Thank You Austin

I am regularly inspired by a little book called "Steal Like An Artist" by Austin Kleon.  His simple wisdom and advice often helps me get back on track when I've fallen off.  I highly recommend it.
Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon published by Workman Publishing Company, New York.  You can visit Austin at www.AustinKleon.com.  Thanks, Austin.

Torah Thoughts on Yitro

This week’s Torah portion, Yitro, (Ex. 18:1 – 20:23) depicts the climactic meeting between God and the Israelite people at Mount Sinai, and highlights the Ten Utterances, usually referred to as the Ten Commandments, spoken by the voice of God from the mountain to those assembled below.

Many years ago, on a Hillel retreat, a student of mine gave a d’var Torah on this portion.  He pointed out that all but one of the Ten Commandments had to do with our obligations: to God, to society, to parents, to our spouses, to community.  Only one of the ten is not a responsibility but a benefit, and that is to remember Shabbat.  Shabbat is a day to rest and renew, to look after our spirit and delight in friends, family, food, and song.  However you choose to observe it, make it a celebration.  It’s for you.

Torah Thoughts on Beshallach

This week’s Torah portion, Beshallach, (Ex. 13:17 – 17:16) tells of the greatest miracle in the Torah, the splitting of the sea of Reeds so that the Israelites might cross, but the Egyptians pursuing them are drowned.  Once the great crossing is over, though, the reality of life in the wilderness begins.  The Israelites suddenly realize they have no food, no water, and nowhere to live.  God provides food, the manna which will feed them through their forty years in the wilderness, and water, which God gives them by Moses striking the rock.  But other nations now know that the Israelites are in the wilderness, and Amalek attacks the fledgling nation at Rephidim.  

 

God also provides help for the Israelites in fighting their enemies, but we also learn a lesson in how to work with one another.  As Joshua leads the newly-formed army in battle, Moses stands above them on a hill, holding the rod with which he split the sea in his hands.  As long as Moses’ hands are raised, the Israelites prevail, but when Moses grows tired and lowers his arms, Amalek begins to win.   Aaron and Hur sit Moses down on a stone and hold up his arms for him until the sun set, so that Israel can win the battle.  Even as great a leader as Moses, and even with all of God’s support, also needs help from his fellow human beings.

Torah Thoughts on Bo and on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day

The first time I wrote this was three years ago, but once again, Parshah Bo and Martin Luther King Day fall at the same time, so I am re-running it.  LB

            It is a happy coincidence of the Hebrew and secular calendars that this week’s Torah portion, Bo, (Ex. 10:1-13:16), falls in the same week as the commemoration of Martin Luther King’s birthday.  The Torah portion addresses the last three plagues of Egypt, and the exodus itself.  Within the first few verses of the portion, Moses and Aaron, speaking on behalf of God, utter the famous words, “let my people go”.  These words continued to resound throughout history.  Most notably, they were used by the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and mentioned by Dr. King in his 1964 acceptance speech of the Nobel Peace Prize:

Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself. The Bible tells the thrilling story of how Moses stood in Pharaoh's court centuries ago and cried, "Let my people go." This is a kind of opening chapter in a continuing story. The present struggle in the United States is a later chapter in the same unfolding story. Something within has reminded the Negro of his birthright of freedom, and something without has reminded him that it can be gained. Consciously or unconsciously, he has been caught up by the Zeitgeist, and with his black brothers of Africa and his brown and yellow brothers in Asia, South America, and the Caribbean, the United States Negro is moving with a sense of great urgency toward the promised land of racial justice.

            Nor is that struggle at an end, no matter how far we have come.  The Haggadah for the American Family, written by Rabbi Martin Berkowitz in that same time frame of the 1960s, looks prophetically towards the future in this reading:

The struggle for freedom is a continuous struggle, for never does man reach total liberty and opportunity.

In every age, some new freedom is won and established, adding to the advancement of human happiness and security.

Yet, each age uncovers a formerly unrecognized servitude, requiring new liberation to set man’s soul free.

In every age, the concept of freedom grows broader, widening the horizons for finer and nobler living.¹

         

   As we face this coming week, may each of us feel the need to continue the struggle for freedom, wherever in our world it may be needed.  

¹And a tip of the kippah to Alice Meerson for bringing the Haggadah reading to my attention.

Torah Thoughts on Vaera

This week’s Torah portion, Vaera (Ex. 6:2 – 9:35) tells of the first six plagues of Egypt, which come about after Moses asks Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out into the wilderness to worship their God for three days.  Moses warns Pharaoh that the God of the Israelites is powerful and that there will be dire consequences for Pharaoh and the Egyptians if Pharaoh disobeys God’s will.  But God also tells Moses “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart that I may multiply My signs and marvels in the land of Egypt (Ex. 7:3)”.  How are we to interpret this? If God is causing Pharaoh’s heart to harden, how can Pharaoh himself be held responsible for his actions?

Biblical scholar Moshe Greenberg writes, “Pharaoh conducted himself in conformity with his own motives and his own Godless view of his status.  God made it so, but Pharaoh had only to be himself to do God’s will”.  In Greenberg’s view, God simply used Pharaoh’s own natural stubbornness, rather than forcing him to do anything that was foreign to his nature.

Psychologist Erich Fromm notes that for the first five plagues, it is written “Pharaoh’s heart was hardened”, meaning that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, and only for the second five, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart”.  He comments, “Pharaoh’s heart hardens because he keeps on doing evil.  It hardens to a point where no more change or repentance is possible.  The longer he refuses to choose the right, the harder his heart becomes until there is no longer any freedom of choice left him”. 

Judaism teaches that we are born with free will.  But the case of Pharaoh illustrates that free will may not be limitless. 

Torah Thoughts on Shemot

This week’s Torah portion, Shemot (Ex. 1:1 – 6:1) picks up the story of the children of Israel long after the death of Joseph and of his brothers.  Under a new regime, they are enslaved by the Egyptians and put to hard labor. This chapter introduces us to Moses, a new leader for the people.  He is born into a Levite family but raised as the adopted daughter of the Pharaoh.  He kills an Egyptian overlord and flees to Midian where he marries the daughter of Jethro the priest.  Moses joins Jethro’s family and one day, herding Jethro’s sheep in the wilderness, out of a burning thornbush, Moses sees and speaks with God.  

God tells Moses that he has been chosen to free the people Israel from enslavement in Egypt.  God gives him specific instructions and assures him.  But Moses resists.  He is filled with doubts about his ability.  Four times, he gives God reasons why someone else should be chosen.  But of course, God knows best.  Moses will stand up to Pharaoh.  He will guide the people Israel from Egypt to the wilderness, to their encounter with God at Sinai, and to the verge of the land which God had promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  The one who called himself “slow of speech” achieves an unmatched eloquence, and dictates the entire book of Deuteronomy.  The one who feared he was too insignificant for Pharaoh to heed wins arguments with the God of the universe.  

When Moses herded Jethro’s sheep, he could not have imagined that he would become the image of liberation for people all over the world for millennia, but that is exactly what happened.  And, though we are not as great as Moses, we each underestimate what we can accomplish.  On the day of this secular New Year, let us commend ourselves for how far we have come, and look down the road to the next goal.

We All Pull The Trigger

Here's my most recent article published in the Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-walker-baron/we-all-pull-the-trigger_b_8787898.html

When confronted with terrifying and inexplicable events we experience extremely uncomfortable and seemingly unbearable individual and collective chaos. We are thrown into crisis. Nothing makes sense. Everything seems out of control. Life becomes terrifying. Our very survival appears to demand an immediate return to the perceived safety and certainty of life before the chaos of crisis.
Surviving a crisis can sometimes be as clear as finding the most direct path to safety: Leave a burning building through the closest exit. Seek a storm cellar before the tornado arrives. Go to high ground during a flood. These safety strategies are historically effective and may help us survive such moments of danger. We further understand that fires are extinguished, winds end, and waters recede. Most of us don't live in constant fear of these dangers and those who do seldom thrive. We also generally understand the root causes of these dangers. When these understandable crises end, their dangers for the most part also end. We clean up the debris, we bandage the wounded, we bury the dead and then we turn once again toward balance and life.
Common wisdom indicates that the mass shootings of the past decade have devastated our necessary sense of equilibrium and left us in a different type of crisis state. As we reel from the violence we demand explanation. As life becomes increasingly scary we seek accountability. Unfortunately, this is no simple crisis and, despite our yearnings for one, there is no clear, direct path to safety. There is no single source of our current danger. Nevertheless, flailing, we grasp at anything that might steady us. We cling to the simple solution and the named culprit. With a culprit and a solution we feel safer and more in control.
This human need to quickly resolve a crisis and regain safety and control is innate and understandable. As a strategy for resolving our current crisis of mass shootings this 'quick-find- the-culprit-and-implement-the-solution' approach holds the potential for doing more harm than good. All too quickly and all too frequently we point our fingers at already disenfranchised minorities and proudly proclaim that we've found the bad guys. We then feel compelled to 'do something about' those to whom our fingers point.
After each tragic mass shooting we are called upon, for example, to 'do something about' mental illness. The majority of the 'mental-illness-is-the-culprit' strategies are sadly rooted in misunderstanding and misinformation.
Any strategy designed to target those among us receiving mental health services will likely violate the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) privacy rule. Federal law protects the privacy of our medical information. If you don't want your recent treatment for that STD made public then don't demand that your neighbor's recent treatment for depression be made public either.
It must be further noted that when we point our fingers of blame at the mentally ill in this country we are pointing at over 50 million people. Each year one in four adults experience a mental disorder. (Martinelli, Laurie R., Binney, June S. & Kaye, Rebecca.2014."Separating Myth from Fact: Unlinking Mental Illness and Violence and Implications for Gun Control Legislation and Public Policy." New England Journal on Criminal and Civil Confinement. 40. 359-357.) Seeing a woman odorous and disheveled jumping up and down while shouting at someone invisible to us can be unsettling. It is very different behavior. Unfortunately our national mythology equates different with dangerous and so we fear difference.
Between 2001 and 2010 people with mental illness perpetrated fewer than 5% of the 120,000 gun-related killings in this country. (Metl, Jonathan M.2015."Gun violence, stigma, and mental illness: Clinical implications". Psychiatric Times. 32.3. 54.) Different does not necessarily mean dangerous. Is it possible for a person suffering from mental illness to become violent? Of course it is. Is it possible for a person who has never experienced any symptoms of mental illness to also become violent? Absolutely. Predicting violent behavior is potentially possible. However relying on mental health providers to make such predictions is not practical. Definitions of mental illness are fluid. Even the bible of psychiatric diagnosis, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, publishes regular revisions.
Seeking our quick exit from crisis by identifying and pointing fingers at potential culprits also increases the stigma of already stigmatized minorities. Research tells us that public stigma robs the mentally ill of work, independent living and other important life opportunities and further negatively impacts their own self-esteem and self-efficacy. (Corrigan, Patrick W. & Watson, Amy C.2002."The Paradox of Self-Stigma and Mental Illness". American Psychological Association. D12. 35-53.)
In his address to the Institute of Medicine's (IOM's) Forum on Global Violence Prevention, Dr. Mark Rosenberg stated that, "Mental illness plays only a small role in violence, but that intersection is clouded by misconceptions and disinformation in the public's mind." (Levin, A.2014."Experts Refute Myths Linking Mental Illness, Violence". Psychiatric News. March 31.)
There is no denying that we are in the middle of a national crisis. However, by claiming the quick explanations and solutions we so desperately crave we risk not only missing the root causes of the crisis but also, in fact, making it worse. Our problem is systemic. Each of us is part of the problem and in our hands each of us holds part of the solution.
In a crisis it is extremely difficult to take time for analysis and consideration. We desperately want to take the quickest path to safety. This crisis, however, demands deliberation and careful attention. Our quick solutions based on knee-jerk blaming may feel good in the moment. In the long run, however, they will worsen our already terrible reality.
People don't like having fingers pointed at them. It doesn't feel good. However, to appropriately examine our current crisis it is absolutely necessary to first point our fingers at ourselves. It won't feel good but it may help us navigate through this crisis to a place of safety.