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Can pluralism be quantified?

Jul15

by: on July 15th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Note: The headline has been changed, some text has been removed, and a picture has been added since this article was originally published.

First of two parts

St Joseph's Oratory in the Snowdon-Cote-des-Neiges district of Montreal

St Joseph's Oratory in the Snowdon-Cote-des-Neiges district of Montreal

I left Montreal not quite three years ago. And I was very happy to leave.

Montreal is not a pluralistic city. It is a frankly racist city. People are accustomed to it: they make excuses for egregious and blatantly racist assertions, which most often come from Quebec nationalists who complain about the “ethnic” vote (meaning either Jews or Italians, depending on the context).

The news was consumed in 2006 with the Bouchard-Taylor inquiry, formed by the provinicial government to report on race relations in Quebec. This would be a sensitive topic anywhere. In Quebec it was explosive.


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A prophetic voice from the Northern Monarchy

Jul14

by: on July 14th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Some commentators [a] in Canada feel that the health care debate in the USA [b] should open up a debate also in Canada.
I can’t imagine why. We’ve been debating it by complaining long and loud since 1995, when the Liberal government of Jean Chretien [3] [a] decided it was a Conservative government and began to destroy health care in the name of deficit fighting. Canada abandoned Keynes [4] and endorsed Hayek [5] overnight.
It is a fortunate person who has a private physician today. For my first four years in Montreal I mostly used clinics, now ubiquitous in most Canadian cities, where one can wait two hours to see a physician. My last three years in Montreal I was fortunate to find Mark, who has become a friend as well as my doctor, but I’ved lived in Ottawa two years next month and don’t have a GP here.
I medicate for ADD. The difficulty in getting diagnosed properly in Montreal led to a nervous breakdown in 2001 and a trip back home to Vancouver, where Gabor Mate [6] sat me down, told me not to bother fillling out his questionaire because he’d known me for 20 years, and then said I definitely had ADD. He prescribed Dexedrine, which is counter-intuitive for a recovering drug addict.
It worked.
Not perfectly, not by a long shot, but I stuck it out for about three years. Gabor was in Vancouver and I was in Montreal and he absolutely (and correctly) prohibited a long-distance relationship with respect to medicating me. The only physician I could consult regularly was a psychiatrist at a neighbourhood hospital, who insisted (incorrectly) that my mental health was fine as she wrote a 90 day prescription for the medication. I finally found Mark at Congregation Dorshei Emet [7] in Montreal.
Mark took me off the Dexedrine, which had serious side effects incuding chronic insomnia, and finally we settled on Concerta after exploring varous other types of Ritalin. Concerta was the breakthrough drug for me, though it caused me tremendous feelings of anxiety as it began to wear off. I began to take pure, sugarless cocoa powder for the caffeine since I don’t drink coffee. This worked.
But when I went back to Vancouver to attend to my father in his last months I couldn’t get Concerta. I have a regular GP there, and he adamantly refused to prescribe Concerta because it’s indicated for children, not adults. Ho could I argue? He was right. And the last thing I was going to do was shop for a physician until I found one to prescribe Concerta. That’s what drug addicts do and I’m a I>recovering< drug addict.
So, no Concerta. I tried again when I moved to Ottawa and did get it prescribed here — but I couldn’t fill the prescription! It would cost me $300 a month. Ontario’s pharmacare would not pay for adults. I began to dose myself more and more with the cocoa. Tasty with sweetner, useful, I kept my focus and accomplished a lot — and I gained 25 pounds. I also developed an intolerance for dairy products, which is what I usually mixed the cocoa powder with.
It was a consultation with Mark that brought me to Montreal last week. I’m finally taking Straterra — but first I’m taking samples to see how they work. So far, so good. Mark wanted blood tests, which my Ontario medicare will now pay for in Quebec, so I went to the local hospital and saw a line up that would have kept me there at least 90 minutes — you need to take a numbet to get a number. Stand: no chairs were available and people stood about in the hallway.
Montreal is a city with degradation so severe it’s palpable. Grime is everywhere and graft controls city hall so thoroughly that The Economist [8] has commented on it.
The state of Canada’s health system in the 21st century is not ideal. And it is not what I grew up with. The health system I knew until 15 years ago allowed me to select my own GP and paid for my basic medical needs. I went to private testing laboratories for my blood tests and X-rays.
Canada needs a new health care system. The United States need a new health car system.
My prophetic voice calls for a combined health care plan funded jointly by the United States and Canada. This would create a single market of 350 million people. Canada’s single payer system worked well when it was financed properly. Imagine the efficiencies available to a system funded in trillions of dollars rather than billions. NorAmed (North American Medical Plan) could eventually extend itself to all the Americas.
Imagine continents linked by trade and social services both.
In Breshit – Genesis 11 we are told of the Migdal Bavel (Tower of Babel), the builders of which claimed I>Ve’na’aseh-lanu shem pen-nafutz ahl pnay kahl ha-aretz< “…that we make a place widespread world-wide”. The basis of this well-known story has one language spoken by everyone and a commons, which appears to be the Tower. One can make the case that a single language is “spoken” on the Internet that makes Tkkun Daily possible.
What is this “language”? Commerce, or perhaps Linux, or maybe TCP/IP? [9] Maybe it was the free exchange of ideas, what we now call “open-source”? Count the Ws in the phrase “widespread world-wide”. WWW…
Whatever is meant by language, the story clearly teaches one thing: humanity was united in a single purpose that became corrupted as the Tower was built. One purpose melds into another, just as an article on health care becomes a Bible lesson on an ancient Internet!
But that is the way of things. A foolish consistency, Emerson has it, is the hobgoblin of little minds. If a lesson on one matter can be taught by referring to a second, this is the way it ought to be. But note:
Emerson says I>foolish< consistency. It is foolish to maintain a system that no longer works. It is foolish not to entertain outlandish and visionary ideas. It is foolish not to contemplate a single, open-cource market place for health care in North America: NorAmed.

Third in a series

Medicating in Montreal

Some commentators in Canada feel that the health care debate in the USA should open up a debate also in Canada.

Jean-Chrétien

Jean Chretien, Prime Minister of Canada 1993-2003

I can’t imagine why. We’ve been debating it by complaining long and loud since 1995, when the Liberal government of Jean Chretien decided it was a Conservative government and began to destroy health care in the name of deficit fighting.

Canada abandoned Keynes and endorsed Hayek overnight.

It is a fortunate person who has a private physician today. For my first four years in Montreal I mostly used clinics, now ubiquitous in most Canadian cities, where one can wait two hours to see a physician.

My last three years in Montreal I was fortunate to find Mark, who has become a friend as well as my doctor, but I’ve lived in Ottawa two years next month and don’t have a GP here.

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A Prophet from the Northern Monarchy (2)

Jul13

by: on July 13th, 2009 | Comments Off

Second in a series
Halakha (Jewish law) is a normative legal system: It is primarily about good order and governance (what scholars of law call “municipal law”). I teach the halakha of chaplaincy, which is found in some 30 chapters of the section Yoreh Deah [YD] of the Shulhan Arukh, a 16th century digest of halakha so superlative that it is only surpassed by the much fuller treatments found in modern halakhic compendia.
The halakha of chaplaincy is also the halakha of health care. The price of medication, for example, must be standardised. This means a pharmacist cannot create a market for medication by restricting its
availability. It also means that a pharmacist cannot increase the retail price of medication unless the wholesale cost of the meds also increases. The dispensing fee must be in accord with the fees charged by other pharmacists, for this would be the standard.
YD 336:1 states –
Torah permits physicians to heal. This is a mitzva. The general principle is saving a life. One who makes no effort to save a life is a manslaughterer. This is so even if someone else may do so, on the premise that his or her skills are the ones needed to save the life in question.
A I>mitzva< is what G!d Wants us to do. Halakha is how the Rabbinic tradition wants us to do it. This mitzva, however, poses some serious questions:
*What if there are no physicians available to heal?
*What if there are many physicians, each so busy already healing others that no time is available to heal me?
*How much time is it reasonable to wait before healing is available?
*Is it reasonable to impose restrictions on where physicians can work so as to provide reasonable access to health care in small or northern communities?
These questions occur from the inefficiencies of the Canadian singe-payer health care system. The inefficiencies are well-known to anyone living in Ontario, as almost 40% of Canadians (including me) do, because a Conservative provincial government brought with it a L>Common Sense Revolution< that destroyed health care here and devastated also the educational system.
But it was not just a right-wing government provincial government more interested in saving money than saving lives that caused the mess Canadians now face. The federal government had a huge role to play when it went into its deficit reduction mode — and this government was Liberal, which transitioned from centre-left to centre-right. Canadian health care suffered because federal transfer payments to the provinces were reduced by 50%.
It was much easier to refuse funding than to impose fiscal discipline, so the money stopped.
Medical students, however, kept graduating — and the tuition remained low. The current tuition is $21,000 to train a physician at McGill University in Montreal — over four years. The four year tuition at Columbia: $200,000.
This simple math eluded both the federal and Ontario governments. Medical education is 90% less expensive in Canada. The educational standards meet or surpass those in the USA. Canadian medical graduates can write American board exams.
Our top medical students are doing residencies throughout the United States. They’re not always returning. Compounding this issue: the reticence of provincial licensing bodies to make licensure attainable for physicians trained outside North America.
Implicit to the halakha of health care is the assumption of a free market. The halakha, however, also regulates the market — something that was long ago proposed in Canada for medicare and rejected. Price controls were rejected until pharmacare was introduced.
Pharmacare is by no means universal, which is to say that some provinces and territories are more generous with their pharma benefits than others.
An unscientific study suggests to me that Quebec’s pharma program is the most generous in Canada. The only qualification for membership in Quebec’s program is lack of group insurance. I think I paid $9 for a three month supply of ADD medication.
The halakha of health care is too complex for a single post. I’ll continue with it tomorrow

Second in a series

Halakha (Jewish law) is a normative legal system: It is primarily about good order and governance (what scholars of law call “municipal law”).

I teach the halakha of chaplaincy. The halakha of chaplaincy is also the halakha of health care. The price of medication, for example, must be standardised.

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A Prophet from the Northern Monarchy

Jul12

by: on July 12th, 2009 | Comments Off

First in a series

A PROPHETIC VOICE FROM THE NORTHERN MONARCHY
A conservative national newspaper in Canada says: Gay Pride Isn’t Political Anymore
I have been given a challenge: define a Canadian prophetic vision to mesh with Tikkun’s prophetic voice. My next series of posts will explore that challenge.
In this post I will explore GLBT pride. Before I do that, though, I want to set a context to help international readers understand the opinion of Canada’s National Post, one of two nationally circulated
newspapers in Canada.
The Canadian head of state, Michaelle Jean, is a black woman who speaks English, French and Creole. She is originally from Haiti. Our previous governor-general, Adrienne Clarkson, is Chinese and born in
Hong Kong. Three of the last six governors-general were women. Four of the last six were ethnic Canadians — black, Chinese, and Ukranian.
The politics of race in Canada most certainly exists — but it is not the same as in the United States. There is nothing noteworthy at all in having either a female or an ethnic head of state. This idea, what the Nat
Post calls “tolerance”, a word I dislike, has germinated in Canada for the better part of two generations and is applicable now to the politics of sexuality.
The Nat Post is usually L>”small c”< conservative. Let’s now look at the L>Nat Post’s recent editorial opinion< on the L>funding controversy< with respect to Toronto’s Gay Pride parade. Emphasis,
wherever it occurs, is mine.
“The sad thing about the I>minor< controversy… is that we do not yet live I>in the future we all know is coming< — the future in which I>the tolerated presence of alternative sexualities in our culture is no big
dea<; maybe even not enough of a big deal to be worth holding a parade about. We are, perhaps, about halfway there today.
“…Today, in a place like Toronto, organizers have learned that they are defeating their own ultimate purpose if they act to exclude people from a festival of inclusiveness. And in turn, the city, for the most part,
regards the festival as a … greatness credential. At the very least, it’s a hell of a draw.
“The federal government is right to reconsider what events receive funding… . But the Pride Parade in Toronto is … popular, nondestructive, colourful, fun and a legitimately huge earner for the downtown
economy.
“Saskatchewan MP Brad Trost has a I>hypothetical< point when he argues that “Canadian taxpayers, even non-social-conservative ones, don’t want their tax dollars to go to events that are polarizing…” His
criterion is … sound …; it just doesn’t happen I>to apply to the Toronto Pride events anymore<.
“… Conservative Senator Nancy Ruth says that opposition within the caucus was limited to Mr. Trost himself and a few others… .
The Nat Post concludes its editorial by quoting Monte Solberg, a former member of the Conservative government: It would be ideal, he says, to “let everyone raise their own money to hold their parades and
the police can be there to make sure that most of the people keep on most of their clothes most of the time.” The alternative, he concludes, is “you can either scrap all grants for all parades, or you can fund the
thing like you always have and devote your efforts to fixing … other things that really do make a difference.”
It was perhaps 15 years ago that L>Or Shalom< in Vancouver entered the Vancouver Pride parade. I vehemently opposed this because I felt that it would put Or Shalom outside Vancouver’s mainstream
Jewish community. I was an idiot. Within a month of being in Pride the new members began to show up. I met some amazing people and learned some amazing lessons.
I will, G!d Willing, be marching in Ottawa’s Pride parade this year. I marched in Montreal’s twice.
I am considered a “straight ally”. I was told this by a young man I’ll call Yo, who came out to me at an Orthodox synagogue in Winnipeg. Yo had overheard me give an halakhic (legal) opinion that gay
marriage is not the problem from a Jewish legal perspective — gay divorce is the issue, because marriage is a contractual act. The question becomes will you find a Beth Din (Jewish court) to recognise the
marriage contract as valid, threby allowing its termination?
The answer is now Yes. The Beth Din Tzedeq U’Mishpat — the Jewish Courts of Social Justice — will do so. I can’t say for certain but I’m reasonably sure that the Bedatz Umi will be the first Beth Din to do
in the world.
It’s about time.
My next Prophetic Voice article will concern the politics of medicare.

I have been given a challenge: define a Canadian prophetic vision to mesh with Tikkun’s prophetic voice. My next series of posts will explore that challenge. In this post I will discuss the politics of sexuality, specifically GLBT pride.

The Natonal Post says: Gay Pride Isn’t Political Anymore.

I want to set a context to help international readers understand the opinion of Canada’s National Post newspaper, one of two nationally circulated newspapers in Canada.

The Canadian head of state, Michaelle Jean, is a black woman who speaks English, French and Creole. She is originally from Haiti. Our previous governor-general, Adrienne Clarkson, is Chinese and born inHong Kong. Three of the last six governors-general were women. Four of the last six were ethnic Canadians — black, Chinese, and Ukranian.

The politics of race in Canada most certainly exists — but there is nothing noteworthy at all in having either a female or an ethnic head of state. This idea, what the Nat Post calls “tolerance”, a word I dislike, has germinated in Canada for the better part of two generations and is applicable now to the politics of sexuality.

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Canada: Prophetic Voice & Conservative Politics

Jul8

by: on July 8th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

Diane Ablonczy, Minister of Small Business & Tourism

Diane Ablonczy, Canada's Minister of Small Business & Tourism

Diane Ablonczy, the Canadian minister responsible for distributing The Marquee Tourism Festival Program, has lost her authority to oversee and distribute the $100-million federal fund. The reason: Ms Ablonczy approved a $400,000 grant to Pride Week in Toronto.

The fund was established to support Canada’s largest festivals and attractions over 2009 and 2010.

The current government of Canada is formed by the Conservative Party. This was previously called the Progressive-Conservative (PC) Party. It was was fiscally conservative but socially progressive (the “Red Tories“); there was always a rump of “Blue Tories” who were strictly fiscal conservatives, though not socially so.

Blue Tories governed Ontario the same way that Richard Daly governed Chicago: for decades. Though Daly was a working class Democrat and the Blue Tories anything but.

The PC Party governed in Canada throughout the 1980s but was defeated in 1993 and left with only two seats in Parliament (of the 151 they had as government). The Reform Party, a social conservative party rooted in Western Canada, elected 52 members and over time managed to merge with the PC Party. When the merger was complete the “Progressive” was dropped.

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A Canadian Perspective

Jul7

by: on July 7th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

FlickrCC / David Paul Ohmer

FlickrCC / David Paul Ohmer

A couple of months back a Canadian rabbi wrote to me objecting, in friendly but strong language, that Tikkun magazine was ignoring Canada. I had no doubt he was right. The U.S. is nothing if not U.S.-centric, and that infects even those of us who are campaigning for a Global Marshall Plan and a U.S. foreign policy based on generosity not domination. We can all use our friends to point out our shortcomings.

So I invited the rabbi to provide a Canadian perspective on our upcoming blog.

Reb Arie has posted frequently and told us surprising things: that “The plot of WALL*E seems to come from Breshit – Genesis 6, the chapter in which Noah is introduced,” or that “Social justice by Jews in Canada is not a well-established activity.” Reb Arie’s voice is passionate and hard to classify: he appears to be truly an independent.

The Canadian perspective shines in some of Reb Arie’s comments on other posts. Of the struggle to get universal health care he writes, “It absolutely astounds me that Americans have been willing to put up with this — this conversation has not changed in all my adult years. I’ll never forget the first time I paid for a physician in my entire life — and also the last (other than for certain incidentals): I was living in Brooklyn…” He finishes, “America, it seems to me, is the land of the free only if you can afford it.”

As he wrote when introducing himself in his first post: “Can one be modern, liberal, and deeply traditional? Stay tuned to my posts at Tikkun Daily and find out. I’ll discuss that, and also other issues as they arise, in particular issues about Canada and Canadian Jews.”

What I would like to know is how a prophetic challenge to recreate the world as a place where people truly care for each other and for all living beings translates in the Canadian context: is all that too utopian for the folks in the True North Strong & Free, or do Canadians not pride themselves on caring more for each other and the poor of the world than their louder neighbors do?

LATER: Had to run home and make the dinner, and didn’t manage to add an important Canadian link for all supporters of Tikkun. This is the Tikkun Toronto site. They include a fascinating sections of their members’ stories about Israel here. They gave us transcripts which we had on our web site as part of our “Israel at 60” issue a year ago, but which were lost in our website meltdown earlier this year. I will try to rescue them but am a little taken up with this blog at the moment.

A Jewish Court for Social Justice

Jul6

by: on July 6th, 2009 | Comments Off

A Jewish Court for Social Justice
The “official” Jeiwsh community in Canada confuses social justice with Jewish advocacy. It is for this reason that the Metivta of Ottawa has formed the Jewish Courts for Social Justice.
Social justice by Jews in Canada is not a well-established activity. Ve’ahavta, run in Toronto by my friend Avrum Rosenzweig, has become an important Jewish contribution to social justice. Mazon Canada
does a wonderful job. The Recontructionist Synagoge in Montreal undertakes some social justice initiatives and has an annual Empty Bowls project. These are all important Jewish contributions. These are all
>local< Jewish contributions.
BREAK
The Metivta of Ottawa has formed the Jewish Courts for Social Justice to forge a national Jewish consensus on social justice in Canada.
A metivta is a Jewish learning community. Metivta is giving voice to a progressive Jewish tradition. Two conversion students and three spiritual direction students have now graduated.
The Core Competency in Alcohol & Addiction Foundations begins its first class today. One student is completing Metivta’s Core Competency in Deliberative Ethics (CCDE). The CCDE qualification is
required to sit on the Jewish Courts for Social Justice.

The “official” Jewish community in Canada confuses social justice with Jewish advocacy. It is for this reason that the Metivta of Ottawa has formed the Jewish Courts for Social Justice.

The Jewish Courts of Social Justice at The Metivta of Ottawa

The Jewish Courts of Social Justice at The Metivta of Ottawa

Social justice by Jews in Canada is not a well-established activity. Ve’ahavta, run in Toronto by my friend Avrum Rosensweig, has become an important Jewish contribution to social justice. Mazon Canada does a wonderful job. The Recontructionist Synagoge in Montreal undertakes social justice initiatives and has an annual Empty Bowls project. These are all important Jewish contributions.

These are all local Jewish contributions.


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The Independence of Jewish Voices

Jul2

by: on July 2nd, 2009 | Comments Off

What I look like on Shabbat & Holy Days

What I look like on Shabbat & Holy Days

The Independence of Jewish Voices

Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV) is a Canadian organisation formed to disagree with Canada’s three primary Jewish communal agencies. This is an important development and one that Canada’s organised Jewish community had better learn to contend with, something it has not yet done. The Canadian Jewish Congress has, in fact, denied IJV any status in Congress. That is, in my opinion, a foolish decision and one that will ultimately damage Congress more than it does IJV.
The question for me, however, is how “independent” IJV can be when it is over-run by a cadre of new leftists. I have become close to one of IJV’s organisers but remain uncertain of whether or not there is a place for me. Israel Apartheid posters were in profusion at the annual general meeting I attended, a calumny that I find offensive, ignorant, and bereft of any authentic notion of Jewish identity. Books on Israel as a racist state were for sale at a table set up in the hallway. IJV passed a resolution, with 95% support, calling on divestment from Israel. Sheer madness!
So why was I in full Chasidic regalia among a group I hold in contempt?
Well… because they are Jews. That’s precisely the same motivation I use to attend Unitarian Universalist churches. There are Jews there. The Jewish religious leader who is afraid to encounter Jews where they affiliate is leading with one eye closed. I already need bifocals. Closing one eye would be a tragedy. This brings to mind the statement attributed to Rabbi Sholom Ber of Lubavitch (who is actually quoting a well-known maxim) “We have a strong eye to see the good in others and a weak eye to see the evil in ourselves”. This notion is reinforced by Jewish tradition.
Mishna Pirqei Avot (4:3) states <i>Do not degrade another,and do not be generally opposed “on principle”; there is for you no one without a reason and neither thing nor word without a place in your life.</i> The Mishna is an attempt to restore traditional memory, which I’ll discuss at length in another post. Pirqei Avot is The Mishna’s collection of ethical guidelines.
The traditional memory of Judaism, it seems to me, is largely lost to IJV. That’s not a strong criticism — the traditional memory of Judaism is lost to most Jews — but IJV’s acceptance of biased and poisoned rhetoric submerges the Jewish voice so completely that I wonder if IJV is appropriately named: where, precisely, is the Jewish voice? The Mishna compels me to accept that IJV has a place. Sholom Ber asks me to see the good. I see the place. I see the good. But what voice I hear hasn’t got a Jewish accent.
The voices that <i> do<i> speak with a Jewish accent do <i>not</i>, however, speak to me. The Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) is the lead Jewish communal agency in Canada. The linkage of Israel advocacy and Jewish advocacy is, to me, highly inappropriate. Jewish advocacy is my job and the job of any rabbi or educator.
I once told the Israeli consul in Montreal that his job is to demystify Israel to non-Jews and my job is to demystify Judaism — to both Jews and non-Jews. Israel advocacy is best left to Israel, which has a network of shlukhim (representatives) assigned to both small-community synagogues and the Jewish National Fund, various Israel Bond agents, a trade commissioner, two consuls, and an ambassador in Canada. If there is something not working in this network that issue is Israel’s, not the Canadian Jewish community’s.
IJV’s dissent from the Canadian Jewish communal norm is no reason to deny it access to the “official” community. The idea that there is a single Jewish voice in Canada troubles me and is the reason I have begun the Jewish Courts for Social Justice, a Beth Din (Jewish court) in Ottawa that will concern itself with social policy and social justice issues. Congress has long had this role but has always spoken with a secular voice. The Beth Din will speak with a Jewish, religious, and progressive voice.
The Jewish sage Hillel counseled “Do not separate yourself from the community. Do not be certain of yourself until the day of your death. Do not judge someone unless you have stood in his (her) place.” Both IJV and Canadian Jewish Congress should heed this advice.

Independent Jewish Voices of Canada (IJV) is a Canadian organisation formed to disagree with Canada’s three primary Jewish communal agencies. This is an important development and one that Canada’s organised Jewish community had better learn to contend with, something it has not yet done.

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Who Is Reb Arie?

Jun30

by: on June 30th, 2009 | Comments Off

My dilemma as a modern rabbi is how to answer the very modern question “What kind of rabbi are you?” I haven’t ever had a ready answer for that question. Last year at a synagogue in New York the rabbi
(with whom I spent Shabbat) said to me “I thought you were Jewish Renewal until you told me that you don’t eat before you daven (pray) in the morning. Then I realised you were Orthodox.” He got it wrong
both times. I let Jews and Judaisms merge deeply in me even as I make room for the “Other” also. I’m authentically Chasidic to Conservative Jews, authentically Masorti (traditional Conservative) to Haredi
(fervently Orthodox) Jews, and authentically a question mark to Jewish progressives, with whom I deeply identify, irrespective of whether they are spiritual or secular.
It’s a strange tension, one I think that is felt by Canadian Jews generally, the majority of whom were raised in progressive families until the 1960s. My mother was a so-called “Red diaper baby”, the child of
communist parents, of whom there are many in the circles I grew up in. My mother was not a communist but I was raised with a Yiddishist culture instilled by the Peretz Shul in Winnipeg. My father, unusually
for Vancouver when he grew up there, was raised in a nominally observant home; my grandfather was one of the founding members of the local Conservative synagogue. Years later I discovered (to the extent
one can discover anything about family in the post-Holocaust generation) that my grandfather was the grandson of a Polish Chasidic rebbe (spiritual leader) in Cracow who was the son of a Turkish chacham
(rabbi).
Can one be modern,liberal, and deeply traditional? Stay tuned to my posts at Tikkun Daily and find out.

My dilemma as a modern rabbi is how to answer the very modern question “What kind of rabbi are you?” I haven’t ever had a ready answer for that question. Last year at a synagogue in New York the rabbi (with whom I spent Shabbat) said to me “I thought you were Jewish Renewal until you told me that you don’t eat before you daven (pray) in the morning. Then I realised you were Orthodox.”

He got it wrong both times.

I let Jews and Judaisms merge deeply in me even as I make room for the “Other” also. I’m authentically Chasidic (spiritual/mystical) to Conservative Jews (who tend to be rational, scientific, and “mainline” about their Judaism), authentically Masorti (traditional Conservative) to Haredi (fervently Orthodox) Jews, and authentically a question mark to Jewish progressives, with whom I deeply identify, irrespective of whether they are spiritual or secular.

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