Friday Shabbat Shalom

I went into a ladies’ room last fall and saw a ghost. I had just arrived at a synagogue in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to give a lecture on All Other Nights, my novel about Jewish spies during the Civil War. As I hurried to the restroom before greeting my hosts, I opened the door and stopped short. In the mirror, next to my 21st-century reflection, was a woman wearing a 19th-century corset and petticoats, struggling to pull a calico dress over her hoop skirts.

This week's Parashat Shemini contains a long exposition of the laws of kashrut, a practice I did not grow up observing. Though my father (z”l) loved tradition in general, he was the first one in his family to have a non-kosher home, saying: "We're American! What is this craziness? We should eat like Americans!" Family lore has it that when my great-grandmother (his grandmother) came to visit my parent’s new home in the suburbs, she was so horrified to find that the kitchen wasn’t kosher, she would only eat a piece of cold lettuce, on the back porch, on a paper plate, in the middle of a Boston winter!

Let’s face it, on Purim we Jews look pathetic... Think about it: on Passover, we confront the mighty Pharaoh and gain our freedom with bravery and portents; on Hanukkah, we defeat a Hellenist empire with a gutsy resistance, and on Purim… we win by trickery, seduction, and dumb luck. Jews seem to be at the mercy of the whims of a frivolous king and an evil viceroy… OK, now that I’ve ruined Purim for you, let me share what I consider to be its most redeeming quality: Purim is, probably, our most Zionist holiday.

I’m having a difficult time getting my joy on for Adar and for Purim, because I don’t recall a time that both the state of the Jews (the Jewish people) and the State of the Jews (Israel / Medinat Yisrael) were in such bad shape… But then… I realized that our sages and our wise tradition have already shown us the way of living in an unsettling and painful reality… They taught us rituals that help us recognize sadness in the midst of our joy, and conversely, perceive joy in the midst of our sadness. We humans aren’t well designed to live solely in joy, nor should we dwell solely in sadness. Life is about finding balance, ‘the golden mean’ or ‘the middle path,’ as the rabbis put it.

We at CAJE are so proud of Miami survivor and past March of the Living participant David Schaecter, who as president of the Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation USA (HSF), condemned The Zone of Interest director Jonathan Glazer for his divisive Oscar acceptance speech that linked his film’s Holocaust subject matter to criticism of Israel’s ongoing Gaza conflict with these words...

An entire chapter (Shemot/Exodus 39) is spent speaking about the priestly vestments, the uniform worn by Aaron and his sons when they performed the Divine sacrificial worship... In essence, like a superhero, the moment Aaron donned the priestly clothing he became a symbol for the enduring relationship between the Jewish people and God initiated at Mount Sinai.

We live in an age of great material abundance. It isn't unusual for families to own several automobiles, for their homes to display telephones and televisions in more than one room, even to have several computers at home. We own multiple refrigerators and freezers, lavish amounts of clothing, and recreate in private facilities that offer state-of-the-art amusement. With all the luxuries that Americans enjoy, it is surely anomalous that so many of us are bored and lonely. You would think that all our possessions and distractions would keep us buzzing contentedly … Yet that isn't the case.

This is a truth known viscerally to Jews today who hail from the unfree world — those from the former Soviet Union; those who were expelled from Iran and other autocratic regimes in the Middle East. And it is a truth faced daily by Jews in places that remain unfree. Just ask the Jews of Tunisia, who in October watched as a historic synagogue was reduced to rubble by a mob driven by false reports that Israel had bombed a hospital in Gaza.