A Double-Edged Sword, Part 1

Three plus years ago it so happened that I learned a number of college-educated, liberal, professional people in this country--people I consider my peers--look down on me because of my religion, and they look down on Judaism. Now, they always may have done so, but I hadn't faced it. Because of the times I was fortunate enough to be born in, I maintained the illusion that only uneducated, ignorant people had such prejudices. I didn't know such beliefs were widely held and even widely taught, although once I learned this was so, it did explain a lot. The confrontation with this reality launched me into a course of study and a journey into community--or communities. (But luckily, I learned to love the studying and learning. And I need the people, too!)

At first the problem seemed to be that the Christians I met were learning a lot of erroneous information about Jews in Jesus' time. For example, a Living the Questions course taught that Jesus was like a civil rights leader, and all the Jewish leaders were the bad guys--analogous to segregationists. Well, maybe there could be a few good ones but mostly not. Brian McLaren taught in Everything Must Change that there were four categories of Jewish leaders, all either clownishly stupid, ineffective, or corrupt, who didn't know what to do about anything. Only Jesus knew what to do. The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault, on Christian mysticism, taught that Jesus proclaimed a beautiful, wild, free, deep truth; rabbis in contrast were teaching rigid legalism, all the while running around telling the people not to listen to Jesus. John Dear, a Jesuit priest being interviewed in Sun Magazine said that Jerusalem was the heart of evil of the Roman Empire. The priests in the Temple were extorting the people to get money for the Emperor. Deepak Chopra (not a Christian, but writing for them) said in The Third Jesus that the priests were subjugating the people. He thinks--or at least, wrote--that Jews invented original sin and saw nature as punishment via toil and suffering, that their relationships were enforced by religious obligations which their angry god demanded, that Jews constantly feared Satan (although with his view of "the Jewish God," that sounds redundant). He wrote that Jesus came to free people from being trapped in such a hell on earth, and, further, that Christians who are misguided (according to him) have forgotten Jesus and relapsed into those allegedly Jewish beliefs. Joseph Campbell, similarly, wrote that ancient Mideastern Israelite beliefs blocked the spiritual truths that were later revealed through Christ. People who cannot see Christ's true message are trapped in those snares (Thou Art That). Educated, religiously inclined people from the Christian tradition whom I met in diverse settings commonly believe and insist that Jews in Jesus' time didn't want to bury their dead or even take care of the sick because of purity issues. And so on.

Early on, I knew almost nothing about Judaism, yet enough to know that whatever those writers, intellectuals, and teachers were talking about, it was not Judaism. So it seemed I could simply speak up and correct these gross misconceptions. But it didn't work. It is very sticky. These are not misconceptions that people want to give up. They seem attached to these beliefs. They will quote Leviticus, they will quote Marcus Borg. This is tantamount to claiming that they are not only experts on Christianity but also, as they apparently believe, experts on Judaism. And so, to them, any disagreement apparently means it's I who am being defensive. And even stickier: not only am I being defensive; if I'm contradicting their beliefs about Judaism, I must be attacking Christianity. Just for saying what Christians say about Jews is wrong, I could be--the enemy of the Church!

Then the plot thickens. At the same time that I was being impacted by people's ideologies about the first century of the common era, I was hearing surprisingly similar or parallel teachings about the country of Israel nowadays. Israel is practicing apartheid. Israel is a theocracy. People in Israel who are not Jews are mistreated and have no rights. Israel's existence is based on imperialism. Also, Zionists were opportunistic European imperialists. The 1967 war was a preemptive war for territory. The European Jews were devilishly superhuman even to be able to survive (much less thrive) in their new locale. They have gone about destroying the cultural heritage and artifacts of Palestinians. They could and should stop the occupation unilaterally. While a two-state solution is better than the current situation, Israel really should never have been created and should not be there. Its being there may bring about an apocalypse that liberal Christians say conservative Christians are seeking to actualize. Before the state of Israel was created, there was peace in the region. Because of deception by Jews via the Jewish lobby, Israel is given huge amounts of money just so they can bully their neighbors. The Jews by their control of Hollywood in particular have put forth a successful propaganda effort that has wrongly convinced America that the creation of Israel represented justice, but "if America only knew" the truth, they would all condemn Israel just like the rest of the world does.

"If America only knew" has been the theme of recent liberal anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian talking points from the liberal church, and "If Americans Knew" is the nonprofit organization and website of journalist and lecturer Alison Weir (not to be confused with the British author and historian of the same name). If Americans Knew consists of what has become the familiar anti-Israel polemic and more. For an example of what I mean by "more," I found there a lengthy article by Ms. Weir to the effect that Jews are capturing Palestinians to harvest their organs for the underground organ trade which they, through a conspiracy, are concealing. In case the reader thinks that sounds like the classic antisemitic blood libel against Jews, Ms. Weir claims that during the middle ages, Jews did kill Christians and use their blood, in reprisal for Christian persecution of Jews. One wonders what kind of a guilty conscience those accusations hide.

Reviewing this litany of what I heard about Jews and Israelis in church and through church, I must mention two more. First, Rev. Naim Ateek, a Palestinian Christian now in the US who, under the auspices of his so-called peace organization, Sabeel, teaches his pro-Palestinian position via the classic Jews-as-Christ-killers motif. Second, the tragic case of Rachel Corrie, the International Solidarity Movement protester who was killed in Gaza in 2003 while trying to block a bulldozer under disputed circumstances. Her supporters in demanding justice and truth claim that she was intentionally killed, again according to the Christ-killing motif. I, too, want the truth, but fear her supporters will claim a whitewash unless their version of the truth, which they have already accepted, is vindicated.

What I'm saying is that the above beliefs and similar ones are being spread through liberal churches today. They are not all being taught from the pulpit, but they or related material is being taught through Sunday school and generally communicated and reinforced through church networks and ministries. The framework which underlies these beliefs and points of view is being taught. The view of Jesus as a social justice leader taken out of his context and played against a supposed unjust and evil Jewish society in which the people were suffering under exploitative leaders is being widely accepted as literal history. It forms a framework for viewing ancient Judaism as well as modern international politics.

What is being taught in churches is important. Malcolm Gladwell, writing in the October 4, 2010, issue of The New Yorker ("Small Change--Why the revolution will not be tweeted"), argues that change does not stem from casual notifications via social networks. It comes not from such casual contacts but from deliberate teaching and planning. His example was the use to which black churches were put during the Civil Rights era. But the new historical and sociological understanding that social actions arise not spontaneously but intentionally does not apply only to positive movements like Civil Rights. For example, the Leo Frank lynching in 1915: We used to think of that lynching as a spasm of mob violence, but now it's known that men who were pillars of the community deliberately planned and carried it out (And the Dead Shall Rise, by Steve Oney). Another example of the planned and orchestrated nature of social movements masquerading as spontaneous: the money and planning of David and Charles Koch, the billionaire libertarian businessmen exposed as being behind the ostensibly spontaneous Tea Party movement in Jane Mayer's "Covert Operations," The New Yorker, August 30, 2010.

Right wing beliefs that spread throughout a society are no spontaneous conflagration from the grassroots, nor is the new anti-Judaism a mysterious virus. It is being taught. After WWII and the grisly evidence of the Holocaust, humility regarding Jews was the predominant note throughout Christian America. Not that antisemitism disappeared, but those voices were muted. Progressive, pro-justice movements flourished, and the Civil Rights movement came to fruition. Then, with the passage of decades, the evangelical movement and "Christian right" gathered strength (although not many years before, those millions of people had called themselves "the silent majority"). As the conservative church gained ascendancy, the mainstream, liberal churches were left relatively depleted and hemorrhaging members, with their voices still muted. To some, the "separation barrier" in Israel must have appeared as a wonderful opportunity--if not an antisemite's dream, then an opportunist's dream. All of a sudden, a voice, a purpose, a new cause! Something with which to chastise the Right. New battle lines were drawn, not against injustice in America, this time, but, using Israel, against the competing conservative Christian movement. And only afterwards did the burgeoning theology in support of the new movement, the revisionism, and the plentiful condemnation follow, in justification.

If America only knew!

And not one bit of this is to say that we must not correct injustice in Israel. This post is about the political uses of blame and the scapegoating and the distraction from themselves that people use, and, yes, the hate they nurture. This about the disproportion, so that what they hold up as symbolic genocide is loudly decried while, elsewhere, actual genocide proceeds. This about silence on terrorism. This about silence on the persecution of Christians in the world unless there is some Jewish connection. This is about claiming that Jews are responsible for America-hatred abroad or for the conflict between Islam and Christianity. This about those who, in condemning Israel for putting people behind walls (with forced comparisons to Nazi death camps), forget who actually invented ghettos. This is about justifying hate. Because this is not Judaism or Israel. This is Christianity's own dark side, projected onto others and, here, called "Jews." This is about making someone else the Antichrist--not a bit different than when the right wing does the same to Islam or President Obama.

I am not writing to condemn all Christianity, but I am writing about those aspects of Christianity that have confronted me since late 2007. I very well know and I am so happy that there are Christian writers and teachers who do not promote anti-Judaism, do not want it to be done, and struggle to undo what has been done. Here are some from whom I have learned and who have influenced me: When I read Barbara Brown Taylor there is no odor of anti-Judaism. She teaches that when one people includes another people in their narrative, they are writing fiction. She teaches that one can protest injustice and protest injustice by governments, but must never use the same methods against which they are protesting. James Carroll in Constantine's Sword struggles with the history of Christian antisemitism and how he, himself--a Christian--might relate to Judaism. The New Perspective Christian scholars on Paul are uncovering the truth that what Paul meant was not what the tradition has held up over the years. In other words, not all Christians seek to celebrate and exploit an anti-Jewish scripture but rather some are not only willing but glad to reveal that Paul's original writings have been put into a context in which they were twisted and misunderstood. These are certainly not the only examples, but in three plus years I have at least come into contact with them. And let me not forget Martin Luther King Jr., who never exploited anti-Judaism, for his beloved community included--did it not?--both Jew and Gentile.

Who can you talk to?

A few years ago, we were saving money by canceling our cable or having only some very basic package. Since I don't watch TV much, it took me a while to figure out that we were budgeting according to this method. I discovered it the first time I wanted to watch CNN and it wasn't there, and in my consternation I was surfing to find out exactly what was there. That's when I happened to come across a women's group in progress, on some small Christian station, at the exact moment the facilitator was haranguing one of the participants. She was saying to her repeatedly, "You're arguing with a Pharisee! You're arguing with a Pharisee!" Apparently this group leader was communicating to the woman why and how she was stuck. Something like, "You've punched a tar baby," I guessed. Telling the woman that in fact she was stuck and was in her fix because of whom she had let herself become embroiled with. An unresolvable mess! A bottomless pit!

The particular significance of this story for me is that, according to tradition, at least, the Pharisees gave rise to the ancient Rabbis, who assumed leadership of the Jewish people after the fall of the Temple to the Romans in 70 CE. The Judaism that survived is Rabbinic Judaism. So, you might say, I'm a Pharisee. To me, the Pharisees are good guys, sort of analogous to Church fathers for Christians.

Because of the significance of Pharisees in the Christian tradition that eventually evolved, "pharisee" has come into English with a very different--and not positive--meaning: "hypocrite." Pharisees are supposed to have been the enemies of Jesus, so in our culture the ordinary person on the street will have all sorts of negative characterizations for "pharisee." Actually, though, Jesus was more like the group known as "Pharisees" then he was like the other known groups and classes of the time. Pharisees were not the ones in power in those days. That would have been the high priestly class (Sadducees) and the princely class (Herodians). Pharisees were the liberals and progressives of their day, concerned about the poor, the widow, and the stranger, etc., and who led "schools" organized in the master-disciple fashion. Nor were they a monolithic group, any more than "liberal Christians" today, albeit defining a cultural group, are monolithic in their beliefs, practices, and lifestyles.

Some scholars think that the enmity between the Pharisees and Jesus described in the New Testament portrays conflict being experienced at the actual time the Gospels were being written that was retrojected back into the stories about Jesus' time. And also as the new Christian tradition grew and tore apart from Judaism, the theological need arose to make all the directions the Jewish leaders might lead the wrong directions--not to mention the political need to control the flock and keep it from straying.

Now isn't that convenient for establishing group boundaries and keeping the right people in and the wrong people out! There are the right people and then again there are the wrong people. As for them, don't even speak to them, much less, argue with them. Keep your distance. Keep up your defenses. Once the "yuck" factor is associated with those wrong people, separation becomes second nature. No one has to police it, since it has become internalized.

And I won't lie; it's the same in reverse. For Jews, Jesus and all things Christian have acquired that same patina of disgust. As with Christians this is not experienced to the same degree in everybody across the board. I hypothesize it may be strongest in large relatively self-sufficient Jewish communities and weaker in the South, where we typically have been more integrated into the general community. I grew up in a liberal Christian community who were kind. It was not so long after the second world war had ended, and those neighbors were sensitive. I had no cousins or grandparents in town and only a limited connection with the Jewish community way across town, but, nevertheless, I will say something of this aversion was instilled in me. No matter how much in those days my parents tried to protect me from knowledge of any prejudice, and no matter how I as a child came to recognize and feel the stigma of being different, something was instilled that protected me from ever wanting to join that majority.

Now take this same principle and apply it more generally. I'm not talking just Christian and Jew anymore. Protestant and Catholic. Muslim and the West. The races. Foreigners. Native people. Immigrants. Not to mention Conservative and Liberal. Even epicurean vs. ascetic. I'm talking "us" and "them" and what we do to "protect" ourselves and automatically wall out "the other."

Here's some interesting research I came across: Some subjects in an experiment were primed with words or odors associated with disgust, while other subjects were not primed in that way. Both groups were shown some rather innocuous individuals doing and saying innocuous things. Those people who were primed to feel disgust judged the individuals they were shown more harshly. In other words, according to these results, the emotions ("passions") come first, the intellectual conclusions follow. If you are interested, this experiment was done by a psychologist named Jonathan Haidt, who has been working with philosophers on the question of how we make moral judgments.

Now, back to our religions, our races, our politics. In those polarities, no one has to manipulate the situation to associate disgust with "the other" since it comes pre-installed with the package! I am not talking about something abstract or in your head. Disgust is visceral. And another aspect of this is that it's easy to see that dynamic in your adversaries, not so easy to admit to it in oneself. It's quite easy to see how this works in others, that others are reactive and under the control of their passions. Those pesky others--they're so subject to manipulation! They are downright irrational! Something comes to mind here about the speck in the other person's eye and the log in my own.

What to do? Why should the disgust we project onto the "other" even be a subject of interest? For instance, if I happen to be in a dominant group in our society, why should I care? Wouldn't I be like the incumbent in a campaign who doesn't particularly want to have a debate? If I admit to such concerns, wouldn't I have everything to lose and nothing to gain? Well, for one thing, even if I'm the majority in one area (say, Caucasian), I may be a minority in the next area (Jew). Or I'm soon going to be a minority (Caucasian!). Or, say I love or care about somebody in a minority or marginalized group. Or say I want to influence somebody in another group--I'm going to need to empathize. Or, what if, as they say, hate hurts the hater worse than the "hatee." A belly full of various shades of disgust for others makes for indigestion, and certainly all our religious or ethical traditions weigh in on these matters. Love your neighbor as yourself. Do unto others.... At some point we are going to have to behave like adults!

How to dissipate disgust? Remember the 1985 movie The Breakfast Club? The "jock," the "brain," the "hippie," the "princess," and the "thug" have to spend all day together. The movie is about the transformation that occurs. At the beginning they all hate each other. At the end a modern miracle has occurred. Each comes to see he or she has a little bit of all those others in herself or himself. The "otherness" has been transmuted into a common humanity. They are family.

Maybe all this otherness, this alienation and polarization should not exist. I was idealistic and didn't want it to. I stuck my head in the sand. I guess I was waiting for things to change, or for somebody else to change them. Time it was a-passing and I wasn't getting any younger. It has only been in facing people as they really are that I can sometimes engage. If I want to do something about the barriers that exist, I had to come up against them, kicking and screaming though I may be.

Birds sing; people talk. Talk to each other!

More on Walls and Security

The other day I was writing about walls and I wanted us to look at ourselves. Today (Friday, Aug. 13, 2010), I got some of what I asked for when assistant professor Eric C. Sands in the Department of Government and International Studies at Berry College wrote a guest column for the morning paper: "Restore balance of liberty, security." He complained specifically about his students and himself having to put up with guards, checkpoints, passes, and alternative entrances at our political and cultural landmarks. He decried our "siege mentality." He criticized our elected officials for being fearful out in public. He referred to the "anti-incumbent sentiment" sweeping the country, implying that their fearfulness might justify voting them out and someone else in. He did refer to changes since 9/11, but he thought our elected representatives lacked courage, comparing them unfavorably to the patriot Nathan Hale who, at his execution, said he regretted having only one life to give for his country.

So, Eric Sands did take a look at walls and security, but it was a negative look. He blamed the people and institutions using them for erring on the side of fearfulness. He thinks we as a society have an imbalance of security and freedom.

But I don't think the demand for security is going to go away. Not after school massacres, courtroom shootings, the killing of the security guard at the Holocaust museum, and killings of people at work or while filling up at gas stations or giving directions to a stranger. Not with more and more people authorized to walk around with guns and more and more places where they can carry them. We used to go to Canada and Mexico without passports; now we need them. We used to be able to board airplanes without taking our shoes off and without cramming all our lotions and potions into quart-sized baggies. Who is going to ask us, from our celebrities and elected officials down to you and me, to give up our safety? Eric Sands may ask it in general, but would he ask his own family and friends to take unnecessary risks? We have our police and armed forces who do volunteer to face danger, and, by the way, Nathan Hale was an officer and spy in the Revolutionary War. Telling us to pretend there is no danger won't work. I heard anger and frustration in Eric Sand's column but no answers as to how to restore the balance, as he puts it.

What, then, could we do as a society and as individuals to lessen the need for walls, security, and bullet-proof vests?

First we might consider how not to be part of the problem. Blaming and pointing fingers is not a solution. If I blame and condemn you, then are you not more likely to build a wall to defend yourself? And, next, whenever you get the chance, won't you poke your head out from behind your wall to take your potshots at me? Then I'll have to reinforce my own wall. And so on. We are just being part of the problem.

I recognize that there are prophetic voices. There is good and there is evil. An issue can be so well delineated that the truth becomes undeniable. For example, the critical mass that was reached when Senator Joseph McCarthy was successfully confronted and his lies became self evident and stopped working. But most of the time, in conflicts large and small, from marital conflicts all the way to polarized segments of society, warring parties want to pin the evil on each other. They think it will work to simply make the opponent admit to being wrong. They think they can change things by making the opponent change.

Dennis and I studied a book last year called The Anatomy of Peace, Resolving the Heart of Conflict, by The Arbinger Institute. According to this book, you cannot make peace unless your own heart is at peace. It's not the circumstances in which you find yourself, it's whether your heart is at peace. The key concept is seeing others as people, not objects. Peace begins by seeing that the other party has feelings just like I do, and--literally--putting myself in his or her place. Peace begins by seeing the other party is an individual, not a faceless stereotype. Peace begins when I put the person--and truth--ahead of the story I want to promulgate. If I want peace, I've got to put myself into my opponent's situation.

The story is set at a fictional Camp Moriah, where a Muslim and a Jew facilitate a group of parents of very troubled teenagers who are going to participate in the camp. If the parents cannot get out of a position of blame and condemnation toward their own children, the aims of the camp experience will ultimately fail. The instructors have achieved a level of peace which they have to get the parents to share, for the sake of their children. The book is both a story and an instruction manual.

The book deals with the common misconception that the peacemaker is weak. Quite the contrary, with a heart at peace, the retiring person may become more forceful, and the overbearing person more tolerant. Nor does it matter where you find yourself or what you're doing. The determinant is where your heart is, therefore, how you're doing what you're doing. Also, whether you indeed are called to be doing something, as, in the book, the group of parents are. And, finally, whether what you have tried has not worked and you know it.

For these hypothetical parents in the book, something very large is at stake--their children. What good will it do them to protect themselves via a self-justifying story while their children go down the tubes? For the sake of their children these parents will dismantle their walls, their protective barriers, if they can see that is the way.

On the Uses and Misuses of Religio-Political Metaphor

Some of you will recognize "security wall" or "separation barrier" as a ubiquitous new religious metaphor. You may have noticed it popping up everywhere. For example, in February, 2009, Bishop John Shelby Spong said about Jesus that "he appeared to need no security barrier behind which to hide." More recently, last month in the AJC (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, for the uninitiated), in a position paper arguing that Georgia should continue to ban guns in places of worship, the Rev. Patricia Templeton, rector of St. Dunstan's Episcopal Church, said, "Fear is isolating. Fearful people build barricades."

This past Monday (Aug. 9, 2010), the principal of Stone Mill Elementary School was attacked and robbed and had her arm broken as she arrived at school at 6:45 AM on the first day of school. It so happens that's the neighborhood I work in--Stone Mountain/East Ponce de Leon/Memorial Drive. In short order we received an email message reminding us of the latest safety tips and urging us to keep ourselves and our co-workers safe. No one suggested that this message was isolating or was the wrong-headed message of inappropriately fearful people.

I consult with a large state agency. It sits in a grassy estate with extensive parking areas in front and behind. It is in a bad neighborhood. It is surrounded by a security fence. You need a key card to get through the parking gate.

How many people would hesitate to help their aging parents put in the latest alarm system? Who would not help their young-adult child living in a transitional neighborhood install an improved bolt lock?

What if people looked at themselves before using their religion to scold other people?

Speaking of scolding, I recently read an essay targeting the "Prosperity Gospel" of such preachers as Creflo Dollar in favor of being as "the lilies of the field." This author was an upper-middle-class sort of person, and I bet that upon reading the essay, not a single compatriot seriously considered cashing in his or her retirement account or firing the broker. I would think the Rev. Dollar's followers, on the other hand, are more likely to be the have-nots who want to get a little piece of the pie. Maybe they need more of a work ethic and a way to get there.

Notwithstanding that Creflo Dollar is an easy and tempting target, I wish people wouldn't use their religion to bash other people over the head!

What happened to looking into your own heart?

Gang Colors and Religious Insignia 3--The Sign of the Pig

The other day I had an invitation to eat at The Iberian Pig. Now this gave me pause. For Reform Jews, the degree of kashrut followed is a matter of conscience, but even prior to the last three years I was thinking about not eating pork, ever since reading Annie Proulx's That Old Ace in the Hole. That book brought home the terrible stinking grossness of hog farming. Being down wind of one was intolerable, people were ill, and the water table was being contaminated. Can you get free-range pigs?

In medieval Spain and Portugal, with the Inquisition breathing down their necks, Jews had to pass as Christians and do such things as keep lard on the boil on their porches--or display hams in their windows at Easter (and, of course, eat them). The Inquisition (short for "The Holy Inquisition Against Depraved Heresy") was supposed to concern itself only with rooting out Christian heresy. But since Jews were being forced to convert on pain of death, they would continue to practice Judaism secretly. "Pig" paired with "Iberian" brings that history to mind in a way that the local barbecue pit does not.

I don't think for a minute that this local Decatur restaurateur has any notion of the Inquisition. Nevertheless I felt out of place under the sign of the pig. I don't want to flaunt who I am. I just don't want to be anywhere that I have to pretend I'm not me or possibly celebrate the heritage of the Inquisition.

Going to church with Dennis does not present me with that same problem. I participate as I can; everyone knows very well that I'm a Jew. I have participated in the monthly lunches--not a problem. But the spring barbecue on the front lawn under the pig-mascot sign? Not for me!

An invitation from loved ones is a horse of another color--not something to discard lightly. But The Iberian Pig won't be my choice for a return visit.

By the way, according to Geraldine Brooks in People of the Book, church and crown were not too picky about who came under the purview of the Inquisition. The military campaign to drive the Muslims out of the peninsula had been very expensive. So much the better when someone, whether converso or Christian, could be charged and convicted of heresy. The unfortunate individual's property would be confiscated and go toward refilling the crown's coffers.

Addendum, Sept. 10, 2010
I think some Christians are beginning to "get" this pig thing. The news this past week as been about the Gainesville, Florida, preacher who was planning to burn the Qur'an and throw in some pork for good measure. It has become an international incident. Apparently this is also the time of the year when some churches hold pig roasts. (Shades of Sukkot, the Feast of Booths?) A friend was going on and on about all the "Pigs on Fire" church cook-outs he was planning to attend, when someone lightly commented she wasn't too thrilled with his term "ecclesiastical barbecue" right now.

When it was just us Jews, Christians did not have to experience confrontation by a pluralistic world. They have us so outnumbered that they can avoid that confrontation--just say it doesn't mean anything, and by the way, why are you so over-sensitive, get over it. Muslims--a different story.

Gang Colors and Other Religious Insignia--2

I was going to participate in breaking the daily fast on the first day of Ramadan on Monday, September 1, 2008, with the women's interfaith book club at Charis. The three Muslim women had recommended we wear some kind of head covering, saying it didn't matter what kind. So I had phoned and asked if they would be offended if I wore a kippah, and they said not at all.

A kippah is a head covering some Jews wear to indicate reverence for God. Some say it is worn as a reminder there's something "above" the wearer. Perhaps you've heard of yarmulka. That used to be the more common term. Yarmulka is Yiddish; kippah is Hebrew.

Back in the '50's and early '60's at the Temple, no one wore a kippah. American Reform Judaism at that point in time was rejecting such traditions; they were not considered "modern" or suitably integrationist. When I showed up again over 40 years later, everything had changed. A number of men were wearing kippot. So were women, which was unheard of before. The old tradition had been enlivened. Society had changed, too; people had become proud of their ethnicity.

So I put on my kippah. My hair was still long. I pulled it back and bobby-pinned the kippah on the back of my head. It was winter-white with blue and purple stripes in a roughly circular design. My then-25-year-old son came by the house. I felt a little embarrassed but I guess he took it in stride. My children were raised before I rediscovered Judaism.

I got in my car and drove to the bookstore. It felt risky when I got out of the car, but it's only a few steps to the door. Inside, I still felt awkward with my kippah on. It didn't help that I hadn't finished the book for the evening (Qur'an and Woman by Amina Wadud). I was over-committed, of course--when am I not?--but what did that mean except that I had deemed this book less worthy of my time? It also meant I had little to contribute. Then the Muslim women led us in the "breakfast." This was turning out to be one of those times I feel stilted and apart and couldn't fix it. The hat didn't help. Although they had asked me to wear a head covering, I felt like I was grandstanding.

Outside afterward, that vulnerable feeling again! Glad to jump into my car, drive home, take it off! I need to fill up my rituals with meaning before I perform them. Also, this was a mail-order kippah with a pointy look to it. One of the new gently rounded ones, like little circles, would work better. As with any clothing, you will feel better if what you're wearing is in style. And no grandstanding for me; I will not show up at your church wearing a kippah unless I'm wearing one at my synagogue!

One other thought. I said I felt odd and isolated wearing the kippah. Well, if I set myself apart, shouldn't I expect to be targeted? I've heard something like that twice in the last three years, from separate cross-sections of liberal white religious but post-Christian Atlanta. That's enough to think it's a pattern. Here's one example: "Now, Jan, if you, Dennis and I went to some foreign country and kept to ourselves with our own customs, couldn't we anticipate persecution?" That one was from a minister (and a Buddhist), arm around my shoulder, confidingly. Spoken as though by someone who's above it all. The other source was less creepy.

It turns out this sentiment surfaced during the French National Assembly circa 1789 in the struggle to ratify the Declaration of the Rights of Man. The reactionary view was that Jews should not have civil rights because--for one reason--they had excluded themselves and did not mingle with society. The liberal answer was that they were forced by law to live apart! In other words, the issue was legal segregation, not ethnic customs. Blessedly we don't have legal segregation these days, but I think "You should expect to be persecuted because you set yourself apart" actually refers to how Christian theology sets Jews apart for not accepting Christianity, not to the circumstance of Jews' having our own customs. My hypothesis is supported by the otherwise general liberal embrace of immigrants and ethnicity. It's also supported by the fact that culturally assimilated Jews have not been immune from hateful attitudes--or persecution.

Gang Colors and Religious Insignia--1

Oh my God, those earrings--are they the Muslim design, whatever it's called?

A quick look in the 1st place I could think of, the printed list of symbols for use with obituaries and available in every day's paper tells me, yes, the star and crescent, that is the familiar Muslim symbol.

I have had this pair of earrings for years. Fifteen? Twenty? They have never been a frequent choice because of the color, an unshiny, almost greenish gunmetal gray. They are thin, inch-and-a-quarter crescent-moon-shaped pendants with a small five-point star hanging from the top horn. Each moon is decorated with a vaguely fruit-looking geometric design. I couldn't say where I bought them but remember I did buy them. They were not a gift. To me they had always been reminiscent of that fairy-tale man-in-the-moon sleepy-time motif. They had come up in my mind today as a possibility for the outfit I'd put on. It was then that the Muslim connection hit me.

I'm a Jew but for the 1st 60-plus years of my life it would never have occurred to me that I might be wearing the Islamic symbol. I grew up in Decatur, a suburb of Atlanta where from 1902 until 1932, the public school week was Tuesday through Saturday. Therefore few Jewish families settled there. That was still the case in the 1950s and '60s when I was in school. Although I attended the Temple downtown on Peachtree, the neighborhood ruled, in terms of my identity group. Also, my parents celebrated Christmas and Easter in the secular aspects of those holidays. The only Jewish holiday we celebrated in the home was Chanukah, and even that was limited to reading the prayer and lighting the Menorah. My parents have died, so I've missed the chance to ask them the reason for their choices, but thankfully they held on to their Judaism. They have bequeathed to me a spiritual treasure chest.

The upshot of all this is that for most of my life a Christmas sweater or ornament earrings at the holidays were de rigueur. I thought nothing of it. In my reality, the "Jewish community" didn't exist, until everything changed three years ago. (And how that occurred is another story.) All of a sudden the colors you wear define the camp you're in. Jews do not wear red and green in December. Red's fine; Christians don't have a copyright on the color (although jingle bells and snowflakes--maybe!). For Christians, too, the colors are not insignificant. In a seasonal Sunday-school class I attended last year, someone laughingly but quickly re-framed a woman's royal-blue dress (which was actually pretty close to the color of the Israeli flag, I thought) as "Madonna blue," quickly bringing her within the pale.

All this takes some some thinking about, some careful programming!

So, anyway, I looked up the moon-and-star motif. Yes, the Islamic symbol is known as the star and crescent. No, the motif did not materialize with the Prophet Muhammad. It has featured in various combinations across the world. Like most of our symbols it arose first in a pagan context with the crescent representing, naturally enough, the moon god, and the star, Ishtar. As far back as the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, the crescent and star symbol were found in the environs of ancient Israel, supposedly on Moabite name seals. Coins are a major way we find out about ancient icons. Coins with the star and crescent show up in Byzantium associated with the cults of Mithras and Hecate. Though some scholars think the Muslims took the symbol from the Byzantine empire, others say it was already in use by Turkish states across Asia and by the 400-year-old dynasty and world power that existed in Persia before the coming of Islam. At any rate the star and crescent was not exclusively identified with Islam, as some Byzantine emperors were still using it on their coins during the crusades!

And now, Bing has tons of star/crescent images--including the sleepy man-in-the-moon with star, tattoo patterns, and even crescent-moon Santa Clauses with stars. A Portuguese and a British town include a star-crescent in their coats of arms (although with the crescent on its back and the star hovering above). And of course there's the Shriners' symbol.

And I googled Muslim jewelry but found no star-crescent earrings.

So--will I wear them? I thought I wouldn't, but after working my way through all of this in writing--maybe so! If I'm not confused! And if the place is right! ...But it still may feel weird. Would you? And if you are Muslim, would you be offended? If you think I'm totally neurotic, and if you are a Jew, would you wear a cross? If you are a Christian would you wear a Star of David? What if the symbols were somewhat indeterminate? If you are out of a Christian tradition but not active, would you wear a cross? If you are a Jew but not practicing, would you wear a Star of David? A Chai?

A dream

Yesterday I had a mini-dream--that is, hypnogogic, the ones that last just a few seconds while you're falling asleep but you don't quite fall all the way. It was during a nap that started out restless. Just experiential and visual--no sound, emotions, other sensations. Experience of being...pelted by something. Certainly not stones--too small (and no pain). Not hail or sleet--no cold, and...yes, there's a blue sky. Wait...it's seeds! And maybe there is a light, brushing sensation....
I could have a blog.
Half the time I sit and stare at Facebook. Should I make that post? What would be the use of it? Would it just be a bother?
I do have an idea, although my first experience here seems to be Blogger's Block!