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Simply sharing life lessons through a Jewish lens.

12 April 2009 - 11:23Rebbe on the Road North America 2009: Part I, Times We are Free

Goldie: “Zman heyruteynu mikra kodesh - times we are free holiness happens,” this line from the Passover Kiddush leapt to mind as one of the docent’s vignettes struck a chord of awe. Last week, in Richmond, VA we perched for one-night at the reasonable and excellent Museum B&B. While the art museum itself is under renovation, I felt drawn to enter the white clapboard chapel just behind, because it resembled the style of my first and very beloved pulpit, Temple Beth El, in

Hammonton, NJ.Inside we were startled as a man came towards us in the darkness, his features etched by glowing stained glass bearing Confederate flags and dedications to the service of fallen Confederate veterans. Clearly happy for the company, he offers an uninterruptable river of information. The chapel is the only remaining part of Robert E. Lee Camp # 1, a home for needy Confederate Civil War veterans, chartered in 1884 by the

Commonwealth of

Virginia., (the war ended in 1865.) Surviving Confederate soldiers and families were often homeless and part of the retribution was to also be vote-less and benefit-less for many years after the war’s end. According to what I recall from the docent, a Union Veteran from

New England visiting the South, was deeply affected by the plight of the Confederate vets. He described the situation to his lodge brothers in the North, they hosted Confederate Veterans for discussions and became involved in funding Robert E. Lee Camp #1, including commissioning a stained glass window, which became the basis of gathering which today we might term a rite of reconciliation towards healing.

Barry: My take on this is incredible awe at the ability of people to be shortsighted. Even in the 19th century they had to know that the future of the economy in the south could not be based on slave labor. Yet they couldn’t wait to go to war over this right. Today descendants of these same people shout “drill baby drill” and in hindsight couldn’t wait to go to war in

Iraq for an oil dependant economy..Goldie: Very rational, dear. Dehumanization justified by economic rationale is a pervasive human foible, an anti-middah (attribute). This very day an egregious individual example is in the news, in

Saudi Arabia a judge upholds the marriage of an adult male to an eight year old girl. The recipient of this debt-payment has pledged not to consummate the marriage until she reaches puberty. She was given over by her father to resolve a debt. The issue here would seem to be that he has religious freedom to do this under Sharia, so it’s rational. Yes? The judge says she has the right to petition for a divorce at puberty – who will she become raised by either the father or the recipient? The illusion of the value of the rational/irrational split is ever evident. Her parents are divorced; her mother does not have custody. She is her father’s commodity, the human child, dehumanized while her mother and rights groups keep trying (and losing) in the courts to save her daughter. Are there transcendent values, beyond the unholy split of rational and irrational? Or am I just a westerner apply culturally specific values and other civilizations have the right to decide if women, children and their neighbors are human and to be treated humanely or as chattel? Dehumanization is pervasive in industry, whether the sex industry or the investment industry treating us as trusting fools (we were/are), or as you often note, how medical residents are abused commodities in a for-profit, rather than for-people, health care system.
So is it even true, zman heyruteynu mikra kodesh – times we are free holiness happen? Not necessarily, there’s another step to the mitzvah, it is “zeycher yitziyat mitzrayahm, remember leaving

Egypt.” Remember what took to get the freedoms we savor, over 300,000 died in our civil war. I love that President Obama hosted a seder in the White House, an orange and “Obama” on the seder plate to me are icons of our evolution as a species. Whoever has labored to be free - through spiritual practice, divorce, war, and so much more. Remember the suffering that it took until you were ready/able to leave or narrow places, our mitzrayim in this live and throughout all time. In the millennia hopefully to come, may each Passover mark increasing freedom for all, and the capacity of more of us to relate to our freedom with kindness and justice for all. May we be blessed for the world’s diverse opposing forces, bimheirah v’yameinu, quickly and in our time, to recognize each other’s humanity. And,

And yes, we are having fun while teaching and traveling and finding meaning in all four dimensions – physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. The south is in the full flush of Spring and we’re also seeing evidence of beautiful flowers past, such as the Beaux Arts Ballroom at the Jefferson Hotel we visited here. The old-world elegance soothes one into softness and I imagine myself garbed in a flowing silken gown under the great stained glass dome looking down on once-swirling couples on the dance floor below. So far the people are gracious, and the streets are lined with columned homes. At a visit to the State House, gleaming white high on a hill we learned the Queen of England had been by with her 32 hat boxes (yes!) and entourage two years ago. Barry wondered aloud why she carries a purse? It seems there are biscuits in there for her Corgies and also, when she moves it from one hand to another, it’s a signal to her team that it’s time to move on. Go figure.

Our next posting will be about our time in

Greensboro, N.C.