Reflections on "Paul"

The only recognizably Roman Catholic member of the clergy I could identify was a nun sitting in the front row. We (and a capacity audience) were watching the North American Premier of Howard Brenton’s “Paul” at the Gamm Theatre. When the play was over, she was the first person to stand and applaud. I turned to my wife, tapped her on the shoulder, pointed to the nun with my chin and asked “Did she see the same play we did?” It’s hard to imagine.

Some background: According to “The Acts of the Apostles” the fifth book of the New Testament, those who knew and followed Jesus were still Jews, but Jews who thought the Messiah had come in the person of Yeshua (Aramaic for Joshua). They still obeyed the old laws but because they shunned rabbinic authority and were baptized, they were shunned and persecuted. The principal persecutor was Saul of Tarsus who, hearing that there were Jewish followers of Yeshua in Damascus determined to go there to stamp out the community. On the way, he was blinded by a light and heard a voice saying “Why do you persecute me?” and realizing that only the voice of Yeshua would say such a thing—though he was dead—he converted to the new faith. And to him it was a new faith. Unlike Jesus’ old colleagues who thought of themselves as Jews, Paul (the name he adopted upon having his miraculous experience on the road to Damascus) creates a new religion, one where circumcision is not required, nor eating of kosher meat etc., the better to attract gentiles (Greeks) to the new faith.

Now, all of that is a given. The play, though, assumes facts not generally found in the Christian texts—that Jesus and Mary Magdelna, a prostitute, were married, that Jesus did not die on the cross, so was not resurrected but kept in hiding by Peter and James (Jesus’ brother—another thing not generally accepted by Christians) that Joseph and Mary were wealthy purveyors of religious objects in Nazareth, that Peter and James sent Paul out to convert the gentiles assuming that he’d be ignored—or stoned, that they brought Yeshua with them to Saul’s encampment and had him talk to Saul, a well meaning hoax that Saul believed in its entirety. The depiction of Nero is so off the wall that I won’t even mention it other than to say that if you missed Kelby T. Akin as the despotic emperor you missed something rare.

So, we are there the night before Paul’s execution is scheduled. He’s chained, chanting almost as if in a self-induced trance “Christ is risen” over and over and over again. He is a man of faith. But then Peter (played by Gamm veteran Jim O'Brien) is brought into the prison and as the play unfolds he reveals to Paul all the deceptions. Jesus was not God, but an inspiring man. This Paul the believer refuses to believe, that he has been deceived, that his life’s work is based on someone else’s artifice. Peter, who knows the truth ultimately joins in with him intoning, imploring, Jesus the risen God, to help them. If he’s going to die, he may as well die for a cause—whether he believes it or not.

So, why was that nun applauding? I don’t know, but I suppose she does.

A good piece of theater ought to leave us with questions—all the best literature does. Here the question is not so much was Jesus God (the answer is “No”) but the epistemological question, how do we know that the things we know (and are the things we know truly true)?

And we Jews? We enter the Passover season in a couple of days. Our tables will groan under the weight of food, we’ll be a little drunk after four cups of wine, we’ll open the door to allow Elijah the prophet to come join us (he hasn’t yet, but maybe this year) we sing songs and prayers, we ask questions to which we already know the answers, but do we? Were our ancestors slaves in Egypt, rescued by God through his servant Moses? Were there all those plagues? Or miracles? It hardly matters. If one wants to believe, there’s no harm; if one sees the story simply as a metaphor for the potential of the oppressed to rise and liberate themselves, so be it. To my uncertain knowledge there is no historical evidence that the story of the Exodus is true, but it’s a wonderful story nevertheless. If nothing else it gives us the opportunity to clean behind those corners we never normally get to, to be with friends and family to sing and rejoice. Dayenu.

Passover Reflections 2010

As I sit at this old Olivetti, its motor humming, its keys clickety clacking, its ribbon newly dipped in ink, perhaps the last of its breed still in service, Passover looms. But as you read this, the Seders are memories; the labor of preparations rewarded with the twin joys of hearty fellowship and over abundance of food. The theme of the events was freedom (or if you prefer, of God’s deliverance of His people from slavery). At our Seders for the past few years we mix contemporary song with ancient tradition as we sing the non-Christian parts of the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and, to the same tune, “Solidarity Forever.” We sing Negro spirituals (“Let My People Go”) we sing “We Shall Overcome” and Hatikvah. We talk of Civil Rights struggles of the past and debate (for our guests are usually of mixed political views) gay marriage and universal health care. And we do all this in the comfort of our home, in the warmth of friendship, in the security of knowing that in America we are free and safe.

But it wasn’t always this way, we know. In 1943 the Jews of Warsaw, the few who had managed to survive the deportations to Treblinka, knowing that the end was near, gathered what arms they could to make a last ditch effort to… to what, I’m not sure. Not to survive, they knew that was no longer a possibility, and they were not attempting to follow the example of the Jews of Masada or of York, committing suicide to prevent being captured/murdered/humiliated by oppressors. No, the Jewish leadership of Warsaw meant to die with the dignity of resistance to those who were trying to transform them into sheep led calmly to their deaths. If during the fighting a few could escape, so much the better. The sewers were a way out for some, going over the wall for others, but not for many. For the majority of the Jewish survivors of the past four years of systematic starvation and forced deportation to death camps, the goal was to go down fighting. For Jürgen Stroop, the SS commander assigned to crush the rebellion, the challenge was almost too much. Facing unacceptable losses of his men he resorted to burning buildings, one by one, forcing the surviving Jews to flee into adjacent buildings ready to be set alight or into the sewers or onto the streets where they could more easily be rounded up or picked off. In the end, he entitled his report on the successful destruction of the Jews “The Jewish Quarter of Warsaw is no more!” though my English language copy is simply called the “The Stroop Report.”

It was on Passover that the Jews of Warsaw chose to time their rebellion, doomed though it was. Liberation was not gained; there were no miracles, no plagues descending from the finger of God striking the evil ones. We do commemorate the event, however with Yom HaShoah, timed to coincide with the rebellion in Warsaw. In my shul (Temple Emanu-El), each year a diminishing number of survivors rises to recite the names of family and friends who were killed by the Nazis. At Roger Williams University this year Hillel’s third annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture will take place a few days early, on April 8 at 5:00 when we host Deborah Slier and Ian Shine, co-editors of the recently discovered letters of Philip (“Flip”) Slier, a young Dutch Jew who while in a Nazi work camp before his deportation to Sobibor, was able to send out 86 letters and postcards and one telegram, materials serendipitously found only in 1997. The lecture is free and open to the public. (Full disclosure notice: I am the faculty advisor of the RWU Hillel.)

On another subject entirely, Jerusalem was never intended to be the capital of Palestine. In the UN partition plan the city, which had a majority Jewish population, was designated an international zone. Only with the attempt by Jordan to crush the new Jewish state was East Jerusalem, including the entire old city, seized. Israel conquered it in 1967 not from the Palestinians who never controlled it but from King Hussein of Jordan. The newly announced settlements may not be wise, but they certainly are not illegal.

Passover thoughts, 2008 (5768)

Passover looms. The dishes and pots and glasses and utensils have been schlepped from storage to cabinet, replacing their everyday equivalents which were simultaneously schlepped from cabinet to storage until the chag is over and we can eat bagels again.

So, it’s time to ask (yet again) what the holiday, the holy day, is all about. It has some unusual rules—what was kosher this week won’t be next week. On the other hand, things permitted during Passover can be done anytime (except for the slouching. My mother never let me slouch at meals. [“Reclining, Mom,” I’d tell her, “I’m reclining, not slouching.] It did me no good.)

To the rabbis of antiquity telling the story of the Exodus speaks of the miracles of God in the liberation of His people. More modern, nearly contemporary secular Jews saw the story as one of liberation only. The miracles? Well, maybe. But the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto who chose Passover, in 1943 to make their last stand were not expecting a miracle; they were hoping for nothing more than that a few escape while the rest died with at least a remnant of dignity.

To me Passover is or ought to be the Jewish equivalent of the first Monday in September or May 1st. It’s Jewish Labor Day, a celebration of the triumph of the downtrodden worker. Oppressed so hard they could not stand, our ancestors overcame to become the role models to Negro slaves in the antebellum South. Both communities, Hebrews and Africans were exploited labor, both sought relief from God or man, whoever arrived first.

But while our tables groan under the weight of the food placed on it; as we drink the final intoxicating drop from the fourth cup of wine; as we open the door for Elijah to join our celebrations, scant attention will be paid to what’s in the dark, beyond that door. Two weeks ago the newspapers reported that 80,000 American jobs had been lost in the month of March, the most in 5 years, the third straight month of losses. Some, I suppose, may be replaced by those whose labor can be purchased at sub-standard wages.

In Israel there is a kibbutz near Eliat which may reflect current practices. The well educated Israelis work up north in business, and give their net salary to the kibbutz which then uses the money in part to employ Tai workers of the fields. Sic transit Gloria tzion. Does the Jew of Israel no longer believe in the nobility of labor? Is the Jew of Israel interested only in the bottom line? Has Thatcherism and Reaganism spread so far? It seems the sad truth. Of whom do Americans who send jobs to China or exploit cheap labor here think when they point to the matzah and pronounce, “This is the bread of our affliction? We were slaves in Egypt…”
When we invite people to our table (“All who are hungry come and eat”) we offer matzah, the bread of affliction, the bread of poverty. It’s what we eat as well so that there is no difference between what we serve ourselves and those in want. We are all equal on Passover, the rich the poor, all of us are descendants from slaves eating the food of slaves on the threshold of liberty.
If we are to think of Passover as though we were in fact slaves, as the Haggadah enjoins, then it’s obvious that Passover is the story of the redemption of oppressed labor. Their burden was heavy, their lives miserable, like the sweatshop workers so many of our grandparents were at the turn of the previous century. At our house we read excepts of the original text of Exodus (something the Rabbis apparently thought unnecessary or distracting, as they didn’t include that in the service) and we sing of liberation—We Shall Overcome, and Battle Hymn of the Republic (though not the “In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea” part); and to the same tune, Solidarity Forever! Always we conclude by singing the song of modern liberation, Hatikvah, to me the hope not only of Zionists to recreate a Jewish homeland, but the hope that Jews will not forget that from which we emerged—an oppressed people yearing to be free, the tired the poor of the age of miracles then of the post-holocaust world now. It was as workers of the field that Jews re-created Israel. Now that’s work for foreigners?

Did we learn the lessons of the Seders?

The Seders of 5767 are now only a memory. Still, it's appropriate to ask, did their stories of freedom change us, clear our eyes, awaken our consciences? Are we more free now than before the Seders? By one definition, the answer is clearly “no,” for no man is free while even a single man is a slave. And, worse, what if we are enablers of the slavers? If we are, can we ever be free or are we merely latter day Egyptians, benefiting from the new pharaohs? Here's a simple quiz.

Did you emphasize that the story of our ancestors was the story of the exploitation of oppressed labor? And then did you go out and buy a product made in a sweatshop rather than in a Union shop?

Did you read of Pharaoh and not remember that people are being smuggled into this country to work in sub-human conditions; indeed, are being smuggled into the country in sub-human ways, crammed into airless trucks from Mexico, driven through deserts, abandoned if their drivers fear capture, or if from Asia, forced to live in ships in conditions comparable to those of the Middle Passage of the 19th century which smuggled Africans to our shores?

Most Jews no longer work with their hands in crafts. If we work with our hands it's as surgeons or dentists or musicians. We work with our minds as lawyers, teachers, store owners, stock brokers. We have achieved the American dream. We have become market driven bottom liners shopping for price, ignoring the human cost that goes into the production of our inexpensive goods. And why not? Being bourgeois is comfortable, it's convenient, it's what people around the world want—as proof of which there are all those desiring to come here. But there was a time when it was us who came to this country as the tired, the poor, the huddled masses yearning to be free. And then we began the American labor movement. Those who did were Yiddish speaking secular Jews; maybe they never entered a synagogue, but they were the product of the Seder, of the retelling as though they had been slaves in Egypt. They were not going to wait to be liberated by a God they did not believe in; when they searched for the Messiah, they looked into the mirror and saw their own grime-lined faces. They remembered that they had a mission as Jews, to redeem not only themselves but mankind in general, so they formed their unions and they marched for workers' rights and then when African Americans demanded equality, of the white community it was Jews who were the first to ride freedom buses and march in Selma. We've given all that up now, but at the Seder, if we did it right, we remembered when we were slaves in Egypt; if we did it right we wept at the success we've achieved at the cost of abandoning our roots as workers for the liberation of the downtrodden.

Rabbi David Teutsch of the Reconstructionist Seminary has it about right. “If we only pour ten drops of wine from our cups and do nothing more, we do not understand the significance of our act. Our joy cannot be complete when there is harshness, cruelty, or suffering in the world. We cannot wait for others to tackle the injustices of our time. What will we do this year?” Oh, Rabbi Teutsch is also a PhD—from the Wharton School of Business. He writes as a Jew, but with that business background he might also be channeling the ideas of the principal theorist of capitalistic economics, Adam Smith. Smith asked the question we too often ignore—what is it that gives something value? And his answer was straightforward and simple—it is labor. Without labor taking a raw material and transforming it into something usable, it is just a tree, not a desk; some ore, not a knife; some gold, not an earing. Smith, who brooked no interference in the economy, not from government, not from price fixing allowed only this—the formation of workmen's associations so that laborers could collectively negotiate their wages. Smith wasn't a Jew, he was, I imagine, a Presbyterian, but like Teutsch, he knew the lesson of the Seder. Messiah? Look in the mirror and see your own reflection. You are the messiah if only you would recognize the strength within yourself, within our tradition that began as slaves in Egypt.

Passover’s implied obligations to the world i.e. Darfur

Passover looms. It is getting to be a competitive sport, have you noticed? We are having 15 for the first Seder and the same for the second. Oh, but my friend X is having 18; Y counters that she’s having 30 but Z wins this year’s competition with 50 “Wait ’til next year,” grumbles X. Oh, and then there’s the time competition. Our Seder lasts until 11:00; ours ’til midnight; ours ends at 2:00 in the morning; ours lasts until the next Seder begins! Up and up goes the ante. We read most of the haggadah; we read the whole haggadah; so do we but we add to it; so do we but we sing each song in as many tunes as we know for each. Huff, puff. At Chez Stein (which when the children we young enough to live at home was called “Bedlam Hall”) the Seder will be over before 11:00, the company will be large enough so that it will be festive, but not so large that people won’t be able to talk to each other; we will read the haggadah as appropriate and an edited version of Exodus; we will discuss the moral implications of the story. Dayenu. Oh, and each year, though I say I won’t, each year I promise to remember but always forget that old Buddhist mantra: “Ohmmmmmmm, don’t be a chazar, Ohmmmmmmm.”

But while Passover is marked at its beginning with great feasts, at it end there is always Yiskor. As I help my wife set the table, as I smell the delicious fragrances wafting in from the kitchen, as I greet friends and relatives who come to our door bearing wine and flowers and good cheer, as we begin by asking the four questions, there is always, in the back of my mind, a fifth question, one asked by both the wise and the wicked son, to which I have no satisfactory answer. What does this mean to me? What does liberation mean? Is it personal freedom I celebrate or the potential of all men to be free from…from what? Franklin Roosevelt spoke of four freedoms, two positive, and two negative (freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, freedom from fear). The US Constitution grants others—freedom to assemble and petition the government, freedom to vote, freedom (if in a well regulated militia) to bear arms and freedom to feel protected in our homes.

In Darfur the government and the Arab Janjaweed, randomly select villages and destroy them, killing the men, raping the women. In Afghanistan a man was to be executed for converting from Islam to Christianity. Am I, a Jew in Rhode Island, safe and secure here, free here, well fed here, to try to do anything about the Darfur millions? And the one man in Afghanistan? What can I do? It’s not likely that I can get onto a plane and rescue the poor guy or organize a brigade of overweight, exercise-deprived college professors to stand guard over the huddled masses in the Sudan and Chad. I can write to my congressman and to the president; I can sign a petition, but all of that seems woefully inadequate. In effect, I’m free, but powerless. I am free just enough to be tantalized—I can see the problem, but can’t resolve it, not as an individual anyway, but as part of a mass of other free people, then maybe, just maybe, our freedom, our liberation can be shared with the world. Look what we have done as collective individuals, often under Jewish leadership and inspiration—we have ended slavery, we have ended Jim Crow, we have organized labor, we have created public education—and it all goes back to that story of the liberation from Egypt, that great exemplar, that magnificent role model. What was done for us once, we now can do for others. Is it sufficient each Passover to read of the liberation of our ancestors? Is it sufficient each week that at the Shabbat table I thank God for the liberation from Egypt? Is that the secret message of Dayenu, It is enough? Is it enough that we know that Sisyphusian challenges await the free on behalf of those still enslaved by fear, persecution and economic deprivation? Not for Jew it isn’t. There’s always something more to be done in the constant challenge of repairing the world.

So our table will groan with the weight of the food, our friends and relatives will leave the house with their bellies full and their spirits lifted, but I’ll know that at the end of the holiday I’ll stand and recite Yiskor for my mother; I’ll know that somewhere the Janjaweed is lurking in Africa, somewhere there is hunger, somewhere there is still slavery. Dayenu?