Making it all about the learning.

Last week I was able to spend a week learning from the wonderful people at the Jewish Women's Archive as they were teaching us how to use this online archive in our schools, especially the Living the Legacy curriculum.  The curriculum teaches about the role of Jewish women in the civil rights movement and by extention other Jewish participation in this amazing event that changed the world we live in it.  One statistic that struck me is that some estimates suggest nearly half the white women who went South to work for civil rights from the north had Jewish heritage as part of their family history.  These were mostly women of privledge who saw the injustice and wanted to change it.  This story is important and visiting the archive website and learning about these extraordinary women would be well worth you time. 

But what was interesting was I was the only man in a group of 25 Jewish educators from around the country and Canada.  While this was not an unusual position for me to have been in in my career.  I knew a couple of the people before I came, recognized a few more from other conferences, and many were complete strangers.  What was amazing was how quickly we became a community.  As an obvious outsider it would have been easy to be held responsible for the sexism of the past and in many cases the present.  (I did occassionally cringe when some spoke of their helpless husbands suffering back home).  But we represented what truly illustrates the theme of my multicultural workshop "The Diversity of a Dozen Eggs".  We were born Jews and Jews by Choice, Orthodox, Conservative, Reconstructionist, Reform, and Secular Humanist, we were Rabbis, lay synagogue professionals, lawyers, writers, and many professions I can't remember, we were Jews who kept kosher and some who loved bacon, we were Jews who love services and Jews who never attend, we were Jews who feel God in every tiny detail of the world, and those who are comfortable in their doubt of God's existence.  But we were all there for one thing.  We were all there to become better educators and we wanted to bring voice to the voiceless of history.  What turned out is that we all learned from each other, we all shared with each other, we all felt connected to each other.  So often the walls that separate us make it hard for us to access all we can be.  If anything was accomplished this week was to show me that when I think of my experiences for the week, I will always remember that teachers who think outside the box to instill the wonders of Judaism to the next generation. I will remember how we worked together to find ways to modify the curriculum for our particular setting.  I will remember the discussions of sustainable food and traffic on 128.  I won't remember where these women daven, or how they say the blessings, or if full kriah is important to them.  And that will always make me smile.  We came together in diversity and left in unity without compromising that diversity.  Hazah to all the women I learned from and to Etta, Judith and the entire staff of JWA.  Thank you for making my summer learning useful and reenergizing. 

Civility where did it go?

So I traveled to Boston for a conference of Jewish educators that the Jewish Women's Archive puts on.   I arrived at the airport in Indy and was greeted with an amazingly long line.  Since I didn't have a bag to check I stood in line and looked around for a USAIRWAYS attendent to see if I could skip the line and find a place to get a boarding pass.  Some horrible woman called to me and said I couldn't get ahead of her in line.  PS I was trying to help her because she too was not checking a bag.  Well let's just say the line moved well.  When we got to the counter the person who helped me was more efficent and I was done in seconds and I saw that she took a lot longer to get through security. 

So the line was long the whole time.  At one point a family of 5 walked up the counter, ignoring the line and started using one of the electronic kiosks.  When it was pointed out the counter guy asked him to stop.  He refused.  One of the girls in the family started begging and crying to the counter guy about missing their flight.  The counter guy canceled his check in and sent him to the line.  Someone let him in.  The whole time they were complaining.  In the security line, which moves surprisingly fast there was a fight of words between a couple of people...for the 10 seconds of difference between being first or second to get to the counter.  OH well, then at the gate there was the ubiquitous pushing and shoving to get on the plane first.  Once on the plane there was a bit of seat jockeying but after that things were quiet.  I had to change planes in DC.  There was a picnic.  When boarding there was a family with a child who had some form of brain disorder.  The girl was screaming like crazy and I couldn't figure out how to help.  I thought for sure that the guy at the counter would allow them on early....NOPE.  Then there was the FAA regulation that you can have only 2 carryons.  A woman had three and was yelling at the counter guy that she has to take them all on.  Then blocked the jet way to make sure someone she was traveling with would take it.  Then a guy kept trying to bump the line, then he stood behind counter guy and he had to physically move him.  Once on board the flight attendents had to repeatly tell people to power down their electronic devises, get in their seats and simply act respectful.  It was an amazing thing to watch. 

One interesting thing was our plane was met by a handful of Mass State Police, I wanted to see if they were there for any of the rude people.  Now this isn't the first time I have seen this but it was the first time it was so concentrated.  It was the first time it was so over the top. 

But now I am with a group of about 30 women, all of whom are smart, funny and ready to learn and teach.  The conference has started beautifully and we will all have a great time.  Now if we could just get this spirit out to Logan on Friday I would be happy. 

Hawking God

Steven Hawking has made the news again with a comment that not only is being reported wrongly but is not really surprising.  Hawking has become the physics darling of the media and as one of the smartest people in the world his words carry cache.  What I find surprising is how amazingly wrong the press got what he said.  Hawking called the concept of heaven and the God, as often defined by western culture a fairy story.  I would argue with his choice of words since in literature discussions the use of the words fairy tale and fairy story specifically exclude religious text.  But maybe he is correct.  The definition of God in our culture and certainly the concept of heaven prevalent in our society are not so much religious writings as they are extrapolations of what might be.  Drawn from ancient Greek and Roman concepts the ideas of heaven and hell are often seen as a place where we have temporal and physical existence as an individual.  That doesn't sound like any explanation in my Bible of life after death.  However when one is looking for a way to create a carrot and stick to explain the need for positive behavior, this is as good as any.  The Biblical formula of not getting rain in the proper season, for example, is only a good learning tool if in fact there is a connection for violating Biblical law and rain.  If there wasn't then how can one believe anything in the Torah.  This is what drives many away from religion and here is a prime example.  Hawking's proclamation is being held up by those who seem to make a career out of attacking religion any religion.  However what Hawking actually said was much in line with most modern religions.  Focusing on the here and now is far more important to modern Jewish thought and many Christian preachers than thinking about the world to come.  For them as for me, living a good life is a reward in itself.  I know, not the wonderful concept of the afterlife that would bring perpetual joy but trust me, if you do the math there are real problems with seeing heaven in its pop culture construct as joy.  


But what drove some people over the edge was Hawking's claim (though he did it last year and only now getting more traction) that the universe can exist without any God or gods and in fact is likely to exist without one.  "Hawking says there is no God" ran the banner headlines all over the internet.  But what in fact Hawking did was say the God of Newton, the mindful, purposeful creator God, who with intention and plan started the universe's balling a rolling or the every intervening God that picks winners and losers of life and football does not exist, or more correctly nothing suggests that that God does.  Again not a new idea, many modern theologians have written about a God outside of direct interaction with universe.  In fact Reconstructionist Judaism in fact is based in part on the theology of Rabbi Mordechai Kaplan who said God is what drives existence itself.  Not a separate entity.   God is not a celestial hall monitor looking for sins in humanity, nor a supernatural concierge to give us things asked for.  Reconstructionist Judaism sees a good metaphor for God as the electricity running through our wired homes, adding that we as humans must activate Godness for God to be part of our world as one flips a switch to turn on the  light.  This evolution of the God concept is seen in other faith traditions as well.  But many many cling to the older notions of God that Hawking can't rectify with reality.  


I remember an episode of West Wing where President Jed Bartlet was disclosing to the country that he has MS, something he kept quiet while campaigning.  His life-long secretary had just been killed in a drunk driving accident and the funeral had just ended. He stood in the middle of the National Cathedral to give a speech.  A devote Catholic he comes face to face in a way with his God...the words directed straight at this God.


Bartlet: You're a son of a bitch, you know that? She bought her first new car and you hit her with a drunk driver. What? Was that supposed to be funny? "You can't conceive, nor can I, the appalling strangeness of the mercy of God," says Graham Greene. I don't know who's ass he was kissing there 'cause I think you're just vindictive. What was Josh Lyman? A warning shot? That was my son. What did I ever do to yours except praise his glory and praise his name? There's a tropical storm that's gaining speed and power. They say we haven't had a storm this bad since you took out that tender ship of mine in the North Atlantic last year, 68 crew. You know what a tender ship does? It fixes the other ships. It doesn't even carry guns. It just goes around and fixes the other ships and delivers the mail. That's all it can do. Gratias tibi ago, domine. Yes, I lied. It was a sin. I've committed many sins. Have I displeased you, you feckless thug? 3.8 million new jobs, that wasn't good? Bailed out Mexico. Increased foreign trade. Thirty million new acres of land for conservation. Put Mendoza on the bench. We're not fighting a war. I've raised three children. That's not enough to buy me out of the doghouse? Haec credam a deo pio? A deo iusto, a deo scito? Cruciatus in crucem. Tuus in terra servus, nuntius fui. Officium perfeci. Cruciatus in crucem. Eas in crucem!


The Latin is :



Am I really to believe that these are the acts of a loving God? A just God? A wise God? To hell with your punishments.(actually to the cross)   I was your servant here on Earth. And I spread your word and I did your work. To hell with your punishments. To hell with you!" (again literally to the cross with you)  


Later in the episode he is confronted by the memory of his secretary, Mrs. Landingham. 
He dialogues with her:


"I have MS and I didn't tell anybody." 
        "Yeah. So, you're having a little bit of a day." 
"Are you going to make jokes?" 
         "God doesn't make cars crash and you know it. Stop using me as an excuse." 
"The party's not going to want me to run." 
          "The party will come back. You'll get them back." 
"I've got a secret for you Mrs. Landingham, I've never been the most popular guy in the Democratic Party." 
          "I've got a secret for you, Mr. President: Your father was a prick who couldn't get          
           over the fact that he wasn't as smart as his brothers. Are you in a tough spot? Yes. 
           Do I feel sorry for you? I do not. Why? Because there are people way worse off 
           than you." 


They go on to discuss the state of society and work still needed to me finished.  She concludes with the following. 


". . . . You know if you don't want to run again, I respect that. But if you don't run cause you think it will be too hard or you think you're going to lose, well, God, Jed, I don't even want to know you."  


You can see here the struggle between the concepts that embody the old world idea of what God is and the more modern idea that we have a role to make Godness grow in the universe.  A struggle that Hawking probably has been living with for quite some time, a struggle that is clear in the work of Hawking's predecessor Einstein and of course many many modern people who take their faith seriously.  But the message I would give to Hawking is that he is right there is no sense of worrying about an afterlife, but if we work hard together, honor the simplest of tenets of most faiths, and engage Godness in this world we can build heaven here, and while it will not be an eternity, it will make the short time we have better for all. 

Am Yisrael Chai

I wrote this for my weekly Religious School newsletter and thought I would share it. Please comment on it as I would like to know what you think.

Sunday is Yom HaShoah a day to remeber the Shoah. Yom HaShoah is a powerful holiday to commemorate the tragedy of Nazis’ rise to power and their efforts to wipe our European Jewry and Hitler’s plan to do that eventually to Jews worldwide. Every year we lose more people who can give us firsthand accounts of this time period, and so this holiday takes on a new importance, especially for educators of young Jews.
Part of the story must also be about survival. I was once at a conference to discuss Righteous Gentiles, non-Jews who saved the lives of Jewish people in the occupied countries. A survivor was there to speak of the man who saved her life. As she told her story of living underground in farmers’ fields, moving at night through thick forests and tricking the not-too-bright border guard who her family ran across I noticed that her poster on the dais was not of Nazi-era horrors but of her son’s wedding, Purim at her synagogue in Florida, her granddaughter’s Bat Mitzvah. Her story was about what she lived through as a child, but it was not about the horror she faced but of the survival.
Her theme was that because a man risked his life and lives of his family to save hers, she should celebrate the life that was saved in the most powerful and to her meaningful way. She saw the importance of bringing Judaism into the next generation and beyond. As she told me this, we both at the same moment we whispered, "Am Yisrael Chai," (the Jewish people live.) It reminded me that we must all remember the the Shoah, the Holocaust, even as time moves us further from it. We must pray it never happens again. We say Kaddish for the lives lost and wonder about what the lives that never got started would be like. We must fight those who wish to hurt us because of our traditions and heritage and stand for those who are suffering the same fate today. But we must too also remember Am Yisrael Chai, for the Jewish people live and life is a blessing.

Truth is a difficult thing to see.

So this weekend I was privileged to teach the Confirmation Class in my Religious School and we started talking about God and the Bible. It was an intense conversation with some surprising and I must say really surprising comments by the students. When Rabbi Sandy came in the discussion got more intense and in the end we realized the simple truth that the Bible and our understanding of God was never meant to be a static thing, but we define our contact with God, holiness and our understanding of the Bible by who we are as individuals and as a people. We seek a truth not THE TRUTH. We can see the myth of Adam and Eve are powerful stories but do we have to believe that the earth was created in 6 24 hour days in last 6000 years for it to have power. Of course not. The truth comes through. Our perspective plays a role.

I lived with the students' words as I ventured down to the Indianapolis Repertory Theatre's production the The Gospel According to James. The play is based on the story of an August 1930s lynching in Marion Indiana. There was one survivor and he went on to spend time in jail, got out, get educated, work for civil rights, create a museum for African Americans to remember the history of lynching in the US and later get a pardon. The play centers around the dialogue of two people. Mary Ball and James Cameron. You see the story told was that James and two friends Thomas Shipp, 18, and Abe Smith, 19. were out to stick up someone for some fun money. Found Mary and her boyfriend Claude Deeter in a car. Tried to stick them up but James knew Claude and couldn't do it and ran off. The rest is unclear. But Deeter died, Abe, Thomas and James were arrested. A crowd formed and pulled the first two from the jail, murdered them and hanged them. When they went to hang James, then 16 years old, a voice from the crowd saved him. Someone, one voice, stopped the lynching. We can talk about the power of that voice some other time. However the play has Mary and James telling very different stories. Each remembers the night but remembers it differently and each has a real good reason for the difference. Their recollections are discussed 50 years after the event. Most of those present that night had all passed on. There was a sad reality that in the heart of the play was that we remember and think what we need to or want to get out of the story. James, for example, until his last day saw the voice that saved him as that of an angel. Others think it was a member of the crowd who while in the midst of horror found his humanity.

But the over riding message to me yesterday was that truth is an elusive thing to nail down, especially when strong emotions are involved. Our connection to God, the horrors of murder both require our perspective. Go and see the play and it will help you understand what I mean. Remember what we see in life is always interpreted based on who we are. So much more so of our memory. With Bible, God or a horrific event who we are constructs meaning far more than the actual events and words. With that in mind we might see everything differently.

The Still small voice

Again the world is reminded that the earth is not a calm solid rock but a dynamic and ever changing and sometimes violent system. Our life is a gift of the same system that allows for the earthquake to destroy so much of what we have built and cause so much devastation. We are thankful that the Japanese over the last 50 years have become expert in dealing with both earthquake and tsunami warnings and the death tolls will be far fewer that similar events in other regions. Of course those who must attribute a cause to nature will look to this as a sign of something from a supernatural force. God's punishment for some reason or a sign of the end times. Writers will connect the revolution in the Middle East with this event, the earthquake at Christ Church and perhaps even the local cold that seems to last for weeks. God does not throw storms, tsunamis nor earthquakes at people. God, in my opinion and by historical evidence, does not intervene in that way. The universe is a creation with rules, rules that I dare say bind even God. While the Bible and other Jewish texts are full of stories of God bending the laws of nature I dare say those a simply meant to illuminate the more important lesson in the story. If we look for a God that does it all then where is our place. In fact one could argue that if this is God's doing why should we be involved.

In the first book of Kings gives us a different way to think about this as we see an interaction with Elijah.


And God said: Go out and stand before ME on the mountaintop. Then the The Holy One passed by. A furious wind split mountains and shattered rocks in the presence of the Eternal, but the Eternal was not in the wind. After the wind, an earthquake -- but the Eternal was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake, fire -- but the Eternal was not in the fire. And after the fire, a still, small voice.

That still small voice is the one telling us to reach out, to share what we have, and to help those in need recover. We are partners with God, and my guess is that God would be in the mix helping too, if God could. But maybe that is why humanity was created.

Ain't it America

The Supreme Court the other day rendered a decision that said the funeral protests of the Westboro Baptist Church are Constitutionally protected speech. This church, which is basically the family of one man, Fred Phelps, is known for their hateful rhetoric that suggests that the death of young military personnel is God's punishment because of the fact the the US tolerates homosexuality. This is the church with posters that say God Hates Fags and their website has a clock on it counting the days Matthew Shepard, the young man brutally murdered for simply being gay, has been in hell. I know a lot of Christians including those who see homosexuality as a choice, a sin, a destructive "lifestyle" who never level this kind of hate. They would never agree with Phelps and his ilk but they share a basic foundation of their faith, the Christian Bible. Hard to see them and Phelps share a meal though they share a Bible. Is it fair to lump them together?

Now we turn to Peter King, the head of the House Homeland Security Committee, has started hearings on the American Muslim Community. In part he is looking for radical infiltration. He has even suggested that the American Muslim community has not been as cooperative with police and other law enforcement. This of course is odd since nearly 1/3 of the intelligence we have gathered since 9-11 to stop Islamic terror has come from the Muslim community. So in effect King is putting all of the American Muslims on trial for the actions of a few, many of that few do not even live in the US. Is it fair to lump them together?

King is doing something that should be an outrage to people. He is questioning the loyalty of Americans who only share as devotion or love for the same text with SOME terrorists. He doesn't question whether they share the same understanding of the text. My guess, just like my most evangelical Christian friends can't find a place in the Bible that promotes Phelps' protests and hate speech, the vast majority of American Muslims are just as confused as to how certain Islamists find words in the Quaran that encourages suicide bombing. Yet while many Christians are not ask to explain Westboro Baptist nor do they get soiled by the dirt they throw it seems easy to do that to any Muslim. Especially an Arab American Muslim. We should not be making anyone who follows the faith of Islam a suspect. It is not American.

Ironically, the Supreme Court got it right with Westboro. As much as I hate their speech, it is the cost of living in a free society to have the right for them to say what they say. Too bad Peter King doesn't understand that some ideal. I wish the GOP would stop him.

A Visit to the Creation Museum

So this weekend we packed up the car to finally visit the Creation Museum, a building dedicated to the position of a group called Answers in Genesis that evolutionary theory is wrong and that the Bible explains all one needs to know about the 6000 year old earth. Now I have been highly critical of the organization behind this museum. I think the hardest thing for me is that the focus of the organization and of course the museum is to take the Torah text of the Book of Bereshit (Genesis) and make it their own, decide what it means, and build a tradition around. Any questioning of their vision is met with accusations of being either brainwashed by atheist science or closed minded. Now I have no problem directly with people who want to take the Torah try to build a theology around the words, but when someone takes a sacred text from one tradition, twists it for their own, and then tell everyone they have the only answer, I tend to be upset. So I will begin my story with the full admission that I walked in with bias. I was not disappointed.

From the first display I was met with both a lie about science (saying that scientist view the world through evolution and thus discount everything else) and admitting that what they are doing is not science while calling it science. You see the theme of the museum is that both evolutionary biologists and the rest of the scientific world and they look at the same evidence, just have different starting points. The starting point of the people who run this museum is that the Bible as they read it is completely infallible, accurate and 100% true. So anything that contradicts the Bible must be wrong. Of course this is not science, as anything that is discovered in science that contradicts evolutionary theory would be studied to see if it could replace the current ideas in part or whole. Darwin's theory has been refined over time. But the simple fact that evolution exists and there is a theory that explains it is not the end of the discussion. For those who see the Bible as the end of the discussion fail to take reality into account. One example is the idea of thorns found among dinosaurs. Since Genesis 3 seems to suggest that thorns only came into existence after the fall of Adam so any dinosaurs found with thorned plants means dinosaurs existed at the same time as people. Thus no millions of years old. This is just ridiculous as a way of trying to do science. But there it is.

But what I found most disturbing is the political message that the horrors of the world are the direct result of evolution and science being taught in the schools as opposed to their brand of religion. At one point I turned a corner to come face-to-face with a poster that included a picture of a lynching of a black man and piles of dead bodies from Nazi death camps. The image was to suggest these two events would not happen if we all embraced their brand of religion. However, history clearly shows that the KKK saw itself as religiously mandated and the Holocaust (the Shoah) had its roots in European Anti-semitism that was fueled by the Church. But ignoring all the horrors of history that were clearly the result of Christian aggression made me sick.

The museum also uses some Jewish imagery to suggest that Judaism would back their position, including a video of an apparent Rabbi discussing the meaning of the word "yom" day in Genesis. Throughout Jewish tradition the Bible is seen as poetry to help explain the unexplainable. Even great sages and rabbis argued that Genesis was to be understood at a deeper level, not just the words on the page. Evolution does not truly stand at odds with the vast majority of the way the Jews have understood Judaism.

Over all it was a good trip but I think it is disturbing to me to see so many people not understand basic science and those that do are ridiculed as close minded. We will see what the future holds. I have always believed that the universe is a puzzle that we have been given to tools to unravel. The Bible is not the stopping place but the beginning place. We must now go and study.

When a Man loves a Man

The General Assembly in Indiana wants to pass a Constitutional Amendment that would outlaw same sex marriage. Now this is already illegal in Indiana by law but the push for an amendment to the Constitution to define marriage as between one man and one woman is fear that the law might be struck down by a court. I find that to an interesting argument as if the law is so bad that it might not hold up in court truly questions whether the law should exist in the first place. But more so I am struck by the lack of good arguments for defining marriage as such. I mean there is the religious argument but that shouldn't enter into the civil discussion. Basically what this law and amendment will do is have the government decide what kind of contract two consenting adults can enter into. Beyond religion, I see no rationale reason for denying the right of marriage to the person of their choice to anyone who happens to love someone with the same physical appearance.
Now the religious argument is powerful, but not always fully formed. Too often the argument relies on "The Bible says so". When talking about the passage in Leviticus that is a hollow answer. Jewish Biblical tradition would, in almost all cases, look for deeper meaning than the literal words on the page. In fact the deeper meaning is often the more prominent view of the text and this is clearly seen in a Jewish understanding of the famous "eye for an eye" text and the not quite so famous "do not place a stumbling block before the blind". For many centuries Jews view the text of the Torah as a lesson, not to be merely read as a document of fact, but as a poem giving one a deeper understanding of live we live. To think the Torah text is simply to be examine on one level is to assume William Carlos Williams had a remarkable wheelbarrow and so...

In a society that understands that love is not about morphology but about emotion, that we can't simply rely on the 3000 year old text to define all of morality, and that even if we could our country was founded on liberty from any kind of specific set of understanding of a creator or that creator's vision for us, we must all stand together and say outlawing same sex marriage and writing it in our Constitution is not who we are as Americans. Someone said the other day that in 50 years students will look at today as the time we debated the silliness of same-sex marriage. Let's not let history laugh at us to harshly.

On Death and Hope

I went to the funeral of my ex-wife's grandmother today. I went because I liked Libby, the woman who died, I like my former in-laws, and mostly I went for Noah. Noah has gotten to know his great-gram over the course of the last several years and he wanted to be part of the mourning process. As I arrived I found him sitting with his mom, detached, and sad. Apparently someone in the receiving line told him that he should be strong, this is the first of many. I am not certain that I would have allowed this man to simply smile and walk away. I think I know who it was, a stranger so no one I could regularly encounter, but on the off chance I do, I will, in my way, address the issue. That had me in a sour mood. A mood that was brewing since earlier today. Little things had cause to annoy me this morning. A person who couldn't seem to pick a lane on Michigan road, the fact that my special order I have been waiting all week for has been in at the local grocer and no one called, my computer gave me a hiccup this am and didn't download all my email right away, then I got a deluge, a drink exploded in my lunch as I was going to eat on the fly before the funeral and the nagging concern that I have forgotten something important. But that changed.

At the funeral I watched Noah, receive people again with poise at times, I watched the Rabbis speak of the "kiss of God", Libby slipping into death as she slept, a preferred way of the Talmudists, and I watched my ex speak of being grateful for the opportunity she received doing a simple task for her mom. Bringing her grandmother to services one Friday night and watching the joy in her grandmothers eyes as she sang the Hebrew melodies, followed along in the prayerbook and shook the Rabbi's hand. It was a touching moment too when she shared a story of Noah as a three-year old hellion running around her apartment. Libby first asked if he could calm down and then realized that this spunk was inherited from her.

After the funeral I drove to Target, I really needed a Fix-A-Flat. There I wandered around the store and checked my phone for news of Egypt. I am torn, violent protest is never a good thing. But the people want to get rid of a dictator and maybe, just maybe bring about democratic rule. My fear is that democracy in the land of the Muslim Brotherhood might be much like what democratic elections brought to Gaza. But I have hope that the players will find a compromise and seeing Noah try so hard to be grown up and hearing Tracy's words and dear love and sadness over her loss I knew the world had great things. Then it was reinforced. As I walked to my car, fix-a-flat in hand, I walked behind the vehicle next to mine as the women with two kids was pulling her van out. We did the dance of you go, no you go. I walk around her and opened the back of the car. She pulled out and stopped behind me. Rolling down her window I was ready for anything. Perhaps she noticed my kippah and had a Jewish question, or worse a slur to hurl. Both have happened in this town. Perhaps she was going to tell me that I should be more careful walking to my car and that she might have hit me, or maybe she just was lost looking for directions. None were true. She had noticed my soft tire and on a cold day, in a Target parking lot, with two children in the car, she stopped to write me a note to tell me my tire was low, and now she stopped once again to point that fact out so I would not miss it. On a day that I would have much rather been home doing anything else but standing in a Target parking lot this women took a few minutes to write me a note and a few more to draw my attention to it. I know my response was not adequate to her kindness. I hope she knows I did appreciate it and more so the fact that it made me realize the every day kindness we miss out if we don't watch.

Tonight the people of Egypt sleep uncertain of the future of their nation and people I still think of as family and my own son mourn the loss of a matriarch. But I will rejoice this Shabbat because I know, every day, every where, gemilut hasadim (acts of loving kindness) are being done by everyday people, people like you.

The death of a child is not about me

This is one of the many things two high girls told us they learned on a 4 month trip to Kenya. I heard this on Friday night at a celebration of the connection between Indianapolis and regions of western Kenya. The girls, took part of their senior year, to live apart from family and friends and see how they can help in an area of the world devastated by HIV/AIDS and poverty. Hunger, disease, and lack of opportunity permeate the community. So these two teens went there to help and to learn.

The line about the death of a child came as one related the story of her preparation to go. Knowing the statistics there was a good chance that they would see the death of a child. She fretted over how she would react, how she would feel, how would she get over it. Then the girls met Wellington.

She told the story of meeting Wellington at a Children's home they stayed at and worked with the children. Wellington arrived because of severe malnutrition and a father that couldn't take care of him. The girls played with him and gave him a sticker that said WOW. While Wellington didn't speak much he did learn to say WOW. A few minutes of connection brought joys and smiles.

However, Wellington could not be saved. His body was unable to recover from the effects of lack of food. He died. It was that moment that a young woman who fretted about her potential reaction learned that this death had a face. The face of a small boy. It wasn't about her reaction, it wasn't about how she would recover, it wasn't about how she would feel. It was about the young boy who learned the word WOW who will never again be able to use it. She was able to share that story with us and teach us to keep that in mind.

This quote has stayed with me all weekend. I want to be profound but I can't, I have nothing. All I know is that a boy I will never meet, who had a brief interaction with two girls from Indianapolis, will always live in my awareness as go through my life. Problems will become smaller, working to help others will feel more real, and hunger will never seem the same. At least I hope this is true. Beyond that when I think about these girls and what they taught me all I can say is WOW.