My trip to the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C.

I just arrived last night from a driving journey to Washington, D.C. and back for the purpose of attending the National Prayer Breakfast. The event was held at the Hilton Hotel on Connecticut Ave N.W. Remember that is the hotel where President Regan was shot by John Hinkely. Needless to say the security was intense. Yet, when I sat down I found the atmosphere almost jovial. There were diplomats, heads of state, and elected officials from the Congress, clergy and people of faith from all the religions. Yes, there was outside across the street a very small demonstration by a group condemning religion. What else is new in Washington?

Putting aside the remarks of the President for a moment, there were some really inspiring and entertaining speakers. One of the miners in the Chilean mine accident, Jose Enriquez, spoke of the travails of faith and the spiritual challenges the miners faced inside the mine. With a translator Enriquez told us that when they opened a hole to the miners and sent down food and water, they also sent down a small bible with that person’s name inscribed on the cover to each miner. When the capsules were ready to take each person to the surface, Enriquez insisted that the individuals get on their knees and make a prayer. His point was that religion and spirituality played a paramount role towards enabling the miners to survive this crisis.

Emmy award winning vocalist Alison Krauss stunned the entire audience with her amazing voice. I had never listened to her before but she had a voice that inspired everyone. Then Hollywood film producer Randall Wallace, a man born in small town poverty of Tennessee and then Virginia told his story of the ups and downs of his life and the humility he learned from his grandparents and parents in the rural south. His career as a film producer also took him to the wealth he aspired and back to having nothing. At that point he wrote a script which he ultimately produced called Braveheart. He was a good old fashioned story teller. Very effective.

Elected officials spoke about their prayer breakfast traditions they have in the Congress. Many of these groups usually meet once a week. The speakers from the US Senate or the House of Representatives all lauded these experiences as the most meaningful of their week. Yes it was nice to see the bipartisan participation in the program as well as in the audience. They read from Hebrew and Christian Scriptures.

Then the president spoke. Most news reports televised his comments on Egypt. Of course that is to be expected. But I really liked what he had to say through the rest of his remarks. He spoke about his own prayer life and how he as a community organizer in Chicago without religious affiliation worked with clergy. It was there that he became a Christian. He also spoke about the need to balance in his spiritual life the foundation of his core values with the need to respect others with completely opposing political views. He spoke about his wife and thanked her for tolerated him. (That is universal with most men with any brains!) Then he spoke of his praying on his older daughter who is of age now that she is going to her first school dances. He spoke of “Boys” and the length of her party dresses. Boy did that resonate with everyone!

Finally Captain Mark Kelly, the astronaut and husband of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords from Tucson, Arizona spoke and delivered the benediction. He discussed his transformation of spirit and discussed how he the astronaut and science guy used to see the world and human events as completely arbitrary. Now he has a different understanding about destiny and the power of the human spirit. He took me by surprise when he concluded his remarks by saying that he would read the benediction from the prayer that his wife’s Rabbi recited over her hospital bed. That was truly a blessing moment. Her Rabbi is Stephanie Aron. I do not know her but it makes us all proud to see a rabbi being an effective comfort to her congregant.

After it was all done, I took a cab over to the Dirksen office building and met up with our Congressman Joe Wilson. His staff and I walked over to the Capital building where Joe and I discussed the situation in Cairo. I will save this for another blog. For now I will say that one can feel the change in the American Foreign Policy establishment towards Middle East policy. Change is coming. I do not know what it is but it is happening behind the scenes.

I am glad I went. More to report to you over the weekend.

We shall talk on Sunday.

The sudanese children in Cairo

Dear Friends,

We are all watching the news of the crowds of Egypt’s uprising or, some say, revolution. I came across a poem that I wrote five years ago when the Egyptian government was dealing with thousands of Sudanese refugees living in the parks and square of Cairo. Eventually the Egyptian authorities put them, despite their appeal for mercy, onto buses and shipped them back to the Sudan. Many of them were refugees and fearful for their lives.  So this situation in Egypt reminded me of Sudanese people’s aspirations for freedom. I would like to share this poem because the bottom line is that people’s lives are on the line. The voice of the people, be it Egyptian, Sudanese, Tunisian, Iranian and any other people’s cry for democracy and basic human rights, must be heard. I pray that God’s will to provide a peaceful resolution to this crisis will inspire the people in the streets and those in the government and the military as well.

Sudanese Children in Cairo

Black fists

Outstretched arms

Bare chests

Mother’s breasts

Children’s hearts

Old men’s bones

Defy life’s illusions

And the drumbeaters

Flying in desert winds

Sweeping and twisting limbs

And the stickmen who beat

The breath out of black skin.

Sudanese children sleep

Faces buried in the mud

Holding birthday candles

A doll

A baby’s blanket

And a suitcase.

As wild dogs howl amidst the cries and screams

Echoing in a Cairo park.

Slabs of human flesh

Heaped onto buses

Perspiration indistinguishable

From a plague of heartbreak

Infecting the breathing corpses

Transported to camps

As angels on high immune

To the black exhaust

Rising to the sky

From the exile below

While the righteous wait

Sheltered in armbands

And ID cards

Who shut their eyes

As the storm passes.

Silent tears lost I the desert

Anger executed

And death is the last rite

Wearing a headdress

Of royalty in the tribe

From the land of their fathers

Whose flute sings freedom’s

Song in a city park’s

Grave to the living dead

That tells tales of martyrdom

And God alone cried above the moonlight.

The Messiah

Today I had the opportunity to deliver a lecture at a church service on the Jewish ideas of the Messiah. The church, Chapel without Walls, conducts its weekly service in our sanctuary on Sunday  mornings. It is an intimate congregation that usually attracts 35-40 people. Today there were about 100 people. How ironic that my friend Rev. John Miler would introduce me as a guest speaker to my own pulpit! We all got a laugh out of that observation. The experience was a positive one because when Christians and Jews speak about the Messiah we are really talking about apples and oranges. Yet my sense is that because both Jews and Christians were sitting together inside a synagogue sanctuary in a church service was a sign of the importance of learning and sharing ideas between the religions. We need to do more of it.

For mainstream Christian theology the Messiah represents an internal process of redemption and salvation usually connected to believing in Jesus of Nazereth as the Messiah, the son of God as a precondition to entering Heaven. For Jews the concept is very different. We see the Messiah as a human being performing acts of heroism which unite a people and return the Jewish people to their homeland. In fact the five criterion of the Messiah in conventional Jewish theology are, defeat the enemies of the Jewish people, establish the Temple service in Jerusalem, bring together the Jewish people back to the land of Israel and, finally, usher in an era of peace for the Jewish people and the world.

The Messiah ideas have changed from the times of the Bible to the period of late antiquity and then into the Middle Ages. Jews followed the law-halachah- and the belief that not only were the Scriptures holy but also the rabbinic literature of the Talmud as well. The Jewish people have had to defend their beliefs over history, particularly with the Catholic Church in Spain and other nations. Jews also had to contend with a history of false Messiahs going back to the times of the Romans when Rabbi Akiva  declared Bar Cochbah, the Jewish general who defied the Roman army in 136CE, as the Messiah. Sabbatai Tzvi called himself the Messiah in the 17^th century in Europe. Most of the Jewish communities believed him until the Turkish authorities arrested him and he converted to Islam before his death.

The period of the Enlightenment in the 18^th century ushered in a new era of thinking about the Jews. The messiah ideas reflected themselves not in a person but or in a return to the land of Israel. Instead it was to integrate Jews into the mainstream of European life. But by the time of the latter part of the 19^th century arrived, the Messiah ideas grew into the movement to settle Jews into the land of Israel. Theodore Herzl led that movement and the settlement of Jews in Palestine. Zionism took on a kind of Messianic movement in Jewish life. In America the reform movement took the opposite view. In the 19 century the reform rabbinate come up with their platform which said that the Reform Judaism would no longer accept a belief in the Messiah nor in a return to the land of Palestine. Of course that all changed by the middle part of the 20^th century when Reform Judaism changed its tune and embraced the call to resettle Jews in Palestine. In those early days of Reform Judaism the movement was trying to embrace American culture and acculturate German Jews into the mainstream of American culture.

Today we see resurgence in the Messiah ideas with the HABAD Hasidism one side and progressive Judaism on the other side of the theological spectrum. The reform movement now advocates social justice and in that way we do not need a personal messiah but we can bring about an era when social justice and learning combine to repair the world and heal it. Part of that thinking comes from Jewish mysticism in the 17^th century. How powerful ideas are and how they reappear centuries later in places we would never imagine!

The upshot of today’s lecture is that Judaism has many different ideas about the Messiah. It is an act of communal not individual redemption. This is consistent with Judaism’s focus on the history and promise of the Jewish people. Communal revelation and salvation define our religious underpinnings. Yet history has certainly influenced the creative instincts of Jewish communities to defend the traditional ideas of the Messiah as well as to create new adaptations of the Messiah as the times required.

Finally, today was a wonderful opportunity for all of us who attended the service to discuss the teachings of our respective religion’s teachings on the Messiah.  Different religions learning together the similarities and differences of our respective faiths goes a long way to show how religion is a force for unity and good in our country. We need to do more of it and not less.

The revolution in Egypt

I have taken a break from the blogging world. I am back.

The world is fixated on the tumult in Egypt, Yemen and Tunisia. We are watching the news because we all know the potential dangers that lay ahead of us if Egypt does not resolve their issues in a peaceable manner. The thought of the potential scenarios is reason enough to pray.

I was on a rabbis’ mission in Egypt over twenty years ago. We traveled throughout Cairo and down the Nile to Luxor and then returned on an overnight train back to Cairo. We entered and toured through the Moses Ibn Ezra synagogue which has since gone through extensive renovation.

We could see back then the extensive poverty that was spread throughout Egypt. What we learned from the tour guides back then was that the people of Egypt were a peace loving and not a revolutionary people. They could withstand much suffering as long as they had enough to live on. Even then I remember viewing thousands living and sleeping at night in the cemeteries of Cairo. I recall the little villages and the children without shoes when we stopped during our cruise down the Nile River.

At the same time we saw the great Islamic universities and the cultural elite that flocked to Cairo because there one could indulge one’s needs, according to the guides, in Cairo more than any other Arab capital. I learned of the paradox between the great civilization of Egypt and its enormous poverty living side by side. Not much has changed over the years.

I am no foreign policy expert. I do not propose to make any predictions.  I am about hope in the future. We all know that there has been a tenuous peace between Israel and Egypt. The parties have worked together to maintain the peace between them and have cooperated in dealing with the Palestinians. Considering that only 43 years ago the Egyptian President Gammal Abdul Nasser was predicting annihilation of Israel in the 67 war and then Sadat’s visit to Jerusalem and Camp David we have seen that Egypt is capable of doing evil, but also, rising to the occasion and contributing to world peace.

Most recently the Islamic fundamentalist killed Christian Coptics in Egypt coming out of their church services. They make up 10% of the population. The Muslim population reacted in favor of the Coptics and protested on their behalf. Does that happen for Christians in Iraq when Sunnis go after Iraqi Christians? The answer is no.

Facts like these give me hope that despite the chaos we see on the streets somehow peace will prevail and that whatever changes occur in Egypt, the largest and most prominent of Arab nations, will make Egypt better in the future without hurting Israel. That is my prayer.

reflection from Tuscon:When

http://www.islandpacket.com/2011/01/15/1511055/unity-necessary-to-heal-nation.html#

Here is my article from today's Island Packet.

Reflections on Tucscon: When?

http://www.islandpacket.com/2011/01/15/1511055/unity-necessary-to-heal-nation.html#

Here is my column in the Island Packet published on Saturday. I hope you will take a look.
Shavua Tov
A good week.
Brad

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The Memorial Service in Tucson

Reactions to the Memorial Service in Tucson

It is sometimes amazing what will touch a chord in the soul of person. I sat down to listen to the speech on television like the rest of the nation. The commentators have been postulating all kinds of theories regarding this moment and this speech in the Obama presidency.

Unexpectedly, my emotions got the better of me when I listened to the first musical piece that the orchestra played. It was Aaron Copland’s “The Common Man.” I have heard portions of it in the movies but not the entire piece. Suddenly tears started to emerge and gently flow down upon my cheeks.

Why did that happen? I suspect that this music reminded me of the majestic dignity of the American person. Our great arms and shoulders lifted this nation to greatness. Our muscles and the integrity and unity of spirit has made this nation the beacon of light for all who aspire to a better life. There is a quiet dignity of this music as if I was walking inside Arlington’s National Cemetery through the rows of soldiers who gave their lives to protect what we all value as our freedoms, or our way of life.

Somehow the music lifted my spirits beyond the political pundits and the debates raging on public policy issues that have surfaced since the alleged shooter went on a crazed rampage of killing last Saturday. Maybe the music captured some pent up emotions from this tragedy that finally rose to the surface when I heard the brass and the percussion of Copland’s “The Common Man.” What makes this country great is the everyday citizen. It is the person who grows up and never looks for the limelight but who raises a family, pays their taxes and enjoys the fruits of their labors. And then that moment arrives when an emergency occurs and the average decent person rises to the occasion and sees the challenge that a community or a nation faces. The common man, the American man and woman rises in spirit and body to the occasion. The American, robed in dignity and glory, and in quiet humility gets the job done for the welfare of the community. That is the common man, the first responders; the people protected and initially cared for the wounded until they could be transported to the Hospital.

What I love about being an American is in those moments of great adversity how we face challenges and overcome obstacles and perform in a righteous and humble fashion. The music of Aaron Copland allowed me to see something in us that words could not communicate.

I know that there are many issues which I feel need to be debated in our community about the continuing tragedy of gun violence and treating the mentally ill. We own this problem and it is an American problem. But before we tackle these issues in the public domain there must be a spiritual connection to enable us to have the dialogue and fix what is hurting our culture.

Music can lift our spirits and inspire us  to  our task which  is a noble one and  that the events of Tucson will propel us to a better place securing  our country’s future.