Martini Judaism Religion News Service

“I am running away to join the circus.”
It was 2004, and my synagogue in Atlanta had welcomed Amichai Lau-Lavie as a guest speaker. Amichai had been the founder of Storahtellers, a ritual theater company, which was an innovative approach to presenting Torah in synagogue. He had come to our congregation along with what could only be described as a madcap ensemble of actors, singers and theater professionals – who also knew Torah. 
They dramatized the Torah portion. And, much more.
The congregation was mesmerized.
The next day, we had breakfast. This is what I said to him:
“You are the circus, and I am running away to join you.” 
Those are the kind of feelings that Amichai Lau Lavie evokes. For decades, he has been one of American Judaism’s most creative, most courageous, and most outrageous, spiritual leaders.
Listen to the podcast interview with him.
This is his resume. Time Out called him “an iconoclastic mystic." NPR called him “a calm voice for peace." According to the New York Times, he is a “rock star.” The Jewish Week called him “one of the most interesting thinkers in the Jewish world.”
Rabbi Lau-Lavie is the Co-Founding Spiritual Leader of the Lab/Shul community in NYC, where he has been living since 1998. Just recently, his colleague at Lab/Shul, Shira Kline, received a coveted Covenant Award for her contributions to Jewish education.
He was ordained as a Conservative rabbi by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in 2016 – which is the only thing conservative about him.
Being a rabbi is not a career for Amichai; neither is it a calling.
It is a genetic predisposition.
His cousin is Rabbi David Lau, the current Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi of Israel. His uncle is Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the former Ashkenazic Chief Rabbi, and survived the Holocaust as a child. His brother is Rabbi Benny Lau, one of Israel's most prominent Orthodox rabbis.
If Amichai did 23 and Me, the results would scream: "rabbi!"
Amichai is the 39th generation of rabbis in his family.
Except, he is the first one to be openly queer.
Did I mention that he used to be a drag queen? His drag persona was Rebbitzen Hadassah Gross, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, who was the widow of several rabbis.
Amichai Lau-Lavie is the subject of a new movie -- Sabbath Queen, directed by Sandi DuBowski, who previously directed "Trembling Before G-d," which was the first film to shine a light on the plight of Orthodox LGBTQ persons.
"Sabbath Queen" had been entered in several festivals, but had been cancelled because, well, you know. It is making its premier at the Tribeca Film Festival, where it is the only Israeli-ish film in the festival.
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie has many gifts. Chief among them is his ability to transform our views of Judaism, in which he takes us from the either/or to the both/and. He strives to be radically inclusive, even if it means dipping his toe into waters that some might find heretical.
My favorite quote of his: “The Bible is the PDF, and we are working on the google doc.”
As in: The biblical text might be a set text (as some might say: set in stone). But, a google doc is the result of many minds, souls, and hands writing and re-writing it -- as a communal effort.
We are all working on that doc.
 

I am experiencing serious FOMO.
I am totally bummed that I am going to be out of the range on Monday to watch the solar eclipse.
So, let's talk about Judaism and eclipses.
Are there eclipses in the Bible? Most likely. It is possible that the plague of darkness during the Exodus from Egypt was a total eclipse of the sun. Likewise, when the sun stood still in the book of Joshua, that also might have been an eclipse. There are also references to solar eclipses in medieval Jewish texts, especially as they might have influenced the calculation of the new moon.
But, far more compelling is the idea that God is also in eclipse. The term for that is "hester panim," the act of God concealing the Divine Presence as a way of punishing the Jewish people.
To experience the hidden Presence of God was to experience great terror and anxiety:
"How long, O LORD; will You ignore me forever? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long will I have cares on my mind, grief in my heart all day? How long will my enemy have the upper hand? Look at me, answer me, O LORD, my God! Restore the luster to my eyes, lest I sleep the sleep of death; lest my enemy say, “I have overcome him,” my foes exult when I totter" (Psalm 13: 2-5).
It is dangerous — to directly experience the hidden nature of God can sear itself into your eyes, and into your soul. God chose to conceal the Divine Presence — either as a punishment for sin or because God cannot tolerate the fact of our suffering.
But, here is the good news: a God Who hides is also a God who can be found.
The eclipse itself is a testimony to the cycles that attend to the natural universe, the flowing of time and the placement of the planets and orbs — all imagined, all in the mind of God — as intimated in the opening words of Genesis.
You have bought your eclipse glasses, haven't you?
In the words of Bruce Springsteen:
Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sunBut mama, that's where the fun is ("Blinded by the Light").

What are the three little words that rabbis almost never, ever, say to their congregations.
Hold on, because I am about to say them.
God loves you.
That is the topic of Rabbi Shai Held's new book, "Judaism Is About Love,"` which is also the topic of today's "Martini Judaism" podcast.
Wait a second, you are saying. Isn't this supposed to be Martini Judaism -- not Martini Evangelical Christianity? Am I reading the wrong column, or has Jeff Salkin decided to convert?
Neither.
Let’s face it: “God loves you” is not how the world views Judaism.
It’s not how Jews view Judaism and God either.
We have forgotten and abandoned this sublime and comforting idea, and we are the poorer for that amnesia and abandonment. 
A conversation with Shai Held, regarding his new book on the topic...
Our liturgy proclaims it very clearly – for starters, in the Shabbat evening liturgy:

The ahavat olam prayer: "with eternal love You have loved us" – and the sign of that love? The Torah and its laws.

In the Avot prayer, we chant that God will bring us redemption for the sake of our ancestors b’ahavah, in love.

In the Kiddush, we chant that God gives us Shabbat b’ahavah, with love….



I like to think of Judaism as the story of a romance.

Act One: God meets people. That is the patriarchal period. The Jewish people begins when God, for no apparent reason – this is how the mystics put it – God fell in love with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob.

Act Two: God and people date. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the matriarchs — all have conversations with God.

Act Three: During the sojourn in Egypt, God and people are out of touch.

Act Four: God hears the cries of the beloved coming from Egypt.

Act Five: God remembers that love.

Act Six: God and the Jewish people get married at Sinai (which will happen a few weeks from now, on Shavuot). It is why on Shavuot some communities actually write a ketuba between God and the Jewish people.

Act Seven: Then comes the business with the Golden Calf. A big disappointment. A bad day in the marriage.

Act Eight: We endure God’s perhaps petulant or even passive-aggressive silence. For much of the later parts of the Jewish Bible, God says nothing.

Act Nine: We and God re-invent our relationship over and over again. The Temple is destroyed; the Jews rebuild it; the Romans destroy it again; the Jews figure out new ways of demonstrating their love for God.



When we study Torah, do you really want to know what is happening?
It is as if we have entered into that romance with God.
We read every word of Torah, listening to its nuances and wondering aloud and in sacred community about its meaning….
If you’ve ever been in love, you know exactly what I mean.
In the Zohar, the cardinal text of Jewish mysticism, the author imagines the Torah Herself (yes, herself – in the Jewish imagination, the Torah is always feminine).
The Torah is a kind of Rapunzel, waiting coquettishly in her tower while her lover tries to find her and rescue her and even ravish her. Our love affair with Torah is perhaps the closest way that we can understand our love affair with God.
Where did we lose the idea that Judaism is about love?
Our history has bruised us and battered us, and it has forced us to be deaf to our own beautiful traditions.
To quote the late chief rabbi of Great Britain, Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: “Once upon a time, we saw ourselves as the people that God loves.
“Now, all too many of us define ourselves as the people that the world hates.”
Yes, I am painfully aware of what is happening in the world right now -- and especially in this country -- with the frightening rise of antisemitism.
But, the idea that we are the people whom the world hates is a pathetic distortion of our faith and our fate.
Because, do you know why countless generations of Jews were able to stand up to Jew-hatred?
Because no matter what befell them, they had faith in God’s love.
We still do. Thank you, Shai Held, for bringin

A very intelligent young person once asked me: “When did the Bible stop?”
“What do you mean?” I responded.
“I mean,” she said, “when did they decide that the Bible was finished? Why can’t we simply add on to it? Why can’t it be like a loose-leaf notebook, where you put things in and take them out whenever you need to?”
I admit I had found that question to be, well, irreverent.
Now I am not so sure. Now I actually think it was a great question and I have been asking it myself. Not about taking pages out of the Bible (though I am sure there are some things I would not miss), but about adding pages to the Bible.
Perhaps we are writing a new Jewish Bible for our time.
Especially since Oct. 7. That is what Rachel Korazim, one of Israel’s most noted and most beloved educators, has revealed to us — a new book of Lamentation. Listen to the podcast.

It is November 10, 1938. It’s in a small city in Germany. It is the night after Kristalnacht, the night of broken glass that ushered in the mass roundups and the killings that would become the Holocaust, what we call the Shoah in Hebrew.
There are a group of men shoved together in a cell. They are all of different ages. One of them turns to a much younger man, a rabbinical student who was no more than twenty years old.
“You! You are a rabbinical student. You are a student of Judaism. So tell us – what does Judaism have to say to us at a time like this?”
The recipient of that weighty question was young Emil Fackenheim. He would spend the rest of his life coming up with answers to that question. In so doing, he became one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of our time .
In this column and accompanying podcast, we pose that question to Liel Leibovitz. He is an Israeli journalist, author, media critic and video game scholar. He is a prolific writer, mostly for Tablet magazine. I have followed his work for years.We talk about Liel's fascination with that often arcane, and central, Jewish text... how the contemporary writer Jonathan Rosen called the Talmud “a drift net for catching God”... and how the Talmud is like an ancient version of the Internet.

The other day, I was talking to someone about a friend of mine who had converted to Judaism, a.k.a., joined the Jewish people.
My conversation partner stopped me in my tracks.
"I don't believe in that," he said. "You can't convert to Judaism. You can't just join the Jewish people. You either are Jewish, or you are not. What — you take a class, and you take a test and they dunk you (in the mikveh, the ritual bath) and poof — you're Jewish?!?"
"No!" he continued. "You have to have a yiddishe neshame, a Jewish soul. You have to have centuries of suffering and feeling. It has to be in your DNA!"
I will tell you what went "poof," at that moment.
2,500 years of Jewish history, law and theology went "poof."
More than 40 years as a congregational rabbi working with Jews-by-choice went "poof."
More than 40 years of being an activist and a leader in the Reform movement working to welcome Jews-by-choice went "poof."
More than 40 years of having colleagues in Jewish professional life who are Jew-by-choice went "poof."
And, let us be clear: Thousands of years of people joining the Jewish people to live Jewish lives and sometimes, tragically, to die Jewish deaths, went "poof."
So, let me say it again — just in case you were not listening decades ago, or just in case you are new to this topic.
Judaism is not a closed club.
Judaism is not a secret society.
Judaism is not in your DNA. Actually, there are genetic elements of having ethnic Jewish ancestry. Every week, countless people are finding out, via 23 and Me, that they are, in fact, some percentage Jewish.
But, therein lies the paradox. The Jews are a tribe, a family, a people and a nation — into which you do not have to be born, but in fact, that you can join.
Is it easy to feel that sense of connection, and that sense of history? No.
Can you learn it? Absolutely. And it happens all the time.