Debate Preview: How to Win an Election

In all of politics there are two universal constants—incumbents and challengers. During the lead up to an election each has his or her advantages unique to their position.

An incumbent has the power of incumbency. Incumbents can appear to do things that attract press attention just by doing the job they were elected to do.  They can show up at business openings, hold press conferences, initiate new legislation, propose some new programs, give out awards and appear at ceremonies, or do any of the countless things that will naturally get their doings in the news and their faces on TV.

Consider George Bush’s appearance at ground zero shortly after the attacks of 9.11. President Bush had failed to protect the country from attack and his security apparatus had failed to respond to direct and obvious communications from al Qaeda about an imminent attack and yet his appearance at the debris that was once the World Trade Center and his subsequent “presidential” comments on the “war on terror” enabled him to win a second term.

A challenger has much less ability to make news except as part of his or her campaign itself (unless they already hold some public office, and even this has limited value compared to the higher office they are running for—which the incumbent currently controls). BUT, an incumbent has one thing in the office up for election that the challenger does not have: a record. And here is where the challenger has an inevitable advantage. No matter how praiseworthy an office holder’s record of achievement, no matter how many things that person has done and no matter how many people that person has helped, no one ever achieves everything that everyone wants done. And this gives an opening for criticism to the challenger. (Irony alert:) Short of accusing one’s opponent of failure to cure lyme disease, anything goes.

Consider Ronald Reagan’s criticism of President Carter for the handling of the disastrous hostage situation in Iran and the failed rescue attempt highlighted by the crash of a Sikorsky helicopter. The President had no control over those events, nor was he responsible for the rampant inflation that accompanied his presidency, yet a former movie actor and affable governor of California was able to turn criticism of the President into an electoral victory for himself in 1980.

A challenger can always find something that the incumbent did that was not perfect. And a challenger can always find something that the incumbent did not do at all. This is what will become the basis of any challenger’s attack.

As the presidential debates approach, consider these two challenges each of the two candidates faces. Look to President Obama and watch to see if he seems to be appearing at events in which he looks “presidential.” Of course he can’t help it; he IS the President. But is he taking unfair advantage of his incumbency?

And look at the criticisms of Mitt Romney. Is he finding fault in everything President Obama has done? Is he portraying the President as a total failure, with not a single accomplishment to his credit? In an imperfect world, where compromise is the way anything in politics gets done, is Romney criticizing Obama for compromising? It is easy to do. It is the only way for him to get elected.

But will the public be convinced?

Religious Foundation of Labor Movement

The American labor movement is founded on the deeply held religious principles of our people yet many understandably associate labor with the Left.

Marx, after all, was a champion of labor and many labor organizers sympathized with the egalitarianism of theoretical communism. Yet it is the Bible and subsequent religious teaching that informs our celebration of labor on this final weekend of the summer.

While we grill our burgers and shuck sweet corn and suck a pull of Bud Light with family and friends we should pause to remember why we dedicate this day to those Americans who earn their living with their hands. The reason lies in the Bible, not the Communist Manifesto.

When early labor leaders sought protections for workers from abuse by factory owners they had Deuteronomy on their side: “You shall not abuse a needy and destitute worker… You must pay the wages owed on the same day, before the sun sets, because the worker is needy and urgently depends on it” (Deut. 24:14-15).

But it was not only a fair income that the labor movement sought for its workers. Especially after the Triangle Shirt-waist Factory fire, where the conflagration and horrifying deaths were the consequence of the owner intentionally locking exit doors, labor leaders also fought for safe working conditions.

Whose should prevail? Does the owner have the right to run his factory as he or she wishes and if you don’t like it, work somewhere else? Or do workers have a right to conditions that promote health and safety—even at the involuntary expense of the factory owner?

This is not just a modern controversy. In the 13^th century Judah, the son of Samuel of Ratisbon wrote in The Book of the Pious that an employer may not oppress an employee.

Asserting his authority as a rabbi, he taught, “When someone employs a worker, he should not burden the worker too much or give him more than he can do… Even though the worker may seek it, it is forbidden to burden him more than he can handle.” Eight hundred years later we still value statistics about “productivity” over “quality of life.” We forget that the word “economy” means “quality of life” not “profit.”

The most vulnerable workers in America today are not, thanks to OSHA, those who labor in factories, but those who work in fields. They often lack clean water to drink, somewhere to rest in the shade, or even a place to pee.

They do backbreaking work and if they get sick or hurt they return to the field the next day for fear of otherwise losing their job. Is the fruit of such labor “kosher”? The liberal branches of Judaism say No and forbid the eating of food that comes to the table as a result of oppression.

In 1978 I stood with César Chavez in San Benito, Texas (representing the American Reform rabbinate)—along with religious leaders from churches across the region—in a three-day convocation dedicated to addressing the myriad problems of migrant workers. A religious nation cares about the working conditions of its laborers, about the education of their children as parents follow harvests north from Arizona to the Canadian border, and about the possibility of their rising above this lowest rung of the American ladder.

Today, our guaranteed minimum wage, eight  hour work day, child labor laws, and unemployment compensation reflect American’s effort to make religious values real in our society. Labor unions educated their members and helped immigrants to become integrated into American society.

Many of today’s teachers and other professionals are the grandchildren and great grandchildren of these laborers. As they benefited from increasingly fair labor conditions in America—giving them health, safety, dignity, and a living wage—so should we today dedicate ourselves to nurturing this American dream, this religious vision, to a new generation of immigrants, migrant workers, and factory laborers—who are made more vulnerable than ever by a weaker union movement.

With the globalization of labor that is accompanying an increasing concentration of wealth into fewer and fewer hands, workers need us, more than ever, to follow the teaching in Proverbs, to “Speak up, judge righteously, and champion the poor and the needy” (31:9).

A Valentine's Day Solution

There are two kinds of Americans—those who love Valentine’s Day and those who hate Valentine’s Day. For those who hate Valentine’s Day I have a solution which I’m publishing now in order to give you time to make it happen.

Among the haters of Valentine’s Day are florists. Half their annual revenue comes on this one day. Florists sell a hundred and eighty-nine million roses on February 14.

Among those who hate Valentine’s Day are chocolatiers. Fifty eight million pounds of chocolates are sold in the first half of February—including 35 million heart shaped boxes of chocolates. Eight billion pastel colored hearts proclaiming fidelity on them are also sold in association with the patron saint of love.

On Valentine’s Day it is impossible to get a table at a nice restaurant.

In the week or so leading up to Valentine’s Day jewelers’ counters and mail routes—both underutilized most of the year—are clogged. What to do?

Eureka! A solution is at hand.

The fundamental problem is the same “problem” as Christmas—all that commerce and planning and anticipation and activity is funneled into a single day.  One cannot change Christmas (although some do sensibly celebrate the “twelve days of Christmas”) but one can certainly tamper with Valentine’s Day.

My proposal is to spread it over three days. February 14 would remain the same for unmarried lovers—those for whom nothing as quotidian as a weekday will get in the way of celebrating their love. Then (and here comes the revolution) the following Saturday will be Valentine’s Day for married couples. And, finally, the Sunday a week later will be Valentine’s Day for intergenerational love—when parents, grandparents, and children will shower each other with chocolates and roses and cards and eGreetings and meet at ice cream parlors and cheesecake factories.

The advantages are obvious. Florists will have two or even three weeks to vend their bouquets. Chocolatiers will also have the same extension of time to arrange and sell their delights. Making restaurant reservations will decrease in difficulty by 50%. And by the time the third Valentine’s Day comes around—think of all the sales to take advantage of.

And for some, best of all, you can take out both your lover and your spouse on their proper Valentine’s Day. Soon there may be only one kind of American.

Are trash cans too large?

Starting today, when you think about my opinion, think “garbage.” My own was picked up this morning and I feel guilty. Not about the waste but about the weight of it all.

Remember those 31 gallon aluminum cans that punctuated property lines in the 1950s? You can still get them, but I haven’t seen many in my neighborhood. Instead, I see plastic cans with tops that catch on a rim around the top. They start at 32 gallons. But as I look up and down the street I see much larger ones. I had to replace a Rubbermaid can that, at 32 gallons, came with wheels for convenience and had lasted 15 years. The bottom finally wore off from being dragged along the sidewalk.

So I bought a newer model. It holds 45 gallons of garbage and has larger wheels. I pull it to the curb every Sunday night and don’t think about it again until Monday evening when I come home and return the empty can to its sheltered shed.

But the process of selecting this new can led me to think about who would have to lift it and how difficult that would be. A 45 gallon can, filled with garbage bags, is too heavy for me to lift easily. I’m glad for the wheels. But the sanitation workers who come every Monday morning don’t have it so lucky. They have to carry the can to the truck and lift it up high enough such that the top is lower than the bottom allowing for the contents to spill out. Not just for my can, but for Ryan’s and for Vivian’s and for David’s and for Eric’s and for… well, for everyone in my neighborhood. These men spend their days lifting those cans up high enough to empty them into the compactor.

And a 45 gallon can turns out to be one of the smaller trash cans available at home supply stores. You can buy 64 gallon, even 96 gallon cans. 96 Gallons! That’s three times larger, three times heavier, than the can I bought in 1995 when I first moved to Easton.

Those sanitation workers will have to work as long as we who work with our heads, sitting at desks in air conditioned rooms. They won’t get social security benefits any sooner than you or me. Yet they do all this heavy lifting day after day, coming home with muscles melted and clothes smelling from week old mackerel.

It gets worse. I weeded the other day. Filled my old can (only 32 gallons) with the garden refuse. Even this relatively small can was then too heavy for me to lift. How do they do it?

Rain was in the forecast when I put that can out and I thought about those dutiful men and that extra weight of water. So I put an older mis-matched cover on top of the leaves and branches. Not a pretty sight, but it deflected an inch or two of water.

There are other things we can do to help out these men who relieve us of that which we remove from our homes as quickly as possible. Reasonably sized cans are one way. But there are others. When no rain is forecast, we can remove that cover so they won’t have to pry it off—house after house. Or we can loosen the cover so it rests easily on top and is just as easily removed the next morning. We can put our trash next to our neighbor’s (my own neighbor taught me this by quiet example)—saving the trash collectors a few steps and an extra stop of the truck. We can seal smelly garbage by double bagging it and we can rinse out our cans occasionally with the garden hose. And surely we can be careful not to hide broken glass or pointed or dangerous objects with the trash.

There are rules and restrictions on what sanitation workers have to pick up at our curb but I find that they always try to err on our side—taking things that they could have left behind. They work hard and they keep our community clean. They deserve some consideration and gratitude from us. At least when it comes to trash cans, bigger is not better.

Jews are Democrats

The High Holy Days this year accompany a Presidential election season. Should we retreat from political action and assess our own personal lives or should we see this as an opportunity to reinforce the Torah’s message to be politically active? One need not sacrifice either but I urge you to work for, and vote for, President Obama and a strong Democratic Congress and I say this for Jewish reasons.

The fundamental difference between Republicans and Democrats is this: Republicans believe that America thrives when individuals are left alone to work hard and fulfill their potential. If, in doing this, you make a crappy Corvair or pollute our rivers or use your access to get unfair tax loopholes then the public will not buy your product and the “market” will force you to change your behavior to what is more socially acceptable. Democrats, on the other hand, believe that America will best thrive if we work together as a society to help those who, through no fault of their own, are disadvantaged. Democrats believe in the collective use of our resources (including taxes)—to fund, not just the military and an infrastructure for businesses to profit by (e.g. roads and bridges and police) but also good schools, a clean environment, orchestras, health care, parks, safe and efficient automobiles, a safe and fair workplace…

Christianity is about individual salvation. Judaism is about redemption of the community, the nation of Israel. And so our history in America—a country where Jews have been a part of the voting public since its founding—has been a history of liberalism. Every other ethnic group in this country has voted more conservatively after its immigrant generation—once it became economically secure. The Jews of America, uniquely, continue to vote with the Democratic party, even as we have become as wealthy and as “established” as Episcopalians. The Jews of Beverly Hills are as liberal in their politics as the Jews of Brighton Beach. There is a reason for this.

But assimilation may be taking its toll and this can be measured in our politics. While the Torah demands that our politics work for the immigrant, the poor, and the needy, it is no longer unusual to meet Jews who, without embarrassment, profess to be Republican.  I’m not speaking of the ethnic Orthodox, who have always been more aligned with socially conservative Christians in their un-Jewish opposition to women’s reproductive freedom, marriage equality, public education, etc. I’m speaking of wealthy Jews who, having succeeded economically, are now acting more like those successful Episcopalians. They have every right to vote for their own economic interests, but in doing so, they demonstrate that the American system, not the values of Torah, is governing their politics. Not only assimilation, but overheated anxiety about America’s support for Israel, are taking their toll. What a loss—to America and to Judaism.

If you look up the term “sin” in the (Christian) Interpreters’ Dictionary of the Bible you’ll find an odd final sentence. It reads, “When it comes to repentance there is no Old Testament remedy for sin. Only in the New Testament would that come.” The writer had to ignore the central message of Isaiah in order to say that. In our Yom Kippur haftara reading we recall the prophet’s message, “Wash yourselves clean. Stop doing evil. Learn to do good. Seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of (the vulnerable in society). Though your sins be like scarlet, they can be white as snow" (Isaiah 1). In other words, stop sinning. Start doing good. It is not God’s grace, but rather political action, that will redeem us. We can argue about some of the details about what “doing good” means but the Jewish teaching begins with the obligation to create a just society. This is why Jews have supported Democratic candidates more strongly than any other identifiable group in America—since the beginning. It is no less Jewish an act today.

No Representation? No Taxation!

We don’t know yet whether the Pennsylvania Voter ID law will survive its journey through the commonwealth and then the federal courts. But it is pretty clear to all that the Republicans passed this law to solve no problem other than the fact that more Democrats than Republicans would otherwise vote in the upcoming presidential election.

Governor Corbett, who signed this bill into law, used to be Pennsylvania’s Attorney General. While serving in that office exactly zero cases of voter fraud came to him.

There is no more sacred ritual in a democracy than casting one’s vote. It is an act so embedded in our history and culture that we have been unwilling to consider any change in the act—no matter how much more efficient or easy such changes would make our elections. To vote, one must go to a poll and physically enter one’s choices. You can’t choose to vote through your phone. You can’t vote via an ATM type machine that would give a paper record to enhance a recount if necessary. You can’t send in your vote via email.

Why is this ritual act—of voting in person at our specifically assigned polling place—so fundamental a part of being an American citizen? And what qualifies a person to be able to vote?

It is not the possession of a photo ID. It is not the quality of being an educated citizen. It is not the reward for making oneself well-informed about the issues. It is not about passing a literacy test or about speaking English. It is not even about being an upstanding citizen—without a criminal record (although many would deny felons the right to vote after they have completed their prison sentence).

The centrality of the vote in our country goes back to the Boston Tea Party—an act of defiance against the British government that imposed a tax on tea in the Colonies despite the fact that Americans had no vote or representatives in the British Parliament. It was in this fundamental act of American rebellion that we created a direct connection between taxation and voting. You cannot impose a tax on a people that cannot vote. Or, to put it positively, only a government that allows its people to vote has the right to impose taxes on that people. The legitimate taxation function of government is a direct result of democratic elections.

And now the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would deny that right to vote to anyone who does not have a picture ID.  This is a serious problem. But it invites a serious solution. Any citizen of Pennsylvania who is denied the right to vote should not be required to pay taxes. If the legislature wants all our taxes, it must allow all of us to vote.

Those who care about our democracy can go a step further. So long as the government of Pennsylvania denies the right to vote to some of its citizens, then all of its citizens should withhold their taxes in sympathy. Put them in escrow until the legislature returns the right to vote to all Pennsylvania’s citizens. That is a tea party that every Democrat and Republican of conscience should join.

Turkish Kaddish

This version of the chatzi' kaddish (traditionally chanted between sections of the Jewish worship service) comes from the repertoire of the Turkish synagogue in Vienna in 1881, according to Cantor David Benedict of Temple Israel in Lawrence, NY.  He  arranged and recorded it as part of a vinyl LP published by his synagogue in the early 1950s. It is sung by the Musikakademe Chorus (members of the Vienna Opera Orchestra). The synagogue from which it came was founded in Vienna by Spanish Jews who had fled the Inquisition in 1492 and found a home in Turkey. Cantor Benedict writes, "They remained for approximately 250 years and absorbed Turkish influence. Once again, they were uprooted and a group found refuge in Vienna, where they continued to practice their Spanish-Turkish traditions. The unusual music for the chatzi kaddish is irresistible in its charm and grace. The gentle rise and fall of the cantor's roulades form a lacework pattern, broken only by the amen response of the choir." The language of the chatzi kaddish is Aramaic--spoken by Jews in Judea during the Second Temple (Roman) period of Jewish history. There is no longer any trace in Vienna of the Turkish Synagogue. We revived Cantor Davisdon's arrangement at Temple Covenant of Peace in Easton, Pennsylvania in 1999 where it found a new and welcome home.

http://thepatio.net/kaddish/01 kaddish1.mp3

Biden Assures Nation that the President is a Macho Man

The commentators all seem to think that Vice President Biden goofed with the gaffe that President Obama is virile. Campaigning at New York University April 26, Biden referred to Teddy Roosevelt’s foreign policy that is captured by the phrase “Speak softly (use diplomacy) but carry a big stick (be sure to have a strong military in case diplomacy fails). And then the Vice President looked up from his text and said, very deliberately, “I promise you, the President has a big stick.”

This was not a typical Biden slip of the tongue. It was quite intentional. The Vice President read from a script. He knew exactly what he was saying. He was assuring the nation that their President is manly. How absurd. Some Americans think that the Commander-in-Chief who ordered the destruction of Osama bin Laden is not virile enough to lead the nation. 

It helps explain the irrational perverse and pervasive hatred that some have for the President.  There will always be racists and much of the hatred is the result of this—the Birthers, the people who call him a Muslim (as if that were a criticism), the people who call him (a frustrating centrist) a socialist, a Kenyan, a European…  But there is something else.

The first black President—like Jackie Robinson, the first African-American to play major league baseball—has to be very careful not to lose his temper, not to appear to be an “angry black.” And President Obama does this very well. He is not angry. He is by nature a calm, even-tempered, reassuring person. There is plenty of reason for him to be angry—given the cynical hypocritical and unprincipled opposition he has faced from congressional Republicans. But he isn’t.

It is this very lack of anger—required by his Jackie Robinson-like historical position and engrained in his natural temperament—that has infuriated some Americans.  They hate that he is a metrosexual. They would fear a black man who appeared strong or angry yet they hate a man who eschews violence, would not carry a gun, and lives in an otherwise all female family. Jimmy Carter may have suffered from this same prejudice. Most of our recent presidents have had only daughters but they also drank, hunted, philandered, or did other things to show their manliness. Obama, like Carter, does none of this.

The president is a symbol of the country and many Americans want that symbol to be a Texas rancher or a hunter or a military hero. President Obama just does not fit that bill. And so he is hated both by racists and also by chauvinists and by macho men. Joe Biden cannot do anything to change the president’s skin color but at NYU he did his best to change his image—from mild-mannered professorial collaborator who listens to everyone and seeks a middle path to a man who has a big stick, a man whose manliness defines him, a man who will stick it to you if you get in his way. Biden’s intentional and illuminating comment reflects Obama’s paradox—trying not to look too strong (and thus scary) he appears weak (and thus effeminate) to many of his detractors. No wonder he won’t take on the NRA. No wonder he is not leading the way for gay rights. No wonder he sits adversaries down to a beer. Biden’s remark is, in the end, not reassuring at all. It tells us how far we still have to go in gender identity in this country. It is very sad. 

Blood from a Stone: Happiness and an $838 blood test

My dental hygienist recently noticed that my normally low blood pressure had spiked so she encouraged me to get a check up. I did. It was Flaubert who said that “in order to be happy one must be stupid, selfish, and in good health.” Was my last chance for happiness at risk?

A week later the doctor found nothing abnormal but ordered a battery of blood tests, just to be sure. The bill came this week: $838.20. Closer inspection revealed that, after an “insurance adjustment” for $593.33, I owed “only” $244.87.

I guess I should have been happy. But even that seemed rather high, so I called St. Luke’s to ask about it. Maybe they would have sympathy and lower the bill… or perhaps just accept the “adjustment” from Highmark as full payment.

The hospital official was adamant about my paying the whole thing despite my meek effort to negotiate a lower charge. They wanted full payment but they were willing to let me pay $20/month until it's paid off, with no finance charge. Which I concluded was pretty reasonable of them and was the best deal I was going to get.

But over $800 for blood tests still seemed outrageously high a charge so I went a stop further. I called Highmark, my insurance company, to ask what they thought about St. Luke’s charges. What I learned shocked me.

The official from Highmark explained to me that the insurance adjustment is never paid. St. Luke's only gets the $244.87 they charged me. There was no real $838 fee for analyzing my blood. So I asked Highmark what that $838.20 is doing on the bill. Why imply that is the charge when it really isn't? Highmark's answer: “That is what someone would be charged if they did not have insurance.”

What?!!! I responded. People without insurance are charged over three times more than people with insurance? That is, insured people are only charged about 30% of what uninsured people are charged. And uninsured people have to pay the full, inflated, amount. Yes, she assured me. “That's the way the system works.”

I guess, Flaubert to the contrary notwithstanding, I have little hope for happiness.

School Financing is Unfair and thus un-American

Sometimes fairness and the law are in conflict. Recently the Parkland, Pennsylvania school district devoted  resources to discover that ten children were attending their schools from other districts illegally. This again raises the ongoing issue of how we ought to pay for our children’s public education.

A basic question informs our discussion: should public education be funded primarily by real estate taxes—knowing that this will guarantee school systems in which the children of wealthy home-owners receive greater opportunities for their children than do the children of poorer people?

It is very easy to retreat to a legal argument in the Parkland school district case. The parents were breaking the law and should be made to send their children to schools in the district where they live and pay taxes. This same safe logic applies to undocumented workers who come, mainly from south of our border, looking for work and for a better life for their children. They break the law in crossing that border but they are otherwise by and large good people with the same aspirations for their families as those fortunate enough to have been born here.

The law they broke does not make them criminals in the same way that thieves and murderers and self-appointed block watch stand-your-ground vigilantes and inside-traders and (your get the point) are criminals. In the first case the motives are moral. In the latter cases they are vile.

A story. Rabbi Hillel, who was born around 110 BC, taught the Golden Rule--"That which is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow." He was too poor to attend school and so he sat outside and listened to lessons through a window. One winter day he had to clear snow from the skylight to see what was going on in class. The teacher noticed the unexpected sunlight--and then Hillel himself--and invited the future rabbi to come down off the roof and join the class. Hillel is said to have studied for 40 years before becoming a rabbi. Today he is known as one of the greatest scholars of all time.

Many readers know The Little Prince, by Antoine de St. Exupery. Another story by this beloved French pilot/writer depicts a well-to-do gentleman walking through the third class car of a train in which many poor children are crammed onto the floor. "What Mozart lies here?" the traveler wonders, "and we'll never find out."

There will always be inequalities because people are all different. But the goal of America should be that these inequalities result from differences in results, not from differences in opportunity. Two children born a mile apart—one in Princeton and one in Trenton—will have profoundly different educations. The child from a wealthy home will have a house filled with electronics and books, afternoons and weekends filled with music lessons and horseback riding, vacations and summers filled with camp and travel. The child of a poor family will have none of this.

Historically it has been our public schools where immigrant children have been given the opportunity to achieve all that America has to offer. But we also have home-born immigrants in our land—people born across invisible borders and held captive there by invisible social structures and institutions that preserve differences of race and class.

Let's fix school financing. And Parkland: fix your priorities; go after bad people first.

The Troubles with Cantors

The Trouble With Cantors

Rabbi Jonathan H. Gerard

Two quick disclosures. I was raised in an observant Reform family on the north shore of Long Island by parents who both sang in the choir of a synagogue they helped create. They cared a lot about the music in the service and passed that value on to me. Secondly, I confess to the belief that the music, not the sermon, determines the quality of a worship experience—even though I also look forward to the learning experience of a drash.

I suppose I didn’t pay much attention, as a kid, to what was going on up on the bima because I was quite startled one Shabbat by my parents who, upon returning home from services one morning in the 1950s, complained to each other about the behavior of the rabbi while the cantor was singing. He wasn’t an invested cantor; he was an Israeli for whom the prospect of singing on the High Holidays in front of a congregation of wealthy American Jews made him so anxious that he inevitably and punctually succumbed to a rhinovirus every September. (Eventually, he found a path to health by becoming a stockbroker like half his congregation.) Anyway, I’ll never forget the oddness of my parents’ complaint that the rabbi would “undress” while the cantor sang. By this I understood that he loosened his tie, pushed the cuffs of his robe up above his wrists, and perhaps even loosened a button or two on that robe. But it was primarily the facial gestures that gave away his attitude towards poor struggling Natan.

I carried this sympathy for cantors with me to HUC in New York and actually had an opportunity to manifest it during my senior year. It was a small school in which all activity took place on two floors of a small building near Lincoln Center. Except for lunch. In the basement was a dark den of a lounge with huge white pillars breaking up the sight lines across the room. The cantorial and rabbinical students—none of whom spoke with each other upstairs—sat every day eating lunch at tables on opposite sides of the lounge acting as if the other group did not exist.

Fourth and fifth year students at HUC read the Torah and delivered a student sermon Mondays and Thursdays at the daily chapel service. My senior year that task fell to me during tazria/metzora.After the reading I rolled up our little Torah and set it aside. I looked out at the congregation of students and faculty and perhaps Dr. Steinberg, paused, smiled, and, pointing in their direction, said, “You know, we have lepers right here at HUC—it’s the cantors!” I’ll never forget the reaction of my beloved rabbi, Eugene Borowitz, who laughed so hard I thought he might fall off his pew.

We hear the occasional lament about how poorly rabbis and cantors get along “in the field,” I said. “But how can we expect any improvement when we don’t even talk to each other here, as students?!” Spontaneously, as soon as the aleinu concluded, Danny Freelander and Jeff Klepper rushed downstairs to the lounge and pushed all the lunch tables to the center of the room, where they remained for the rest of the spring term.

My first pulpit—in Brownsville, Texas—came with a lay cantor—a gentile songleader, actually, who arrived Friday evenings with his piano playing wife on his Harley. They were terrific. They knew nothing about Judaism and nothing about Jewish music so they sang everything I gave them pretty much exactly as I asked them to. For three years I lamented not having a professionally trained cantor while virtually every other rabbi in America would have envied me, if they even knew who I was, or where Brownsville was.

It’s a big problem that I can’t sing. Maybe that’s one reason I so admire cantors.

My next two pulpits had the same “blessing”—song leaders who knew so little about Jewish music that they were happy to try to fulfill my every liturgically musical fantasy without any opinion of their own.

In my last pulpit before retiring I again inherited gentile musicians. An organist and three soloists who sang in a choir loft up and behind the bima. A rear view mirror from a bicycle, strategically affixed, was meant to keep the choir and me in synch. After six months of missed cues and frustration I retired the 80 year old organist and his entourage and brought two of the singers down to the congregational level from where they now led the singing. Then fortune intervened. A Catholic woman who sang with her Jewish husband at the Amato Opera in New York came to see me about conversion. She loved the music so much that she completed her conversion, learned Hebrew, sang every Friday evening with the gentile soloist, and eventually took charge of all the liturgical music—even learning to chant Torah b’sotto voce while I translated into English like I belonged at the UN. Until she focused more on me than on the music, all was good. But that’s another story.

A more troubling cantor-incident came around the same time. As vice-president of DVARR I organized a meeting in which we invited some cantors from our region to come join us in dialogue. The cantors who participated sang a pretty sad song. It was clear that they were not happy with how they were treated by some rabbis. Then, as president of DVARR I became a member of the CCAR Executive Board. At one of our meetings the agenda listed a major program with two members of the ACC. It turned out that I was not the only person out here concerned about rabbinical/cantorial relations.

For two hours we rabbis listened to one story after another from cantors held in high esteem by their peers—but not by their rabbis—stories of rudeness, humiliation, and degradation. For example, the president of the ACC told us about a cantor who took a job at a congregation that had two lecterns on the bima—equally spaced on either side of the ark. When he came to sing on his second Friday evening he found that the rabbi had moved his lectern a few inches back. Each Friday night after that he subsequently discovered that the lectern was moved further back until eventually he found himself singing almost up against the front wall of the pulpit.

At the end of the give and take session that was all give and no take the cantors left. Someone relieved two hours of oppressive tension in the room by saying “Who do those cantors think they are?” “We’re in charge of the service,” another responded Many laughed. And then we went on to the next topic on the agenda.

What leads me, now, to put these words to print is a happy experience I had in my own “neighborhood.” A cantor at a large nearby Reform synagogue, who had served happily and for many years with several different rabbis, was suddenly in a very unhappy, even disturbing relationship with a new rabbi. This cantor had significant support in the congregation and quite a number of members left—eventually forming a new congregation. The rabbi got raises; the cantor was asked to work half time. The cantor left. The new congregation then asked this person, whom they loved, to become their spiritual leader. A shiddach was made.

I had been friends with this cantor for a decade and a half and went to the new congregation to see what it was like, how my friend was doing. I should not have been surprised. The cantor, having served several rabbis over the course of a career, had assimilated the best ideas and professional style and leadership skills from each of them to create a service that was, for me, more spiritual and more satisfying than services at any of the other eight synagogues in our corner of the golah. The congregation was warm and welcoming. The sermon was informative and funny. The music was lead by a congregational group, “The Wandering Jews.” The large room, in a local private school, was filled. The oneg was delicious. The cantor is happy, not least because of much well deserved positive feedback. In six months the congregation has grown to 85 families with 55 children in the religious school.

That some rabbis sometimes mistreat our cantorial colleagues is a shanda. That we often ignore or neglect the great contribution they can make to the liturgical experience—beyond their singing and song leading—is a very sad thing for our movement. Cantors should be given the opportunity to give sermons, to teach about music they never get to sing, to lead discussions and discussion-sermons, to have a presence on the pulpit and in the service that reflects the learning they have acquired and the kavod they deserve. Over the course of my career I have seen very healthy and positive rabbi/cantor teams. They are a minority but we can learn from them. Our worship services and American Judaism would both be richer for it.

1.26.12

The Season of Questions

The onslaught of Republican presidential debates has been very entertaining but only minimally instructive--in both cases because of deficits: deficits in the candidates' presentations.

They seem smart, so I assume these deficits are intentional. I think they know better. I hope they know better. Here are five questions that I would like to ask them.

1. Mr. Gingrich, you criticize President Obama's energy policy and pound the pulpit for "energy independence." Since oil is a limited resource which everyone knows will eventually be depleted, whose oil should we buy and use up first--ours or theirs?

2. Mr. Santorum, you characterize your overriding view of our society as based on strong family values. Why do you criticize those who extend the metaphor of family to their community and, beyond that, to the nation as a whole?

Why is it wrong to help out our fellow citizens who are in need? If helping the needy encourages them to become more dependent, isn't that also true of family members? And if we ultimately agree that we can't let family members die from neglect, why shouldn't we have the same attitude towards members of our national family?

3. Mr. Romney, you have no sympathy for undocumented foreign workers and want them gone. Why? They work hard, are not criminals (in part, for fear of being caught and deported), they pay taxes but don't receive such benefits as social security, and there is plenty of room for these immigrants in the vast and relatively empty middle part of our country.

Originally, when our country needed workers and growth, we had no immigration quotas. Quotas came only as a result of supra-nationalism and prejudice following WWI and these quotas favored immigration from western European nations. Why do you support this policy over a more humanitarian policy towards those who came, illegally, through a border intentionally made permeable because, for instance, agri-buisiness wanted cheap farm labor?

4. Dr. Paul, you argue that a "free market" benefits everyone. Would you eliminate fire safety codes, child labor laws, food labeling, collective bargaining, the licensing of professionals...?

The word "economy" comes from the Greek word meaning "management of household," yet many equate the word with profit. Does a "capitalist economy" require that profits be more important than quality of life? Do businesses and corporations have any responsibility to their community? Do you trust human compassion to trump human greed when lives are at stake?

5. To all four candidates, you claim to be best qualified to be president because you know best how to create jobs--even as you argue that government (and I assume that includes the President) cannot and should not create jobs. Why have you not once mentioned social justice as a part of your presidential agenda? What areas of our American society would require your devoted attention in a Republican administration?