Rabbi Jason Miller

Friday, November 26, 2004

Parshat Vayishlach – D'var Torah for Camp Ramah Canada

by Rabbi Jason A. Miller

Our parsha this week tells of the transformation of an individual, our forefather Jacob. This personal transformation also lays the foundation for the creation of a people, Israel. The Torah teaches that Jacob was left alone in the dark when an angel wrestled with him until the break of dawn. When Jacob’s adversary saw that he had not prevailed against him, he dislocated Jacob’s hip at its socket. He then pleaded that Jacob let him go, but Jacob would not let him go until he was blessed. At this point our ancestor’s name is altered from “Jacob” to “Israel.”

During the course of a summer at Camp Ramah (and throughout several summers as well) campers experience a personal transformation much like Jacob. Many campers find that Camp Ramah is a comfortable venue for wrestling with one’s Jewish identity. The summer is a time for self-discovery and renewal. It is a time for both campers and staff to engage in the opportunities and challenges of wrestling with God and matters of faith and spirituality. May we all celebrate in the blessing of our children who have the Ramah experience to struggle, seek, change, and grow. Perhaps it is truly during the summer that our future generations show us the path from simply being like Jacob, lonlely strugglers, to becoming Israel, our holy community.

Thursday, November 25, 2004

Happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family

Thanksgiving: the American Sukkot?

LINDA MOREL
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

Did you know that Thanksgiving is really a Jewish holiday?

Although Thanksgiving is not on the Jewish calendar, historians believe Sukkot may have inspired America's favorite farewell to fall, often nicknamed "Turkey Day."

"The pilgrims based their customs on the Bible," says Gloria Kaufer Greene, author of the "New Jewish Holiday Cookbook" (Times Books, $29.95 hardcover). "They knew that Sukkot was an autumn harvest festival, and there is evidence that they fashioned the first Thanksgiving after the Jewish custom of celebrating the success of the year's crops."

Linda Burghardt, author of "Jewish Holiday Traditions" (Citadel Press, $24.95 hardcover), says, "Sukkot is considered a model for Thanksgiving. Both holidays revolve around showing gratitude for a bountiful harvest."

Today Thanksgiving is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, but President Franklin Roosevelt didn't propose this timing until 1939.

It was Abraham Lincoln who made Thanksgiving a national holiday. Roosevelt actually changed Lincoln's decree that Thanksgiving be observed on the last Thursday in November, which sometimes fell on the fifth Thursday of the month.

The pilgrims invited local Indians to the first Thanksgiving during the fall of 1621. Historians speculate that this celebration occurred somewhere between Sept. 21 and Nov. 9, but most likely in early October, around the time of Sukkot.

"Originally, Sukkot entailed a pilgrimage to Jerusalem," says Greene, who believes the two holidays share much in common. [...more...]

Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Question: What is the truest definition of Globalization?

Answer: Princess Diana's death.

Question: How come?

Answer: An English princess with an Egyptian boyfriend crashes in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian who was drunk on Scottish whisky, (check the bottle before you change the spelling) followed closely by Italian Paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles; treated by an American doctor, using Brazilian medicines.

This is sent to you by a Canadian, using Bill Gates's technology, and you are probably reading this on your computer, that uses Taiwanese chips, and a Korean monitor, assembled by Bangladeshi workers in a Singapore plant, transported by Indian lorry-drivers, hijacked by Indonesians, unloaded by Sicilian longshoremen, and trucked to you by Mexican illegals.....

That, my friends, is Globalization.

Monday, November 22, 2004

Mazel Tov to Dr. Ali Mendelson and Rabbi Jeremy Winaker

A joyous occasion borne of a sad one. [photo by: Suzy Allman for The New York Times]

By MARCELLE S. FISCHLER

Published by the New York Times
November 21, 2004

When 6-year-old Henry Strongin Goldberg was being treated for Fanconi anemia, a bone marrow disorder, at a Washington hospital in 2002, he liked to play with Dr. Ali Meredith Mendelson, a pediatric resident. One day, he sat in a lotus position on his bed, tethered to an I.V. Dr. Mendelson assumed the same position on a chair and, like buddies with a secret pact, they hummed "Ommm."

"She has an incredible ability to be extremely professional and direct and trustworthy as a medical doctor but with a passionate heart, someone you would want to take care of your child," said Laurie Strongin, Henry's mother.

That September, Dr. Mendelson slipped into a back row at Adas Israel Congregation, a Conservative temple, for Henry's funeral. She noticed the man one seat over had a bare ring finger and knew the prayers.

After the service, Dr. Mendelson asked him how he knew Henry. He said he had not had the good fortune to know the child.

Dr. Mendelson, 30, pressed on.

"So what are you doing here?" she asked.

The man, Jeremy Adam Winaker, 31, replied that he was the new assistant rabbi. He told Dr. Mendelson he wanted to get to know Henry as best he could, even in death.

Suddenly something clicked. Dr. Mendelson realized that she was speaking to the Rabbi Winaker who knew her sister, Alysa Mendelson Graf, an associate rabbi in Westport, Conn. Rabbi Mendelson Graf had become friendly with Rabbi Winaker in the fall of 2000 in Jerusalem, where they were studying for the rabbinate. When Rabbi Winaker was moving to Washington, Rabbi Mendelson Graf urged him and her sister to connect. They both ignored her.

Dr. Mendelson had tried online dating services in a quest for a mate who enjoyed going to synagogue. But "I had dated a rabbi before," she said. "I didn't want to get into that political drama."

Rabbi Winaker, meanwhile, had congregants clamoring to set him up. "It's very hard to be a single young rabbi in a large urban community," he said.

A few weeks after Henry's funeral, Rabbi Mendelson Graf and a friend began plotting again. They persuaded Rabbi Winaker to call her sister.

Soon Rabbi Winaker was running to the hospital late at night to be with Dr. Mendelson.

"He'd be sitting there working on a sermon. I'd be dealing with some kid's ventilator," Dr. Mendelson said. Three weeks after their first date, he professed his love.

"He gets what I am going through in a way that a businessman would not," she said. "I'm not afraid of what he is dealing with. It's very much reality, very much cycle of life."

But the cycle of life includes light moments, too. Fellow clergy members say Rabbi Winaker oozes sappiness like melting cheese. He cries at sad movies and spends hours cooking gourmet meals for the sabbath. And Dr. Mendelson's friends describe her as "bubbly," "goofy" and a "girlie girl."

In October 2003, Rabbi Winaker scattered rose petals over a game of Scrabble in Dr. Mendelson's apartment, dropped to one knee and proposed. In August the couple moved to Mount Kisco, N.Y., where Rabbi Winaker is now the senior rabbi at Bet Torah Synagogue.

At their wedding Nov. 13 at the Fountainhead, a caterer in New Rochelle, N.Y., Dr. Mendelson wore a beaded satin gown and a tiara. Her betrothed danced toward her surrounded by friends for the signing of the marriage contract.

Later, Rabbi Winaker donned a white ritual robe as he stood under a huppah fashioned from Dr. Mendelson's purple and white prayer shawl. And Ms. Strongin and Allen Goldberg danced together for the first time since their son died.

"This is a sign that life continues, and it continues with Henry in it," Ms. Strongin said. "Not just for us but for Ali and Jeremy, too."

Sunday, November 21, 2004

Racism Studies Find Rational Part of Brain Can Override Prejudice

From the Wall Street Journal (11-19-04)

By SHARON BEGLEY

When scientists theorize about why racism is pervasive -- so much so that some have suggested it is hard-wired into us -- they come up with something like this: Back when humans were venturing out of the species' birthplace in east Africa, each little band mostly kept to itself.

But occasionally someone, searching for food or territory or maybe adventure, came upon someone unfamiliar, from a different band.

He could wait for the thoughtful, cognitive part of his brain to assess the stranger. Or he could follow the instincts of the primitive, vigilance and wariness-inducing part of his brain, instantly identifying the guy as an outsider and then either running like heck or assaulting him. With this reaction, he was more likely to live and reproduce. We, the descendants of such people, inherited their genetically based brain modules, which reflexively classify people as "like me" or "unlike me." And thus was racism wired into humankind.

Leave aside that this fable is impossible to test and rests on a questionable assumption (at the dawn of human history, people looked pretty much alike even if they belonged to different bands). It has nevertheless exerted a powerful hold on the imaginations of those who regard racism as a fundamental and therefore inevitable human attribute. More evidence: Although many white Americans consider themselves unbiased, when unconscious stereotypes are measured, some 90% implicitly link blacks with negative traits (evil, failure).

But recent studies challenge the conclusion that racism is natural and unavoidable.

Evidence that we are wired for racism comes from studies in which whites were shown pictures of black faces. That typically produced a spike in activity in the part of the brain, called the amygdala, that is the source of wariness and vigilance, responding automatically and emotionally to possible threats. The greater the whites' negative attitude toward blacks, as measured on the unconscious-stereotyping test, the greater the activity in the amygdala when they saw black faces, compared with the activity when they saw white ones. (Data from studies in which blacks saw white faces are less clear-cut.)

But that primitive response is not inevitable. In a new study, researchers found that it indeed occurred when the faces were flashed for 30 milliseconds, so quickly that they could be seen only subconsciously. There was no such difference in amygdala activity, however, when the white volunteers saw faces for 525 milliseconds, scientists led by William Cunningham of the University of Toronto will report next month in the journal Psychological Science.

Instead, there was greater activity in the prefrontal cortex and the anterior cingulate. Both regions are associated with higher thought and with inhibition and control of reflexive responses. This suggests that the thoughtful, rational part of the brain snuffed out the prejudicial response that would have otherwise popped up from the amygdala. In fact, people who showed the most unconscious bias on the test of unconscious stereotyping, and thus had the most to control, also showed the greatest activation of higher brain functions when they saw black faces.

"If people have a chance, they can modify or override the emotional response with the cognitive regions of their brain," says Prof. Cunningham.

Although you might think that racism is fundamental and inevitable because it emanates from a primitive part of the brain, even if we can override it with a higher region, Prof. Cunningham demurs: "It's silly to say that these automatic reactions are the true you," or that they are any more "you" than thoughtful reactions that reflect consciousness and beliefs.

Consider what happened when white volunteers looked at yearbook photos of black or white faces for two seconds to determine any of three things: if they were over 21, if there was a dot on the face, or if the person depicted looked as if he or she liked a particular vegetable.

There was no extra activity in the amygdala when the whites looked for a dot on a black face, found psychologist Susan Fiske of Princeton University. They were probably seeing the faces not as faces but as mere background for a dot, so no racist feelings surfaced. But there was a spike in amygdala activity when the whites scrutinized the black faces to assess age. Categorizing someone for one purpose (age) seemed to activate stereotypes of another category (race).

But then the volunteers looked at black faces to assess their affinity for asparagus (or celery, or carrots). There was no amygdala spike. Why? This task forced the volunteers to see black faces as those of unique individuals. That inhibited what Prof. Fiske calls "category-based emotional responses" generated by the amygdala.

"Prejudice is not inevitable," she concludes in a paper to be published in January. To the contrary. With a conscious goal to see someone as unique, the default response -- race-based and stereotyped -- "can evaporate. We have some control over how we look at people. You're not responsible for what goes into your head -- and people are fooling themselves if they think they can be colorblind -- but we are responsible for what we do with that information."