised of 6 Catholics and 3 Jews.  Much has been made of other possible bloc configurations, especially of women and New Yorkers. But the totality of this ascension of the formerly excluded to the ultimate star chamber is an apt accompaniment to the Age of Obama and the dawning demographics of diversity.

To be certain, ethnicity alone is insufficient qualification for membership on this, the ultimate juridical baseball team.  But despite the rants and raves against Sotomayor’s celebration of Latina judiciousness, the need for a variety of life experiences and cultural perspectives on SCOTUS is unquestionable.

For the first three-quarters of our nation’s history, the descendants of the Ur-WASP core of colonial founders wielded unchallenged power and influence over a country of increasing size and evolving ethnicity.  Its control of the national narrative and myth was so complete that it seemed to most that the powdered-wig and bodice bound were the true native Americans resisting an encroaching hoard of savages sweeping down continent from the Aleutians.

Much is made of the critical notion that America’s strength lies in its ability to transcend race, religion and background to forge a unified sense of shared citizenship.  That is undeniable.  But the true power of that shared identity comes from the many strands of particularism and subjectivity that reflect the views of the previously excluded or more recently emancipated.

Though Catholics and Jews had dissimilar roles and experiences in Europe and in America, they share a history of derision from our founding caste and the pall of suspicion concerning divided loyalties.  And so it is time for the sons of Luther and Henry to give way to the progeny of Peter and Moses to bring the law down from the marble mountain of our shared moral patrimony.

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Radbam April 29th, 2010

Amidst the hype and hysteria generated by the rightward political pandering of the Arizona Legislature,  satire, as usual, caught the moment best.  Seth Meyer’s SNL Weekend Update observation (see above) that it is a staple of WWII movies for the dastardly gestapo officer to query the hero with “Show me your papers?” proved as funny as it was illustrative.  Not that the good citizens of Arizona should be rightly compared to Nazis, typical of the current climate of rhetorical hyperbole, but I’m just saying….

I often listen to rightwing radio as a kind of aerobics of indignation, never failing to increase heart rate and blood pressure as new and distinct muscles clench in restrained tension.  The Hannitizer was berating a liberal Hispanic listener whose passion paralleled his ignorance, a quality shared by seemingly all carnivorous consumers of the conservative echo chamber regardless of party affiliation.  The Han-Man’s defense of the bill to his stuttering victim:  Read the bill.  Ok Sean…

ARTICLE 8. ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS

Cooperation and assistance in enforcement of immigration laws; indemnification

…B. FOR ANY LAWFUL CONTACT MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON…

Despite protestations by supporters that other elements of the existing law mitigate against racial profiling, in practice abuses and assumptions will reign as opinions inevitably vary as to what is “reasonable”  If you are in Phoenix DWB (Driving While Brown), you are more likely to be stopped, questioned and impressed for your papers than if you are a blond, blue-eyed Swede from Fargo.  Hell, after 3 days in the Scottsdale sun, my Ashkenazi Jewish family might prove suspect!

It is trite but worth reiterating how this country was built by immigrants, and how Emma Lazarus’ epic poem at the base of Lady Liberty enshrines the iconic ideal of “America The Refuge.”  And it is a tired but true and poignant irony that the last generation of immigrants are often the first to want the gates closed behind them.

And yes, most of our greenhorn grandparents came in legally and assimilated more quickly than recent migrations. But the dynamics of the culture and the economy are more complex and diffuse than before, requiring an exploitation of and dependence upon a level of migrant labor that would have made 17th century indentured servitude seem humane by comparison.  Yesterday’s thousands of seamstresses toiling away in the Lower East Side seem quaint in scope in relation to the hundreds of thousands of hispanics picking fruit, washing dishes and working gardens in the Southwest.

But one thing has not changed:  We need these folks to work the jobs none of us want to do.  Not the laid off auto-worker from Flint, Michigan,  not the outsourced tele-marketer from Overland, Kansas, and not the cast off WalMart checker from Tallahassee, Florida.  And equally unchanged is the hypocritical demonization of this vulnerable group by the politically needy and the frustrated, nativist working class.  When the Good Book lauded by so many on the anti-immigration right talks about caring for the stranger as it does often and emphatically, it’s talking to you!

Just today, British PM Gordon Brown’s politically suicidal but morally genuine rebuke of blue collar bigotry and the sentencing of Iowa Kosher Agribusiness Boss Sholom Rubashkin for violation of immigration law bordering on human rights abuse reflect the intensity of feeling surrounding this issue, an anger easily amplified into prejudice and violence if left unchecked.

Our legal system seeks to bring dispassionate process to the implementation of policy in ways that are least restrictive of civil rights.   The recent move by the Arizona Legislature is antithetical to thoughtful deliberation, invoking the bias and bombast of the cultural moment amidst a debate requiring reason and vision. Let’s hope the courts can douse Sunbelt sensationalism with the cool waters of constitutional authority.

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Radbam April 19th, 2010

If a fetus screams in space...?

Committing to principle in shifting moral and argumentative circumstances requires staunch character.  To do so within the maelstrom of politics mutated by vampiric media demands an almost biblical rootedness.  One of the tenets of more moderate, normative pro -choice advocates is that abortion is not preferable, but should remain a woman’s right.  As former President Bill Clinton waxed to poll tested effect, abortion should be “safe, legal and rare.”

Many who are pro-choice (myself included) are most comfortable with volitional abortion prior to the end of the first trimester, the threshold established by Roe v. Wade.  The notion, morally and theologically if not legally, concerns fetal viability v.s.  a woman’s control over her body and destiny.  In essence, when does the “personhood” of the fetus assert itself against the status of the mother to terminate it?

Thus, the recent action of the Nebraska legislature tries devotion to principle when met with the perversions of politics. It’s less the legislation itself, a knee jerk response to those supporting murdered Kansas physician George Tiller, than the medical and moral implications of moving the viability calendar back to 22 weeks based on incipient pain research.

The great struggle for principled pro-choicers is to consider the implications of medical revelations in conceding the merits of limiting abortion while acknowledging that the champions of this legislation see it as but the first step in a process of wedges and slippery slopes toward an absolute prohibition.  Those of us who seek a common ground of even commoner sense and thoughtful discourse would feel a bit more comfortable if there were any signs of moderation on the other side. Unfortunately, most pro-lifers rally the troops behind the party line of zygotic life with no exceptions for heinous circumstance.

In the current era of political bloodsport, reductive reasoning and an ill-informed polis abetted by a jingoistic media, can there be a forum for considered moral debate based on emerging science?  What do you think?

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Radbam April 13th, 2010

Blotter art of "The Creator"

From the Greeks through Hegel and beyond, incisive students of history have observed how progress seems cyclical, resisting the neat, linear path of increasing sophistication that our collective contemporary ego prefers. Recently, we seem to have dusted off the dynamics of 40 years ago for review and replay.  An involvement in active military conflict, divisive culture war that appears irreconcilable and pressing movements toward a broadening of civil rights (gay marriage) conspire to bear out the axiom, “The more things change…”

Yesterday’s Times offered the cherry on the top of this nostalgia confection.  The spirit of Timothy Leary calls out from within and beyond (his cremains were literally shot into space) as psychologists once again explore the clinical value of hallucinogens.  Though perverted from this original intent by the loopy excesses of Leary and countless refugees from the Hippie Haven on Haight St., this recent foray offers real hope for a sober scientific investigation into medicinal benefits for varieties of mental affliction.

An intriguing religious aspect of this renewed journey into the center of the mind has been documented by the emerging field of neurotheology:  Brainscans indicate the similarity between areas affected by intoxication and those in the throes of intense spiritual experience.  The dissolving of ego and awareness of a Grand Unity mark both phenomena. Leary’s theologizing of LSD has now been grounded in hard science, rather than exploited merely as excuse for megalomaniacal licentiousness.

So what is the more genuine approach?  The more effective?  Is taking the Jefferson Airplane’s Carroll-inspired pill a legitimate pathway to enlightenment or a spiritual slacker’s shortcut to easily-obtained nirvana?  And before we throw stones of self-satisfaction, beware the glass of the growing acceptance of Prozac as pathway to mental health over the laborious, time-consuming and expensive talking cure that launched a thousand couches of pampered practitioners.  Not everyone is in need of psychotherapy, and few can handle the intensity of mystical union. But let’s say we could counter the dangers of reckless, recreational use in a controlled, balanced scientific or ritual context (see thousands of years of indigenous practice). If Prozac and Xanax are legitimate avenues toward mental health for some in need, why aren’t magic mushrooms an acceptable embrace of divine mystery for those who want? What do you think?

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Radbam April 5th, 2010

Does it matter who they see?

In the run up to the observance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), the Times’ Sunday Magazine ran a glancingly-revealing expose of the life and work of Roman Vishniac. Though the renowned Jewish photographer did not document the Holocaust with Night and Fog gruesomeness, his poignant record of soon-to-be annihilated Polish Jews rendered him, in the words of The New Republic’s Leon Wieseltier, as “the official mortuary photographer of Eastern European Jewry.”

In pouring over Vishniac’s archives in preparation for an upcoming exhibition, a both well kept but seemingly well known secret emerges:  Vishniac was more myth-making artist than impartial historian. While his images document real people in real circumstances, his augmentation of his own story and his embellished memories of his subjects seems to have stirred controversy.

As the article indicates, this says less about Vishniac’s bone fides than post-Holocaust Jewry’s longing for nostalgia and narrative.  The “vanished” world he captured may have been selective, unrepresentative and crafted to convey sentiment and evoke guilt from fortunate survivors. Does this matter?  In her pamphlet Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag observes that photographs are “both objective record and personal testimony, both a faithful copy or transcription of an actual moment in reality and an interpretation of that reality–a feat literature has long aspired to, but could never attain in this literal sense.”

One genre of literature seems to come close:  sacred scripture.  Professing both a basis in reality and a transcendent power, sacred texts tell us something about who we are and who we could be. Jung, Campbell and Eliade (amongst others) have fairly convincingly analyzed the critical cultural and spiritual need for myth as conveyance of ideals that contextualize history, empower the present and inspire hope through the most daunting and deadly existential gauntlets.

Is Vishniac’s art most significant as attestation of what was or inspiration for what could and what must be?  Does his creative license diminish the power of his work or elevate him to the pantheon of the most exalted preservers of the Jewish people?

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Radbam March 22nd, 2010

The latest Pew survey on religion only adds to the mystery and mayhem inherent in determining the faith life of Americans, especially the young.  And so, my literary efforts at in-the-trenches reportage from last year (see book sold above) were not merely a vanity project (well…not only), but an apt reflection of larger trends confirmed by science (well…social science, but work with me).

This recent revelation concerning the media-manufactured demographic millennials , superficially spun in the attached CNN piece, only confirms what we already knew: The young don’t believe much or attend much when it comes to faith communities. But two interesting bits of statistical static stand out.

First, there’s a glimmer of hope for rank religious romantics like me in the realization that the young of previous eras were similarly diluted of faith. Gen Xers and Boomers shared the pre-30 skepticism of those coming of age in the time of Dubya. As they aged, and not-coincidentally matured, contempt for its own sake morphed into faith for growing family’s sake.   I guess the Yippie Yogi Jerry Rubin was right.  You can’t trust a God-lover over 30.

And the other faithful factoid posed an understandable hypocrisy:  Youthful skepticism ends on the outskirts of the afterlife.  Despite the ubiquitous, cliche sense of invincibility attributed to the young, there are as few young atheists crouching within existential foxholes as those of us for whom ash, dust and finitude are less abstract.

Rumors of the demise of God  have been greatly exaggerated. Ask Nietzsche or the cover editor of Time in the 60’s.

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Radbam March 8th, 2010

Figure 2: Pacelli (center) at the ignominious signing ceremony of the Reichskonkordat {Wikipedia: German National Archives}

In my usual, quick quotidian scan of the Times, the articles on Judaism, Israel and the Grateful Dead usually stand out for deeper reading.  Most of us need these filters, for how much mental energy can we really devote to the Nigerian coup-of-the-moment or the latest Avatar-inspired fodder for Fashion Week. And so this morning’s bizarre piece about a self-described “shlmiel” retiree who moonlights as a papal knight and apologist for the allegedly MIA Pius XII during WWII drew considerable interest.

I’m not sure what it takes to become a source of Swiss Guard sycophancy these days, but I bet the bar is pretty high for a Krupp from Queens, and garnering pet scan machines for an Italian hospital just doesn’t quite seem to cut it.  Far more compelling for a Vicar of Rome increasingly set on a regressive agenda inclusive of this controversial canonization would be to elevate an ordinary-schmo-of-a-Jewish-spokesman with claims of scholarly support.

In an era of increasing concern about the breakdown of Catholic/Jewish relations and the repudiation of the progress since Vatican II, the lauding and exploitation of this well-meaning but clearly over-his-head refugee from a Deli breakfast klatch is, as Krupp might characterize it, a shanda.

There is a longstanding figure in Jewish history, our version of an Uncle Tom or the “House Negro,” called the Court Jew.  He supported the agenda and standing of the gentile monarch, represented his patron to the Jewish community, often against its best interests, and profited handsomely in coin and station.   Even those who sought nobler purpose could too easily buy into their own hype. And while I’m sure Gary Krupp believes he is doing his part for peace and reconciliation between historic antagonists, the seductions of this last bastion of awe-inspiring, divinely-sanctioned royalty could cloud the discernment of even the most modest of souls.

If the current resident of St. Peter’s truly aspires to promote Pius while resolving troubling concerns about his actions (or lack thereof) during the Holocaust, immediate access to all pertinent Vatican records would serve this cause far more thoroughly and honestly than trotting out suburban semites.  Suspicions borne of silence cannot be quelled by even the most unassuming of the sons of Abraham.

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