Hi JCK folk,
I am attempting to enter the 21st century by opening a blog within which we can discuss issues of interest to us as a Jewish community and discuss the essays we are reading in “This I Believe II”.
This past Shabbat we read and discussed two contrasting essays: “Untold Stories of Kindness” by Sgt Ernesto Haibi, a medic in the 23rd infantry battalion in which he describes his experiences in Iraq, and “A Potential for Brutality” by Yinong Young-Xu in which he recounts his experiences as a young child growing up during the Chinese Cultural Revolution and the way in which brutality became normalized. The week’s Torah portion was the story of Noah. You may recall that God becomes so discouraged with humankind that it becomes necessary to wipe them all out and start again with Noah. These essays and the Torah portion all raise the question: Is human nature good or evil?
Those of us who were together for services on Friday night agreed that people can be influenced in either direction. As Haibi observes, even in the midst of war, he saw fighters and civilians reach out to each other in caring and non-partisan ways. And as Young-Xu notes, regular people can become so used to public torture and humiliation that these occasions take on an air of festivity. We discussed that people can be pushed towards good or evil both as individuals and as members of a group. It takes courage to be the one who insists on doing what is right, even when others make different choices. And I pointed out to our Bar Mitzvah-to-be, Jason New, that that was both the gift and the burden of responsibility. It is much easier to let others make decisions for us, to go along with the crowd. It is hard to stick with what we know to be right in the face of peer pressure.
Overall, our first “This I Believe” Shabbat was not a particularly controversial one. Perhaps our next one will generate more debate.
If there is an essay or two essay that you would like to have us discuss on Shabbat, please just recomend them to us either via this blog, or by emailing me privately.
Posted by Jody Goldenberg on October 30, 2009 at 12:11 am
Go Rabbi Helaine! This is going to be such a good way to bring up and discuss the “This I Believe” topics, as well as a whole bunch of others.
I would like to recommend an essay that appears on the Web site and not the book. It’s called “Leap of Faith” and its URL is http://thisibelieve.org/essay/65076/ I’ve been thinking about how hard it is to be fearless in discussing my faith and wonder if others had this experience or not. I think it might make a really good topic for discussion.
Posted by rabbihelaine on October 30, 2009 at 2:34 am
Jody, that “Leap of Faith” essay made me think of another essay called “Floating Takes Faith” by Rabbi David J. Wolpe (in a book by the same name). In it he writes:
“I remember when I was learning to swim. The hardest part was floating. Swimming is about propulsion: One must kick, stroke, move. But floating asks us to be still, to trust in the buoyancy of the water. Swimming is work; floating takes faith.”
Isn’t the idea of a leap of faith, the same kind of courage it takes to float? The courage to trust?
Posted by Ken Balick on October 30, 2009 at 1:32 am
What a great idea. Thank you for initiating it.
Part of our new mission statement is that the JCK is a community with a common goal of fostering Jewish identity and community, and celebrating the warmth of being a small, inclusive congregation
Now we can share our thoughts and ideas with each other via Rabbi Helaine’s blog. Here’s to our new JCK digital community!
Posted by Brittany Kahn on November 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm
I get that, Rabbi, all about that peer pressure and everything. At Choices last week, this is what we were talking about.
I also have an essay to recommend, Jody showed it to me, and neither of us agree with it, but it seems like a good discussion. It is “Navigating Turbulent Waters” by Jimmy Liao on p. 146. It’s all about going with the flow and letting things go.
Posted by Randy Freeman on November 3, 2009 at 1:48 am
Actually, I am sorry that I missed services and hope to be there next time. Having said that, I think that the topic is actually more controversial than it seems. I think the book/movie The Reader was a perfect example of the question of why and how people move toward doing evil. In fact, Hannah Arandt also wrote a great deal about the banality of evil, which I do believe was portrayed in the book The Reader, as well. The concept of evil being banal is disturbing, and it is hard to understand what drives people in that direction. On the other hand, one does wonder what drives people toward doing good when all around them is chaos or if their very lives are in danger if they do something that is good.
Posted by rabbihelaine on November 3, 2009 at 4:05 am
It’s a question I ask myself, and I imagine that others ask themselves, how would we react in the face of real danger? Would I/we be among those who strive to help others and to continue to do good, even when all around us is chaos and threat? We who live in this country are so fortunate that we have faced this kind of chaos and threat so little compared to so many other citizens of the world.
Hannah Arandt’s work is so disturbing because it shows us how evil and hatred and prejudice and discrimination become so “normalized” that they are no longer perceived as evil, they are just part of the banal fabric of everyday life. The recent protests in our area by the Westboro Baptist Church offered disturbing images of young children holding aloft placards with hateful messages. To these children it is clearly acceptable and normalized behavior to spew venom and denigrate other human beings. What kind of adults will they become? Even as our JCK School tries to teach our students the richness and values of our Jewish heritage, we are careful NOT to diminish other faiths, other traditions as a way to bolster our own. I am proud of the way our Jewish school teaches about Judaism. I am grateful that we live in a pluralistic society and believe it is possible to love and cherish Judaism and still find value in other people’s faiths.