You Say You Want A Revolution...*

(*...will that be with a side order of sit-ins or just a beheading?)

For me Boston often feels like a perpetual boiling point for civil rights. Every weekend seems to bring a new rally to The Common or Copley Square or The State House. Tea-Partiers, Immigrant Rights, Queer Rights, Labor Unions, all bump elbows in a town that is small enough to be tucked away in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. The streets and campuses here echo with the cries of the righteous, whoever that may be on any given day, to the point where the line between mainstream tolerance and indifference becomes blurred.
That being said, the current anti-Israeli sentiment around here is leaving me uneasy. Many of the tenets of protest I have lived by as a longtime activist seem to have been abandoned like yesterday’s space-saver in snow-buried Southie.

First is that over-used, least understood and much co-opted word ‘peace’. I learned my protesting from the school of Mohandas Gandhi, Alice Paul and Martin Luther King, Jr., where fighting back comes from a place of non-violence as opposed to "an acceptable level of violence", where you raised an open hand, not a clenched fist, you rose above your opponent instead of sinking down to them, you stood up rather than striking out; you disrupted the empire by sitting in, not by setting off bombs.

So it disturbs me greatly when during the recent Egyptian revolution there were calls to take Hosni Mubarak out "17^th Century Revolution style" or that the uprising had reached a level of "CHFHO" (Chop His F**king Head Off") already. For me Peace can never mean, or be obtained by, "acceptable level of violence" nor "preparing for armed conflict." When those onboard raise hands that hold the simplest of weapons, it is no longer a "peace" flotilla but a "protest" flotilla.

Also disturbing is the distinct lack of any real dialogue regarding the discourse. Some anti-Israeli protestors have made no pretense in refusing to come to the middle ground, instead staking claim to the most extreme of fringes (spots I imagine to be crumbling drop-offs that offer little wiggle room.) Instead of coming to a place of discussion they make demands; rather than discuss they debate; rather than actually hear they listen for the opening to make the next clever retort.

I also find it disturbing how easily History is ignored and everything is framed in the context of a few decades, years, weeks, the latest rally, RIGHT NOW!

I guess it should not surprise me (even though it does) to hear such arguments from this encampment as "the only way Palestine could live is if Israel dies", "you should stop being Jewish" or that "Zionists have taken over your police, government, media culture, etc.". It is profoundly distressing to me to hear how easily anti-Semitism is tucked into anti-Israeli protests, how old anti-Jewish myths are resurrected unchallenged in the new age, how extremism is packaged and sold as the new diplomacy, how critical thinking is discarded to embrace the electricity of the newest cause, how one missile can be seen as oppression while another fired in response can be called ‘love letters’ from revolutionaries.

Please make no mistake - I think the Occupation needs to end as of yesterday, the walls between nations need to come down, the term "moral army" is an oxymoron and that the current ultra-conservative Israel government often invokes religion to justify its stream of blatant racism and needs to be called out for any human rights violations. Just as any nation guilty of such grievious acts should be. Except they are not, are they? The French government violates the rights of Muslin women by stripping them of their veils, American Islamophobia continues to run amok., British Muslims are reviled in the country’s popular culture, yet it is Israel that is singled out for this level of demonstration. Hard to ignore the implications of that..

I am reminded of one of my favorite books, Starhawk’s "The Fifth Sacred Thing" in which a post environmental disaster San Francisco resurrects itself as a true socialist haven where Peace overrides Power. So strong is this spirituality that when the military-industrial complex comes rolling into town the citizens fight back through nonviolent protest, literally laying down their lives for that ideal. I can’t help but wonder how many of today’s protestors would follow that example.

The Call of Jewish Ethics

3 Adar, 5771

So Thursday night’s Intro to Judaism lesson touched upon a topic I had been waiting to delve into ever since Day One when I spotted it on my syllabus: Jewish ethics.

Does this sound dry, dull, perhaps even sleep-inducing? Not in the hands of the Temple Israel rabbi who led the class. (I am not mentioning his name only because I have not asked permission to do so yet. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t mind but I am trying to keep some blogging ethics here. Note the emerging theme) His amicable lesson, interwoven with humor, kept us all engaged.. Throughout the evening we found ourselves splashing through ideas of justice and fairness, justice versus fairness, digging up definitions of charity and mishpat and squishing some tzedakah between our toes. It was muddy and messy and fun. Were you expecting something else?

I was excited about this because Jewish ethics was one of the reasons (Reform) Judaism had called to me. Remember, I had found this path after my prior spiritual G.P.S. stopped working and I ended up lost, wandering in the desert of civilization. Not that I was on the verge of committing any grievous moral sins but I was in need of some serious course correction to turn myself around. Not just an arrow-shaped signpost either (as any and every religion offers those up in abundance) but a whole new compass, a new understanding of how to read the terrain of Life.

European-based Paganism (which, post Constantine, arguably became a socio-political underground reaction to the totalitarian dogma of rising Christianity) did not come with a lot of built-in ethics. Oh, I found some motivation to do good in the framework of karma, some earnest Scott Cunningham writings, some underlying socialist values (as found Starhawk’s beautiful and beautifully written paean "The Fifth Sacred Thing") and, of course, a definitive pro-Gaia environmental responsibility (which I still try to practice.). None of this was particularly helpful though as my know world began collapsing on itself. The fact that there was no real Pagan canon on the topic more than a few decades’ old was all the more frustrating. Steelwork wasn’t exactly getting me a job to help pay the mounting bills or simply get some food.

As for Roman Catholicism/Christianity (which, for better or worse, I will lump together here), its moral code had given justification for various relatives and friends to believe 1) I was somehow handicapped, or a pariah, as transgender, or 2) doomed to Hell for being my gender expression and sexual orientation or 3) some combination thereof. It was difficult - okay, damn impossible - to sidle up to any notion of right or wrong based on a belief system that automatically marginalized me.

Why would I have thought that Judaism offered a user-friendly, far-reaching moral consciousness, especially since I had never stepped into a synagogue or cracked open the Torah before in my life? To this day I am not sure. I think what started me thinking along those terms was how, when things started to fall apart around me, it was my Jewish friends who put deed before creed and stepped up to help, offering not just prayers but real-world and real-life actions. Now to be fair, some of my non-Jewish friends, including my BFF, who is Buddhist and possesses one of the kindest hearts I know, also helped out. And not all of my Gentile family and friends even knew the true depth of my troubles. But for many who did, their offering of copious prayers for miracles, although very appreciated, was not always practical. Personally I blame the God-dispensing-miracles mind set that leads many of us into moral cul-de-sacs, going around and around looking for any egress.

And unlike Paganism, Judaic ethics had oh, a couple of thousand years history of trial and tribulation to fall back on. Its roots run all the way back to the base of Mt. Sinai. If that covenant didn’t wed the laws to the Children of Israel then the codifying of them generations later would. These laws (arguably the inspiration for The Constitution of The United, at least in part) seemed to have remarkable staying power.
That is not a coincidence. I think one of the reasons Jewish ethics have stood the test of time, I think, is that they are based in reality in both deed and creed. They are not checkmarks to be tallied up outside the fabled pearly gates by some halo-wearing bouncer the day after you die. They also aren’t based on some metaphysical boomerang that will always return to sender. (Which, by the way, I still believe in, just not as the basis for a spiritual morality.)

Does any of this mean because they are commanded, if not inspired, by mitzvot that Jews are less prone to do wrong than anyone else? I doubt it. It doesn’t matter in the end if you represent with a Star of David, a hijab, or a crucifix - human is human is human. But I think it is difficult to discount a set of ethics which first came into being (however you want to believe that happened) before two of three major world religions even existed.

And it was upon that solid foundation (carved from Mt. Sinai, perhaps) that I instinctively knew I needed to re-plant myself upon.

Standing there still - Stephanie