In Other Words . . .

When there are no words, turning to someone wiser helps. I share the sentiments expressed by Rabbi Rubenstein of Harvard University Hillel to the incoming students. I offer it to you with his permission:

. . . "Our time is a fraught and contested one: the headlines from America to Israel and across the globe surprise and worry us; we get our news from diverse and irreconcilable sources; the frameworks through which we have long understood the world now come up short in helping us navigate our rapidly shifting reality. 

How are we to move through these times - together, as individuals and a community - and not merely live, but make choices and, when necessary, sacrifices of which we are proud? Two very different approaches recommend themselves and - as it always does - the Jewish tradition holds both of them, “these and these are the words of the living God.” So we live them both at Harvard Hillel.

One stance is to seize the day, roll up our sleeves, and enter into the fray - to be, as Teddy Roosevelt put it, “in the arena.” Confronted by forces of hatred or intolerance, we organize, recruit allies, strategize, and fight to win. Jews - from at least the time Esther, and certainly since Herzl, have been consistent, energetic, and effective political actors. From building a state to creating and sustaining the organs of communal life and advocacy in America and elsewhere - our people knows the work of accruing and deploying power, in tune with the times and responsive to emergent stresses and possibilities. 

And there is another stance, one with at least as deeply-rooted a tradition in Judaism: the retreat from politics into the timeless cycle of holidays and the eternity of the Torah. Captured well by Arik Einstein, this tradition goes very deep: I remember my teacher Seth Schwartz asserting that the most stable and distinctive feature of traditional Rabbinic writing - from the Mishna through the modern giants - is that it is nearly impossible to discern anything about the political climate of the piece or its author. A given responsum could equally have been written under the Hapsburgs, the Czars, or during the Risorgimento; any piece of Talmud could have been produced under Roman (pagan or Christian) or Persian rule - each is defined by an internally-defined set of rules and ideas, a chain of teachers and students that stands impervious to the headlines and upheavals of the day or even the era." . . .

A minsister I know used to end each Sunday service this way:

"Peace, Shalom, Shanti. Now go and do as you see fit".

Amen!

Making US Great Again in My Little Town?

In my little town

I grew up believing

God keeps his eye on us all

And he used to lean upon me

As I pledged allegiance to the wall

Lord, I recall my little town

Coming home after school

Flying my bike past the gates of the factories

My mom doing the laundry

Hanging out shirts in the dirty breeze

And after it rains there's a rainbow

And all of the colors are black

It's not that the colors aren't there

It's just imagination they lack

Everything's the same back in my little town*

That is until now when this happened to my little town

 DHS and its US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arm are calling the operation Patriot 2.0, modifying the name of a May deportation surge that led to the arrest of 1,500 people in the state, according to the reports.**

When the streets look less safe for kids after school flying their bikes on the streets where they live, the "good ol' days" are gone, never to be "great again".

My heart goes out to Massachusetts from Boston to the Berkshires where music, medicine, education are hallmarks for one and all. The "bluest" state, as it is often called has a very long history where the American Revolution began in Lexington on the Green. Each April that moment of resistance is re-enacted in real time. To witness it is a reminder that ordinary people, holding their own against powerful people, stood up for US. We have been their legacy for nearly 250 years. We owe them something in return. Standing up against powerful people is democracy more than that one precious vote. Standing up against powerful people empowers everyone. Boston is no stranger to empowering one another when the time comes.

https://www.nps.gov/mima/road-to-revolution.htm

*https://lyrics.lyricfind.com/

**https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/06/trump-administration-immigration-crackdown-massachusetts

"The Man Without a Country"

This story has haunted me since fifth grade, the same year of my awakening to boys and the disruption that liking one brought to friendships with girls. I was eleven years-old, and a good day was when I sat by the classroom window and daydreamed my way into other places like Mesopotamia on the exotic Silk Road. It was the year music took hold of my life through Mr. Filiatro, the first choral conductor introduced to the school. Let's just say, it was a year!

The teacher, whose name I no longer recall, assigned the short story by Edward Everett Hale that has stuck with me ever since. Over the years I have returned to re-read it in part or in total, most recently listening to it on a long train ride. The story published in 1863 hasn't changed, of course, but I see it differently each time it crosses my mind, compelling me to take another look. Today, in our ever-changing world, I am going back to that story, summed up in its title, with yet another understanding of the poignancy of being exiled from one's own country, never to return.

The main character lives aboard ships at sea for decades, never setting foot again on his homeland as punishment for renouncing his country in a trial for treason alongside infamous, Aaron Burr. Once his words: "Damn the United States! I wish I may never hear of the United States again!" left his lips in the court of law, his fate is sealed.

HIs life devoid of news from his own country sears his soul. He misses her terribly like a lost love. "The Man Without a Country" confirms in our hearts and in our collective soul and mind, the deep meaning of homeland. Many, many people have been forced to leave their own homelands to live in some other country due to violence, starvation, lawlessness, and all manner of oppression at home. Over time, the refugee settles into the new homeland, calling it home. Roots are not deep, but needs run with the land in which they have come. America, despite its own egregious trampling of indigenous stakeholders, has been for centuries the sought after homeland, come hell or high water.

A few years ago, I stood on the borderland at the Rio Grande River which was almost a trickle that day. I imagined crossing from my homeland to the other. What would it take to renounce the place where I started my life story? I remembered a time in Guatemala where I felt the oppression of the young men carrying machine guns and femicide, the murder of women without impunity, is the norm. Oppression so blatant as to force one into those waters is the great motivator.

How much has changed since that day on those banks when the border patrol shooed me on my way after asking if I was an American. "Yes", I stated unequivocally. What about all those others who know this land as home, but cannot say yes to that question? They are living some place in-between in exile without a country here or there in no-man's land.

We all know someone who made choices long ago that have landed them neither here nor there. They have contributed their talents, sweat and ideas to THIS homeland. If they are ousted against their will or voluntarily they take that with them wherever they go. The loss is ours as much as theirs.

The epitaph of Philip Nolan, Lieutenant in the Army of the United States, was written by his own hand aboard ship: "He loved his country as no other man has loved her; but no man deserved less at her hands".

 https://riheritagehalloffame.com/Rev-Edward-Hale/

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