Jeremy Lin and the Jews

Judaism is the story of the underdog.   Abraham is the younger son of Terach.  Isaac is the younger son of Abraham.  Jacob is the younger son of Isaac. Joseph is the 11th son of Jacob. Ephraim is the younger son of Joseph. The Priestly tribe of Levi begins as a secondary Tribe to Reuben. The Israelite nation is of lesser size than its neighbors.  Judah is smaller than the Kingdom of Israel.  And our nation as a whole were slaves to Egypt, Captives to Babylon, and Exiles in the world until 1948.  Our psyche as Jews is one of the lesser child, born with no silver spoon in his mouth, making it on the world stage as beloved partner with God in history.

As such, underdogs always play well with the Jewish people.  We love stories like Jeremy Lin of the N.Y. Knicks - sitting on the bench two weeks ago unknown to the world. He tweeted last month that security guards at Madison Square Garden where still asking him for I.D. and thought he was a team trainer.  In a moment of desperation, with the multi-million dollar starters out with injuries, the Knicks let Lin onto the floor.  Since then, 6 games later, they have not lost a game.  He has been beyond steller, scoring more in his first 6 starts than any player in N.B.A. history.

The startling rise of the lesser son to prominence is the assertion that every person, every soul, has a destiny.  That destiny is never known to people until it is fulfilled.  Our lives proceed on the path of our choosing, but are flooded with the influence of others and God.  Very little is actually under our control, other than our choices each moment we live. What we have been given, like Mr. Lin, is a chance.

Politics are brewing as a result of Mr. Lin's success.  He parents are from Taiwan, and he has become an instant sensation in mainland China - among the people, not the government.  Mr. Lin is Taiwanese, American, and religious.  These are not China's favorite adjectives for a role model.  It will be interesting to see how such flash points in the large world react to the arrival of Jeremy Lin.

Israel knows the tension well.  As an exile minority among the nations, we kept our stories tradition and identity alive for 2,000 years. And as refugees in the wake of World War II, the world looked at us with sympathy and wonder, voting to create the State of Israel nearly 62 years ago. But once we became a power, a winner, the world became less impressed.  1967, Yom Kippur, Lebanon and the Intifada have all cast Israel as the military power.  And the west dislikes anyone *else* with power, casting all conflict as the cruel oppressor and the noble victim.  In this world view, Israel is no longer seen as the under dog.

Of course the difference between a Basketball game and an international conflict is that the former has a time clock, and when it is over it is over.  Count the points, declare a victor, and move on.  The 1969 Mets became immortal in similar fashion.  Had the war of 1967 or the Yom Kippor war ended the conflict, the majesty of our history would be recognized by all.

AIPAC and others have always made a great deal of hay about the population of the Arab world versus that of Israel.  The argument is a waste of time as long as Israel continues to "win" on the battlefield.  If Israel wants to retain its "miracle status" like Jeremy Lin, we need to find a precipitous road to two states and put the past behind us.  The buzzer needs to sound.

The Dead Sea Scrolls and Us: Where Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow Meet

On Thursday, February 16^th I will lead a day trip from the B’nai Shalom parking lot to the Discovery Museum in Times Square to see the Dead Sea Scrolls: Life and Faith in Biblical Times exhibit.  The exhibit features many items never before displayed. Some of them date back nearly 3000 years ago to the time of King Solomon; the youngest item in the exhibit dates from the Byzantine period, around 400 CE. Why?

Anyone who has ever visited the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem can attest to the incredible sight of the ancient parchment scrolls on display.  They raise as many questions as answers. Who wrote them? Why? What function did they serve?  How were they used? Are they personal devotional scrolls used prayer, as some scholars suggest? Could they have been for personal study? Are they something else entirely?

The answer to all these questions is surely “yes.” So many fragments, of such wide variety in style, age, and content represent a broad spectrum of ideas, hopes and purposes.  And like our Judaism today, the variations are endless, yet create a core truth which is not to be denied.

Judaism is best defined as a people, our texts, and God – meeting in the Land of Israel for all time.

On the bus in to the city (leaving promptly at 9:30 a.m.), we will study some of the texts that we will be viewing.  Once in the museum, we will compare them to the sacred versions we use in synagogue today.  What differences are there, and what similarities?

When we consider the enduring impact on Western civilization the words of our Tanakh have had, we can not help but be touched by the devotion that inspired ancient scribes to preserve these words for others to read and know.  We’ll marvel at the “non-Jewish” nature of many of them, and think about the legitimate limits of religious ideas. And we’ll sense the wonder at the deep love that subsequently stored them to last for the ages in a ceramic jar stashed in a cave high up on a cliff.  We will explore how those words united our ancient ancestors even long before the scribe in Qumran wrote them down then. And, hopefully, we will away with renewed appreciation for these immortal words, which have helped us survive the vagaries of historical homelessness for nearly two thousand years without the Land of Israel. Now that we have returned to our Land, we may also return to our Literature.

It is humbling to realize how much grandeur underlies these little scraps of parchment.  It makes me wonder: What are the acts of devotion that we produce in our day that will similarly inspire our descendants two thousand years from now?  Will it be the scholarship that we have produced? Will it be the beautiful artwork, or the inspiring literature?  Will it be something intangible?  While I do not have any absolute answers to my question, I doubt it will be any of the brick-and-mortar edifices that we have built.  Ultimately the message of these little scrolls is that their values endure.  May we be blessed to rise to the challenge they present to us.