Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

Teshuvah, Tzedakah, T'filah: Yom Kippur 5770

The ritual phrasing of the Unetaneh Tohkef prayer reads: "On Rosh HaShanah it is written, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, how many will leave this world and how many will be born into it, who will live and who will die... But penitence, prayer and good deeds can annul the severity of the decree."

Teshuvah, above translated as penitence, is also about returning to the center, and aligning with the Center. In the world of 12-step, teshuvah and t'filah are a daily practice, reflected in the 9th, 10th and 11th step: making amends, reflecting and admitting our shortcomings and seeking to return to connection with the universal Higher Power through prayer and meditation. I like to think of the 10 day period of the days of awe as an experience of going thru all 12 steps in 10 days. And it's intense. 

I am not much of one for the mythology of the holiday: a hairy thunderer up above with a book of accounts. But as a metaphor it serves to remind me that no matter how much I might try to deny it, I am aware of every person I have harmed in some way, every way in which I have fallen short of the mark of living my values. And that denial only turns up physically in my body, or as a repeated pattern in the world with stronger consequences so that I get the lesson through my thick skull.

This is in fact the true meaning of karma, the fruit of sankhara.

May we all return to that universal Center. May our hearts be open in gratitude and may we all share our blessings so that that all beings are liberated.

Thoughts for a Jewish-Buddhist Purim

Ah Purim. It’s developed, at least in the U.S. into Jewish Mardi Gras: a wild holiday of costumes and drinking to excess. And of course, the telling of the great folk tale of Esther and the King of Persia.

So what is it about drinking so much that you can’t tell the difference between Haman’s curse and Mordechai’s blessing? It reminds me of the custom in Japan at Bonenkai parties — year end celebrations where office workers go out together and drink even more than they do during the year — and where they are given free reign to speak any of their pent up frustrations and hostilities. It is the one day of the year where it is permitted to drop the mask. The next day all is forgotten and forgiven. At least that’s the stated custom in Japan.

At Purim, the alcoholic haze also frees people from their inhibitions. But wearing a mask can also free someone who believes they aren’t recognized — here we aren’t dropping a mask and telling the truth, but wearing a mask to do so.

But if this is the day we are allowed to lose a certain measure of control, the story of Esther tells us what happens when the one man who is supposed to be in control, the king, isn’t in control of his own appetites.

King Ahasuerus was ruled by his lust. And when his wife Vashti refused to obey his desire to display her beauty to his attendants, he divorced her. He chose his next wife, Esther entirely based on her looks. Here the king is ruled by his eyes. This is a king who isn’t in control of himself — what does this mean for his kingdom? (You might be tempted to think this question relates to recent political events in NYC, but one can look at leaders in every time and place and see this very failing — leading back to the same question about control of others and self control)

Kabbalistically speaking, the sefira of Malchut, means both kingship and sovereignty. And this conjunction of meaning is important, because sovereignty means not only a ruler, but a kind of independence that comes with knowing how to rule oneself. King Ahasuerus didn’t have that. And both the Jews and the Buddhists agree on that the ability to rule one’s self is required to rule others.

In the Pirke Avot it is written:

Ben Zoma said…
Who is a strong leader?
One who conquers his passions and emotions

In the Dhammapada it is written:

Though thousand times a thousand
in battle one may conquer,
yet should one conquer just oneself
one is the greatest conqueror.

How can we best know ourselves? There are some who say in vino veritas. But using alcohol as an excuse to speak what you’re afraid of saying to others is cowardice. However if in letting down your inhibitions you discover you’ve got just as much lust in your heart (to use a phrase from President Carter) as King Ahasuerus, then you have learned something about yourself. You have to know your passions and emotions if you’re going to deal with them. That doesn’t mean acting them out, which alcohol can lead to.

Please don’t get the idea that I’m against alcohol. I am against its abuse. People used the same argument for using LSD — it was a tool of self-exploration. And for some it was. But it’s a dangerous tool that did damage to many.

The injunction to drink so much that we don’t know the difference between Haman’s curse and Mordechai’s blessing I take as the commandment to see that within me I carry both inclinations. I am no saint — but neither am I a devil. Both these men live in me. And when I can see both of them clearly, I can choose true action rather than blindly reacting to unconscious urges.

So put on your mask tonight. Down a glass of wine. Drop your guard.  See what you’re hiding from others — and yourself. Will we take this knowledge to engage the shadow or believe that by putting the stopper back on the bottle the genie is under control?

Does lust rule you? If you live white-knuckling to keep yourself under control, do you need a night like Purim to let go? Can you rule yourself with compassion and not as a puritan? Can the shadow be unmasked so that its energy can be used in service of the Whole? These are my questions this Purim. What are yours?

D'var Sutra: Pekudei — the place where you are standing is holy

Here we are at the last reading in Sh’mot, the book of Exodus. And the storyteller in me wants to think about this book, just the second of the five books of Torah, as one complete story to be read in and of itself. Except that it ends right in the middle of the journey. Or does it? Now I realize that the story calls for wandering for 40 years. That the generation that lived in slavery had to pass away before entering the land. But…

Remember, at the end of Devarim, the last of the five books, the people still have not crossed over into the land. This seems significant to me when looking back at the story in Sh’mot.

The book begins with our ancestors living in Egypt as slaves to a temporal power, the Pharaoh. They are unwilling builders of the Egyptian temples and cities, making bricks from mud and straw. Building structures that cannot move. And when Exodus ends, they have freely entered into a relationship with the Divine, building a portable tabernacle made of the finest precious metals, jewels, woods and hides they have been able to muster.

I suspect there is a teaching here about where holiness is truly found, and it isn’t connected to place.

When the people completed the building of the tabernacle, Moses blessed them. The Midrash tells us that his blessing was: “May it be God’s will that the Divine Presence rests upon the work of your hands.”

Similarly at the end of Devarim Moses says to the people: “The thing is very close to you, in your mouth and your heart, to observe it”

In the Torah, both at the end of Sh’mot and at the end of Devarim, the people do not enter the land. They are told that the Divine Presence is within, and can be expressed in one’s actions and in one’s work in the world. This simple and radical teaching is often overlooked in our desire to connect myth with history (please do not make any assumptions about my political leanings about Israel from this statement — I am speaking entirely about our relationship with the Divine as it is revealed through the story).

On Shabbat, we look back on the week before. We rest. But it does not mean we do not reflect on our work in the world. The question to ask when we stop running (which means we catch up to the Holy One, who wasn’t going anywhere) is whether the work we have done expressed our relationship with the Divine, so that the Presence will rest upon it, and among us.

When we can answer that question clearly on an ongoing basis the tabernacle will follow us wherever we go. And the Promised Land will always be beneath our feet wherever we are.  This is the experience of the unification of keter and malchut (and all the sefirot in between). This is the experience of the non-dual nature of peshat and sod. The recognition that Samsara and Nirvana are one: wherever you go, there god are!

Some Light Reading for the Fourth Night of Hanukkah: The Buddha's Last Instruction

The Buddha's Last Instruction
A Poem by Mary Oliver

"Make of yourself a light"
said the Buddha, 
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal-a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down 
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire-
clearly I'm not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches, 
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd. 

Some Light Reading For the Second Night of Hanukkah: Rumi

What better poet to honor on a Jewish holiday than a Sufi Muslim mystic?
For that matter, this poem by Rumi strikes me as particularly Buddhist:

A Just Finishing Candle

A candle is made to become entirely flame.
In that annihilating moment it has no shadow.

It is nothing but a tongue of light
describing a refuge.

Look at this
just finishing candle stub
as someone who is finally safe
from virtue and vice,

the pride and the shame
we claim from those.

Some Light Reading For the First Night of Hanukkah: My first Jewish-Japanese-Christmas-Hanukkah-OshogatsuTree

There are 250 million people in Japan and only 2% of them are Christian. But it seems as though all 250 million Japanese celebrate Christmas. Tokyo is filled with Santas, candy canes, and Christmas cakes.

The first December I spent in Tokyo, my Japanese boyfriend Hiroshi asked if I was going to have a Christmas tree. I explained that Jews (even Jewish Buddhists like me) didn’t have Christmas trees, and that we don’t celebrate Christmas. He was quite shocked. He knew I was Jewish, and in fact he was fascinated by this since he’d never met any Jews before. He had an idea from something he’d read that Jewish mothers and Japanese mothers were the same. He just assumed that Christmas was something all Westerners celebrated. Of course his understanding of Judaism was as limited as my understanding of Shinto. Not to mention my confusion at the fact that every Japanese considers themselves both Buddhist and Shinto — and that they see no contradiction. Not that a Jewish Buddhist like me can complain about that.

Anyway, Hiroshi thought all Americans celebrated Christmas, and now that he had an American boyfriend, he really wanted a tree, despite the fact that neither of us was Christian.

The Japanese do have year end custom that seemed similar — on New Years Day, the Japanese put pine branches, plum branches and bamboo saplings together just outside the entrance to the house, to welcome good luck into the house for the new year.

He felt that if we put Christmas and Japanese New Years together in a tree, it would be a yearly ritual for our relationship. The idea of a Christmas tree just didn’t seem right to me, but I wanted him to be happy.

So I called my friend Andrew Ramer back in the U.S. and told him my dilemma. And he told me what Rabbi Miriam Da Silva had to say on the subject....

It seems that a young couple had gone to Rabbi Da Silva for counseling. Their daughter wanted a Christmas Tree. Now their daughter was a Jewish day school student, who took her heritage seriously. But for some reason the child insisted they have a tree.

The rabbi listened and thought about Purim, whose heroes, Mordechai and Esther are clearly taken from the Mesopotamian Pagan gods Marduk and Ishtar. And she thought about the quintessentially Jewish ceremony, the Passover Seder, which was modeled on an ancient Greeks ritual, the Symposium — which is a banquet centered around a topic of discussion. Not that the Maccabees, intolerantly murderous fundamentalist fanatics that they were, would want to know this. But the Rabbi didn’t have an answer, so she asked the couple to wait while she sought guidance on the matter.

And that night the Rabbi had a dream. In the dream, a fiery angel of god came to her and said,

“Miriam, Miriam. Remember when Moses saw a bush all aflame. This came at a dark time in history, when the Jews were slaves, just as the Solstice is the darkest time of year. The tree this child longs for is a symbol of that burning bush. Tell them that. Tell them that their tree will commemorate this sacred time — but that it must be grown for only this purpose. They may not cut down a tree in the woods. And it must be mulched or recycled at the end of the season. The tree must not be taller than the tallest person in the family. They may decorate it with colored lights, but no more than ten, to remind them of the tree of life and its sephirot. And they must not use tinsel, even if it is biodegradable. They must never wear shoes around the tree. And for the eight nights it is up, they must sit around it and read and discuss the passage from Exodus about Moses and the burning bush. Tell them if they do these things in just this way their tree will be kosher, a sacred reminder of the Presence of God in the world and in nature, which must be honored and preserved, for it is God’s holy creation. “

When the Rabbi awoke, she wrote down the words she remembered and told the parents of the girl. And she said that Jews unconsciously honor the sacred revelation of nature every time they plant a tree in Israel, At least that’s what my friend Andrew Ramer told me that Rabbi Da Silva said. It gave me permission.

Okay, I’m sure you know the song from A Chorus Line — What I Did for Love. I went out to the nearest florist and rather than buy pine branches, I bought a potted pine tree, one that could keep growing, so we could keep it on the terrace throughout the year.  We decorated so that it glinted with 10 gold foil wrapped chocolate Hanukkah coins. So, no, the foil wasn’t biodegradeable. At the top we put a gold star of David, which oddly enough also happens to be a Shinto symbol.

That first year, Hiroshi also put a little statue of the boddhisatva of wisdom, Fukurokuju, at the foot of the tree. He said it would be okay, because he looked like Moses — carrying a staff and a scroll.

It was a funny looking statue, a smiling old man with a, long white beard and a bald domed head that stretched up like a zucchini to emphasize his intelligence. It was only after I’d spend a few years in Japan that I learned in earlier times the statues were made in graduated sizes and used to initiate the boy acolytes of the Buddhist priests. Yes, it’s the sacred dildo you can see to the right!

That is my coming out story as a Queer neo-pagan Shinto Buddhist Jew with a Christmas-Hanukkah-Oshogatsu tree. I just hope there aren’t any Maccabbees reading this blog. The photo above of Hiroshi and me in front of one of our trees was taken after we moved to New York — around 1990 — and when the decorations had become even more, uhhh, eclectic.

Meanwhile, my wish for you, my dear readers, is that this Hanukkah and all year round your life is filled with light to share with those you love — and all beings. To quote the Buddhist teacher Ajahn Sumedho:

“Thousands of candles can be lit from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness never decreases by being shared.”

Share your light.

D'var Sutra: Resh Lakish, Angulimala and Yom Kippur

It is the period of the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur — that time when the myth (which I do not mean in any disparaging way — there is nothing quite so powerful as myth) tells us we are between life and death, and that we must put all our thoughts towards at-one-ment and return to God.

It is the time when we review all our sins and do the work of repairing what has been broken in our lives — relationships, agreements, our own moral sense. Sin in Judaism does not carry the same meaning as it does in Christianity. In fact, I tend to think it is closer to the Buddhist concept of “unskillful means,” that is to say that the sinful action was an attempt, however misguided, to reach wholeness from a place of delusion.

I find the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the subject of sin and the energy that is locked up in it to capture the experience of what happens in meditation when we awaken from the grip of one kind of delusional thinking or another:

“Sin is not to be forgotten, blotted out or cast into the depths of the sea. On the contrary, sin has to be remembered. It is the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than every before. The energy of the sin can be used to bring one to new heights.”

He then goes on to use the example of the life of Resh Lakish, a sage of the Talmudic era who before he came to the study of Torah was a much feared bandit. When he repented and returned, Soloveitchik says (in agreement with all the sages of the Talmud) this is what raised him to the level of the sages, it was the energy from released sin that elevated him to “unimaginable heights.”

Certainly, one of Resh Lakish’s great teachings, recorded in the Talmud, could have come from the mouth of the Buddha:

"No man commits a sin unless struck by momentary insanity"

It is interesting to note a similar story of a bandit turned saint in the Buddhist canon — the story of Angulimala. Angulimala was a highwayman who killed his victims and cut off their fingers, wearing them in a gruesome necklace. In fact that is what his name means, necklace of fingers. He had vowed to kill 1000 people. And had reached 999 when he met (and intended to kill) the Buddha, who with a few words enabled the robber to see through the delusion that led him to sin so grievously. And in a moment he became an Arahant, an awakened saint who then went from village to village as a monk trying to repair the damage he had done to others.

As a storyteller I recognize the motif at work here — the archetypal pattern that both reassures us that we can be forgiven and we can attain atonement by showing us how the worst can reach that state. And how these characters also stand in for the ways in which we commit little murders.

Scholars say that Angulimala did not really exist. It seems certain that Resh Lakish did, but who can say? I love one of the quotes ascribed to him in the Talmud as it regards the power of story and myth:

“Job never actually existed; he is only the imaginary hero of the poem, the invention of the poet”

And of course it doesn’t matter that Job didn’t exist, and Resh lakish (if he existed) knew it. Job's story (as well as the stories of Resh Lakish and Angulimala) teaches us something that a biography can’t. It reaches that part of our unconscious minds in the language it understands. Perhaps this quote is even a sly clue in the Talmud that Lakish did not really exist, but was created to tell a story. Maybe.

I digress however because of my love of story. And that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that we all sin. And that we can use awareness, mindfulness and compassion towards ourselves and others to wake up and release the energy of our sins to ride that energy towards unimaginable heights.

May you have an easy fast.

The Messiah is a Queer Smack Addict: D’var Sutra for Tisha B’Av

If you’ve read Michael Chabon’s amazing new novel, The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, you’ll already have discovered a whole alternate universe of Jewish life in Alaska, complete with a Messiah who escapes from his arranged marriage by slipping out of the family home in drag. Some might be outraged by this characterization, but the Talmud has a story about the Messiah in which he is a scabrous leper who begs outside the gates of Rome. Here’s the story:

Rabbi Yehoshua asked Elijah another question about the future time: “When will the Messiah come?
Elijah answered, “Go and ask him, himself.”
Rabbi Yehoshua was amazed: “You mean I could find him, talk to him—now? Where is he?”
Elijah said, “You can find him at the gates of Rome.”
“How will I recognize him at the gates of Rome?” asked Rabbi Yehoshua.
Elijah told him, “There he sits among the lepers whom you will find unwinding all of their bandages at the same time and then covering their sores with clean bandages. The Messiah is the only one who unwinds and rewinds his bandages one at a time, thinking, ‘I want to be ready at a moment’s notice if I am called’.”
Rabbi Yehoshua traveled from the cave of Rabbi Shimon bar Yohai all the way to Rome—a journey that seemed to take him only a few steps. He was not frightened by the strong gates of the enemy nor the pitiful condition of the lepers. Keeping in mind Elijah’s advice of how to identify the Messiah in the most unlikely of places among the most wretched of people, he quickly spotted the one poor sufferer who was unwrapping and rewrapping only one sore at a time.
Rabbi Yehoshua approached him and said, “Peace be upon you, my master and teacher.”
The leper looked knowingly at him and replied, “Peace be upon you, son of Levi.”
Rabbi Yehoshua asked him, “When will the master come?”
“Today,” said the leper.
Rabbi Yehoshua returned to Elijah in the blink of an eye.
Elijah said to him, “What did the Messiah say to you?”
…
Rabbi Yehoshua said, “…he lied to me, saying, ‘Today I will come.’ But he has not come.”
Elijah said, “No, he did not say that he would come ‘today’. Rather, he was quoting a Psalm verse to you: Today—if only you will listen to His voice (Psalm 95:7). (from the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 98a)

At the time this was written there was no human more feared or despised than the leper. To see the Messiah in this way was a radical act — as indeed was the entire recreation of Judaism by the rabbis after the destruction of the Second Temple. Which brings me to the holy day that begins tonight after sundown: The 9th of Av.

One of the myths of our people (here I mean the Jewish people as opposed to the Queer People or the Buddhist Peoples, all of whom I number myself among) is that the Messiah will be born on the 9th of Av. This is also the day on which the Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, and the Romans destroyed the Second Temple. A day on which there was much carnage, cruelty, and torture. A day of mourning in our calendar. Yet the rabbis also say it’s the day the Messiah will be born. Why is that?

I have to admit, I don’t want to see the Temple rebuilt speedily or at all. I am glad animal sacrifice is gone. I am glad there is no longer a hereditary priesthood. The destruction of the Second Temple led to the creation of a renewed and new Judaism. A more individual connection to the Divine rather than one mediated by a politically connected priesthood.

There are those who even today see the destruction of the temples as an example of ignorance spreading in the world. Rabbi Shraga Simmons recently wrote:

With the loss of the Temple, God has become more concealed -- resulting in a world filled not with clarity but with spiritual confusion. It is no coincidence that immediately following the destruction of the First Temple (circa 421 BCE), Greek and Roman philosophy (as well as Buddhism and Tao) rose to their peak. Similarly, Christianity began concurrently with the destruction of the Second Temple (70 CE).

Of course this comes from someone who believes the reason the first temple was destroyed was the sexual immorality of the people. But this attitude — a prejudice that apes the recent position of the Nazi Pope that other Christian faiths are invalid  — is depressing. If anything, I live with the hope that when faced with destruction of the foundation of our beliefs we see what was corrupt in that belief, and say goodbye to it as we rebuild again.

This is the reason that the card that follows The Tower in the Tarot deck is The Star. In The Tower we see the destruction of a man made structure, and people falling from it. A potent image for New Yorkers, not in the least theoretical or mythical. Many people have forgotten what it was like in New York in the days after the destruction of the Trade Center. It was a city of people who walked around with open hearts filled with compassion — we spoke softly, not in fear, but out of concern for each other, knowing we had all gone through something truly traumatic, and out of concern that the stranger we spoke to on the street had lost someone. We were all connected to the truth of loss. We all had a crash course in the Buddhist teaching of annicca — impermanence. And not only did the Towers fall, but our ego defenses fell as well. With The Star, we find a naked human, defenseless, drawing the water of hope under the guiding light from above.

Of course, this openness did not last. Certainly in the rush and drumbeat for revenge led by our pseudo-leaders in Washington and with the constant retraumatization by the constant broadcast of the images we were numbed and dumbed into a war that has taken us to the home of the ancient conquerors of the first Temple: Babylon. Meanwhile, there are those who make the remnant of the Temple, the Western Wall, an idol.

And like Rabbi Simmons, the Taliban see Buddhism as spiritual confusion. So they bombed ancient Buddhist statues in Afghanistan to the horror of those who wish to save the history of humanity. But these statues weren’t idols to the Buddhists. Because they were just stone. And their destruction only furthers the teaching of impermanence. It might be sad to lose art that is part of our spiritual heritage on the planet, and it might be sad to lose art that inspires spiritual reflection. But the loss of the art is in fact a teaching. What do we do in the face of impermanence? How can we treat each other with compassion? How can we see each other in our vulnerability and beauty as humans instead of becoming rigid and astonished (in the old sense of to become like stone) in our beliefs?

Meanwhile we (and here I mean the collective we of all humanity) are hard at work destroying the original temple: the planet. The cruelty and torture continue across the planet in wars in fact if not in name. And we poison the seas, the land, the air, and our fellow creatures.

In this moment of what seems to be almost certain planetary destruction headed towards us, the Messiah sits at the gates, appearing as a beggar, a leper, a queer man with a heroin addiction. Yet she is ready to come, today, if only we will hear — and heed — the voice.

D'var Sutra: Rock Steady

This is the week Moses loses it and punches out a wall in Parashat Hukkat. We’ve all been there. You get so angry you break something. And while you might just break a finger or two punching a wall, or leave some inanimate objects in pieces on the floor, it’s better than taking out your anger on another person. Except leaders are held to higher standard, even leaders of those whining Jews, who can be so annoying it can seem like Moses has the patience of a saint, except for the fact that there are no saints in this tradition. 

Certainly Moses has learned to keep his anger in check. Last time he lost it, he killed and Egyptian and had to go on the lam. So just what happened this time? The people, as usual are complaining that they should have stayed in Egypt rather than die of thirst in the desert. And God says to Moses, speak to the rock and water will flow from it. But Moses, angry with the people says:

"Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?" And Moses raised his hand and struck the rock twice with his rod. Out came copious water, and the community and their beasts drank.

Okay, so he hits the rock instead of speaks to it. And he lashes out at the Jews. For this God is so angry with him he doesn’t get to enter the promised land? Pretty severe. The rabbis spend a lot of time chewing this over, trying to rationalize such a hard punishment. They don’t like it. Would you?

Anger is one of the big emotions to work with in Buddhism. Some of my favorite passages in the sutras speak to the issue:

One should give up anger, renounce
pride, and overcome all fetters. Suffering never
befalls those who cling not to mind and body and
are detached.

Those who check rising anger as a charioteer
checks a rolling chariot, those I call true charioteers;
others only hold the reins.
        -Dhammapada, Chapter 17

"Where is anger for one freed from anger,
Who is subdued and lives perfectly equanimous,
Who truly knowing is wholly freed,
Supremely tranquil and equipoised?
He who repays an angry man in kind
Is worse than the angry man;
Who does not repay anger in kind,
He alone wins the battle hard to win.
He promotes the weal of both,
His own, as well as of the other.
Knowing that the other man is angry,
He mindfully maintains his peace
And endures the anger of both,
His own, as well as of the other,
Even if the people ignorant of true wisdom
Consider him a fool thereby."
    -Akosa Sutra

In the Jewish tradition, my favorite teaching on the subject is from Pirkei Avot, Chapter 4:

"Ben Zoma said, who is wise? He who learns from all people, as it is said: 'From all those who taught me I gained understanding' (Psalms 119:99). Who is strong? He who conquers his evil inclination, as it is said: 'Better is one slow to anger than a strong man, and one who rules over his spirit than a conqueror of a city.'” (Proverbs 16:32).

As I noted earlier, a leader is held to a higher standard. The analogy one teacher of mine liked is what happens when you hold your hand outside of a train window when it starts to pull out of a station — it isn’t going very fast, so you can slap your hand against a pole and it isn’t a disaster. But try that when you’re on the bullet train between Tokyo and Kyoto and you’ll lose your arm. The very nature of leadership is that one is moving at a higher speed of life, where a higher level of integrity is demanded. What might be a small slip personally can have greater ramifications when the whole community is involved. The quote from the Dhammapada alludes to this — when those horses are really galloping, you well better have your hands on the reins.

I may not like what happens to Moses as a result of this slip, I may feel it is unjust. But I do know that the greater the responsibility we take on, the more we are called on to be awake, vigilant over emotions and behaviors that could be dangerous to the community.

This is an interesting reading for gay pride weekend. Since after all, it was the rage of the patrons of the Stonewall that led to the uprising of queer energy into the birth of a modern LGBT movement. But this rage was the anger of the powerless, a taking back of power denied. These were people who were given no respect. The police could hit a drag queen with a billy club without even a second thought. And perhaps this is the connection. Rods and rocks. Billy clubs at Stonewall. Either way, if you lash out unconsciously (as one could say the police did, acting out their own homophobia with violence) that violence is only going to boomerang right back at you. I have the bruised knuckles and dented plaster to prove it.

Shabbos D’var Sutra: Strange Fire

What are we to make of Parsha Shemini? Our ancestors struggled mightily with this reading because there are things in it that also made them very uncomfortable. There are things in it that make me very uncomfortable. But open-hearted struggle with what makes us uncomfortable is in fact a part of the tradition. A part I really connect with – because the Torah is part of our inheritance, whether we like parts of it or not. And I like a good story…

The story begins after 7 days of preparations for the dedication the Tabernacle are ending. So there are lots of lists of ritual laws of sacrifice and holiness for the priests and the people, connected to the Mishkan. The reading also includes the introduction of the dietary laws. With all these laws we get the story what happened at the consecration of the Mishkan and the ordination of the priests — including Aaron and his sons.

Unfortunately, this ordination does not go well. Okay, that’s an understatement...