Synagogues Speak for Judaism

Only the synagogue can be the center of Judaism.

For a long time it was wrongly taught that “synagogues replaced the ancient temple.”  In fact, this is not true.  From well before the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 C.E, our people had gathered in our towns and communities to hear the Torah read and to say public prayers. 

One of my favorite artifacts is the Theodotus stone, which can be found in Jerusalem’s Rockefeller museum.  This stone, carved in Greek and found in excavations in the City of David, which declares Theodotus to have been a head of a synagogue whose purpose was to welcome the wayfarer in a gathering place of Torah.  Even in Holy Jerusalem, with her hallowed Temple and Priesthood functioning fully, there was a need for a synagogue to welcome and gather people to learn from the Torah.

Look as well at the ruins in Gamla, in upper Galilee.  A 1^st century synagogue there has a central reading table, and benches seated all around the walls facing in.  Far from Jerusalem and into the hills, the community needed its center, and even the building was oriented to draw attention inward to the lessons of the sacred text.

The synagogue was not founded because of a lack of the Temple.  It grows from the center of our people’s need for meaning and for community.  We find God talking among us and to us in these sacred buildings and places.  The gathering place is an institution, which is still vitally needed today. 

In recent years, many sought to redefine the “center” of Judaism. At first non-religious institutions such as community centers, and federations claimed the center by virtue their “non-sectarian” nature.  Worse, recent funding trends have corted the peripheral Jewish community at great cost and with rare success.  Formal Jewish institutions can speak for Jews, but only synagogues can speak for Judaism.

America has always been a religious culture, and there is no “post-religious” future in view.  In an age where the fastest growing religions in America include both Mormonism and Islam, our next generation needs to be brought into religious dialogue with our American neighbors by first having a strong religious identity  of their own.  This can not be provided by the community center or the federation, and is seldom the goal of initiatives to reach the unaffiliated.

The Jewish Federation of Greater Metro West has encouraged synagogue affiliation, much to its credit.  It knows that synagogue affiliation is a lead indicator of likely future donors, but it also knows that synagogues provide a soul to Jewish society.  The moral teachings of our various synagogues are what give us strength and purpose. 

The Mormons and the Moslems will be speaking religious language if we truly wish to get to know them.  Will we be able to do the same?

In every generation, in every culture and historic circumstance we have faced, it was the synagogue which was the heartbeat of Jewish living.  The doors are open as the new year begins.  Come back to the center.

L’shanah tovah tikateivu.

Political Murderers & Social Murderers

This week has been one of those weeks that come once or twice a year, it seems, when mass-murder fills the news.

First, on Wed., July 18, there was an attack in Bulgaria against a bus filled with unarmed Israeli tourists.  Second, early this morning, there was an attack in a midnight movie theater in Denver, CO, killing and wounding adults and children alike. In Bulgaria, 5 Israelis and the Bulgarian bus driver were killed.  In Denver, 12 are dead and 50 wounded.  Yet the nature of these two attacks is fundamentally different, and that difference can not be ignored.

It is important for the ethical and religious people of the world to know that these killers are not "crazy," but are intentional and well thought-out individuals who are deliberately and knowingly killing the innocent among us.  The Bulgarian attack was perpetrated by a suicide bomber, dressed in plaid shorts, in the country for only a few days, and carrying a fake Michigan driver's license.  The Denver attack by a man in black, wearing a bullet proof vest, carrying a rifle, shotgun, two hand guns and a gas mask for the smoke canisters he used in the attack. Neither crime was done out of "passion" or in a day.

Conclusion?  These are not crazy people.  These people know what they are doing.  They know that what they are doing is wrong enough to evade the authorities, and to hide until the moment of violence.

And while both murderers are cowards who surprise-attack their unarmed civilian victims, their motivations are clearly different:  One is political and one is social.

A Political murderer, in the case of the attack on Israelis can not be brought to "justice" simply because he is a suicide murderer.  Was he working for Hamas?  Hezbollah? Or was he working for Iran, as Ambassador Michael Oren presents? http://video.foxnews.com/v/1741751357001/ The bottom line is that there is no possibility of civilized engagement with political murderers.  They can only be stopped by force in advance, prevented by force en route, or engaged by force in the place of their crime.  Their supporting state and non-government organizations must be starved or destroyed if such murder is to be prevented in the future.  They know how to talk and have chosen this instead.  Talk will not be the solution.

A social murderer is different.  James Homes, who was caught at the scene next to his car with a second round of arms inside, was raised to a college education, is a former Medical student, and had just recently withdrawn from a PhD program in Neuroscience at the University of Denver.  He dressed in the garb of a villin and broke into the back door of a shoot-em-up Batman movie to attack the crowd.  He had booby-trapped his apartment with explosives, evidently to great the investigation in the wake of his crime.  As an individual, frustrated in his failures and goals, one can see social discontent is the likely motivation for his evil decisions.  But his intelligence and planning are apparent.

Some like to claim that the roots of violence are economic.  This is simply not the case.  The 911 attackers were not starving or uneducated.  Quite the contrary.  They were simply political murderers.  So too the suicide bomber in Bulgaria.  Eventually he will be identified.  His economics will be irrelevant.  And of course James Homes, or the UVA shooter, or Columbine... all are from the privileged "class" in this country.

When it comes to social murderers, the force of law must be mustered against them, and against any who support and enable them. Yet prison, rehabilitation, and other social tools may have some hope in such cases - if we care to apply all of our societal tools in the justice system.  That is a debate for another day.

But when it comes to political murderers, there is no such hope or reason to believe that tools of peace will win the day.