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Archive for the 'Values' category
Miracles: A Reflection
Lately, I have been giving a lot more thought to the subject of miracles. Considering what I so recently went through, I don't think many of you will find that surprising. Having a stroke, and surviving it, and having all my faculties returned to me in a matter of hours rather than months or years, can certainly focus one's thoughts toward the miraculous.
How much the more so with my being a rabbi – a member of the clergy who has spent many years serving congregations – and as such, has accompanied many a congregant along the long and arduous road of return that typically follows falling victim to a stroke. Indeed, providing comfort and solace to stroke victims has been one of the more difficult tasks in my rabbinate, and I expect that is just as true for other clergy, regardless of their faith identities. After all, when people have lost in an instant so many physical abilities that we tend to take for granted, and then are faced with the grueling task of recapturing those abilities, in the smallest of incremental achievements over the longest periods of time, it doesn't take long for them to view a faith leader's words of encouragement, and hope as sounding shallow as their own efforts to recover seem increasingly futile. And who can blame them? As clergy, we not only observe the growing frustration and the spiritual and emotional agony of congregants who have fallen victim to strokes, but we, in our own sense of powerlessness – in our inability to do much more than offer words of encouragement which seem empty in the face of their painfully slow and miniscule progress – feel their pain and frustration as well.
Having accompanied so many others along that excruciating journey, how could I not but recognize the miraculous when I found myself one morning in the grips of a stroke, yet a day and a half later I was able to leave the hospital with all, or most, of my abilities restored? I tell you, that morning, when the stroke hit, and I was holding myself up over the bathroom sink by my arms, for my legs had failed me, and I was waiting for my wife to come home and the ambulance to arrive, I truly felt that this was the end; that I would not see the light at the end of that tunnel. At that moment, I was the embodiment of the prayer from the morning service which states: "Praise to You, Adonai our God, who formed the human body with skill, creating the bodies many pathways and openings. It is well known before Your throne of glory that if one of them be wrongly opened or closed, it would be impossible to endure and stand before you." Yet here, this Shabbat, I stand before you. I have not the slightest doubt but that it was a miracle.
Now one can easily argue that it wasn't a miracle. That it was science; medical science. The drug that was responsible for my recovery – the tPA Drip – was first introduced in 1996. If it is administered within 3 hours after the onset of a stroke, it can quickly work to dissolve the blood clot which caused the stroke, eliminating it before there is permanent damage to the brain. But when you think about, if you are not already a patient in a hospital, 3 hours is not a lot of time to work with. A lot has to happen before the drug is administered. In my own case, the diagnosis was that the stroke hit the back of my brain. But if they were to administer the drug in time, they did not have the time to do the testing necessary to determine whether or not there was any bleeding in my brain. For if there was bleeding, the drug would only make the situation worse, perhaps kill me. My wife and I decided that in spite of the risks, they should administer the drug and leave the rest to God. Considering how dire the result could have been, that I not only survived but recovered was but another miracle. Going in, no doctor could guarantee that outcome. It wasn't just science. It was a miracle.
But if any doubt of the miraculous still lingered. That doubt was about to be washed away. After my release from the hospital, though most of my faculties had been restored, there were some lingering effects. The top of my head always felt numb. I continually had 3 separate headaches, simultaneously; one in the back of my head, around where the clot had been, another along the carotid artery in my neck, where an ultrasound had been conducted to determine any blockage, and one in the front of head, in the area of my forehead. All hurting at the same time and never going away. It was strange, since from childhood I used to have headaches regularly, but sometime in the late 80's they just stopped and never returned. Now I had 3 of them all at one time. It was Yom Kippur afternoon – 19 days since the onset of the stroke. I was worshipping at the synagogue in Davenport. It was time for silent prayer, and I silently prayed in earnest, thanking God for my salvation, and asking God for strength. For if the way I had been feeling, with the numbness and the headaches, was to be my new normal, considering what the outcome could have been, I was more than ready to accept it. I only wanted God to give me the strength to live with it. It was while I was deep into that prayer that my prayer was suddenly interrupted by what I can only describe as a strong pop that I felt in my head. It was as if I could actually hear it as well as feel it. No sooner did it occur than the numbness and the headaches started to quickly fade. By the end of the service, they were completely gone. Now there could be other explanations for what I experienced. In fact, I shared the experience with my doctor, who had nothing to say in explanation of it. Still there could be other explanations, but I am convinced that the pop I experienced, and the relief I felt, were in answer to my prayer. Miracle number 3.
One can ask: Were any of these experiences really miracles or are there rational explanations for each and every one of them? It's a fair question. But there is a fundamental problem with the question itself. It operates under the premise that reason and miracles must exist on two separate plains. That they cannot exist side-by-side. And that is not necessarily true. Something can be both miraculous and rational at the very same time. Being able to explain how a miracle occurred does not make it any less of a miracle. For what makes a miracle a miracle is not that it defies explanation but rather that how it occurs, when it occurs, and the circumstances in which it occurs produces a sense of awe and wonder. For this one moment, the forces of the universe came together in such a way as to produce a result which was unexpected, surprising, and in its own way, a very special gift. The fact that we can parse it and explain how it happened is besides the point. The fact that it did happen, in the way that it happened is the essence of the miracle itself.
When I was a rabbi in Lincoln, Nebraska, there was this elderly couple who belonged to my congregation – Paula & George. One day George collapsed and was taken to the intensive care unit of the hospital. He lay there in a coma, with the monitors showing very little brain function. He lay in that bed in the fetal position. I sat with Paula as she met with the team of doctors who explained to her that he lay there in the fetal position because his brain was not getting enough oxygen to function, and that the monitor was showing that he was basically brain dead. Therefore they counseled her to allow him to pass away naturally by giving the order not to resuscitate him should he go into cardiac arrest. To my surprised, she refused. All of us in the room, with the exception of Paula, were convinced that he would linger until he died. We were wrong. Several days later, he awoke, eventually left the hospital, and lived for another two years. While his recovery can be explained medically, it was against all the odds. It was a miracle.
It was but a month or two after I arrived in Iowa that on one Summer Sunday afternoon, I received a call from one of the local hospitals, telling me that a congregant was very close to death and they thought I should come as soon as possible. So I did. I had been doing yard work but I didn't take the time to change my clothes, lest she pass before I arrived. I walked into her room and there she was, laying still on the bed. Suddenly, to my surprise and the surprise of the nurse, she sat up, looked at me and said, "Hello Rabbi. I am so glad to see you." She, too, recovered and left the hospital. A miracle.
In 1948, the United Nations passed its Partition Plan, dividing Palestine into 2 states; one Jewish and the other Arab. The entire Arab world rejected the plan and mustered its forces to invade the fledgling State of Israel, promising to drive all its Jews into the sea. The army of the newborn Jewish State was greatly outnumbered and outgunned by the combined armies of the Arab world. The rest of the world sat back, expecting to swoop up whatever Jews survived the Arab onslaught. But when the smoke cleared, the State of Israel not only survived but was victorious. A miracle. As did the Maccabees 2100 years earlier, they, too, evoked of us the proclamation, "Nes Gadol Haya Sham – A great miracle happened there!"
Miracles occur all the time, and they don't need to be on as grand a scale as any of these. But we miss them. We miss them because our eyes and our ears and our minds are closed to them. There is a story about two old friends meeting on 5th Avenue in New York City, just as all the business offices were letting out. The sidewalks were filled with people and street was fill with cars, and the racket they produce was intense. Now these two friends hadn't seen each other in many years. So they fought the crowd in order to embrace each other in the moment. Just as they were embracing, one friend said to the other, "Don't you hear it?" "Hear what?" the other replied. "Don't you hear that little bird caught in that bush in that window box over there?" Well, the other friend looked and that window box was a good 15 to 20 yards away. "How can you hear a little bird that far away in all this noise?" he asked. "I'll show you," his friend replied. They walked to the window box and the one friend pushed aside the branches and low and behold, a little bird flew out. In astonishment, the other friend exclaimed, "I can't believe you heard that bird! You must have Superman hearing." "Not really," the first friend replied. "Let me show you." With that, he stuck his hand into his pocket and pulled out a quarter. He then dropped it on the sidewalk and no sooner did it hit the ground then a whole group of people just stopped in their tracks, turned around and looked. "You see," said the friend, "it all depends upon what you are listening for."
It all depends upon what we are listening for and what we are looking for. As long as we close our minds to the possibility of the miraculous, we will never witness it. But once we open our minds to that possibility, our world will abound with miracles. And we will be the better for it. Our lives will be so enriched by the miracles we encounter, for with them comes hope rather than despair. For in them we will experience a God who cares and is actively involved in our lives. It is Jewish tradition, that immediately upon waking up in the morning, we say a prayer of thanksgiving to God for granting us the miracle of another day of life. We begin each day by acknowledging the many miracles that surround us. In so doing God becomes all the more real to us, and not just some three-letter theoretical word we invoke in ritual moments but ignore in the course of daily living.
We should not require a moment of dire crisis to encounter the miraculous in our lives, but rather we can actively seek it out.
Categories: Beauty of true faith, Confronting One's Mortality, Connecting to God, Counting our blessings, Faith, Fear, Gail Karp, God, Health Challenges, Henry Karp, hope, Introspection, Israel, Israeli War of Independence, Miracles, Prayer, Silent Prayer, True Faith, Uncategorized, Yom Kippur
Tags: Beauty of true faith, Confronting One's Mortality, Connecting to God, Counting our Blessings, Faith, Fear, Gail Karp, God, Health Challenges, Henry Karp, hope, Introspection, Israel, Israeli War of Independence, Miracles, Prayer, Silent Prayer, Yom Kippur
The Shoah and Today 2019
Last Thursday was Yom HaShoah – Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is 74 years since the liberation of the camps and the conclusion of the war, yet we still hold these memorials observances. As well we should, for we must never forget what happened in Europe when the forces of hate were released from the shackles of conscience and morality.
Yet what does that really mean in terms of our observances today, 74 years later? Are our observances just a memorial to the 6 million Jewish martyrs that perished in the Holocaust? That must not be, for there were 3 million non-Jewish victims that shared their fate. They were Roma and Sinti; gay men, women, and the transgendered; Jehovah's Witnesses and the mentally disabled; Blacks, Communists and political dissidents. They, too, we must remember and mourn, or at least we should. Are today's observances solely a deep dive into dark memory or should they be more than that? Are they merely a solemn celebration of the vanquishing of one evil at one time in history or should they be more than that as well?
There is no rhyme or reason to the sacrifice of those 9 million lives, nevertheless the millions of war casualties both military and civilians. No one can justify their suffering and their destruction. These martyrs were victims of what happens when mindless evil is allowed to run rampant and unchecked in the world. But if we are satisfied to treat their loss as this profoundly tragic stain on the fabric of human history, then we have not done their martyrdom justice. If all they have become is a painful yet vague memory of people too numerous to name, then they truly have died in vain. We cannot allow that to happen.
We must take their sacrifice and give it meaning; true meaning and not just some superficial meaning meant to assuage the human guilt of allowing it to happen. From their sacrifice we must learn vital lessons about what we need to do in order to prevent this from ever happening again. As the philosopher George Santayana said, "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it." These martyrs must be our teachers as to what we need to do so that this history is never repeated. These are the lessons of NEVER AGAIN! NOT TO THE JEWS! NOT TO ANYONE! NEVER AGAIN should we allow anyone to single out a group of people, or several groups of people, and declare them unworthy as human beings. NEVER AGAIN should we stand idly by while others are singled out for discrimination, for persecution, or for extermination, while we say to ourselves, "Well it's not my problem!" NEVER AGAIN should we remain silent, and through our silence, allow those in power to pursue policies that dehumanize and demonize whole segments of society, and then justify the mistreatment of those segments on the grounds of their hate-filled lies and their degrading stereotypes. There is an old saying: "Silence equals Assent" and we must never give our assent to evil.
So where do we begin? We must begin at the beginning. You would think that is the obvious answer, but not really. Why? Because today, when we look at the Holocaust, we tend to look at is as through a "rearview mirror," perceiving it as a whole, with Auschwitz predominating our view. But the Holocaust did not begin with Auschwitz. It ended there. Rather the Holocaust was an evolving process, starting with anti-Jewish laws which carved the Jews out of society and defined than as the "other." It is with those anti-Jewish laws that we must begin, for that is where the Nazis began as they set out on their road which ultimately lead to Auschwitz and the Final Solution.
Between 1933 and 1939, the Nazis enacted more than 2,000 anti-Jewish laws. While in the 1930s most people, including the Jews, could not conceive of the gas chambers, still the road to genocide began with these anti-Jewish laws.
In the 1930's, the Nazis transformed their bigotry into law, and sad to say, that process of transformation is still being practiced around the world, and some would say, even in our own country. As we consider some of the policies in place today in the United States and around the world, comparing them to some of the Nazi anti-Jewish laws of the '30's, let us ask ourselves, "Do we hear in them echoes of the Nazi anti-Jewish laws?"
On April 7, 1933 the Nazis enacted the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service which forbid all Jews from serving the German government in any capacity.
Our society has long discriminated against the LGBTQ community. For the last several years, we have been reducing such discrimination. Yet recently our government announced that transgender men and women could no longer serve in the military. Captain Jennifer Peace was among trans service members who testified before Congress. She shared her reactions upon first learning of this ban. She said, "I think it was in that moment that for the first time I really questioned, 'Why am I still waking up and putting on this uniform when time and again I am not able to serve?' Why should I wait to deploy and risk my life again when the people I am serving do not even want me here?" In the pain in her words do we hear an echo of the pain felt by those German Jews who, in 1933, also were told that they could no longer serve their country?
On April 21, 1933 the Nazis enacted a law banning the practice of Kosher slaughter. In their propaganda, they portrayed Kosher slaughter as perversely cruel, and therefore symptomatic of what they claimed to be the inhuman cruelty of the Jews. Considering the fact that from ancient days, Kosher slaughter was specifically designed to cause the least pain and suffering on the part of the animal, the Nazi assault on it was just a veiled attempt to further demonize the Jews.
Today, in Europe, seven nations – Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Norway, Slovenia, Sweden, & Switzerland – all ban the Jewish and Muslim practices of Kosher and Hallal slaughter, also claiming to do so on grounds of cruelty. Do we hear an echo of the Nazi ban on Kosher slaughter in these current bans?
In July 1938, an international conference to discuss the issue of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany was held in Evian, France, with representatives of 32 nations attending. In the end, most countries, including the U.S. and Great Britain, continued to refuse to admit these refugees, claiming, among other reasons, issues of national security.
After a year of public debate and court battles, in December 2017 the Supreme Court gave its approval to a travel ban which primarily targets refugees from 5 Muslim countries; Iran, Libya, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen. The reason given for this ban is, like the one given in 1938, "national security." However, when one examines the acts of terrorism, and the attempted acts of terrorism, that have taken place between the nightmare of September 11, 2001 and the Pittsburgh Synagogue shooting on October 27, 2018, there appears a serious inconsistency with the reasoning behind the ban. During that time period, 78 attacks or attempted attacks have been recorded. Of them, only 15 involved foreign nationals. The rest were conducted by domestic terrorists. Of the 15 attacks or attempted attacks involving foreign nationals, only 2 of the 5 Muslim countries had nationals from their nations involved; Somalia and Yemen. Yet there were 15 other nations – Muslim and non-Muslim – that had nationals involved in these attacks or attempted attacks, yet none of those nations appear on the list of the banned. Several Holocaust survivors have spoken out against this ban. Aaron Elster, who was the speaker at my own community's interfaith Yom HaShoah service in 2003, said, "For someone to come along and say, 'These people cannot come in,' I believe that's a sliding slope. It starts that way. What group will be next?" Though the order claims the ban to be "Temporary" with a possibility of becoming permanent, Fritzie Fritzshall, who also was the speaker at my own community's interfaith Yom HaShoah service in 2004, said that for those whose lives are in danger, "90 days is a lifetime." Do we hear the echo of the doors that were closed by the nations of the world to the Jews fleeing for their lives from the Nazis in this travel ban?
As the Nazi persecution of the Jews intensified, countless families were torn apart, whether through parents making the heart-wrenching choice to save their children by sending them to England on the Kindertransports or turning them over to non-Jews willing to hide them, or during the selection process when they first arrived at the camps.
The issue of U.S. immigration reform has been hotly debated for many years. Unfortunately, trapped within this controversy are the children of aspiring immigrants and those whose families feel they have no choice but to send their children alone to our nation in search of refuge from the violence in their own lands.
In 2014, the former administration considered sending unaccompanied immigrant children from Central America back to the dangers of their native lands. However, nationwide protests convinced the government to set aside such plans.
But now our current administration plans to reinstate its Zero Tolerance approach to deterring undocumented immigration which includes a policy of Family Separation. Children of families crossing the border without proper documentation will be taken from their families and held by our government. This policy does not include measures to eventually reunite these families. Detainees have testified to Congress that even families lawfully requesting asylum were separated.
Members of the Hidden Children Foundation, representing children hidden during the Holocaust, expressed their deep concerns over the Family Separation Policy. Co-Director Rachelle Goldstein, who herself was separated from her parents at age 3, said, "Separation of the family is probably the worst thing that ever happened to us…When you take a child away from the parents, from the home, from everything that they know, they are never the same…Most hidden children are now in their late 70s, 80s, some are even 90, and they still think about it, and it still hurts, it still aches." Do we hear the echo of the crying children, torn from their families as a result of Nazi persecution, in the sobs of the children impacted by our own Family Separation policy today?
Nazi anti-Jewish legalization culminated in January 1942 with the ultimate anti-Jewish policy – genocide. They called it the Final Solution to the Jewish Question.
The Nuremburg War Crimes Trials outlawed genocide for all time. Unfortunately, genocide lives on, from the genocides in Darfur and Rwanda, to the ISIS massacres of entire Christian villages. Today, the Rohingya of Myanmar are victims of an ethnic cleansing. In December the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum said it found "compelling evidence" that this is yet another genocide. Do we hear the echoes of the anguished last breaths of victims of the Nazi gas chambers and killing fields on the lips of today's slaughtered Rohingya?
When governments target whole groups of people, all humanity suffers. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. hoped, may we come to measure people as individuals solely by "the content of their character."
In memory of the Holocaust martyrs, Yom HaShoah must not only speak of past transgressions but it must challenge the transgressions of today; transgressions that have become all to numerous, both at home and abroad!
Categories: 1938 Evian Refugee Conference, Afro European victims, America, Anti-Transgender Laws, Auschwitz, Ban on Kosher & Halal Slaughter in Europe, Ban on Transgender people serving in the U.S. military, Children in the Holocaust, Communist victims, Darfur, Dr. Martin Luther King, Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya, Final Solution, Genocide, Hate, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Hidden Children Foundation, Holocaust, Homophobia, Homosexual Victims, Immigration Reform, Intolerance, ISIS Massacres of Christian Villages, Islamophobia, Islamophobia, Jehovah's Witnesses victims, Kindertransport, Mentally and Physically Disabled victims, Muslim Travel Ban, Myanmar, Nazi Anti-Jewish Laws, Nazi Ban on Kosher Slaughter, Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service, Never Again!, Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust, Political Dissidents victims, Remembering, Responsibility of the Citizens for the Sins of the Nation in a Democracy, Roma victims, Rwanda Genocide, September 11, Supreme Court, Syria, terrorism, U.S. Family Separation Policy, U.S. Governmental Policies, Uncategorized, United States, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Victims, Welcoming Guests, Xenophobia, Yom HaShoah
Tags: 1938 Evian Refugee Conference, Afro European Holocaust Victims, America, Anti-Transgender Laws, Auschwitz, Ban on Transgender people serving in the U.S. military, Bans on Kosher and Halal Slaughter in Europe, Children in the Holocaust, Communist Holocaust Victims, Darfur, Dr. Martin Luther King, Ethnic Cleansing of Rohingya, Final Solution, Genocide, Hate, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Hidden Children Foundation, Holocaust, Homophobia, Homosexual Holocaust Victims, Immigration Reform, Intolerance, ISIS Massacres of Christian Villages, Islamophobia, Jehovah's Witnesses Holocaust Victims, Jr., Kindertransport, Mentally Disabled Holocaust Victims, Muslim Travel Ban, Myanmar, Nazi Anti-Jewish Laws, Nazi Ban on Kosher Slaughter, Nazi Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service, Never Again!, Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust, Political Dissident Holocaust Victims, Remembering, Responsibility of the Citizens for the Sins of the Nation in a Democracy, Roma & Sinti Holocaust Victims, Rwanda Genocide, September 11, Supreme Court, Syria, terrorism, U.S. Family Separation Policy, United State Holocaust Memorial Museum, United States, Welcoming Guests, Xenophobia, Yom HaShoah
When Purim Invades the Headlines
The Jewish world will soon be observing the holiday of Purim. I said "observing" when truth be known, we Jews don't just "observe" Purim; we CELEBRATE it! We dress in costume. We hold the most raucous, noisiest worship service of the year. We sing and we shout and we stomp our feet. We eat and we drink (and I am not just talking about iced tea or punch but the hard stuff, for on Purim the Talmud commands us to drink so much that we can no longer tell the difference between "cursed is Haman and blessed is Mordecai."[1]). And then, of course there is the Purim Seudah (feast – in our case, a pizza dinner) and the ever popular Carnival. We eat hamantaschen, send shlach manot (food gifts to our loved ones) and matanot le'evyonim (gifts to the poor). It is Mardi Gras, New Year's Eve, that December season of giving whose name we never mention, all rolled up into one. It is one heck of a party and we fondly carry our childhood memories of it with us throughout our lives.
Yet somehow or other, in the midst of all our partying, we can often forget why we party so; what is the cause of the celebration?
The answer is wrapped in a sinister cloud. It is dark and it is painful. For Purim commemorates our victory over antisemitism. It celebrates the defeat of Haman – the Hitler of his day – whose goal it was to accomplish nothing short of a genocide of the Jewish people. So we party hardy as an affirmation of life in what was supposed to be the face of a certain and horrible death. Purim is the personification of the old saying, "The definition of every Jewish holiday is: They tried to kill us. We won. Let's eat!"
Today, most of us intentionally avoid these more somber thoughts when it comes to Purim. We choose to focus on the joy rather than on the fear.
Unfortunately, this year, at least some of that fear seems to be unavoidable for we have been forced to confront the fact that antisemitism is real and alive in our nation as well as in the rest of the world. Over the last 72 hours the news media has "discovered" that antisemitism really exists in the United States. The dramatic vandalism of the Jewish cemetery in St. Louis, with the desecration of over 100 gravestones, along with the addition of 11 more bomb threats to Jewish community centers (bringing the number up to 59 if my math and facts are correct), coupled with the President's bizarre reticence to address the very issue of antisemitism or to even mention Jews in his statement about Holocaust memorial, and his finally condemning (though weakly) the acts of antisemitism, have forced not only the President but the mainstream media to acknowledge this elephant in the room, if only for the moment. But as we all should know, this issue is an even greater one that many are willing to admit. And these are only the stories that the mainstream media has picked up on. For those of you who follow me on Facebook, you know that since 2014 I have been reporting, almost on an daily basis, various acts of antisemitism that have taken place in our country and around the world. I know that there are those that have found my "Antisemitism in Action" reports to be somewhat irritating and alarmist for our lives have been good lives and we generally don't live in fear. But still, these attacks upon our people are real and they have been real for some time now. Unfortunately, they will continue to be real after this current news cycle ends and the stories of antisemitism once again fade from the headlines.
Obviously, there is nothing new about antisemitism. It has been with us for at least 2,000 years. Over that time it has taken on nuanced changes but at its core, it has essentially remained the same and, of course, its impact upon the Jewish people has most certainly remained the same. It matters but little what excuse the antisemites give for despising us, for degrading us, and for persecuting us, in the end it all results in the same suffering, ranging from humiliation to extermination.
That being said, today what we are experiencing in America is not the same singular hatred that has marked most of the history of antisemitism. Rather, today's American antisemitism is but one component of a complex dynamic of American hatred that has found its voice and has felt profoundly empowered over the past year, especially in the wake of the recent presidential campaign. For today's American antisemitism is intimately and inextricably connected to a web of hatred which includes racism, Islamophobia, homophobia, xenophobia, and sexism (and probably a few other bigotries I forgot to mention). For quite some time now I have been fond of saying, "Those who hate tend to be equal opportunity haters." Today in America those "equal opportunity haters" are sensing a new liberation as they are stepping out of the shadows and coming out from under their rocks to assert their prejudices upon our society, and Jew hatred is but one of those prejudices.
But all this should not get us down. After all, soon it will be Purim and we will be celebrating; celebrating vigorously. Why will we be celebrating while bomb threats may be continuing to roll in and perhaps other Jewish cemeteries will be desecrated? We will be celebrating because, just as our history has shown us, no matter what they try to do to us, in the end we will win. We will win because it is our right to win. We will win because there are too many good people in this world to allow evil to prosper.
There is an old Midrash about two men on a lake in a rowboat. One of them takes out a drill and starts boring under his seat. The other, in distress, calls out to him: "What do you think you are doing?" The fellow replies: "What do you care? It's none of your business. I'm drilling under my own seat!" The moral is that we are all in this boat together – sink or swim. We cannot afford to focus solely on the prejudices that attack us personally. We must ban together – all victims of prejudice, along with all people of good conscience – and confront the current hatred in all of its forms, standing up for each other and standing with each other in common purpose.
If we ban together with others of good conscience in opposition to ALL forms of bigotry, including antisemitism, then we will win because we will not let the purveyors of hatred win. We will stand up to them and we will defeat them, in much the same manner that Mordecai & Esther defeated Haman. Each of us will just have to choose to be the Mordecai and the Esther of today. HAPPY PURIM!!!!!!!
[1] Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Megillah 7b.
Categories: "Antisemitism in Action", America, Antisemitism, Bomb Threats to Jewish Institutions, Cemetery Desecration, Equal Opportunity Haters, Following One's Conscience, Freedoms, Full Protection Under the Law, Haman, Hate, Hatred of Hispanics, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Human Unity, Islamophobia, Justice, Mordecai, Political Campaign Rhetoric, Prejudice, Purim, Queen Esther, Racism, Women's Rights, Xenophobia
Tags: "Antisemitism in Action", America, Antisemitism, Bomb Threats to Jewish Institutions, Cemetery Desecration, Equal Opportunity Haters, Following One's Conscience, Freedom, Full Protection Under the Law, Haman, Hate, Hatred of Hispanics, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Human unity, Islamophobia, Justice, Mordecai, Political Campaign Rhetoric, Prejudice, Purim, Queen Esther, Racism, Women's Rights, Xenophobia
Quad Cities Equality Rally Remarks
On Saturday afternoon, January 21st, as 100's of 1,000's of men, women, & children were gathering in Washington DC and in communities throughout the nation to protest the objectification of women and the growing dangers of bigotry and hate that have infected our land, in the Quad Cities, a rally was held to show our solidarity with all those throughout the country who were marching. The rally, which was called an Equality Rally, focused both on the recent challenges to women's rights and on how that challenge is inextricably connected to a complex of challenges to the rights of many targeted minorities in our society. The rally was held in the meeting hall of the United Steelworkers Union, in Bettendorf. The hall was filled beyond overflowing, as a mass of supporters were forced to stand out in front of the hall, due to lack of space inside. Several inspiring individuals spoke, expressing the pain of women, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, African Americans, Hispanics, Indigenous Americans, and people with lifelong physical and mental disabilities. I was among those honored with an invitation to speak from the perspective of our community's newest human rights organization – One Human Family QCA (Quad Cities Area). Below is a transcript of my remarks.
First off, thank you for the honor of allowing me to share these remarks with you today.
Before coming here today, my wife and I were attending a memorial service for Reverend Tom Kalshoven. Tom was the Executive Director of Churches United of the Quad Cities Area from 1973 to 1991. Those of you who knew Rev. Kalshoven know that he was a person profoundly committed to the causes of social justice. He marched with Dr. King. He served as the conscience of this community. I cannot help but think of how thrilled he would have been to see so many of you gathered here to affirm the cause of justice in our community.
We have come together because we are deeply concerned about what has been happening in our nation over the past year or so, and what might very well happen as we journey into the future. Let's face it. Many of us are more than concerned. We are downright afraid, and with good cause.
This past Monday, I was similarly honored to offer a pastoral prayer at a local Martin Luther King Day celebration. There, too, those who were gathered shared our concerns and our fears. Being Martin Luther King Day, I built my prayer around one of the inspiring teachings of Dr. King. He said, "The arc of history is long, but bends towards justice." Yet we seem to be living at a time when that arc has been diverted far off of its course, as it travels, not towards justice, but far away from it.
And that is what frightens us, for we have witnessed the forces of hate as they have freely crawled out from under the rocks which have hidden them for so long and have joyously reasserted their ideology of bigotry, and not without the encouragement of some of our nation's most highly placed individuals. A dark and ominous cloud of prejudice is engulfing our nation. A virulent virus of discrimination is infecting it as the fever of intolerance burns hot in the minds and souls of far too many of our fellow Americans.
Part of what frightens us is that we see the profound dedication of people who hate to their hatred; people like Dylann Roof who is willingly ready to martyr himself in the cause of hate. Part of what frightens us that we have come to recognize that those who thrive on hate tend to be equal opportunity haters. They hate African Americans. They hate Muslims. They hate Jews. They hate Latinos. They hate those who do not share their sexual orientation. They hate those with lifelong mental and physical disabilities. They hate the defenders of the environment. They hate intellectuals. They may not hate women but they sure don't look upon women as the equal of men. Rather, they prefer to look at women as mere objects placed on earth, primarily to fulfill the physical pleasure of men.
And now such people feel empowered. Now such people are empowered. And we are left with the question, "What are we going to do about that?" Of course, our natural instinct is to respond, "Protest!" but what does that really mean? We sign petitions. We post our feelings on Facebook. We gather for rallies, just like this one. But all these things; they are not really protest. They are but a prelude to protest. For true protest requires us to take action. Not for an hour. Not for a day. Not for a week. But ongoing action until we have achieved our goals. We need to work for change, with the emphasis on work; work until the job is done.
Nor can we stand alone. No one group of us can stand alone in our efforts to drive back the darkness. We need to stand together – men, women, young, old, laborers, professionals, people of every color, every race, regardless of sexual orientation, regardless of national origins, regardless of religious identity, regardless of political affiliations. We must cross lines and lock arms in common cause. On Monday, I shared with my fellow Martin Luther King Day celebrants, and I share with you now, the classic wisdom of Rev. Martin Niemoller, one of the founders of the Confessing Church in Germany, who bravely stood up against the Nazis. He said, "First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. Then they came for the incurably ill and I did not speak out because I was not incurably ill. Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist. Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out." We do not have the luxury to think of ourselves as separate from others; as our plight being separate from their plight. Once again, to quote Dr. King: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." If we do not choose to stand together then we will not stand at all.
In our community, we have birthed a new organization. We call it One Human Family QCA. Some of you here today already have joined our ranks. Our stated mission is "to protect the life, dignity, and human rights of all people in all places in our community." We are not looking to re-invent the wheel but to work cooperatively with many of the agencies and organizations that already exist to address issues of common concern. And when it comes to certain issues, for which no agencies or organizations exist, then we are ready to open new doors of dialogue and advocacy. Our organization provides but one opportunity to take your concerns and your values and put them into action in order to effect positive change and drive back the darkness that is engulfing us. There are many others dedicated to this cause; organizations like Quad Cities Interfaith and Progressive Action for the Common Good. The point is, when you leave here today, do not see this as an end to your protest but rather as a beginning of the very hard but important work of bringing the arc of history back on course toward justice. To quote a sage from my own Jewish tradition, Hillel the Elder, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?" Our time is now and our cause is just. We only need to choose to act.
Categories: America, American Politics, Antisemitism, Change is hard, Churches United of the Quad Cities, Dedication of People Who Hate to Their Hatred, Defending Principles, Dr. Martin Luther King, Dylann Roof, Equal Opportunity Haters, Equal Rights, Fear, Freedoms, Full Protection Under the Law, Hate, Hatred of Hispanics, Hatred of Indigenous Americans, Hatred of Intellectuals, Hatred of People With Lifelong Disabilities, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Hillel the Elder, Homosexuality, Human Unity, Interfaith Relations, Intolerance, Islamophobia, Jr., Justice, Martin Luther King Day, Objectification of Women, One Human Family QCA, Prejudice, Progresive Action for the Common Good, Quad Cities Equality Rally, Quad Cities Interfaith, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Religious Diversity, Rev. Martin Niemoller, Reverend Tom Kalshoven, Social Justice, Uncategorized, United Steelworkers Union meeting hall, US Social Issues, Washington DC, Women's March on Washington, Women's Rights
Tags: America, American Politics, Antisemitism, Change is hard, Churches United of the Quad Cities, Dedication of People Who Hate to Their Hatred, Defending Principles, Dr, Dylann Roof, Equal Opportunity Haters, Equal Rights, Fear, Freedom, Full Protection Under the Law, Hate, Hatred of Hispanics, Hatred of Indigenous Americans, Hatred of Intellectuals, Hatred of People With Lifelong Disabilities, Hatred of the LGBTQ Community, Hillel the Elder, Homosexuality, Human unity, Interfaith Relations, Intolerance, Islamophobia, Justice, Martin Luther King, Martin Luther King Day, Objectification of Women, One Human Family QCA, Prejudice, Progressive Action for the Common Good, Quad Cities Equality Rally, Quad Cities Interfaith, Racial Discrimination, Racism, Religious Diversity, Rev. Martin Niemoller, Reverend Tom Kalshoven, Social Justice, United Steelworkers Union meeting hall, US Social Issues, Washington DC, Women's March on Washington, Women's Rights
The Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut: A Rosh Hashanah Morning Sermon
Last night I announced that I planned to dedicate the remainder of this year's High Holy Day sermons to a sharing of some of the potentially life altering lessons of Mussar. And so I shall. But before I can do that, an introduction to Mussar itself is in order so as to put these lessons into an understandable context. If you wish to enter into a deeper exploration of Mussar – and I hope you will – then I cannot recommend highly enough the book EVERYDAY HOLINESS by Alan Morinis. It has inspired me and I know it will inspire you.[1]
The word Mussar literally means "correction" or "instruction" and also has become one of the more popular words that is used today for "ethics." Back in the second half of the 19th century, in Lithuania, Rabbi Israel Salanter started a movement of Jewish study which centered upon examining our ethical values and how they can influence our behaviors and therefore our lives, especially our spiritual lives. That movement came to be called the Mussar Movement, and it remains alive and well today.
Rabbi Salanter came to understand that Halachah – Jewish law – could only take us so far in our quest to develop healthy spiritual lives. For Halachah addresses our behaviors; our actions and our restraint from actions. It calls upon us to adopt a system of Mitzvot – a discipline of sacred behaviors – which can have the effect of raising us up to a higher spiritual plain. But the performance of Mitzvot, as he and all of us have observed, can easily devolve into become a mechanical and meaningless routine. Therefore there needs to be something deeper within us, which drives the Mitzvot and keeps them alive, fresh, and meaningful. And this is precisely where Mussar comes in, for while Halachah addresses our behaviors, Mussar addresses the underlying attitudes which inform our behaviors. And for Mussar, our attitudes are fundamentally a function of our souls.
In order to better appreciate Mussar you need to understand Mussar's approach to the soul. First of all, in Mussar we do not possess a soul, as if it were something apart from us that could be surgically removed like a kidney, but rather we ARE a soul. It is our soul which makes us into distinct individuals. All our physical attributes can change, and many do. My hair is growing gray. I used to have a 28" waistline. Yet we remain the same people. Even identical twins possess their own individuality. It is the soul and not the body that is the seat of our individuality.
While the soul is one, it does have three aspects to it. That is just like us. Each of us is one individual but still, there are many different aspects to who we are. For example, I am a rabbi, a man, a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a teacher, a community volunteer, an American, a Jew, etc. So it is with the soul. The three aspects of the soul, as identified by our tradition, are the Neshamah, the Ruach, and the Nefesh. The Neshamah is the inner core of the soul. It is the very essence of the divinity within us. Therefore it is inalterably holy and pure, and that can never change. The Ruach is, for lack of a better term, the life force within us. It is the Ruach that animates our body and impacts, and is impacted by, our physical condition. Then there is the Nefesh. The Nefesh is the center for our personality traits and our attitudes. The nature and condition of our Nefesh can be altered by the choices we make and the actions we take. It can be stained and it can be cleansed. You could compare the relationship between the Neshamah and the Nefesh to that of the sun and the weather. The Neshamah is like the sun, always radiating light and heat, and the Nefesh is like the weather, sometimes letting the holy light and heat of the Neshamah into our lives and sometimes blocking it out.
It is with the nature of the Nefesh that Mussar is most concerned, the goal of Mussar being to help us develop a healthy Nefesh, so that each of us can reside, so to speak, in the spiritual Sunbelt.
Mussar calls the character traits of the Nefesh, Middot – Middah in the singular. Middah literally means a "measure" and in this context, it is the measure of our attitudes. It is our attitudes which inform our actions. If we embrace one attitude we will act in one way but it we embrace another attitude, we will act in quite a different way.
Mussar envisions our attitudes as existing along a continuum, from one extreme to another, such as from greed to generosity. Both ends of such continuums can be equally destructive. So, for example, excessive greed can cut us off from all human relationships while excessive generosity can lead us to giving everything away to the point that we can no longer survive. What we need is to find some sort of combination of both extremes, where they each moderate the other in such a way as to establish the ideal mix. So, for example, that we become generous enough to make a real difference in the lives of the less fortunate yet remain greedy enough to restrain our altruism in such a way that we keep sufficient means to sustain and maintain ourselves and our families. Achieving such ideal mixtures is the function of the Middot.
The principle which governs how we determine where along the continuum the Middah should reside is to be found in the Torah portion we will read on Yom Kippur afternoon. It comes from LEVITICUS, chapter 9, verse 2, in which God states, "You shall be holy for I Adonai your God am holy." The proper mix – the Middah – is the one that leads us best to a high state of holiness; to spiritual self-improvement; to a cleansing of our Nefesh and a release of more sacred light into our lives from our Neshamah.
Now we are ready to examine our first Middah; the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut. This Middah seeks to help us grapple with the issue of trust in our lives. Trust, like all the other attitudes as viewed by Mussar, exists along a continuum. On one end of that continuum is a trust which is so absolute that how can we consider it anything other than gullibility? Those individuals who live on that end of the continuum believe everyone they meet and everything they hear. As such, they are forever ripe targets for those who seek to take advantage of them. On the other end of the continuum is such an absence of trust that it is nothing less than paranoia. Those people believe no one they meet and nothing that they hear. So Mussar, tells us that somewhere in between those two extreme is the ideal balance of absolute trust and absolute distrust. That meeting place is the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut.
The Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut deals particularly with the level of trust we invest in our fellow human beings. This is not just a challenge for the gullible and the paranoid among us. This is a problem each and every one of us faces. I suspect that for most of us, hardly a day passes when we do not find ourselves in situations which call upon us to make judgements about other people. And if we were to be honest with ourselves, how often it is that we find ourselves all too ready to jump to our own conclusions, most of the time thinking the worst of others; we are so ready to embrace the negative. We are so ready to ascribe an evil or selfish intent upon the actions of others. "They wanted to hurt me!" How we can savor a juicy piece of gossip! The darker the rumor, the more ready we are to believe it and how ready we are to pass it on to others. Our tradition even has a name for this. We call it Lashon HaRa – "the Evil Tongue", and of it the rabbis said that it is a sin worse than murder, for the murderer only destroys one soul but the purveyor of Lashon HaRa destroys three – his or her soul, the soul of the subject of the tale, and the soul of the one who listens to it.
But don't feel too bad, don't beat yourself up about it, for just this summer I found out that it's not all our fault. It turns out that there is a whole branch of psychology called Evolutionary Psychology. Science Daily describes Evolutionary Psychology in this way: "Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach to psychology that attempts to explain useful mental and psychological traits—such as memory, perception, or language—as adaptations, i.e., as the functional products of natural selection." In other words, there are certain aspects of the human psychological makeup which have become almost instinctual within us as a product of the process of evolution. Our readiness to think the worst about people is part of that phenomenon. Our brains are hotwired to expect the negative and that tendency can be traced back to the earliest days of human history when the world was a very hostile place and we always needed to be on our guard if we were ever to survive. That is why, still today, it is part of our makeup that our anger tends to linger while our gratitude quickly fades. We tend to cling to the memories of how others have hurt us and suppress those memories of how they blessed us. We are so ready to forget and throw away all the good times because of one bad time.
That being said, our Judaism has always taught us that we are much more than our instincts. There are times when we need to transcend our instincts – rise above them – in order to make of ourselves better people. And this issue of trust is one of those times. And that brings us right back to the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut, for that is precisely what this Middah calls upon us to do; to rise above our instinctual urges to assume negative intent in the actions and the words of our fellow human beings. For Dan L'Chaf Zechut literally means "Judge others according to a scale of merit," or in more colloquial terms, "Give Others the Benefit of the Doubt." In spite of our psychology, and maybe even our biology, we have to get over our instinct to rush to judgement and assume the worst of others.
We have to stop ourselves from automatically thinking negatively and say, at least to ourselves, and even better to others as well, "Wait a minute! I know this person. And knowing what I do know about this person, do I really believe that this person was capable of doing that or saying that? Do I really believe that this person intentionally wanted to hurt others? Could it be that this report is faulty or exaggerated, or some of the facts are missing? You know, generally speaking there are two sides to every story. I sure would like to hear the other side before I am ready to jump on the condemnation bandwagon."
Overcoming this instinct of ours to generally think the worst is a real challenge. In fact, there are very few people I have known who have ever become masters of it; who somehow inoculated themselves from such massive negativity. One of them was my mother, and another was a person who lived in this community and has since passed away. Many of you knew her. Martha Stone.
For many years, our adult education program included a Wednesday morning book study group. We called it "Sefarim" which is Hebrew for "Books." Among its members were Martha and Alex Stone. From 10:00 to 11:30 every Wednesday morning we gathered in the Temple Library and seriously studied books of our choosing. Of course, as is common in study groups that have met over time, and in which the participants get to really know each other more than just in passing, there were mornings when book talk was sidetracked by community talk, particularly about this or that hot button topic. Invariably, when one person or another, in a fit of aggravation, complained, "Did you hear what so-&-so did or said?" and then went on to recount the offensive remarks or actions, Martha was always quick to jump in and say "Wait a minute. Maybe that person was trying to say X instead of Y. Maybe that person was trying to do A instead of B." She always gave people the benefit of the doubt. She always assumed that their intentions were good, and not evil, and she always tried to make others see that as well. She always chose to see the good in people rather than the bad. She was the personification of Dan L'Chaf Zechut. And how I admired her for it. How I always wished that I could be more like her.
Martha clearly understood what we all need to understand. People aren't throwaways. Every human being is both precious and fragile. Except for the relatively few truly evil people in the world, the vast majority of us are spending our lives, trying to do the right thing, or at least the right thing as we see it. Granted that sometimes we get so lost in our pursuit of our version of the right, that we wind up doing the wrong thing; the wrong thing for what we believe to be the right reasons. We all, every once and a while wander off the path. We all can miss the mark. That is why our tradition uses the word Chet as one of the words for "sin" for "Chet" literally means "missing the mark." But at the end of the day, right or wrong, we are trying to do the best we can. This is why the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut is so important. For in this imperfect world populated by imperfect people, if we are going to measure each other, we need to measure each other on the scale of merit rather than on the scale of demerit. We need to give each other the benefit of the doubt or we will wind up tearing each other apart. Only then can we raise ourselves up to a higher spiritual plain as we begin to heal the world rather than destroy it.
One last thought. For those of you who have accompanied me for all or a good part of my 32 year Quad Cities journey through the High Holy Days, you know that it has been my tradition to focus my Rosh Hashanah Morning sermon on some lesson we can draw from the Torah portion – the Akedah – the attempted sacrifice of Isaac. I would be remiss if I were to abandon that tradition this year, of all years, for my last Rosh Hashanah Morning sermon before you. So consider this.
Today's Torah portion presents us with an Abraham who also could embrace the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut, for even though he had to check and double check God's instructions about offering Isaac up for a sacrifice, in the end he did not resist it nor did he turn his back on God and walk away. He planned to go through with it. Why? Not because he was an unfeeling father and not because he did not love Isaac dearly. But rather because, based upon his knowledge and experience of God, he trusted God implicitly. Knowing the type of god God is – living in a world that was filled with those who believed in many harsh and brutal gods – when it came to his God, Abraham was trusting and faithful enough to embrace the Middah of Dan L'Chaf Zechut. Knowing that his God is a God of justice and compassion, he gave God the benefit of the doubt, truly believing that everything would work out for the best. And it did. Maybe one of the reasons that we read this story as we begin the new year is because, perhaps in this coming year, we will learn to become more like Abraham, trusting in the good of others and every ready to offer them the benefit of the doubt. Dan L'Chaf Zechut.
[1] So much of my knowledge of Mussar is drawn from my studies of Alan Morninis' book, EVERYDAY HOLINESS, and the book TEACHING JEWISH VIRTUES: SACRED SOURCES AND ARTS ACTIVITIES, by Susan Freeman, that I am no longer certain where their teachings take off and my "original" thought begins. I share this with you in the spirit of the Middah, B'Shem Omro, "Giving Proper Acknowledgement of Sources of the Knowledge We Share With Others".
Categories: Abraham, Becoming a better person, Binding of Isaac, Change, Change as a Challenge, Change as a Process, Change is hard, Connecting to God, Dan L'Chaf Zechut, EVERYDAY HOLINESS, Giving Others the Benefit of the Doubt, God, Helene Karp my mother, Jewish Theology, Martha Stone, Middot, Mitzvah / Mitzvot, Mussar, Relationships, Rosh Hashanah, Soul, Spirituality, TEACHING JEWISH VIRTUES, Values
Tags: Abraham, Abraham and Isaac, Becoming a better person, Binding of Isaac, Change, Change as a Challenge, Change as a Process, Change is hard, Changing for the Better, Connecting to God, Dan L'Chaf Zechut, EVERYDAY HOLINESS, Giving Others the Benefit of the Doubt, God, Helene Karp my mother, Jewish Theology, Martha Stone, Middot, Mitzvah, Mitzvot, Mussar, Rabbi Israel Salanter, Relationships, Rosh Hashanah, Soul, Spirituality, TEACHING JEWISH VIRTUES, Values
Standing On the Border of Tragedy and Hope
It was a remarkably beautiful day for December. The sun was shining and the temperatures were moderate. I arrived at the Waterfront Convention Center at just about 7:30 in the morning, looking ahead with both anticipation and anxiety about the day which was yet to unfold. Our own LINDA GOLDEN, LISA KILLINGER of the Islamic community, and I had been spearheading an effort to encourage Quad Citians to join in assembling meal packs to be sent to Jordan to feed the Syrian refugees in camps there. The actual assembling of these meal packs would be taking place for much of the day, with teams of 10 working in 1-hour shifts, from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. At any given time, we had set ups for up to 16 teams working at once. Going into the morning, we were thrilled by the numbers of Quad Citians who had already stepped forward to help in this humanitarian effort. We had slots for 1,600 people to assemble meal packs and we already had 1,550 people sign up to do so! As the day progressed many more volunteers walked through the door. We enlisted the organization, KIDS AGAINST HUNGER, to do their magic in setting up and administering the project. In the past, Linda, Lisa, and I had wonderful experiences working with them as they put on their program in our religious schools. We were fully confident that they would do a great job. However, they had never put together a program this large or complex. So, as confident as we were, we still prayed that it would all come together smoothly, and it did.
We publicized the event as an interfaith effort and it was shaping up to be true to that name. We had Catholics and Protestants, Evangelicals and Unitarians, Jews and Muslim, Hindus and Buddhists, people of all sorts of religions and people of no religious affiliation, all having signed up to do their part to feed starving Syrian refugees. It was wondrous to see these various faith groups working side-by-side. At one point I had to chuckle for there was a group from the Jewish community that was awaiting the group ahead of them to finish working at their assigned table. The group that kept them waiting were the Buddhists. How often do you see something like that?
At the end of each hour, as the shift was ending, the energy level of the people finishing their shift was high for the very act of helping others increased their energy and lifted their souls. Sitting as I was at the donation table, each shift ended with people crowding the table, wanted to extend their good feelings by giving cash or writing checks to further help the cause. So many of them were so grateful for our having provided them with the opportunity to do this act if kindness. So many of them commented on how bereft they felt in the wake of the violence of the attacks in Paris and San Bernadino; how hopeless they felt coming into the Convention Center, but how filled with hope they felt as they left.
Paris, San Bernadino, Colorado Springs, ISIS, Syria, terrorist violence around the world, including the knife intifada in Israel, all have served to cast the dark shadows of tragedy and hopelessness over our little planet. Yet for that one Saturday, at the Waterfront Convention Center in Bettendorf, Iowa it seemed that a bright light had pierced through that darkness and filled our space and our lives with brilliant rays of hope. How could it be otherwise when people of such diverse backgrounds, theologies, and ideologies come together in order to serve a greater good; in order to further the wellbeing of total strangers, people they may even disagree with on political issues? In a world filled with hatred and violence, pettiness and strife, even if just for a moment, there were all these people who gathered to live up to the best of human potential and to create an oasis of caring, respect, and fundamental human decency. There is hope for our future!
Categories: America, Antisemitism, Appreciating the faith of others, Churches, Evangelical Christians, Giving of Our Time, Giving of Ourselves, Gun Violence in America, Hate, hope, hunger, Hunger, Interfaith Relations, Iowa, Kids Against Hunger, Prejudice, Quad Cities, Racism, Religious Diversity, Shared Faith Values, Social Action, Social Justice, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Syrian Refugee Camps, Syrian Refugee Crisis, terrorism, Volunteerism
Tags: America, Appreciating th faith of others, Churches, Colorado Springs Attack, Giving of Our Time, Giving of Ourselves, Gun Violence in America, Hate, hope, Hopelessness, hunger, Interfaith Relations, Iowa, ISIS, Kids Against Hunger, Knife Intifada, Mosques, Paris Terrorist Attacks, Prejudice, Quad Cities, Religious Diversity, San Bernadino Attack, Shared Faith Values, Social Action, Social Justice, Synagogues, Syria, Syrian Civil War, Syrian Refugee Camps, Syrian Refugee Crisis, terrorism, Tragedy, Volunteerism


text:
package com.netflix.hystrix.perf;

import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixCommand;
import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixCommandGroupKey;
import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixCommandProperties;
import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixThreadPool;
import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixThreadPoolKey;
import com.netflix.hystrix.HystrixThreadPoolProperties;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Benchmark;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.BenchmarkMode;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Level;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Mode;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.OutputTimeUnit;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Param;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Scope;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.Setup;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.State;
import org.openjdk.jmh.annotations.TearDown;
import rx.Observable;
import rx.schedulers.Schedulers;

import java.util.List;
import java.util.concurrent.Callable;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutionException;
import java.util.concurrent.ExecutorService;
import java.util.concurrent.Executors;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class CommandGroupKeyExecutionPerfTest {

    @State(Scope.Thread)
    public static class CommandState {
        HystrixCommand<Integer> command;

        static class TestCommand extends HystrixCommand<Integer> {
            TestCommand() {
                super(HystrixCommandGroupKey.Factory.asKey("PERF"));
            }

            @Override
            protected Integer run() throws Exception {
                return 1;
            }

            @Override
            protected Integer getFallback() {
                return 2;
            }
        }

        @Setup(Level.Invocation)
        public void setUp() {
            command = new TestCommand();
        }
    }

    @State(Scope.Benchmark)
    public static class ExecutorState {
        ExecutorService executorService;

        @Setup
        public void setUp() {
            executorService = Executors.newFixedThreadPool(100);
        }

        @TearDown
        public void tearDown() {
            List<Runnable> runnables = executorService.shutdownNow();
        }
    }

    @State(Scope.Benchmark)
    public static class ThreadPoolState {
        HystrixThreadPool hystrixThreadPool;

        @Setup
        public void setUp() {
            hystrixThreadPool = new HystrixThreadPool.HystrixThreadPoolDefault(
                    HystrixThreadPoolKey.Factory.asKey("PERF")
                    , HystrixThreadPoolProperties.Setter().withCoreSize(100));
        }

        @TearDown
        public void tearDown() {
            hystrixThreadPool.getExecutor().shutdownNow();
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer baselineExecute() {
        return 1;
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer baselineQueue(ExecutorState state) throws InterruptedException, ExecutionException{
        try {
            return state.executorService.submit(new Callable<Integer>() {
                @Override
                public Integer call() throws Exception {
                    return 1;
                }
            }).get();
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            return 2;
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer baselineSyncObserve() throws InterruptedException {
        Observable<Integer> syncObservable = Observable.just(1);

        try {
            return syncObservable.toBlocking().first();
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            return 2;
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer baselineAsyncComputationObserve() throws InterruptedException {
        Observable<Integer> asyncObservable = Observable.just(1).subscribeOn(Schedulers.computation());

        try {
            return asyncObservable.toBlocking().first();
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            return 2;
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer baselineAsyncCustomThreadPoolObserve(ThreadPoolState state) {
        Observable<Integer> asyncObservable = Observable.just(1).subscribeOn(state.hystrixThreadPool.getScheduler());
        try {
            return asyncObservable.toBlocking().first();
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            return 2;
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer hystrixExecute(CommandState state) {
        return state.command.execute();
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer hystrixQueue(CommandState state) {
        try {
            return state.command.queue().get();
        } catch (Throwable t) {
            return 2;
        }
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer hystrixObserve(CommandState state) {
        return state.command.observe().toBlocking().first();
    }

    @Benchmark
    @BenchmarkMode({Mode.Throughput})
    @OutputTimeUnit(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS)
    public Integer hystrixToObservable(CommandState state) {
        return state.command.toObservable().toBlocking().first();
    }
}

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub


Discussion in 'Emergencies / Diseases / Injuries and Cures' started by Deanna M, Mar 25, 2019.
Hubby got 2 Barred Rocks at the same time and 1 hasn't grown much. Have gotten Wyandottes same time as well. All have grown a lot except Cruella, one of the Barred Rocks. Swollen, very warm belly. Squishy with a small soft knot on the left side. Eats but doesn't drink much. Not active and waddles when she walks. She stays under the heat lamp or huddles with other chicks. Labored breathing, no sneezing or coughing, and I haven't heard any wheezing. Also has ruffled feathers. Could this be ascites? I've added a pic with her near the other Barred Rock as well to show sizes.
casportpony and ButtonquailGirl14 like this.
The others have grown tremendously, even the ones we got 3 days after her. She is the smallest and not thriving so much.
ButtonquailGirl14 and casportpony like this.
Welcome to BYC. It could be ascites, I'Ve seen it twice in young birds. Once it was in peachick with a defective heart valve, the other was in a pigeon. It could also be some sort of bacterial infection.
ButtonquailGirl14, micstrachan, Deanna M and 1 other person like this.
What does her poop look like?
How long have you had her, what is her age now?
It could be Ascites or infection. The symptoms you describe are concerning. I'm not sure exactly what it could be - Ascites is a possibility. Infection also comes to mind Omphalitis.
ButtonquailGirl14, micstrachan and casportpony like this.
Thank you. That's what I was thinking but wasn't too sure.
Poop is dark green/brown with white. We've had her going on 3 weeks. I posted a pic of her sitting across from the other Barred Rock we got at the same time. Much smaller than the other.


text:
<?php

namespace CampaignChain\CoreBundle\Service\UrlShortener;

use CampaignChain\CoreBundle\Entity\LinkInterface;
use CampaignChain\CoreBundle\Exception\ExternalApiException;
use Mremi\UrlShortener\Exception\InvalidApiResponseException;
use Mremi\UrlShortener\Provider\UrlShortenerProviderInterface;

/**
 * Class UrlShortenerService
 * @package CampaignChain\CoreBundle\Service
 */
class UrlShortenerService implements UrlShortenerServiceInterface
{
    /**
     * @var UrlShortenerProviderInterface
     */
    private $provider;

    /**
     * UrlShortenerService constructor.
     * @param UrlShortenerProviderInterface $provider
     */
    public function __construct(UrlShortenerProviderInterface $provider)
    {
        $this->provider = $provider;
    }

    /**
     * @inheritDoc
     */
    public function shorten(LinkInterface $link)
    {
        try {
            $this->provider->shorten($link);
        } catch (InvalidApiResponseException $e) {
            throw new ExternalApiException($e->getMessage(), $e->getCode(), $e);
        }
    }

    /**
     * @inheritDoc
     */
    public function expand(LinkInterface $link)
    {
        try {
            $this->provider->expand($link);
        } catch (InvalidApiResponseException $e) {
            throw new ExternalApiException($e->getMessage(), $e->getCode(), $e);
        }
    }

}


Visiting sacred places can have a profoundly positive impact on people's lives. Earth is dotted with power centers where people have experienced visions, healings, prophecies, inspiration or insight into the meaning of their lives. Stonehenge in England, the Pyramids in Egypt, Machu Picchu in Peru, Sedona in Arizona and Mount Shasta in California are among the world's best known power sites, but there are over 1,000 stone circles, holy wells, sacred forests, healing springs, oracle caves and pagan temples across the planet that have been attracting visitors since ancient times.The healing power of sacred places.Only 30 miles from Santa Fe, New Mexico is El Santuario de Chimayo where 300,000 visitors each year come to scoop sand from a hole in the floor of the "Room of Miracles.
" Its walls are lined with letters and photographs from hundreds of thankful pilgrims who say they were healed here. Cornwall, in the southwest of England, has more than a dozen holy wells where, like Lourdes in France, miraculous cures have been reported for hundreds of years.Jean Shinoda Bolen, MD, a psychiatrist and clinical professor at the University of California, documented the healing power of both prayer and pilgrimage in her book, Close to the Bone. "The energy of sacred places is very subtle," she said. "The healing capacity of a place can aid the healing process similar to the way that prayer can. When someone goes on a pilgrimage believing they may be healed there, they can set powerful forces into motion.
".Vision quests lead to self-understanding.Going on vision quests is a North American native tradition that has become a popular New Age practice.
It involves spending time alone in an isolated, often wilderness setting, in hope of receiving a message to guide one's life. When Helene A. Shik leads spiritual tour groups to islands in Scotland's Inner Hebrides, she often includes a vision quest opportunity at a holy well called Tobar na h'oige (the Fountain of Youth) on the tiny island of Iona. A popular pilgrimage site for Pagans and Christians alike, Iona is the burial place of 48 ancient Scottish kings, including Duncan, who was murdered by Macbeth in 1040.
Shik says Iona was a sacred isle for pre-historic Celts and later for the Druids. "It's a place where the veil between the worlds is thin," she says, "where we can transcend time and space." Shik says her tours give people new perspectives on their lives, enabling them to understand themselves more clearly.
"Sometimes people learn more about themselves in two weeks with me than they could in 20 years of therapy.".Sedona vortexes stimulate creativity.One of the most power energy centers in the USA is Sedona, Arizona. Once a secret known to few outsiders save for Hollywood crews who filmed countless western movies in its picturesque canyons, Sedona became an artists' colony in the 1950s when surrealist painter and sculptor Max Ernst and author Kahlil Gibran moved in.
After the 1987 Harmonic Convergence was held in Sedona, it became the New Age center of the country. A 1995 study by the Chamber of Commerce found that 64% of Sedona's four million visitors per year come to find "some kind of spiritual experience." The focal points of Sedona's power are four energy vortexes, identified in 1980 by trance medium Paige Bryant.
It is a rare visitor who does not feel invigorated by the vortex energy. Many people who retire to Sedona because of its mild climate and beautiful scenery suddenly develop an interest in painting, sculpture or crafts work, even though they had no previous artistic interests. It is not uncommon for visitors to fall in love with Sedona, buy homes there, and then a few months later have to move out because they are unable to withstand the constant force of so much energy. Sedona is also the headquarters for dozens of astrologers, psychics, spiritual counselors, massage therapists and other energy workers.
A local psychic association member joked that "Sedona is the only city in the world with 1,500 channels and no TV station.".How to get the most from sacred sites.People hoping for a transformational travel experience can enhance their chances of a non-ordinary event by preparing in advance of their visit. Before a native youth went on a vision quest, he or she would train with a shaman to learn about the spirit world. They might take part in extensive prayers, fasting, drumming, chanting, dancing and even psyotropoic herbs or mushrooms.
You can't expect to have a similar quality experience if you simply show up at a place like Stonehenge, buy a ticket, follow a tour guide around and take a few pictures. Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen suggests, "You need to approach a pilgrimage site with an attitude of openness. Since you are going there to be affected by the place, you have to allow yourself to be affected.
" At the very least, you should approach a sacred place with a humble attitude and ask permission from the spirits before you enter.
.Robert Scheer is a travel writer who specializes in sacred sites and power places. He is also editor of the New Age Travel website.


The Northern Powerhouse initiative to increase investment in the North has propelled the UK to 9th on a new global investment index.
The Global Infrastructure Investment index released by Arcadis, a construction design and consultancy firm, has ranked the UK as the 9th most attractive nation for infrastructure investment and is among the highest risers in the index – up 4 places since 2012.
The report, which ranks 41 countries, assesses each country's growth potential, levels of investment and the returns sought by investors to create a list of the most dynamic countries that offer the greatest potential for growth and investment in their economies.
According to the index, the higher ranking afforded to the UK is attributed to its 'mature, stable, low risk business environment', as also shown by its commitment to major infrastructure projects targeting a variety of sectors, such as transport and housing.
Government schemes such as the HS2 high speed rail link, designed to improve transport links between the Northern Regions and London, and Crossrail 2 which will create a new cross-city rail link between the South and North of London, are expected to create new opportunities for investors.
Moreover, the report highlights that efforts to promote growth and development in the North to re-balance the economy of the nation through the Northern Powerhouse initiative are playing a key role in attracting global investors as well as creating real estate and housing opportunities next to their development.


text:
/**
 * ClientController
 *
 * @module      :: Controller
 * @description :: A set of functions called `actions`.
 *
 *                 Actions contain code telling Sails how to respond to a certain type of request.
 *                 (i.e. do stuff, then send some JSON, show an HTML page, or redirect to another URL)
 *
 *                 You can configure the blueprint URLs which trigger these actions (`config/controllers.js`)
 *                 and/or override them with custom routes (`config/routes.js`)
 *
 *                 NOTE: The code you write here supports both HTTP and Socket.io automatically.
 *
 * @docs        :: http://sailsjs.org/#!documentation/controllers
 */

module.exports = {

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `/apps`
     */
    index: function(req, res) {

        Client.find({
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, clients) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            // Send a response
            return res.render('clients/index', {
                clients: clients
            });
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `/clients`
     */
    clients: function(req, res) {

        Client.find({
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, clients) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            // Send a JSON response
            return res.sendResponse(200, clients);
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `/apps/new`
     */
    new: function(req, res) {

        // Send a response
        return res.render('clients/new');
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `post /clients`
     */
    create: function(req, res) {

        //Create a new client
        Client.create({
            name: req.body.name,
            redirectURI: req.body.redirectURI,
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, client) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            // Send a JSON response
            return res.sendResponse(200, {
                msg: 'Client created successfully!'
            });
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `/apps/:id/edit`
     */
    edit: function(req, res) {

        Client.findOne({
            _id: req.params.id,
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, client) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            if (!client) {
                return res.serverError('Client not found!');
            }
            // Send a response
            return res.render('clients/edit', {
                client: client
            });
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `/clients/:id`
     */
    find: function(req, res) {

        Client.findOne({
            _id: req.params.id,
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, client) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            if (!client) {
                return res.serverError('Client not found!');
            }
            // Send a JSON response
            return res.sendResponse(200, client);
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `put /clients/:id`
     */
    update: function(req, res) {

        Client.findOne({
            _id: req.params.id,
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, client) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            if (!client) {
                return res.serverError('Client not found!');
            }
            if (req.body.hasOwnProperty('name') && req.body.name !== '') {
                client.name = req.body.name;
            }
            if (req.body.hasOwnProperty('redirectURI') && req.body.redirectURI !== '') {
                client.redirectURI = req.body.redirectURI;
            }
            client.save(function(err) {
                if (err) {
                    return res.serverError(err);
                }
                // Send a JSON response
                return res.sendResponse(200, {
                    msg: 'Client updated successfully!'
                });
            });
        });
    },

    /**
     * Action blueprints:
     *    `delete /clients/:id`
     */
    destroy: function(req, res) {

        Client.findOne({
            _id: req.params.id,
            userId: req.user.id
        }).done(function(err, client) {
            if (err) {
                return res.serverError(err);
            }
            if (!client) {
                return res.serverError('Client not found!');
            }
            client.destroy(function(err) {
                if (err) {
                    return res.serverError(err);
                }
                // Send a JSON response
                return res.sendResponse(200, {
                    msg: 'Client removed successfully!'
                });
            });
        });
    },

    /**
     * Overrides for the settings in `config/controllers.js`
     * (specific to ClientController)
     */
    _config: {}

};


text:
Phil's Mood è un album del sassofonista statunitense Phil Woods con Enrico Pieranunzi, pubblicato (a nome Phil Woods & Space Jazz Trio) dalla Philology Records nel 1988.

Il disco fu registrato il 20 aprile 1988 al Soundvideocat Studio di Roma, Italia.

Tracce
Musiche composte da Enrico Pieranunzi, tranne Upstairs composto da Enzo Pietropaoli

Musicisti
 Enrico Pieranunzi - pianoforte
 Phil Woods - sassofono alto
 Enzo Pietropaoli - contrabbasso
 Alfred Kramer - batteria

Collegamenti esterni

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


SOURCE_PROCESS_TYPE varchar(64) Name of the source-system process—for example, Order.
SOURCE_PROCESS_SUBTYPE varchar(64) Subtype of the process—for example, Activation.
Retrieved from "https://docs.genesys.com/Documentation:IWD:Ref:IWDSOURCE_PROCESSDimension:8.5.0 (2019-04-20 11:33:07)"