Velveteen Rabbi

You Don't Have To Be Wrong for Me To Be Right: R' Brad Hirschfield on faith without fanaticism

We need to see that everyone who is not just like us is not some kind of restoration project, just waiting for us to "fix" them and turn them into poor imitations of ourselves. Do we really want a world of people who look, think, and act just like we do? That's not spiritual depth or religious growth, but simply narcisissm with lots of footnotes.

That's the kind of wisdom I've come to expect from Rabbi Brad Hirschfield.

Rabbi Brad Hirschfield is one of the co-presidents of Clal, the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership. Along with the other co-president, Rabbi Irwin Kula, he teaches at our Rabbis Without Borders fellows retreats. On my way home from our most recent retreat, I started reading his book You Don't Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism.

I knew that R' Brad identifies as Orthodox, and I had a vague sense that his spiritual trajectory had been quite a journey. But I didn't realize quite how broad that journey was until I began reading this book. In the early chapters he describes his falling-in-love with Orthodoxy; his desire, as a senior in high school, to study for a year in Israel; and his immersion in the culture of the settlers of Hebron.

I visited Hebron back in 2008 (see A day in Bethlehem and Hebron), but I didn't go into the settlement, and I didn't meet anyone who lived in that part of the city. Early in this book, R' Brad offers a stark and unflinching description both of what drew him into the movement -- and what caused him to leave. This is the longest quote I'll offer, but I don't want to abridge it any further, because this is such a powerful recounting, and it's a voice I haven't seen in print elsewhere. R' Brad writes:

I was a pilgrim who had finally reached his destination. I felt whole. Complete. This was what God wanted. This was what God had commanded: Brad Hirschfield, nice Jewish boy from the North Shore, standing at a tomb in Hebron, surrounded by one hundred thousand Palestinians who hated my presence there, singing Hebrew prayers.

I know it may sound ridiculous now, but then I didn't question it for one moment. There was not an inkling of doubt.

[The settle underground] began advocating for an increasingly harsh response against violence directed at Jews....Most of this made sense to me. Jews were being killed for settling in what had once been Jewish homes. This was our land, given to us by God.

For two years I gave myself over to Levinger and his group and the militant arm of the settlers' movement. When settlers Menachem Livni, Shauli Nir, and Uzi Shabaraf (whom I knew, although I was not in Hebron that day) fired into the Hebron Islamic College and killed two Palestinian children, I really felt sick...

Most of my group felt it was a tragic mistake, but they also thought it a natural result of continuous violence against us...No one questioned the wisdom of building the Hebron community in light of what had happened.

I found myself outside the fold. I stopped going to Hebron. I had no idea how to discuss how I felt with anyone within the settlers' movement. And I had no desire to talk to anyone outside about it, either... I was no longer a pilgrim. I didn't quiet know what I was.

It's so easy for those of us outside of a particular fold to castigate those within, and vice versa. And that's true whether the fold is the settler movement, a religious denomination, a community, a subculture, a nation. This book opened up for me both some of what might draw a person into religious fanaticism -- and also the unique lessons such a person could bring with them upon, mercifully, exiting that world for one which is more expansive and pluralistic.

After 9/11, he writes, he realized that he needed to confront his own past, to begin writing and speaking about his experiences as an ardent young settler. "Religion had flown those planes into the Twin Towers, and I had practiced a form of that religion. It is the religion of pilgrims, of people who see no way but their own way, and treat people who do not support them as mistakes that need to be erased," writes R' Brad. Near as I can tell, he's dedicated his rabbinate to teaching that there is another way.

R' Menachem Froman: may his memory be a blessing

In the days since his death, Rabbi Menachem Froman -- may his memory be a blessing -- has been all over my blog reader, my twitter stream, and my Facebook feed. As my friends and colleagues have mourned his passing, sharing memories of studying with him, sipping tea with him, learning from him, I've been moved and surprised by what I've learned.

In the Jerusalem Post article Lessons from a man of peace, Yossi Klein Halevi describes Rav Menachem as a "man of paradox who helped found the settlement movement and continued to believe passionately in the right of Jews to live in all parts of the land of Israel, even as he came to promote a two-state solution and rapprochement between Judaism and Islam." That's a paradox, all right: a settler rabbi who believed in the Jewish people's God-given right to inhabit the whole land -- and who also worked toward the Palestinian dream of a Palestinian state, with full expectation that his home of Tekoa, now part of Gush Etzion in the West Bank, would be part of that state.

2002: Rabbi Froman picks olives with Palestinian women in the West Bank village of Aqraba, in protest against violence committed by Israeli settlers. (Image found here at Huffington Post -- the whole slideshow is quite remarkable.)

Rav Menachem's vision, Klein Halevi writes, was that "however improbably, it was religious Jews who were best positioned to make peace with the Palestinians and the Muslim world generally." The peace process as we have known it, he argued, has been largely driven by political actors who tend to be liberal or non-religious. In his mind, that's exactly why it hasn't yet succeeded. Klein Halevi continues:

He taught me that, in order to make peace with the Muslim world, one needs not only to honor Islam but to love it – cherish its fearless heart, the power of its surrender, the wisdom of its frank confrontation with human transience. Once we went together to a mosque in Nusseirat, a refugee camp in Gaza. It was the time before the second intifada, when such adventures were still possible. We'd been invited by a community of Sufi mystics to join their zikr, the dance that combines chanting and breathing with vigorous movement. For nearly an hour we danced together with our Muslim fellow believers in God. "Allah!" Rav Menachem repeatedly cried out in devotion.

After the zikr, we sat with members of the community, and Rav Menachem explained why he had come here. Two thousand years ago, he said, my people sinned and were expelled by God from this land. But now God has brought us back, and I want to learn from my Muslim brothers who didn't leave here how to worship God in this land.

It was an extraordinary moment: A rabbi – from a West Bank settlement! – was telling Palestinian refugees that God had brought us back to this land. And they listened to him -- because he had come to learn from them, because he was speaking to them as one religious person to another, because he made no apology for Jewish indigenousness.

The mention of dancing / chanting zhikr with Sufis puts me, of course, in mind of the story of Reb Zalman Among the Sufis of Hebron, to which I have linked many times before.

Jewish Renewal voices on the UN vote recognizing Palestine

Last week, OHALAH -- the association of Jewish Renewal clergy -- voted on a resolution regarding UN recognition of Palestine. The resolution is now posted on the OHALAH website: Majority Opinion Among OHALAH Members on the UN Vote Recognizing Palestine and its Aftermath.

I'm proud of our community on several levels. First: I know that this resolution was a challenge to draft. This resolution was drafted by several members of the organization's tikkun olam committee, where there is a wide diversity of political and spiritual stances when it comes to Israel. So reaching a resolution on which all of us on the committee could agree was a victory. Second: once we brought the resolution to the broader OHALAH community, there was a lot of discussion on our list-serv. The conversation there was impassioned but productive. From where I sit, that's a victory too.

And finally: we're putting forth a majority opinion which says some things which I haven't heard any of the other major Jewish organizational voices saying. Such as:

[W]e are aware that the recent recognition of Palestine by the UN General Assembly is a tremendously important and profound moment for the Palestinian people. We honor its importance to the Palestinian people, even though many of us greet the news with trepidation about what this will mean for Israel. Only time will tell whether or not this recognition will actually move the peace process forward. We pray that this is a moment when hearts can open, and steps can be taken to pursue peace, and we call on both Israel and the newly-recognized Palestine to do everything in their power to actively pursue a just, lasting and secure peace.

This is a beautiful articulation of how I felt about the recognition of Palestine by the UN General Assembly. I don't know what it means for the future, but I recognize and honor that it's a big deal for the Palestinian community. I hope that this gesture on the part of the UN will help to create a situation where both peoples can negotiate a just and lasting peace from a new vantage. And yes, I pray that this is a moment when hearts can open and steps can be taken to pursue peace. Absolutely. Amen!

I also like the fact that this statement grounds these hopes in text:

As our sages taught centuries ago, when they interpreted Psalms 34:14, "Seek peace, and pursue it": "So great is peace, that you must seek peace for your own place, and pursue it even in another place" (Leviticus Rabah 9:9). As we seek peace for our own place, for the home of the Jewish people, we also accept our obligation to pursue peace in another's place, for another people as well as for ourselves.

Therefore, we call upon Israel and the Palestinian Authority to enter into direct bilateral negotiations. We agree with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who said that "the only way to get a lasting solution is to commence direct negotiations." Therefore, we support the United States using its influence to bring the parties together for such negotiations.

We urge the three major parties involved in this process to avoid actions which may be seen as being retaliatory, reactionary, punishing or threatening to the commencement of direct negotiations.

What moves me here is the interpretation of the Leviticus Rabbah quote: that "seek peace and pursue it" means not only to seek peace for one's own place, but also to pursue it even in another place. We can read that as: seek peace from one's own place, and pursue it from the Other's place. Our tradition calls us to place ourselves in the position of the Other -- for me as a Jew, that means to try to stand in a Palestinian's shoes -- and seek peace not only from my own standpoint, but also from theirs. This is powerful stuff. (And I give kavod to R' David Seidenberg, who brought this particular interpretation to the table.)

I'm gladdened to be part of a clergy association which can accept this statement as a majority opinion among our members. May our hopes for peace be realized, speedily and soon.

The beating heart of music in Israel / Palestine

Hearing this track, and learning about this nonprofit organization, brought a bit of light into my Chanukah. (Thanks, A Way In, for sharing this song as one of your Chanukah posts!) So I figured I'd share it with y'all too. The song is called "Bukra Fi Mishmish," Arabic for "when pigs fly" or "when the impossible happens." It's written, and performed, by Israeli and Palestinian youth aged 16-20. It's terrific.

(If you can't see the embedded YouTube video, you can go to Bukra Fi Mishmish at YouTube.)

The song comes out of Heartbeat. Here's how that org describes itself:

HEARTBEAT is an international community of musicians, educators, and students using music to build mutual understanding and transform conflict. Founded in 2007 under a grant from Fulbright and MTV, Heartbeat offers a variety of programs to enable Israeli and Palestinian youth musicians to build trust and actively participate in defining their futures, by developing and spreading their music.

Fear, violence, ignorance and a pervasive lack of trust define the political and cultural reality of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Most Israelis and Palestinians have only encountered the other side through televised reports of extremist violence, soldiers at checkpoints, or politicians. As violence intensifies in this small corner of the world, people retreat to their side, and are too often unable to trust in the humanity of the other. To break the status quo of separation and violence and to build a future of peace, security, justice, and freedom for all, people on both sides must know the other; they must communicate and understand each others needs, fears, hopes and shared humanity. People on both sides must be shown tools of change more effective than violence.

Music has an amazing ability to connect people, build trust and inspire hope in the darkest of places. Modern, popular music has long been the voice of change all around the world and a powerful means for youth expression and nonviolent action. By bringing together young Jewish and Arab musicians and strengthening their voices, we are working to build a global culture of trust, compassion, and respect.

I give tremendous credit to everyone involved in this project; I don't imagine that this kind of creative and spiritual work is easy, but I do believe that it matters.

If this sounds like something you might want to support, consider donating to Heartbeat. They're in the process of applying for 501(c)3 status, but for those who are in the United States, tax-deductible contributions to Heartbeat can be sent to their fiscal sponsor, Jewish Renewal congregation Am Kolel, by clicking on the PayPal link on that donate page.

Happy Chanukah to all! I'll be humming this song long after this festival is through.

Prayer for the Children of Abraham / Ibrahim

For every aspiring ballerina huddled
scared in a basement bomb shelter

    For every toddler in his mother's arms
    behind rubble of concrete and rebar

For every child who's learned to distinguish
"our" bombs from "their" bombs by sound

    For everyone wounded, cowering, frightened
    and everyone furious, planning for vengeance

For the ones who are tasked with firing shells
where there are grandmothers and infants

    For the ones who fix a rocket's parabola
    toward children on school playgrounds

For every official who sees shelling Gaza
as a matter of "cutting the grass"

    And every official who approves launching projectiles
    from behind preschools or prayer places
   
For every kid taught to lob a bomb with pride
And every kid sickened by explosions

    For every teenager who considers
    "martyrdom" his best hope for a future:

May the God of compassion and the God of mercy
God of justice and God of forgiveness

    God Who shaped creation in Her tender womb
    and nurses us each day with blessing

God Who suffers the anxiety and pain
of each of His unique children

    God Who yearns for us to take up
    the work of perfecting creation

God Who is reflected in those who fight
and in those who bandage the bleeding --

    May our Father, Mother, Beloved, Creator
    cradle every hurting heart in caring hands.

Soon may we hear in the hills of Judah
and the streets of Jerusalem

    in the olive groves of the West Bank
    and the apartment blocks of Gaza City

in the kibbutz fields of the Negev
and the neighborhoods of Nablus

    the voice of fighters who have traded weapons
    for books and ploughs and bread ovens

the voice of children on swings and on slides
singing nonsense songs, unafraid

    the voice of reconciliation and new beginnings
    in our day, speedily and soon.

And let us say:

    amen.

 

---

Notes:

On "every aspiring ballerina huddled," see Twenty minutes in a Tel Aviv bomb shelter, Jewschool.

On children distinguishing bombs by sound, see A message to Israel's leaders: Don't defend me – not like this, Ha'aretz.

On "mowing the grass," see Israel, Gaza, and the patterns of the past, Washington Post.

On "projectiles / from behind preschools or prayer places," see Dealing with Hamas's human shield tactics, Jerusalem Post.

"Soon may we hear..." is a reference to the final blessing in the set of Sheva Brachot / Seven Blessings recited at every Jewish wedding.

Edited to add: this prayer benefited tremendously from the suggestions of rabbinic student David Markus, who read several drafts and offered substantive feedback. Thank you, David. The prayer is stronger for your contributions.

 

This is meant to be prayed in community as a responsive reading.

As a mother, as a human being, as a Jew, and as a rabbi, this prayer/poem is the best articulation I can offer of what my heart and soul are feeling right now. I pray for God to heal the hearts of all who suffer: Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and non-Jews, "us" and "them," combatants on both sides, those who fear on both sides, those who mourn on both sides, those who benefit from the existing systems in place and those who struggle within those systems. Please, God, speedily and soon.

I welcome comments. (If you are a new commenter, please read the VR comments policy before chiming in.) And all are welcome to share and to use this prayer in your community if it speaks to you, as long as you preserve its origin / attribution.

A pdf file is available for download if that's helpful: PrayerForChildrenOfAbrahamIbrahim [pdf]

Resources and information about African migrants in Israel

Since I referenced this summer's violence against African refugees in Tel Aviv in my Rosh Hashanah sermon Being Change, a few people have asked for more information about African migrants in Israel. Here is a collection of (English-language) resources: an overview, some news links, some opinion essays, and some nonprofit organizations in Israel doing good work in this area.

---

Overview: Israel houses a large number of African migrants (most estimates say that the African population in Israel is between 60,000 and 70,000). Most of those migrants come from Eritrea and Sudan, and most are in the country illegally, which means that they cannot obtain work visas.

Some argue that the Africans who enter Israel illegally (sometimes called "infiltrators," which is a term with a specific history -- see Infiltrated by history, The Daily Beast) are linked to an increase in crime, that Israel does not have the resources to support them, and that they should be detained and/or deported. Others argue that the Africans who enter Israel illegally are refugees fleeing persecution and seeking a better life, and that Israel has both a legal and an ethical obligation to aid them. (I also know people who believe both of those at once: that the influx of migrants is more than Israel can support, and that they are refugees who deserve aid.)

Recent months have seen an increase in incidents of violence against Africans. Some blame the violence against Africans on crime committed by Africans, and others attribute the violence against Africans to general anti-immigrant sentiment or to poor economic conditions which contribute to social unrest. Also this year, Israel amended its 1954 Prevention of Infiltration Law, which now permits Israel to detain migrants for three or more years. (See Migrants in prison protest 'infiltrators' law, Jerusalem Post.) A Jerusalem district court judge issued a preliminary injunction on October 12 banning the summary arrests of Sudanese refugees (see Court prohibits detention of Sudanese refugees days before mass arrests begin, +972); another ruling on this is expected soon.

For more information: The Refugee Situation in Israel (a page provided by the African Refugee Development Center); FAQ on Violence Against Asylum Seekers in Israel (that page is courtesy of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society); African Refugees in Israel (Rabbis for Human Rights).

Cheering for Anat Hoffman

Earlier this week, Anat Hoffman was arrested for daring to wear a tallit and to pray the shema at the Western Wall.

Above: video (Hebrew) of Anat Hoffman's arrest. If you can't see the embedded video, you can go directly to it at YouTube.

Here's how one woman describes what happened, in the blog post Reflections on Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan 2012:

Coinciding with this month’s Rosh Hodesh celebration is the huge Hadassah Convention blanketing the city. Although it would have been optimum to have the Hadassah women join us on Wednesday morning for the service at the Kotel, there was a scheduling glitch and thus they descended upon the Western Wall at 11 p.m. on Tuesday night. The evening program consisted of a warm welcome from Anat Hoffman, founder and current chair of Women of the Wall, followed by Hebrew songs, led by volunteer Rabbinical students.

When the WOW members and volunteers arrived at the women’s section of the Wall to prepare for the Hadassah contingent, the police and authorities surrounded us. They were harsh in their demands that we could pass out NOTHING, not even the song sheets we had prepared. So when the Hadassah women did arrive, Anat delivered her welcoming remarks and then we all started chanting the Shema, probably the most common prayer in our daily ritual.

Immediately a policeman approached Anat and arrested her for disturbing the peace. To say that we were all shocked is an understatement. We know that there are issues with ultra-Orthodox men opposing women who don prayer shawls and skullcaps and pray out loud, but this was beyond our imagination. Anat was handcuffed, detained overnight, and eventually went before a judge on Wed. afternoon. She was ‘sentenced’ to a 30 day period in which she is not allowed at the Kotel.

In an article in the Forward (Police shackle Anat Hoffman for saying shema at kotel), Hoffman describes her experience:

“In the past when I was detained I had to have a policewoman come with me to the bathroom, but this was something different. This time they checked me naked, completely, without my underwear. They dragged me on the floor 15 meters; my arms are bruised. They put me in a cell without a bed, with three other prisoners, including a prostitute and a car thief. They threw the food through a little window in the door. I laid on the floor covered with my tallit.

“I’m a tough cookie, but I was just so miserable. And for what? I was with the Hadassah women saying Sh’ma Israel.”

I admire Women of the Wall tremendously. As I've written before (most recently in 2011: Pluralism, prayer, and Women of the Wall), I'm not entirely comfortable with the extent to which the Kotel (the Western Wall) is treated as though it, itself, were innately extra-special-holy -- but as long as the Kotel is regarded as a central holy site in Judaism, it should be a place where people of all genders can pray, and not only in the ways regulated by Israel's Orthodox rabbanut (rabbinic authority.) Judaism belongs to all of us, prayer belongs to all of us, and the Kotel belongs to all of us. Shame on those police for arresting a woman because she dares to say Judaism's most central daily prayer aloud in one of Judaism's holiest places. Shame on the system which allows only certain, Orthodox-approved, modes of Jewish prayer at the Kotel.

More importantly, though: kol hakavod (all the honor) to Anat and her colleagues for asserting our right to pray our beloved prayers aloud, wearing the ritual gear which is appropriate to our practice, at this place which has for so long focused and concentrated the prayers of Jews around the world. Anat is an inspiration to me, and so is everyone who davens with Women of the Wall. I look forward to the day when religious pluralism is as alive and well in Israel as it is here in the Diaspora. When I lay tefillin and wrap in my tallit later this morning at my shul, I will feel extra gratitude that I live in a place where I can pray aloud, in my ritual garments, without fear. May the same become true for my Israeli family and friends, speedily and in our day.

 

For more:

• Anat Hoffman after arrest: a minority controls Israel's holy sites and abuses its power, Ha'aretz
• Reform leaders call for probe into Israeli colleague's arrest, police treatment, JTA
• Equality for All at the Western Wall, by Rabbi Wendi Geffen, Huffington Post

Jen Marlowe, "The Hour of Sunlight," is coming to town

I picked up The Hour of Sunlight: One Palestinian's Journey from Prisoner to Peacemaker -- by Sami Al Jundi and Jen Marlowe -- after reading a review of the book in The Jewish Daily Forward. The review is by Israeli-American Emily L. Hauser, and here's how it begins:

Americans often hear about Israel, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the U.S.-Israel relationship. We read Israeli authors in translation, buy Israeli products, and anyone within driving distance of a JCC can hear an Israeli speak on a nearly weekly basis.

What we don't often hear are Palestinians.

This is, I believe, understandable — particularly for the Jewish community. We want to know more about ourselves, our brothers and sisters, our homeland. We want to support our people and our future. We know the story, and don't feel a need to hear the version told by Israel's enemies.

But perhaps that's exactly why we do need to consider Palestinian voices — because after all these years, Israel and the Palestinian people are still enemies.

(Read her whole review here: Hearing Palestinian Voices.) Reading Emily's review made me curious about the book, so I picked up a copy last winter, and last spring I shared my own review (Book review: The Hour of Sunlight.) In my post about the book last March, I wrote:

This book wasn't always easy for me to read, but it is powerful and it is worth reading, especially for anyone who (like me) may have more access to Israeli narratives about the Middle East than to Palestinian ones.

My review reached the attention of Jen Marlowe, the American co-author of the book. I learned that she'd actually given a reading in Williamstown in recent memory, which I had somehow missed. And then she mentioned that she would be happy to return to the Berkshires to share the book and to engage in conversation about it, if there were interest.

MigrantHealth:IL - a ray of hope for migrants in Israel

On one of the rabbinic e-mail lists to which I belong, I read about a project in Israel which brings me hope. It's called MigrantHealth:IL. Here's how they describe the work they're doing:

The Need, explained:

In May, a young Eritrean refugee living in Tel Aviv contracted chicken pox. In most of Israel, or the Western world, this would not be a big deal; if the case gets complicated you go to the doctor, she gives you medicine and the infection clears in a few days.

This mother did not know where to go for help. She was not aware of the free medical care available for refugees who are not covered in the Israeli socialized healthcare system. Because of this, she remained at home and the simple case of chicken pox transformed into a deadly pneumonia.

MigrantHealth:IL addresses the disparity between available health care resources and the Israeli migrant community—our health outreach program prevents scenarios as the one above, that typify the disconnect between resources and needs. 

Our Campaign:

In collaboration with the Tel Aviv Refugee Clinic, we will employ nurses from within the migrant community to improve the health of this population. These nurses are uniquely qualified for working in the migrant community as they are multilingual, highly trained in their home countries, eager to work, and already have their fingers on the ‘pulse’ of their community.

If they can raise $15,000, they'll be able to hire three part-time nurses for one year. (The more money they raise, the more nurses they can hire.) If they can make it through this first year, they expect support from the Israeli Ministry of Health and local hospitals in year two.

Their website is here: MigrantHealth:IL. On that website you can see a short video about the project -- or, if you're reading this in a format which supports embedded video, you can watch the video here:

Short MigrantHealth:IL video, from YouTube.

There are some 80,000 migrants in Israel. (The African Refugee Development Center says there are roughly 60,000 African refugees there, most from Eritrea and Sudan.) This project seeks to tend to the health needs of the migrant community, and to employ members of that community in the process. There are currently some Israeli nurses working with African migrants in Israel, but there are difficulties arising from language barriers; most of the migrants are Eritrean. MigrantHealth will provide jobs for Eritrean nurses, and will provide for the community a pool of nurses who not only speak their language but understand their community context.

This is the brainchild of Doctor Jonah Mink, the son of Cantor Susan Wehle (may her memory be a blessing.) Susan was a part of the Jewish Renewal community, and while I didn't know her personally, I know that she was beloved to many of my friends and colleagues.

Dr. Mink received his MD from the Ben Gurion University School of International Medicine in Beersheva. He's already set up an electronic medical records system for the migrant community at the Tel Aviv Refugee Clinic clinic, which earlier this summer had served more than 7,000 patients and was overwhelmed with requests for care. (That's via the article ROI's 21st Century Vision; Dr. Mink is part of the ROI community, "connect[ing] dynamic Jewish leaders from around the globe, enabling them to turn their passion into action by creating transformative work for the Jewish world and beyond.")

MigrantHealth:IL is a crowdfunded project; they need to raise $15,000 over the next nine days in order to move forward. I just made a donation. There's special merit in giving tzedakah before Shabbat. My teachers teach, and I believe, that when we open our hands to bestow abundance on others, we open cosmic channels for God to bestow abundance on us. If you're able to give a little something, I hope that you will do so. This is so important and necessary -- not just because it acts as a corrective to the shameful violence against African migrants in Tel Aviv this summer (see my May 2012 post For you were strangers in the land of Egypt) but because this is a community of people in desperate need, and this is an easy way to help from afar.

Kol hakavod (props/honor) to the creators of this project. May it flourish and provide limitless assistance and blessing to those in need.

A Sukkot prayer for the Bedouin at Rabbis for Human Rights

Hope all of y'all had a wonderful Yom Kippur!

Earlier this summer the folks at Rabbis for Human Rights North America asked if I would write a Sukkot prayer which touches on the situation of the Israeli Bedouin. I was honored to be asked, and took on the task with some trepidation; I hope the result is meaningful.

Here's how my prayer begins:

 

Ribbono Shel Olam, Master of the Universe --
Shekhinah, Whose wings shelter creation --

Once our people wandered the desert sands.
Now we merely vacation in rootlessness

While our Bedouin neighbors perch
Without permission, their goats forbidden to graze.

Time after time the bulldozers tear down homes
And playgrounds, uprooting spindly olive trees

To make room for someone else's future forest,
As though saplings mattered more than children...

 

You can find the whole prayer on the RHR-NA website, in the Sukkot section -- A Sukkot Prayer for the Bedouin -- or in the Prayers section (Prayers | A Sukkot Prayer for the Bedouin) where the prayer appears alongside an image of, as it happens, me in prayer during the last Rabbis for Human Rights conference I was blessed to attend.

Sukkot begins on Sunday at sundown. May this prayer help us to remain mindful of the Bedouin and their situation even as we celebrate Sukkot, the season of our rejoicing. Stay tuned -- I'll share more Bedouin resources from RHR once they're online.

 

Revision / reprint of a poem from 2003

NO ALTERNATIVES

I don't want to write about the girl
    killed by an Israeli bulldozer while
        trying to protect a Palestinian home.
  
Don't want to write about mentioning it
    in casual conversation and finding myself
        weeping uncontrollably into my dishtowel.
   
Don't want to write how politics
    have infected every email list I'm on,
        how poets across the nation are arguing
  
whether those who voted Green
    in the year 2000 got us into this mess
        instead of debating the merits of form
  
and free verse like we used to. I thought
    those arguments were dull, repetitive, but
        today I'd pay to see my inbox overflowing

with impassioned pleas for a return
    to iambic pentameter, diatribes about
        how "women's poems" differ from whatever

the alternatives are. I don't know what
    the alternatives are. I keep lending out
        that article about healing through "dark" emotions,

the one that says anger and sorrow
    aren't the problem, the problem is
        when we stamp and tamp them down

so the pressure of our denial shapes
    the slicing stone-edges of despair, but
        I can't see the darkness around us lifting.

I've always said hopelessness
    isn't an option, if we don't believe
        in tikkun olam we might as well be dead, but

I don't know how to get through this.
    This is not a poem about "them" or what
        they're doing to "us," this is not a poem about

politics or regime change, this isn't even
    a poem about the horror of Iraqis hissing
        that the mothers of the American soldiers
   
will weep tears of blood, or the shame
    of Americans braying that those people
       are animals, not like us, don't respect life.
   
This is a poem about forestalling despair
    by taking a breath and diving as far as I can,
        wishing that I could surface in a kinder world.

 

---

 

This is a revision of a poem I wrote in spring of 2003, around the time of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the death of American activist Rachel Corrie. It was originally published in The Pedestal in the fall of 2004 (see Rachel Barenblat: No Alternatives.)

I returned to it this week in the wake of the court decision exonerating the Israeli government of responsibility for Rachel Corrie's death. The poem has changed shape, I've trimmed a bit (from 51 lines down to 42), and there's a new ending. If you read both the new version and the original, I'll be curious to hear which one you think is a better poem.

Some of this poem feels dated to me now, even in revision. The Iraq War has been a reality of our world for so many years that it's hard to remember what it was like to think that we could have prevented it. But some of this poem still feels current (war, despair, hatred: unfortunately not out of style), and the ending speaks directly from my heart.

The "article about healing through 'dark emotions'" was an essay by Miriam Greenspan in Tikkun. It later became a book with  that same title.

Wishing for a different communal discourse

Late last week, I was forwarded links* to two Republican organizations trying to shame Rabbis for Obama by mis-representing several of the rabbis in that group (particularly Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb) as "anti-Israel activists."

Rabbi Lynn Gottlieb first traveled to Israel in 1966, when she spent a year as an exchange student at Leo Baeck High School in Haifa. She experienced the call into rabbinic service the Shavuot she was fifteen, when she gave a speech called "Man and the Moral Law." (Women didn't begin receiving rabbinic smicha in the United States until Rabbi Sally Priesand in 1972, but Rabbi Gottlieb was one of the first eight women ordained as a rabbi when she was ordained in 1981.) Her first pulpit was Temple Beth Or of the Deaf. She's a trailblazer in the field of feminist liturgy (I use one of her poems in my seder each year.) And she's the coordinator of the Shomer Shalom Network for Jewish Nonviolence. A few years ago I interviewed her for Zeek, along with several other rabbis, in a roundtable about Israel: Roundtable: The Synagogue/ Israeli Politics Mash-Up. She is not anti-Israel, and neither are the rest of us who have subsequently been called out.

As this has unfolded, the xkcd cartoon has come to mind:

"Someone is wrong on the internet!" Courtesy of xkcd.

The cartoon is funny because it's true. Of course some part of me wants to rise to the bait, to correct the record because what is being said is not true. And then I think: why would I allow people who misrepresent us in these ways to define the terms of the conversation? And why does it matter to me that someone is, as the cartoon says, wrong on the internet?

This week's portion: Justice Shall You Pursue

This week we're in parashat Shoftim, late in the book of Dvarim (Deuteronomy.) This parsha is the source of one of the most well-known verses from Torah: "Justice, justice shall you pursue!" In this parsha we read: establish towns where someone who has accidentally committed manslaughter can flee, so that the spiral of violence and retribution doesn't self-perpetuate. We read: do not punish someone on the testimony of a single witness.

We read: on the eve of war, if someone has planted a vineyard but not yet harvested -- built a house but not yet consecrated it -- become engaged but not yet wed -- let that person go home and fulfill those holy promises. (I wrote about that in 2006.) We read: when you approach a town to attack it, offer it terms of peace.

And we also read that if that town refuses the terms of peace, Torah says to attack them and then put all of their men to the sword and enslave their women. And that's only for towns which are far away; for the towns which are nearby, Torah says, the ones containing inhabitants who are known to be idolaters, kill them all. Ouch.

And then we read: even when you are besieging a city, you must not cut down its trees. Are trees human, the Torah asks, that they could flee before you? Therefore show mercy, especially to fruit-bearing trees.

As I study this parsha this year I'm struck by my own oscillation. Some of these verses are beautiful to me, while others make me squirm with discomfort. I don't want such violence to be enshrined in my holy text.

The theme of the parsha, as I understand it, is justice. The cities of refuge are a matter of justice. Releasing young soldiers who haven't yet lived full lives is a matter of justice. Sparing the trees is a matter of justice.

And in the Biblical understanding, the stuff about killing all the men in an enemy city -- or, worse, killing everyone, including the women and children -- is also a matter of justice. But in today's paradigm our understanding of what is just and righteous has shifted. Killing all the enemy men, or slaughtering men and women and children alike, may have been understood as justice in antiquity. Today it would be an unthinkable massacre. I am grateful to live at a moment in time when we understand this kind of violence as horrific.

But violence is still endemic. Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that "scores of Israeli youth" attacked a Palestinian teen named Jamal Julani in Jerusalem, rendering him unconscious and hospitalized. (NYT: Young Israelis Held in Attack on Arabs.) "If it was up to me, I would have murdered him," said one fifteen-year-old boy. Two of the other suspects in the beating are girls, one of them only thirteen years old. (The NYT blog The Lede has more: Account of a 'Lynch' in Jerusalem on Facebook.)

It's enough to make me wish for cities of refuge where people could go to break the cycle of the endless violence. Though in Biblical times, the refuge was only for accidental manslaughter, and it doesn't sound to me like the harm here was inflicted accidentally.

Fortunately Jamal Julani survived the beating. But what is wrong with our world that kids of thirteen and fifteen are swept up in so much hate? What is wrong with our understanding of Torah that we pay more attention to the injunction against cutting down a fruit tree (which is taught each year at Tu BiShvat with great gusto -- see, e.g., the beautiful exhibit "Do Not Destroy: Trees, Art, and Jewish Thought" at the Contemporary Jewish Museum) than to the injunction to pursue justice and righteousness with all our might? (Even fruit trees aren't always safe -- as described in this 2012 Rabbis for Human Rights report about settlers destroying olive groves.)

We've entered the month of Elul, a time for soul-searching and teshuvah. I know I need to make teshuvah for giving in to the inclination to turn away from stories like this one, for closing my eyes to injustice and suffering caused by people who share my religious tradition and my holy text. But Torah does not belong only to those who use it to justify such actions. Torah belongs equally to we who are horrified by these stories.

Tzedek, tzedek tirdof: justice, justice shall you pursue. May we be strengthened in justice and righteousness. May we be brave enough to face injustice and to work toward transformation and healing, here and everywhere.

 

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Recommended reading:

• Lynching in Zion Square: Are We Responsible? by Rabbi Jill Jacobs of Rabbis for Human Rights

Rabbi Brant Rosen's "Wrestling In the Daylight"

I've identified deeply with Israel all my life. I first visited at a very young age and have been back to visit more times than I can even count. In my early twenties, I spent two years there studying, working, and living on kibbutzim. I have family members and many dear friends who live in Israel. My Jewish identity has been profoundly informed by the classic Zionist narrative: the story of a small underdog nation forging a national and cultural rebirth out of the ashes of its near-destruction. The redemptive nature of this narrative has at times assumed a quasi-sacred status for me, as it has for many American Jews of my generation and older...

So writes Rabbi Brant Rosen of the blog Shalom Rav in the introduction to his new book, Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity, recently released by Just World Books.

In that introduction Rabbi Brant writes about his longstanding liberal Zionism, about his slowly-creeping doubts about Israel's treatment of Palestinians (and his awareness that his concerns arose more out of concern that the occupation was "corrupting Israel's soul" than out of concern for Palestinians per se), about the horrors of the Second Intifada and then Israel's military campaign in Lebanon in 2006.

It was that campaign in Lebanon which began to shake the foundations of his Zionism. "Although I certainly felt compassion for -- along with a certain tribal solidarity with -- the citizens of Northern Israel suffering under Hezbollah rocket fire, I was unable to accept the utter destruction the IDF was inflicting upon Lebanon in the name of national security," he writes.

And then came Operation Cast Lead. Rabbi Brant writes:

On December 28, 2008, I read the first news report of Israel's military assault on Gaza -- a campaign that would soon be well-known as Operation Cast Lead. On the first day of operations, the Israeli Air Force destroyed Hamas security facilities in Gaza, killing more than 225 people, most of whom were new police cadets participating in a graduation ceremony. Numerous civilians, including children, were also among the dead. By the end of the day, it was clear we were only witnessing the beginning of a much longer and even more violent military campaign that would drive much farther into Gaza.

I remember reading this news with utter anguish. At the same time, oddly enough, I realized that I was finally observing this issue with something approaching true clarity: This is not about security at all -- this is about bringing the Palestinian people to their knees.

Once I admitted this to myself, I realized how utterly tired I had become. Tired of trying to excuse the inexcusable. Tired of using torturous, exhausting rationalizations to explain away what I knew in my heart was sheer and simple oppression.

Rabbi Brant notes that "rabbis and Jewish leaders are under tremendous pressure by the American organizational establishment to maintain unflagging support for the state of Israel." This is, I think, true -- and it makes his own willingness to publicly chronicle his wrestle with these issues, these stories, and these realities all the more remarkable.

Wrestling in the Daylight: A Rabbi's Path to Palestinian Solidarity is Rabbi Brant's self-curated compilation of his blog posts from Shalom Rav, so if you've been reading Shalom Rav, this material won't be new to you. But I'm finding, as I read, that reading the posts in this new setting and context -- curated by their author into a narrative which clearly shows the progression of his thinking over time -- is a different experience from reading the blog. And Rabbi Brant has chosen to reprint some of the comments from readers as well as responses he's offered to those comments, which gives the book a bit of the internet's Talmudic multivocality (and offers an example of how one can host difficult conversations in a thoughtful and generous way -- which can be hard to come by on the internet, especially on questions of Israel/Palestine.)

The choice to include commentary makes the book particularly interesting, I think. Some of Rabbi Brant's most frequent commentors disagree with him deeply. Over the course of the book, one can see conversations unfolding. Sometimes they are quite heated. And his responses are always thoughtful and respectful, even as he resists attempts at derailing the conversation. Having hosted some conversations about Israel at this blog over the years, I have a sense for how difficult that can be.

At the end of the book, he reprints an article from the Chicago Jewish News with the wonderful headline of Hell freezes over, Cubs win world series, Jews find way to disagree agreeably, about his congregation and its movement toward a new form of dialogue around Israel. The article notes that many of Rabbi Brant's congregants have children who have made aliyah and grandchildren who are settlers, and that his outspokenness about Israel and how he has come to see Israel is not always easy or comfortable for his community.

Here's an excerpt from that article, which closes out the book:

"I have very strong feelings about Israel and I express them pretty openly. My activism is very public," [Rabbi Brant] says. "That is my own truth as a Jew and a rabbi, and it is very important to me to be true to my private personal conscience."

But as the rabbi of JRC, "I also feel strongly that my job is to create the kind of environment where people, even those who don’t agree with me -- and there are many -- feel welcome to express those views and have those views heard. I respect the diversity of opinion at JRC," he says. "We may be (perceived as) left-leaning, but on the subject of Israel, we are more diverse than people think."

The largest group of congregants, he says, fall somewhere in the middle of a continuum, with some on both ends of the spectrum.

With these thoughts in mind, Rosen says, he and a number of congregants "decided together that rather than raise all this dust, it would be a great opportunity to use these emotions in some kind of constructive way."

Rabbi Brant and his congregants contacted the Jewish Dialogue Group, a nonprofit which works to foster constructive dialogue within Jewish communities about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and other controversial issues, and together they developed a program called Sicha (conversation) which has helped his congregation enter a new paradigm in their communal conversations about Israel and Palestine. Reading this article as a congregational rabbi -- aware that within my congregation too there is a wide diversity of experience with and opinion about Israel; aware that I have congregants whose children have made aliyah and whose grandkids have served in the IDF; aware that I need to find a way to minister to my community without my own writing on these issues getting in the way of our relationship -- I'm moved and inspired.

Rabbi Brant Rosen is one of my role models in the difficult but important work of coming to terms with the clash between the classic Zionist narrative (a story which many of us want to continue believing -- I know I still yearn for it to be true) and some of the realities on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian territories. He models for me not how one would do this internal work despite his ardent Jewishness, but precisely of it; not despite being a rabbi, but precisely because his rabbinate calls him to take seriously the Jewish call to stand with those who are oppressed. And he has also taught me a great deal about how to disagree without falling into the trap of looking down on (or dehumanizing) those with whom one disagrees.

If you're interested in progressive Jewish takes on Israel and Palestine, this book is worth reading, and worth having on your bookshelf to return to again.

Broken world, broken heart

Sometimes reading the news makes my heart twist and my stomach sink. I don't know what to say about the horrific shooting in a Sikh gurdwara yesterday (CNN: Gunman, six others dead at Wisconsin Sikh temple). Not to mention the dreadful response of Westboro Baptist Church to the terrorist attack -- not surprising, but still depressing. This is not the America of our dreams.

I don't know what to say about the reality that as ugly anti-immigrant sentiment becomes more pervasive, Africans are routinely harrassed in Israel today. (YNet news: African diplomats in Israel: We're afraid to walk down streets.) Nor the reports of more than 50 instances last month of settlers attacking Palestinians. (Ha'aretz: Lambs to the settlers' slaughter, screaming and unheard). This is not the Israel of our dreams.

I don't know what to say about the situation in Syria. Rabbi Brant Rosen's essay Syrians Pay the Price in a Sick Proxy War is sobering. So is Marc Lynch's Preparing for Assad's Exit. I don't know enough about Syria to know whether, or how, things will get better. And these are just the posts at the top of my aggregator. Just today the Lebanon Daily Star reported a massacre which killed forty. I have no connection to Syria, but the news is pretty uniformly heartrending.

Everything I've just mentioned is huge, important, awful. Here's something tiny and grotesque: I learned this week that I've been named, along with thousands of my friends and colleagues, on a list of supposed self-hating Israel threateners. (I'm not going to link to it. Here's the Wikipedia entry about it intead.) On the one hand it's laughable. And on the other hand it's upsetting, and the fact that people chose to spend their time compiling this list makes me sad.

(The people who maintain the list are Kahanists; they're too far-out for even self-identified far-right Jews. But still. How is this a good use of anyone's heart, soul, or time?)

When I look at all of the hatred in our world today, I don't know how to find enough balm for our broken hearts. I want to hold all of this in my prayers, everyone who is suffering, everyone who has been hurt, everyone who is so damaged that they can only manage to hate and hurt others, but sometimes it's so heavy it crushes my prayers; I can't lift it up.

All I can do is close the laptop, say a prayer, and spend time with my son. What response can there be to hatred, other than teaching our children not to hate in return?

This week's portion: redeeming the instructions to displace and destroy

Here's the d'var Torah I offered yesterday morning at my shul, on last week's Torah portion, Matot-Masei.

 

God spoke to Moshe on the plains of Moab near the Jordan, and said: speak to the children of Israel and tell them: when you cross the Jordan into the land of Canaan, you will displace all who dwell in the land... and if you do not, they will be as thorns in your eyes, they will wound your sides...and I will drive you out of the land instead of them. --Numbers 33:55-56

 

Some weeks it's difficult to draw a clear connection between the Torah portion and contemporary reality. Not this week. This week we're in parashat Matot-Masei, which contains instructions for displacing the Canaanites, as well as instructions regarding the future borders of the promised land.

There are those who hold that this week's Torah portion is justification for establishing Jewish sovereignty over "Greater Israel." Are our only options either to accept that interpretation, or to disregard these verses altogether?

The Hasidic rabbi known as the Sfat Emet reads this text creatively. He says that we ourselves are the "borders" into which holiness can flow. Those other inhabitants, he argues, weren't able to experience the holiness inherent in the land. Only when the Israelites entered did the supernal land of Israel, the ideal Israel on high, merge with the earthly land of Israel here below. And when we prepare our hearts and souls with Torah, he says, God causes holiness to flow into us, contained by the borders of who we are.

I love the idea that we ourselves are the "borders" into which holiness can flow...but I chafe at the ethnocentrism. I espouse a post-triumphalist Judaism; I understand other religious traditions as meaningful paths to God. I can't accept that only we are capable of true holiness and true connection with our Source.

What, then, can we do with these verses?

Three more from Before There Is Nowhere To Stand

Here are three more poems from Before There Is Nowhere to Stand, a collection of poems arising out of the conflict in Israel / Palestine. (I have two poems in this collection as well; I am honored that my work is in print alongside these varied and powerful voices.) I have read the entire collection through more than once, and every time I open it, a different poem moves me.

My previous post in this series featured one poem by Rick Black and one by Reja-e Busailah. When I made that post, I was asked whether I felt I was equalizing the experiences of the two sides in this conflict. Am I implicitly saying that the each side has suffered the same amount, or that each side is equally righteous? It's not what I mean to be saying. But I'm not particularly interested in rehashing old arguments about which side has committed greater atrocities.

As a poet and as a rabbi, I'm interested in the possibility that poetry might be able to help us hear one another. (If poetry can't, I don't know what can.) Some years ago, when poet Rachel Tzvia Back spoke at Williams, she quoted Susan Sontag, who said -- in accepting the controversial Jerusalem Prize -- that now, more than ever, we need poetry because it is poetry which "will open up avenues of compassion and remind us that we might aspire to be better than we had ever imagined ourselves to be." (By the by, I recently reviewed Rachel's latest collection of poems.)

Perhaps you would never sit down with a settler, or with an Israeli peacenik, or with a Palestinian in a refugee camp, or with someone whose spouse or child was killed in a suicide bombing, or with someone whose spouse or child was killed by the IDF. But I invite you to sit down with these poems, and with the realities to which they bear witness. The first is about the withdrawal from Gaza in 2009; the second speaks of Palestinian resistance; the third is another look at the aftermath of a terror attack. (=

 

Waters of Gaza

June 22, 2009

They moved out of Gaza
not without protest, not without prayer
feeling like ivy ripped off the walls
like irrigation pipes torn from the soil
they moved out on unwilling legs
on buses to nowhere
fathers, mothers, children
and children without fathers
without mothers

They moved into Gaza
not without covet, not without envy
feeling like water released from a dam
bursting into surrendering fields
carrying all before it, trees, houses
places of prayer, fences, gardens
waves breaking over alien temples
again and again til water covered all

After the water came briny hatred
lusting for a redder liquid
and the skies darkened again
lightning and thunder returned to Gaza
rained on this thin strip of unhappiness
writhing between the wrath of history
and the dark depths of the sea

-- Johnmichael Simon

Hagit Ofran on the Levy Report

Hebron, 2008.

This week in Israel/Palestine news everyone's talking about the Levy Report, which argues that the West Bank is not, in fact, occupied territory. (See Validate Settlements, Israeli Panel Suggests in the New York Times. For more context, see Bombshell for the settlement enterprise in Levy report in Ha'aretz and A Tale of Two Reports in Open Zion.) I recently sat in on a conference call with Hagit Ofran in which she offered some thoughts on all of this. Ofran is the director of the Settlement Watch project at שלום עכשיו / Peace Now. I've heard her speak before -- at the first J Street conference in 2009 -- about the settlements and the peace process. The call was moderated by Peace Now's Ori Nir.

Some part of me wondered whether attending the call, and writing it up for Velveteen Rabbi, was a good use of my time. The internet is so often an echo chamber in which like-minded folks agree with one another, and those who disagree often engage unkindly with one another if at all. But I really did want to hear what she had to say. And I figured, as long as I was listening to her speak, I might as well share some notes here. What follows are some notes from her prepared remarks; then some information from the Q-and-A; and finally, information about Peace Now's 4% program. (Did you know that settlers make up only four percent of the Israeli public?)

 

---

 

Ofran noted that Netanyahu nominated this committee to provide recommendations to the government. Their recommendations are not obligatory, but rather advisory; the government can accept or reject, and that's in the hands of the Attorney General and the government.

"In my view [the report] could be potentially a challenge for us," she acknowledged, since the committee was officially nominated by the government and it includes former a Supreme Court judge. But the assertion that Israel's presence in the West Bank is not occupation "sounds absurd," and therefore people may not take the report very seriously. "If it's not occupation, what is it -- annexation? If it's annexation, how can you explain the discimination, why Jews are citizens and Palestinians are not citizens?" These questions will be opened if these findings are accepted.

New stories, new leadership, new hope

WASHINGTON -- When Waleed Issa walked into the Americans for Peace Now (APN) Washington, DC office on the first day of his summer internship in June, the 25-year-old Palestinian from the Dheisheh refugee camp south of Bethlehem was startled by what he saw.

"I never saw so much blue and white in my life," he says. "Everywhere you look, there's a Star of David and the colors of the Israeli flag. As a Palestinian, I thought to myself, 'This is not good news. How am I going to work here for the next six weeks?'"

That's the beginning of the article Jewish, Palestinian American groups 'swap' summer interns, originally published in The Times of Israel. Palestinian Waleed Issa has been interning with Americans for Peace Now, and Israeli Or Amir has been interning with The American Task Force on Palestine. Waleed grew up in Dehesha refugee camp in Bethlehem; Or is a former officer in the IDF's medical corps, formerly stationed outside of Gaza. Both are in the States this summer as part of a unique program:

Or and Waleed are among 10 young people - five Israelis and five Palestinians - brought to Washington this summer by a group called New Story Leadership which, according to its website, "introduces  a radically different approach to peace-building, one that does not pretend to solve the historical controversies or mediate between antagonists."

Instead, the group offers what it calls a "narrative-based program" that wants participants to focus on creating new stories based on mutual interest and cooperation, rather than "stories that endlessly recycle old grievances, inflate differences and inflame passions."

The whole article is worth reading. Every time I hear about a program like this one, another tendril of hope takes root in my heart.

Pekar & Waldman: Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me

Harvey Pekar was an American underground comix legend. A lot of people know him for American Splendor, a series of autobiographical comic books. He was a giant, in his own way. He died in 2010, survived by his wife Joyce Brabner.

JT Waldman is the creator of Megillat Esther, which I reviewed here several years ago. It's my favorite edition of the book of Esther, bar none. It contains -- as the saying goes -- the whole megillah; all of Esther, plus all sorts of commentary interwoven throughout the gorgeous artwork.

When Harvey Pekar died, he and JT Waldman were collaborating on a nonfiction graphic novel -- an illustrated memoir with historical divagations -- called Not the Israel My Parents Promised Me. The book follows the two authors through Cleveland as they discuss Pekar's relationship with Israel, from the Zionism he imbibed in childhood through a process of beginning to question Israel's role in the world.

In Megillat Esther, JT Waldman skillfully braids classical commentary on Esther together with the text of the megillah and with his striking and beautiful visual art. He does something similar here, only in this book he's interweaving the story Harvey tells, the experience of hearing that story from Harvey, and Middle East history.