July 7, 2015--The Rabbi

We were about to leave for Anne and Boyce's annual July 4th lobster bake when the phone rang.

Sensing my disinclination to answer it, Rona said, "Pick it up. With everything going on it might be important."

"The caller ID says 'Unknown Caller.' Anything important would be coming from someone we know."

"Oh, answer it. We have time. If we leave now we'll be early."

So I answered it, "Hello. This is Steven Zwerling."

In a booming voice, the caller said, CONGRATULATIONS!"

"Did I win something?" I asked. "Like from Publishers Clearing House or from whoever it was earlier this week who called to say, 'You have been selected for a cruise to the Bahamas'?"

"No, this is Rabbi ____ ."

"Rabbi what?"

"Rabbi ____ . I will be conducting your mother's service on Tuesday."

"Oh," I began to comprehend. My mother came from a traditional background and the family thought she would want a rabbi to preside over her graveside service.

"It will be my honor," he said.

"What a strange way to begin this conversation," I said, settling into a chair.

"I'm not following you," he said.

"The CONGRATULATIONS business. Why are you congratulating me? My mother died three days ago. Are congratulations in order? I mean, she died at 107 and three days. Not anything resembling a tragedy, but still . . ." I trailed off sorry I had answered the phone.

"That's my point," he said.

"Your point being?"

"That you are to be congratulated for having a mother who lived such a long and meaningful life. Actually, she is to be congratulated."

"She did have a very long life and indeed it was meaningful in more ways that I can describe."

"I hope you will try to do that for me."

"Do what?"

"Tell me about her meaningful life so I can talk about that at the service. I won't pretend to have known her but will refer to what you and other members of the family tell me about her. Does that sound all right?"

He was a rabbi after all and I am sure he picked up that I was still not comfortable with the way he began the call and so I said, "I still think you got off to a bad start with me. But of course I am willing to talk with you about her."

"I am deeply sorry if you took it that way. Perhaps I overstated how I was feeling about what I already had come to know about her. I was overcome with joy when I began to learn about your mother. And maybe I was a little envious of you. My mother . . . Well, that's another story  fro another time."

As he was talking, in his own way apologizing for upsetting me, I began to think about what he had already said, as if intuiting the joyousness that I had been secretly feeling.

I had been feeling joy and had not spoken about it out of concern that I would appear to be not caring, not sufficiently sad. Yes, I am sad, how could anyone not be after the loss of a wonderful mother even after so many years. Is it greedy to want more? Yes, I thought, but still I wanted more. Now I am left with memories and feelings. Enough to fill a lifetime, true, even if I am fortunate enough to live as long as she, but greedily I still wanted more. Want more.

"Are you still on the line?" I had lapsed into silence.

"Yes, I'm still here."

"Can we proceed?"

"Of course. It's just that it's taken me a moment to assimilate how you began."

"I understand, The congratulations part."

"Yes. But, you are right. And thank you for helping me to be more honest about the way I am feeling about her death. More important, about her life."

"So, congratulations are in order?"

"Yes, indeed they are. This is all so complicated."

From two years ago

October 15, 2103--Getting a Get

A friend keeps a close eye on fanatics. Particularly of the Islamic sort, especially in regard to their barbaric treatment of girls and women. Like burying them in the ground and stoning them to death.

Though depressing, this is worth doing. We all have to speak out in outrage about practices of this kind. Those sanctioned by religious leaders and governments more than any others.

She and I were talking about this recently and I said that, though I share her outrage, I have chosen to concentrate on keeping my eye on and decrying fanatics among my own coreligionists. That's where I can claim credibility--not seeming in a one-sided way to castigate the sins of others while ignoring what those culturally closer to me may be doing that is also outrageous.

"But your people aren't killing people, not doing these kinds of hideous things to girls, so why are you focused on their relatively benign behavior?"

"In some cases they are not that benign--though admittedly, stoning women to death is in a category of its own. But in the past there are too many cases of Jews killing innocents. If we want to go back to the Old Testament, recall the Israelites treatment of the people of Canaan. The God of the Jews, it is written, instructed the Israelites to commit genocide on the Canaanites--to kill every one of them, including all woemn and children."

"But that was thousands of years ago," my friend protested.

"True, but this suggests to me that we still have to keep a wary eye on all people under the sway of fundamentalist religious dogma, especially if their faith's history might predispose them to violence. I particularly try to maintain a critical perspective on zealots in Israel and on the ultra-orthodox in America."

"I hear you, but I still see things a little differently."

Of course, in many ways she is right, yet I keep alert to the unacceptable things "my" people do and attempt to bring them to public attention.

The other day, for example, the New York Times reported about something occurring in Brooklyn that on the surface felt bizarre and Medieval.

Something about ultra-orthodox Jewish women seeking rabbinical permission to divorce abusive husbands. According to Jewish practice, in order to divorce a husband it is not enough to hire an attorney and file a petition in a civil court. Women must go before a committee of orthodox rabbis and attempt to convince them that there is appropriate cause for the rabbis to endorse their desire to seek a divorce. If they are convinced, they issue a get, a liturgical document that then allows women to proceed.

Since as in the other biblical religions women are considered less than second-class citizens, getting a get is complicated, difficult, frequently humiliating, and often costly.

To be clear--orthodox women seeking divorces usually need to pay the rabbinical court many thousands of dollars for them even to consider their cases. Especially in those circumstances where the husbands refuse to give permission for their wives to proceed since according to orthodox doctrine husbands have this power.

But according to the recent report in the Times, not only is the process very expensive, but what some rabbis have been arranging is bizarre, and likely illegal.

For fees that can total $60,000, the rabbis hire people to kidnap the reluctant husbands and have them physically tortured in order to force them to sign the required papers.

At least two rabbis who allegedly arranged for the kidnappings and torture were scooped up in a sting operation that included law-enforcement officials taping telephone conversations in which the rabbis casually talked about how they go about their violent business. Ironically, with a feminist twist since the beneficiaries of their "services" are women.

According to a rabbi caught on tape by federal prosecutor, after the husbands were abducted, "They beat them up and tied them up, shocked them with Tasers and stun gun until they got what they wanted."

One of the perpetrators, Rabbi Mendel Epstein talked openly and casually about how his hit men went about the techniques they used to fool the police if the victims stepped forward to report the kidnappings and torture:

If they beat them up carefully, leaving no visible bruises, "basically the reaction of the police is, if the guy does not have a mark on him then, uh, [they think there] is there some Jewish crazy affair here, they don't want to get involved."

And not only that--the rabbis guaranteed that after their "tough guys" finished with the husbands, the women will get their gets. And for the most part they did.