A Summer of Protest: How to Respond?

Dear Friends,

Most summers, we think about vacation and getting away from it all for rest and relaxation. As this summer ends, think protest. Picking up from the Arab Spring and the power of community organizing the world over, we have seen the potential of human networking to challenge the status quo. Now we are seeing the same force at work in Israel, but unlike the violence so common elsewhere, in Israel the protests have showcased Israel’s vibrant democracy.

Originally a small uprising by young citizens of Tel-Aviv who were frustrated by the lack of affordable housing options, the Tent Protest – as it is now affectionately called – has taken Israel by storm. This is still true despite the complicated national security issues that the country has recently faced and still faces in the near future (the terrorist attack near Eilat and ensuing missile barrage, deteriorating relations with Turkey and the upcoming UN vote on Palestinian statehood).

The protests have brought together people from all walks of Israeli life to ask difficult questions about social justice in Israeli society.

Every major newspaper picked up some aspects of the story. The small country that brought us the kibbutz and the moshav showed the world the way to make a more just and equal society. But now, those old assumptions about creating parity are being profoundly questioned. And it’s a good thing.

Like the voice of Isaiah the prophet, we must ask ourselves how to make our society reflect our deepest held values. And people across the globe are no longer leaving that to leaders. They are taking it into their own hands and not waiting for politicians and talking heads. Israel is beginning a critical conversation about what an equitable society has to look like today.

As the summer of tents nears its end, let’s hope this spirit of public engagement continues and let’s hope that leaders catch on and catch up. We’re looking for more inspiration from our leadership, and if we don’t get it, we’re going to do something about it ourselves. And for some good reading, take a look at an impressive report put out by the Jewish Agency on how we can achieve change (www.makomsummerprotests.wordpress.com).

Misha

Thinking About Loss

Dear Friends,

A few weeks ago, Natan Sharansky was in New York at the time of his mother’s yartzheit, the anniversary of his mother’s death. He needed a minyan to recite Kaddish, a prayer we recite over those we have loved and lost. It‘s not hard to find a minyan in New York, and my friend Michael Paley from UJA Federation of NY quickly organized one.

Natan said the Kaddish, and Michael asked him to say a few words about his mother. Natan talked about how she fought on his behalf and took trips to the Gulag to visit him, knowing full well that the guards wouldn’t let her see Natan. Once or twice she actually got through with a warning not to say anything about what she saw, the obviously horrible conditions of the Gulag. But, like mother/like son, she had press conferences about everything she witnessed the moment she got back. She was clearly a woman who would not take “no” for an answer. She believed in the impossible and was not afraid, and clearly passed on those same qualities to her son.

Standing there in that group that was pulled together last minute, I was thinking about the nature of a minyan - a communal event that brings together people to acknowledge a loss in one person’s life. The centrality of Kaddish is remarkable in our tradition. We require a community of other Jews to hear acknowledge the life of another person, even the life of a stranger. Everyone has a story of loss and of joy. In these moments, we learn and teach others.

In our everyday lives, we don’t have many moments when we can gather people together so that the personal and the communal can intersect, when our routines merge with ritual, history and personal narrative. Our tradition carries great wisdom.

But as I listened to Natan’s story, I also wondered if this sense of bonding will exist in the future. Will our children and grandchildren who are not steeped in the tradition reap these benefits? Will they celebrate moments of darkness and light within a community of faith and ritual? I do not know, but I know that we as a community can no longer be complacent when thinking about questions of meaning.

Misha

Celebrating our Independence and Taking Responsibility

Dear Friends,

Today is Israel’s 63rd Independence Day. Every year, as Israel grows stronger and plays a greater role in world affairs, we have more to celebrate. But today, I want to ask you to do something more meaningful than eat hummus and wave an Israeli flag.

Not everyone in Israel who fights for independence is independent. Gilad Shalit, an Israeli solder, was captured at the age of 20 by Hamas on June 25, 2006 in a cross-border operation. Here we are, almost five years later, and there is a very important person who cannot celebrate Israel’s independence with us because he is not free.

Recently, the head of Israel’s Shin Bet, Yuval Diskin, shared his single greatest regret as he left office. He failed to bring Shalit home to his parents. The newspaper in Israel reported his words. “I do not share my responsibility with anyone else for the Shalit affair,” Diskin declared. “I did not manage to bring Gilad home and to facilitate his return. I see this as my obligation and as my responsibility. As the head of the Shin Bet, I am saddened.” He took accountability for this mistake, but he is not the only one.

Where are we? What have each of us done to bring Gilad home? How can we think of celebrating Israel’s birthday with one candle missing? We can’t. I ask you today to honor Israel by honoring those who defend it, only one day after Yom Ha-zikaron, Israel’s day to remember fallen soldiers. Five years is five years too many. We have not protested enough. We have not written enough letters. We have not let enough congressmen know. Your help is one click away.

Give Israel a present for its birthday. Help Israel bring Gilad back.

Misha

Writing from Berlin

Dear Friends,

I write to you from Berlin, from a very emotional place. I was just at the Gleinecker Bridge with my friend and colleague,Natan Sharansky, Chairman of the Jewish Agency for Israel. Gleinecker was the bridge to a new life for Natan and the site from where he finally left behind the Soviet authorities and crossed over to freedom. The road ahead would eventually take him to Jerusalem and to a new life with Avital and to the role of an international hero for the Jewish people.

Today marks my own anniversary of freedom. It is 35 years since I came to the U.S. from Russia, just before Passover. I remember it as if it were yesterday. We all have different bridges we cross in the transitions we make as we mature. We do this as individuals and we do this as a people.

Every year at Passover we retell an ancient story that has contemporary resonances. It is a story of the passage from oppression to freedom that repeats itself in our history, our master narrative. It is a story that inspires us to fight against social injustices because we were once oppressed. It is a story that instructs us to embrace the stranger as in our history we have so often been strangers.

Today, there are over 200,000 Russian-speaking Jews in Germany, a million in Israel, 700,000 in North America. The scope of these numbers is larger than the original exodus. In so many ways, the movement for Soviet Jewry was the last real "peoplehood" initiative. Through this movement, we invoked our master story and nurtured the values it gave us to create that fighting spirit forever emblazed in the cause Let my people go.

We need to recapture that spirit. We have organizations. We also need causes. Every year we must see ourselves as reliving history when we gather at the Seder. For me, being in Berlin has been that kind of moment in time. I know that when I sit at my family’s Seder this year, I will think about our people and the bridges we have had to cross to freedom. In addition to the Four Questions, I will ask myself and my children what we must do to ensure the freedom of others.

Have a joyous Passover.

Misha

Laying the Foundation for Leadership

Dear Friends,

There is a midrash on the strange expression in Genesis “Let us make man.” Just who is God talking to in this story if no one has been created yet? One explanation I like is that God was actually speaking to Adam and Eve, asking them to partner in the creation of a human being. The idea of partnering in the act of creation of the self is very powerful for me as a psychologist.

I say this because I just came back from the Jewish Agency Board of Governors’ meeting in Jerusalem. Such meetings are held only three times a year, bringing together professionals and 120 board members from all around the world.

We had a lot of goals to meet. We needed to refocus and deepen our work with currently existing programs, like Masa and Birthright. We also had to discuss key strategic changes, a new organizational structure and the actual programs we need to support this new vision. We heard about cutting-edge programs to service our vision from experts in the field so that we could make well-informed choices. That’s a lot of work for only a few days, and it took days of planning and a whole team of people to make sure that we accomplished our goals.

But what energized me most was an underlying attitude change that we have been trying to implement. We want to change the way that lay leaders and professionals work together and with our client population to achieve maximum efficiency and maximum meaning in what we do. A lot of people wonder, “What do lay leaders really do?” It’s a fair question, and one I want to answer with the help of John Carver, the guru of governance.

Carver once wrote: “Governance is a ‘downward’ extension of ownership, not an ‘upward’ extension of management.” What he meant was that we must all be stakeholders in owning our institutions. We have to put our energies into deepening our understanding of the organization, its missions and its desired outcomes. We have to work together - in partnership - making genuine choices about new directions.

At the last meeting, we made Carver’s words into a reality. We laid the foundations for real policy-making together. We allowed experts to guide us in making our decisions well.

The lay/professional relationship can be challenging, but it can also be profoundly rewarding when we work in true partnership. That’s what excited me most about the last Board of Governors’ meeting. To echo Genesis, “let us make” something great together. And it was good.

Misha