My People and I

“I don’t understand why you have to tell everybody about your private life,” my dad said.

My dad and I weren’t arguing about my words. We were arguing about how I dressed. To be specific, we were arguing about a necklace I used to wear incessantly: rainbow-colored rings dangling from a silver chain. A symbol for the gay rights movement.

Each year, approaching Purim, I think about the conversations I’ve had with my dad since “coming out”—conversations about how and when I reveal this fact about myself. I think about why I wore the rainbow ring necklace: a symbol that I belonged in a certain community, a symbol of the struggle for visibility and acceptance. I think about why I wear a wedding ring: a symbol that reminds me of the love and commitment I renew each day. I think about why I wear a kippa: a symbol of my role and responsibility as a student rabbi. And I think about Queen Esther—no outward, visible symbol of her Judaism paraded before King Ahasueros. I think about Queen Esther, boldly approaching the king, demanding an audience rather than waiting to be invited. I think about Queen Esther, laying her life on the line to say: “Let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request. For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated” (Esther 7:3-4).

Influenced by my personal experience and by the work of one of my mentors, Professor Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (may her memory be a blessing), I have often looked at Megillat Esther as one long coming-out story: the tale of a woman who hid a part of her identity and, at great personal risk, revealed the truth to improve conditions for her entire community (For more on this idea, see Sedgwick’s Epistemology of the Closet). The story of Esther certainly hinges on a dramatic moment of self-identification that Esther chooses.

But I’ve also been thinking about the Book of Esther in terms of the symbols of our identities, the brands we display and the loyalties and values we communicate through our choice of wardrobe. It might be a rainbow necklace or a wedding ring or a Steelers jersey. It might be a discreet star of David pendant or a tall black hat. What do these markers of self-identification serve? What do the symbols we wear communicate?

When I eat my breakfast on Sunday mornings in the Hampton Inn dining room, I am usually wearing my kippa. People always stare at me, whisper to one another—last month two women laughed at me openly. I definitely heard the word “Jew.” Rarely does anyone smile at me, say hello, and ask me about my “strange” head covering. And, I admit, I’ve never initiated such a conversation myself. I usually sit there, stunned and a bit annoyed, eating my oatmeal. I sit there, displaying a symbol that does not communicate what I intend it to communicate.

Symbols inspire solidarity. Wearing a symbol can be a welcoming wink to those “in the know”—like the rainbow rings I wore, which often brought supportive comments from older gay and lesbian people on the street, and which certainly signaled to other gay students on my college campus that I was a safe person to approach to discuss coming out issues. But wearing a symbol can also be a brick wall blocking out those who are not “on the inside.” Symbols insulate and isolate. And symbols can backfire, as we know all too well when the Star of David was cruelly transformed into the yellow star of the ghetto and the camps.

Although they can be misused, symbols still hold power. Some people wear their Judaism all day, every day. Why does it seem that more and more people, not just in faraway places but in Pittsburgh and the surrounding area, display their Judaism by wearing a certain style of clothing? A member of this community recently spoke with me about this phenomenon, asking, “Does it matter a great deal” to the God of Israel whether Jews walk in public with our heads uncovered?

For some Jews, the kippa is a sign of piety and humility. One wears a kippa to remind oneself that God reigns above us, that we are small in a vast universe. In the Talmud, we read about Rabbi Huna, who would not walk even a short distance with his head uncovered because, as he explained, “The Shechina—the Presence of God—is above my head” (Bavli Kiddushin 31a).

Over time, the custom of covering one’s head as a sign of piety or humility before God became Jewish law. No longer a symbol of personal faith or a physical reminder to the self, the kippa became the object of a law, formulated in cold, impersonal terms: “It is forbidden to walk four cubits with an uncovered head” (Shulhan Arukh Orach Hayyim 2:6).

And not only that, but the kippa has become, for some communities, a way to identify insiders and outsiders. In Israel, one learns to label men by their kippa: Is he a Breslav Hasid? A Hareidi Jew? An ultra-conservative religious Zionist? An environmentalist? The color, shape, style, and even placement of a kippa often sends a message that has nothing to do with God or humility or faith. It is a message of belonging and not-belonging, inside and outside. A kippa can cut off communication. A kippa can become a symbol of insulation or fear as much as it can be a symbol of pride or humility.

Why wear our Judaism on our sleeve?

In Jerusalem, I once saw an ultra-Orthodox boy and his little brother, tousling over a book while they waited for their mother on a park bench. Another woman saw the older brother slap the younger brother’s hand and she shouted out, איך מתנהג ילד עם כיפה? –“Is this how a boy who wears a kippa behaves!?”

A kippa might be a personal reminder of our smallness before God’s vast power and love. A kippa might be a sign of humility and faith. A kippa might indicate our status in a certain community or political group. A kippa might indicate our unwillingness to connect with those who are different from us. Or a kippa might signify that we are modeling Jewish behavior.

Like the kippa of that little boy in Jerusalem, our symbols indicate that we represent our communities. Our behavior reflects on the entire community—whether we like it or not.

For many in the gay community, this sense that we are representing more than just ourselves is keenly felt. I am sure that many of you feel such a sense of responsibility toward other Jews, living in a majority-Christian region. I have heard many of you tell stories about being the only Jew—or one of a handful of Jews—in your graduating class. I have heard stories of suspicious neighbors who wondered whether your hair was hiding those infamous Jewish “horns.” I have heard about the judgments ignorant non-Jews have made against you. How do we respond to those stereotypes and fears? Do we seek solace in symbols? Do we fear labels will hem us in? Do we use outward markers of our identity to raise awareness?

Esther didn’t wear her Judaism on her sleeve. On the contrary, she hid her true identity. Like many of us, she had a second name—rather than the Persian “Esther,” her everyday name, she also had a Hebrew name, “Hadassah.” Modern Orthodox Rabbi Joseph Telushkin calls Queen Esther “highly assimilated” (Jewish Literacy: The Most Important Things to Know about the Jewish Religion, Its People, and Its History, 103). Part of the surprise of the Book of Esther, Rabbi Telushkin suggests, is that this “unlikely” character would “risk her life on behalf of her people” (Ibid.). And yet this is precisely what Esther does: we read in the Megillah, ““I shall go to the king, though it is contrary to the law; and if I am to perish, I shall perish!” (Esther 4:16).

Esther lives out her Jewish values, risking her life to put a stop to Haman’s murderous plot to destroy the Jewish people. Esther doesn’t don a symbol. She stands up. She speaks out. She takes action.

Esther risks being judged based on stereotypes about the Jewish people. Many of us know what it feels like to be seen only as the member of a misunderstood or maligned group. Gays and lesbians in the 1970s and 80s faced stereotypes that painted us as degenerates. Gays and lesbians were judged to be sick and depraved. We could not be productive citizens. And so many groups sought to counter these stereotypes. One group of women sought to let their actions demonstrate their values, changing social perceptions about the gay community. These women, like any good citizens, would help strangers in need—assisting someone climbing up onto the bus, carrying heavy groceries out to the parking lot, signaling for traffic to stop to allow the person in the wheelchair to make it safely across the street. After offering their help as they would naturally do, these women took one more step—a risky step. They identified themselves as lesbians by handing out a small calling card before walking away. The card read: “You’ve just been helped by a lesbian.”

The “Lesbian Helpers,” as they called themselves, tried to challenge negative stereotypes by doing good deeds. Their actions were neither publicity stunts nor insincere “tricks.” Their actions were genuine. But they did take that extra step to self-identify as lesbians. Why? Doing so motivated the people they had helped to rethink their perceptions about the gay community. Someone who thought all gays and lesbians were anti-social, destructive, sick people now had to integrate into their definition of “gay” this story of a complete stranger who had helped them kindly. I am sure you have encountered the kind of non-Jew who says, “Well, you’re not like other Jews, you know how they are.” You represent the “exception,” the Jew who is different than other Jews. But hopefully, eventually, the “exception” becomes the rule, and people learn that hurtful stereotypes inaccurately describe a multifaceted Jewish community.

Esther didn’t need a kippa or a rainbow necklace. She needed her own powerful voice, the support of her family and community, her convictions, and her courage. And yet, even if Esther did not rely on symbols, she did identify her Jewishness. In a way, Esther handed out her own calling card. The favored queen, Esther could have asked King Ahasueros to spare the Jews without identifying herself as “one of them.” And yet she spoke to the king as part of a community, as part of a we. “Let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request,” Queen Esther said. “For we have been sold, my people and I” (Esther 7:3-4). Esther cast her lot in with the entire people. Esther risked punishment for brazenly approaching the King this way. Esther risked death if Haman’s decree were carried out in the end. And Esther also risked ridicule and rejection at the hands of a man she called husband. What would he think when he learned that his beloved and beautiful Esther was … one of them? Queen Esther of Shushan—a Jew! Queen Esther of Shushan, kin to that “certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king’s laws” (Esther 3:8)!

And yet, here stands Queen Esther, tall and proud and beautiful, saying four short but immeasurably brave words: “my people and I.” Esther’s revelation could have brought death and destruction. Instead, the King changed his mind about the Jews, letting their actions (and not Haman’s lies or stereotypes) speak to their values.

When I think about Queen Esther, I think about my old rainbow necklace. I think about how I hid behind that symbol, used it—more often than not—to push people away.

We can let symbols cover and hide us like masks, like walls to keep insiders in and outsiders out. Or we can use symbols to remind us that we belong to something larger than ourselves, a Jewish community that lives Jewish values.

Now, when I think about my rainbow necklace, I think about other models for living our values and revealing our identities: Queen Esther pleading for the Jews not in the dispassionate voice of a humanitarian queen but with the very personal cry, “my people and I.”


[This post reflects my own views and does not necessarily represent the views of the congregation I am privileged to serve.]

Fast, with All Your Heart, All Your Soul, All Your Being

[The following is my sermon for Kol Nidre, the evening that begins Yom Kippur, at Temple Beth Am, Monessen, PA. The views expressed here are my own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the community I am honored to serve this year.]

Catholics traditionally fast on Ash Wednesday, the first day of the season of Lent, a time to prepare spiritually for Easter. Raised Catholic, I fasted each year—not at the insistence of my parents or my teachers, but from my own desire to do my religion “right.”

I fainted each year, too.

As an adult convert to Judaism, I struggle with Yom Kippur and the fast. Why do I fast? How do I fast? Do I continue the same fast of my childhood, the one that inevitably leads to fainting? What does that fast teach me? Does it help me turn back to God? Fasting to the point of fainting treads dangerously into the territory of donating money just to get the recognition, into the territory of “I-am-more-observant-than-you.” I am not sure what I learned from these fasts, what I learned about God and my spiritual and ethical duties.

In some ways the opposite of the Lenten fast, which precedes what Christians call the renewal of Easter, the Yom Kippur fast comes after the renewal of our year. We have eaten the apples and the honey, and now we stand, shrouded in white as we will in our own graves, standing before an Ark empty and stark as a coffin (for this analogy, I am indebted to my teacher, Rabbi Dr. Lawrence A. Hoffman). Our tradition calls us to know, in our minds and our hearts and our bodies, that we are mortal and fragile. That this life is temporary. We become more aware of our bodies.

Yet many people assert just the opposite: fasting takes us out of the physical, and into the spiritual. Relying on a stark divide between body and soul, religious leaders (not only in Judaism but in other spiritual traditions as well) claim that we can pay better attention to the “spiritual” when we “overcome” the physical. In an online forum, Orthodox rabbi Mendy Hecht calls Yom Kippur “G-d’s designated annual day of total spirituality,” a day on which we do things “that make us like the angels the most” instead of things “that make us like animals the most.” Yom Kippur makes us less human, some people say, and that’s a good thing; humans are bogged down in the physical, in necessity and desire. We should strive to be more spiritual, more like the angels.

It’s a big fad: spiritual fasting. A few weeks ago, I browsed the bookstore at the Pittsburgh Airport and found dozens of Christian evangelical books and journals on fasting for spiritual insight. You can buy fasting kits online, complete with promises that days of consuming just vegetable broth will give you a “natural high,” that it will rid your body of otherwise unspecified toxins, that it will bring you closer to God. Fasting websites abound with language of “discipline,” “submission,” and “control”: fasts are supposed to make you a “servant” or a “soldier” for God; no longer dependent on food, you can focus instead on serving the spiritual.

Yet today, we stand, shrouded in the color of burial and death, very likely aware of our bodies—as we will likely be even more so tomorrow, as Ne’ilah approaches. We come here tonight in the spirit of teshuva, turning, repenting. We reflect on our actions over the past year, all the things we have sown, and we come face to face with what we will reap. We come with the sound of the shofar still ringing in our ears, a clarion call for us to live Jewishly, a plea for God to remember the covenant.

In Leviticus, we read “In the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, you shall afflict yourselves and do no work […]. For this day will atone for you, to purify you from all your sins; before God you will be purified. It is a Sabbath of Sabbaths for you, and you shall afflict yourselves” (16:29-31). Is all our fasting about affliction?

In the Book of Samuel, King David fasts in an attempt to effect change. The prophet Nathan has just confronted David with the grievous sin he committed with Bathsheba, who was another man’s wife. David not only violated the marriage, but arranged for the husband to be killed in battle. God vows to punish David’s household. The guilty David suffers, watching his innocent son, born to Bathsheba, fall critically ill. “David entreated God for the boy; David fasted, and he went in and spent the night lying on the ground” (2 Samuel 12: 16). David’s servants try to get him to eat, but he refuses. After seven days, the child dies, and David’s servants fear what he will do when he learns of this tragedy. But David does not continue his fasting; instead, he bathes, puts on fresh clothes, and bows down in the Temple. He returns home and breaks his fast. His servants are confused: “[N]ow that the child is dead, you rise and take food!” they wonder aloud. David answers, “While the child was still alive, I fasted and wept because I thought: ‘Who knows? The Eternal may have pity on me, and they child may live.’ But now that he is dead, why should I fast? Can I bring him back again?’” (2 Samuel 12:22-23).

Perhaps David’s fast is like ours: we plead, we afflict ourselves, we wonder whether God is paying attention to our suffering, and we hope that God will forgive us before the Gates close at Ne’ilah. Rabbi Michael Strassfeld writes of our Yom Kippur fast, “We are meant to feel that the natural course of our existence is suspended on this day while our lives, or at least the quality of our lives, hang in the balance. We are to face what a permanent suspension of existence—death—would be like, and thus to learn how to better embrace life” (Strassfeld, The Jewish Holidays, 111). This fast is not a self-absorbed attempt to have spiritual visions or a pointless test of our self-control. At the end of our fast, like David, we return to the rhythm of our lives, hopefully more aware of not only our capacity to miss the mark, but our capacity to make things right.

Why do we fast? Not to prove to ourselves that we can. Not to prove to others how observant we are. While the discipline of a fast can remind us viscerally of the discipline required for teshuva, turning or repentance, our fast cannot end there. We spend a day in self-assessment and public confession, as individuals and as a community. We make amends for past wrongs and we make resolutions for the future. Strassfeld writes, “Yom Kippur is supposed to lead from thought to deed—from looking at ourselves to transforming the way we act” (Strassfeld 119). This, indeed, is the message of the haftarah passage we will read tomorrow, from the prophet Isaiah: “Is this the fast I desire, a day for men to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush and lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, a day when the Eternal is favorable? No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe him, and not to ignore your own kin” (Isaiah 58:5-7). In turning our attention to one another, to the most vulnerable among us—in being present for one another, God in turn will be present for us. As Isaiah says, “When you call the Eternal will answer; when you cry, he will say, Hineini, Here I am!” (Isaiah 58:9).

Spiritual fasting websites claim that fasting will not only rid your body of harmful toxins but will give you a direct experience of that hineini, that presence of God—the feeling that something Divine is listening to you, looking out for you. Writer David Rakoff, who is basically an atheist, embarked on one of these fasts, paying three hundred dollars in exchange for email consultations and a strict regimen for a twenty-day fast: three days of restricted intake on either end, and fourteen days of a very limited liquid diet of broth and herbal tea. He wondered whether he would shed not only toxins and weight but the rationalism that kept him away from all things spiritual. He wanted enlightenment and clarity and focus—all virtues the website promised he could gain through denying his physical body. He thought the experience would show him something new, like “a new color,” something impossible, something he had never seen before (This American Life, Episode 259, “Promised Land”).

But Rakoff did not experience peace or tranquility or insight. He didn’t have visions. He felt sleepy, he reported at first, and he had a hard time concentrating. As the fast continued, he felt better, focused—but no new insights. On day six, he worried that something had gone terribly wrong; he felt faint. He got reassurance from his doctor, who was skeptical and would have preferred that Rakoff end this quest. But he continued with the fast, which he calls “self-obsessed”: twenty days of “narcissistic rumination” that served to increase what the writer calls his “usual feelings of venality and guilt.” Fasting doesn’t solve anything for him, doesn’t reassure him that life and the universe have a purpose. Toward the end of the ordeal, Rakoff recalls a slight feeling of detachment; he was “aware” of the problems in his life, but they didn’t matter as much to him. Worried that he had gone about the fast incorrectly, he called a woman who has fasted like this five times. She reported a radical cleansing of her body; she saw and felt the toxins released. “You feel like you’re new,” she said, “like you’re a new person […] your highest self” (This American Life). Is this the fast we desire?

About halfway through his fast, Rakoff rode the subway in New York City. I will try to retell the story as he told it on the radio: “One night on the subway, I see a woman at the end of the car. She leans over to the people sitting next to her and asks in a quiet, friendly, almost business-like tone, ‘Do you have any extra food I can buy off of you?’ I can only hear her because the train is silent. She isn’t standing in the middle of the car addressing us. She’s just asking those within earshot. I walk over and give the woman a dollar before I get off at Union Square. ‘But do you have any extra food?’ she asks me. I apologize and say that I do not have any extra food. But I know in that moment that there is neither clarity nor serenity enough in the world that would give me the chutzpah to tell her why not” (This American Life).

Is this the fast God desires? Is this the fast we, as a Jewish community, seek on Yom Kippur? Choosing not to eat so that we can gain something for ourselves, some kind of insight or spiritual experience—choosing not to eat while others go hungry? Rakoff saw the sadness in fasting for “spiritual enlightenment,” out of choice and whim and as an intellectual experiment, in the midst of a city where too many people go home hungry, or can go to no home at all. The woman on the subway asked quietly not just for food, but for extra food. She did not want others to go hungry to feed her, but she wanted something to eat. Such a fast gets it backwards: we pay so much attention to our own bodies, to ourselves, that we cannot see the person in need right before our eyes.

What matters tonight and tomorrow is not what passes our lips, not the form our fast takes. We each make our own decisions about our health as we decide how to restrict the intake of food and water and the pleasures of the body denied to us on Yom Kippur. What matters is not that we torture ourselves or punish ourselves. What matters is not that we go on a spiritual quest for visions and enlightenment.

What matters is that our fast awakens us in ways the shofar call did not—awakens us to the fragility of our lives, to our role as partners with God in bringing about a just society. What matters is that we face the empty Ark, dressed as the dead are dressed, with a new awareness of our duty to clothe the naked, to feed the hungry, and to welcome the stranger. What matters is not that we think today alone about our bodies, but that we carefully consider each day what we eat, where it comes from, who prepares it, how they are paid and treated.

God, through the prophet Joel, declares that our fast is desirable. God instructs us, “Turn back to Me with all your hearts, and with fasting, weeping, and lamenting” (Joel 2:13). But this fast cannot be a show. “Rend your hearts rather than your garments,” God urges (Joel 2:13).

May our fast move us, in our very being, to turn our lives toward the care of the neglected, the vulnerable, and the lonely. May we be partners with God in caring for one another.