Rabbi Eleanor Steinman

My thoughts are with the people of Haiti who are now suffering with the aftermath of a devastating earthquake.  Reports coming out of the region are of devastation of the capital, Port-au-Prince.  Death tolls are on the rise.

The entire infrastructure of Haiti’s fragile government is in ruins.  The parliament building has collapsed, as have schools and hospitals.  UN officials have been killed, and the Catholic Church is reporting the death of priests.

The most urgent need is for money to supply the organizations on the ground doing the aid work with the supplies that they need.  There are many ways to channel money.  AJWS has a good track record of getting money to the right places in earlier disaster situations.  It is where I will be giving my donations.

This week we read the second Torah portion from Exodus.  Because I was away last week, I didn’t get to write much.  To begin this week, here is something from the URJ and Rabbi Laura Geller I found thought provoking, interesting, and right on the money.

It happened again this week–this time at the gym. Just as I was finishing my workout, someone called to me:
“You’re Rabbi Geller, right?”
“Right.”
“You know what, rabbi? I don’t believe in God.”

It is hard to know how to respond when that happens. Usually I mumble about giving me a call to discuss it. Other times, when I have more time, I ask the person to describe the “god” he or she doesn’t believe in.
Nine times out of ten it is the god that the person first met as a child, the one who looks like an old man with a beard who lives somewhere in the sky and knows if you’ve been bad or good. The person is usually surprised when I say: “You know, I don’t believe in that ‘god’ either.”
The more we talk, the more the person shares how for him, coming to synagogue only reinforces that image of a god. Even our prayer book, gender neutral as it is, seems to support the image of a powerful ruler, delivering us from oppressors and saving us from tyrants. While the words don’t actually say it, this god looks like a king or a powerful father.
I don’t believe in that god either.
This week’s Torah portion begins: “God spoke to Moses . . . . ‘I am the Eternal. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as El Shaddai, but I did not make myself known to them by My name YHVH.’ ”
Here, in the middle of the famous story of Moses and Pharaoh and the plagues is a theological discussion about God’s names. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have one name for God and Moses has another. But what is even more surprising is the fact that that the name YHVH had already been known to Abraham (Genesis 15:7) and Jacob (28:13).
Akedat Yitzchak, cited in Nechama Leibowitz, Studies in Shemot ([Jerusalem: World Zionist Organization, 1981], p.133), explains: “From this it emerges that the text is a pointer not to God’s name but to God’s essence.” In other words, though this name of God had already been revealed to the patriarchs; what is new is the particular experience of God that the name connotes. For Rashi, that experience is of a God who fulfills promises, and it was only with Moses that God fulfilled the promise to redeem the people and bring us to the land of Canaan (Rashi on Exodus 6:2).
Cassuto, in his commentary to Exodus (cited in Studies in Shemot, p.139) suggests that El Shaddai is the God we experience in nature. No one is exactly sure what shaddai means: perhaps “mountains,” perhaps “breasts.” Could El Shaddai be a hint at a feminine description of God? (see The Torah: A Women’s Commentary [New York: URJ Press, 2008] p. 333). Some read the word as a play on El sh’ dai, “the God who is Enough” (see The Chumash, edited by Nosson Scherman [Brooklyn: Mesorah Publications, ArtScroll Series, 1993], p. 319).
The question of God’s name was central in last week’s Torah portion as well. Moses noticed a bush that was burning without being burned up. He stopped, turned around and paid attention (Exodus 3:3). How many others had passed that bush but hadn’t turned to look? We don’t know. We only know that Moses paid attention.
So Moses found God in the Burning Bush. And when Moses asked God to tell him His name, God replied “Ehyeh-Asher-Ehyeh; I will be what I will be” (3:13-14). Ehyeh is the future tense of the verb, to be.
So what is the name YHVH? It seems to be a version of the present tense. It seems to mean: “IS.”
To say God is “IS-ness” is a little different from saying that god is that old man in the sky with the beard.
Imagine how YHVH might be pronounced if we actually pronounced it? It is all sounds of breathing, breathing in, and breathing out. Imagine that one of God’s names is the sound of breathing, and then ask yourself: “How many times today have I said God’s name?”
How many times have you stopped and noticed? The psalmist says: “With every breath, we praise God” (Psalm 150:6).
The challenge is to pay attention, to notice that God is as much a part of us as breathing and as necessary as our own breath.
God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in one way and to Moses in another. The second Torah portion in the book called “Names” (Sh’mot) reminds us that there is one deity with many different names.
Think about the “god” you don’t believe in. Is it that you don’t believe in God or is it that you are stuck on one particular name, one particular metaphor that doesn’t name your experience of God? Might there be a different metaphor, another name that opens up the possibility of encounter with a power grander than yourself, with a web that can connect every person to every other person?
Here are some others: God is the engine that powers the universe and God is the gas in the engine; God is the Internet server that links us all together and the universe is the hardware; God is the ocean and we are the waves.
We know how God appeared to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Moses because they were willing to notice. Are we paying enough attention to notice how God can appear to us?

Well loyal reader, thank you for not abandoning me completely.  After a wonderful time on vacation, as well as a fantastic PARR conference in Palm Springs (not necessarily in that order) I have returned to Toronto.  I had to time to catch up with old friends, see some family, make some new friends and do some great learning while I was away.  During the PARR conference Mark Pelavin from the RAC was the scholar-in-residence.  He raises some great ideas, provided new tools, and I’m feeling even more ready to come home and get to work.

I am taking a few days off and heading out-of-town.  When I return to the blogosphere, time permitting, I will be at a rabbinic conference in Palm Springs.

Thanks, loyal readers and happy 2010!

It was Chairman Mao Zedong who said, “women hold up half the sky.”

Thanks for playing!

Continuity and predictability is crucial in the world we live in today.  Last night, I watched the Kennedy Center Honors which were recorded several weeks ago.  Nothing about the show is a surprise.  Especially when you watch with veterans like me or my sister.  This year, JAS and I watched and were sending one another instant messages throughout, unless something is really good and then we pay attention to the show.  We make the same comments that our grandmother would have made.

“Couldn’t he have shaved?”  “Do you think their mother knows they’re wearing that?”

We are so in tune with the show after so many years we can predict which person will be honored next and this year, were even able to predict how they would do it and who might perform.  This year, we were pretty much right on.  We knew Matthew Broderick was coming on stage for Mel Brooks, we predicted gospel choir and large multi-racial choral groups for the final honoree, obviously Bruce Springstein.  We often complain when the opera stars don’t get enough stage time, which happened again this year, because rock and roll probably gets higher ratings than the immensely talented people performing arias.  This frustrates us to no end, though we still enjoy all of the performances.

JAS is known to cry.  This year proved no different.

See, the beauty of this award show is it is that predictable.  That being a loyal viewer (I even remember one year sitting in a luxury box at the Target Center during a Timberwolves game and watching, this was before they were good) can lend itself to some measure of consistency, at least in an award show that is taped and aired at the end of the calendar year.

NB~JAS named this post and wrote the first line last night at the end of the show.

Yesterday I finished reading Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.  The book details the challenges facing the world and suggests the empowerment of women as a principle means of creating lasting social change based upon grassroots organizing.  They write, “The global statistics on the abuse of girls are numbing.  It appears that more girls have been killed in the last fifty years, precisely because they were girls, than men were killed in all the wars of the twentieth century.  More girls are killed in this routine ‘gendercide’ in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the twentieth-century.”

Through telling individual woman’s stories, there is a most compelling argument for what each individual can do to make the world better.  One of my favorite quotes is, “American feminism must become less parochial, so that it is every bit as concerned with sex slavery in Asia as with Title IX sports programs in Illinois.  It is already making good progress in this respect.  Likewise, Americans of faith should try as hard to save the lives of African women as the lives of unborn fetuses.  In short, all of us need to become more cosmopolitan and aware of global repression based on gender.”

I finished the book feeling inspired to do more to help women around the world.  I still have a few more days to make donations to worthy causes mentioned in the book, and I am inspired to do more research into micro-finance through Kiva.  Apparently, so many other people are doing the same thing that Kiva has no more people in need of a loan.

I was also thinking big.  Like organizing the community here to partner with one of the aid agencies in a specific place and create an exchange that would go beyond sending a check periodically.  Perhaps this could even include correspondence if the program was a literacy project and then maybe in a couples of years time, a visit by a group of people to work in the community directly.  One thing that made me quite proud was that American Jewish World Service is one of the organizations that the authors of the book highlight as doing particularly good work.  You can find the link for AJWS to the right.

So there I was thinking all these big thoughts about ways that the world can be improved and then I went to see Precious.

You’ll find my general review of the movie in yesterday’s posting, and I would like to add that I’m still thinking about the movie more than 24 hours later.  Precious tells the story of an inner city youth and the story of her life which includes horrors I don’t even want to write about here.  The film was a wake up call in one way.  I was thinking perhaps too much about the global world and not enough about what happens to the people in the city in which I live.  As much as it is important to think globally, never should acting locally be forgotten.  I have more research and thinking to do, but maybe micro-financing is just as important for entrepreneurs in our own cities as it is in villages in Africa, India, and many other places.

There is so much work to be done.  It is said in Pirkei Avot, Sayings of the Fathers, “it is is not up to us to finish to work, neither are we free to walk away from it.”  What are you going to do?

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Do you know who said the quote that is the title for this post?  Find out the answer tomorrow.

Over the past several days I took the opportunity to catch up on new releases at the movies.  I saw Invictus, Up in the Air, It’s Complicated, and Precious.  All very different movies and all noteworthy for different reasons. For the sake of clarity I will say what I liked about each movie.

Invictus was like watching a history lesson (this is an excellent thing).  Morgan Freeman was excellent and even if you don’t like rugby, you still want South Africa to win the world cup.  I highly recommend this and think it is an important film to encapsulate the post-apartheid reality that Mandela and the ANC desired.

Up in the Air is a very well done film.  George Clooney is good.  The story is very intense and did not leave me feeling warm and fuzzy though I did enjoy the movie.  I saw this on Christmas day and it was definitely not a Christmas movie in that I was glad I didn’t see the movie alone and had plans for the rest of the day with people.

It’s Complicated was an enjoyable escape.  Meryl Streep is Meryl Streep.  The views of Santa Barbara and the central coast are fantastic and made this California girl homesick.

Precious is another phenomenal film.  It is strange to say that I liked the movie because there isn’t much about the story to like.  Mo’nique is phenomenal and should definitely be getting the accolades going her way.  This film was a slice of reality that I think is all too often silent because it is the story of the inner city and it isn’t pretty. I have more to say about Precious though I will need to save it for another post.

Did you see any movies?  What were your impressions?

Anyone have a digital SLR and wish to share any advice on the purchase or the factors by which you made your decision to get whichever camera with the number of mega-pixels?  I need your expertise blogosphere.

Never let it be said that I don’t learn something everyday.  Today I came across this.  I hope everyone is able to enjoy some family time today.  Whether it be putting together difficult to assemble toys for little people, arguing over what movie and Chinese restaurant to see and in which order to do so, volunteering time at a shelter for those in need, ripping toilet paper (read the link and you’ll understand), or celebrating your neighbors holiday with eggnog and gingerbread people, enjoy!

Oh and Shabbat Shalom.  Services are at 8pm tonight at TS and at 10am tomorrow morning.