Rabbi Refuses to Give Menorah to Trump White House for Hanukkah Party

It was big news when NBA superstar Steph Curry chose to not go to the White House with his Golden State Warriors team to meet President Donald Trump after winning the 2017 NBA Championship. But he's just one player. After voicing his decision, President Trump uninvited the entire Warriors team. Next to opt out of a White House visit was the entire Women's Basketball team from South Carolina. The team, which won its first NCAA championship in April, was invited to attend a reception at the White House, but declined the invitation.

It's not only athletes who are refusing invitations to the White House. It will be very interesting to see how many Jewish leaders opt out of attending the annual Hanukkah reception at the White House next month. Invitations have already gone out and presumably only rabbis and other Jewish leaders the Trump Administration thinks would accept have been extended an invitation. However, there are likely to be many invitees, even ardent Trump supporters, who will cave to pressure and choose to not attend the Hanukkah party at the White House this year based on actions and public statements by the President himself.

What's interesting to note is that, while there hasn't been any news yet about people refusing to attend the Hanukkah party, there has already been talk of a Reform rabbi who has turned down the White House's request to borrow a menorah from the synagogue to be kindled at the reception.

President Obama lights a menorah in the White House. President Trump is having trouble getting a menorah loaned to the White House as one rabbi has already refused on ethical grounds. (Obama White House Archives)

The rabbi, who is at a Reform congregation and wished to remain anonymous, shared the account after nixing the White House representative's appeal to borrow a menorah to be used at the Hanukkah party. I learned about it from another rabbinic colleague, who posted the story on Facebook:

"I received this from a rabbinic colleague I deeply respect, and was deeply moved by their integrity and bold resistance:
Just got off the phone with someone in Washington, D.C., who is helping to plan the White House’s Hanukkah Banquet this year. It seems the White House was interested in borrowing a special hanukkiah to use in this year’s celebration.
I told her we are honored to be asked.
I told her I wish I could say yes.
I told her that Hanukkah’s celebration of religious freedom, spreading light in the face of darkness, cultivating hope instead of fear, is antithetical to everything this White House has embraced.
I told her we would have to say no.
Then I received a second phone call, that this conversation should be kept confidential. I asked why. Because it wouldn’t be appropriate, I was told. Because this is how things are done in Washington, D.C., I was told.
I told her I would take that into consideration.
I did.
And then I wrote this post."

I'm sure this wasn't an easy decision for the rabbi to make because there's a certain amount of clout in having your menorah be the one used in the White House. After all, most menorahs that are borrowed by the White House to light at the annual White House Hanukkah party are already famous or have some meaning as to why they were used.

So, already an NBA star, a women's college basketball team and a menorah have opted to dis the President and stay away from Trump's White House. It will be interesting to see who else does.

When You’re Unfriended in Real Life

The schools of the great sages of the Jewish people, Hillel and Shammai, were known to debate each other on just about every topic. The students of these two schools rarely agreed on anything; each strongly and passionately arguing the opposite position of the other, albeit always with respect for the other’s opinion.

In Judaism, we believe that each human is created in the divine image and, thus, we have the responsibility to treat one another with respect. However, many of us humans don’t act with godliness when participating in Facebook discussions involving political viewpoints.

The 2012 election was bad when it came to a lack of civility on Facebook, but the 2016 election a year ago was many times worse. I’m scared to think of what 2020 will bring us. Many close friends unfriended each other on the social network, relatives blocked relatives and, even worse, long-term relationships in real life were severed because of hurt feelings during political arguments. While the election might have been over on November 8, 2016, the heated arguments on Facebook have continued. In the past year, with a President known to send out many divisive tweets before most people have had their first cup of coffee, the Facebook battlefield has only intensified.

If you have a Facebook account, you likely witnessed at least one unfortunate interaction in the past couple of years. It has been impossible to post anything about either presidential candidate without a couple of trolls coming in to paste the latest talking points from the most extremist online blogs they could find to bolster their position or refute everyone else’s opinion.

This has been true on both sides, from the extreme left and the extreme right. On social networks, especially Facebook, people have learned to hide behind their screens when they say these hateful things, but it affects all their relationships and not only their virtual relationships. In the run-up to the 2016 election, most political opinions on either candidate would be met with attacks in the comment section of that post. Many of the comments were not fact checked and some were outright myths that had already been debunked by Snopes.com, the fact-checking web site. In the past year, tempers have flared even more with friends attacking friends on Facebook over everything from the NFL's national anthem controversy and the Second Amendment to the Russian interference in the election and Trump's policies. No topic is off limits when it comes to firing shots in the comment section of Facebook and real friendships become the collateral damage.

I was recently tutoring a young woman for her bat mitzvah and we were studying the Tower of Babel story within her Torah portion. I explained that God was so angered that humans would try to build a tower to the sky that God punished them by confounding their languages so they couldn’t communicate with one another. Immediately, this wise 13-year-old girl said, “In my bat mitzvah speech, I want to talk about how we communicate with each other.” And she immediately hit the nail on the head by explaining the negative effects that occur from the way teens talk to each other in the 21st century. Rather than speaking face-to-face, today’s teens send coded text messages, Snapchat messages that disappear after several seconds, and comments under the photos they post on Instagram. The language they use is different from what any prior generation would recognize as English. One misinterpreted emoji or abbreviation can mean the end of a friendship.

On Facebook, it’s not only the teens who resort to insults and abusive language when someone offends them with their strongly held opinion. Earlier generations wouldn’t understand how your crazy liberal uncle can get into a heated debate with some girl you went to summer camp with a few decades ago.

When adults begin threatening to “unfollow” or “unfriend,” we quickly find ourselves feeling trapped and annoyed in a fourth-grade-esque insult circus. Cutting off contact with someone with opposing ideology will never further discussion, debate and democracy. Sadly, a lot of people on Facebook are close-minded, unwilling to listen to opposing opinions.

Free Speech vs. Respecting the National Anthem

The following is the sermon I delivered on Yom Kippur:

A story: In a synagogue somewhere (it doesn’t matter where), the rabbi instructs the congregation, “Please rise for the Torah processional as the ark is opened and the Torah is taken out.” The rabbi notices one of the synagogue regulars has remained in his seat. He thinks this is odd and makes a mental note to ask Mark during the kiddush following services why he didn’t stand. After the Torah reading the rabbi again directs the congregation to stand and, once again, there’s Mark sitting in his seat.

At Kiddush, the rabbi approaches Mark and greets him with a “Shabbat Shalom.” The rabbi asks Mark if everything is OK and he says it is. The rabbi says that he noticed he did not stand when the Torah came out of the Ark or when it was put back during the recessional. The rabbi peppered him with more questions. “Is there a handicap that prevented you from standing? Do you have a bad back? Do you now get dizzy if you stand?”

Mark then looked at the rabbi and explained, “Because I’m a gay man. I cannot agree with what the Torah says about me or my friends in the gay community. I’m silently protesting the verse in Leviticus that deals with homosexuals. You want me to stand out of respect for a document that, in essence, calls me morally reprehensible – an abomination.

Well, the rabbi thought, on the one hand, it is our synagogue custom that everyone who is physically able to, stands when the Torah is carried around the congregation. But, on the other hand, we subscribe to the democratic ideals of free speech in our country. So, Mark is violating our synagogue policy, our minhag hamakom (our community’s custom), but I also respect him for taking a stand.

Now, I must tell you that I made up this story. But it does serve as an appropriate analogy for the ongoing debate about NFL football players “taking a knee” and refusing to stand during the National Anthem before football games as a form of a protest. I’m not going to get into the reasons WHY these professional football players are choosing to protest… some say it’s because of police brutality, others because of our President’s choice words in condemnation of their protest, and others because of the lyrics in our nation’s anthem. What I do want to discuss today is how we ascribe holiness and meaning to objects, and what happens when our embrace of freedom of speech gets in the way of how we feel about these objects of meaning.

First, take a moment to think about how you would respond to my made-up character of Mark. If you were the rabbi – or a fellow congregant in Mark’s congregation, what would be your response to his decision to not stand for the Torah processional and recessional because he’s at odds over what the Torah says? It’s a plausible act of conscientious objection. What if a group of women in the congregation refused to stand because they didn’t agree with the Torah’s views of women? What if all the non-Kohanim in a congregation objected to the privileges ascribed to the Kohens and refused to stand when the Torah was paraded? That would be a lot of people sitting down in protest!

From just one congregant refusing to stand, it could catch on and then there’d be large-scale protests in congregations around the country – maybe the world. Would we commend the protesters for holding their ground, or would be feel they were disrespecting our Holy Torah?

Remember, ultimately, it was humans who ascribed such holiness to the Torah. And it was humans who ascribed meaning to a poem by Francis Scott Key. Is it not each individual’s right to determine if they should stand or sit for the Torah? For the singing of the Star-Spangled Banner? What if someone chooses to sit for the singing of Israel’s national anthem – Hatikvah? Are they wrong? Are they inconsiderate? Or, are they merely expressing their beliefs and making a statement?

It’s a challenging situation and it’s certainly more complicated than simply saying everyone who is of able body MUST stand for the National Anthem. Looks look at how this controversy began in the NFL.

On August 14, 2016, quarterback Colin Kaepernick chooses to sit for the National Anthem and no one noticed. Mostly because the TV cameras never used to broadcast during the National Anthem unless it was a big playoff game or the Super Bowl. A week later, again Kaepernick sits during the anthem, and again, no one noticed. The following week, he sits and this time he is met with a level of vitriol unseen against an athlete. Even the future President of the United States took shots at him while on the campaign trail. Kaepernick went on to explain his protest had NOTHING to with the military, but he felt it was difficult to stand for a flag that didn't treat people of color fairly.

Then on August 30, 2016, Nate Boyer, a former Army Green Beret turned NFL long snapper, penned an open letter to Colin Kaepernick in the Army Times. In it he expressed how Kaepernick's sitting affected him. Then a strange thing happened. Kaepernick was able to do what most Americans to date have not... He listened.

Rabbi Marvin Hier Must Bow Out of the Donald Trump Inauguration

Earlier this year, Ivanka Trump asked her rabbi to offer a benediction at the Republican National Convention before her father accepted the Republican nomination. Rabbi Haskel Lookstein, undoubtedly honored to be asked, quickly accepted the invitation only to later withdraw from the speaking engagement following an outpouring of anger from his Upper East Side New York Jewish community. Many of his former students and members of his Orthodox congregation were outraged that their rabbi would venture into a very political role and show honor to such a divisive candidate.

Despite my support of Donald Trump’s opponent and my concern with the way the Republican nominee was running his campaign, I felt that Rabbi Lookstein was on solid ground in accepting the honor and should have rebuffed the criticism. Separation of Church and State is an often misunderstood concept in our nation. Rabbis, like other clergy, are very much involved in politics. We have the moral imperative to speak our minds on the important topics of the day. I looked forward to Rabbi Lookstein’s wise words of Torah at the GOP convention and was disappointed he opted to extricate himself from the event.

Rabbi Marvin Hier has now come into the public spotlight, having been asked to offer blessings for President Trump and Vice President-elect Pence at the inauguration on January 20. My position regarding Rabbi Hier’s role at the inauguration is diametrically different. Rabbi Hier runs the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. This institution, which I have visited several times, has as its central mission “to confront all forms of prejudice and discrimination in our world today.” The museum educates young people and challenges everyone to create change by erasing bigotry and discrimination. Trump’s entire presidential campaign encouraged the opposite. He denigrated immigrants, mocked the disabled and disrespected women.

Rabbi Hier’s institution draws its vision from noted Holocaust survivor and theologian Simon Wiesenthal. This great man must be rolling in his grave knowing that the dean and founder of the center that bears his name will be bestowing a blessing on a man who bolstered his presidential campaign by genuflecting to the alt-right—a group that includes neo-Nazis and Holocaust-deniers. That Rabbi Hier would stand on such a public stage in front of the world and offer a blessing for a man who refused to distance himself from David Duke, a former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, is completely anathema to his life’s work.

By refusing this role, Rabbi Hier would be making a loud statement in defiance of prejudice and hate. He has the opportunity to proclaim to the world what his institution stands for and why he has staked his entire professional life on the legacy of Mr. Wiesenthal. As a rabbi, I ordinarily find it uncouth to publicly criticize a colleague for accepting an engagement such as this, regardless of political viewpoint. In the case of Rabbi Hier offering a blessing for President Trump, I’m deeply concerned about the message it will send to the world. A man in Rabbi Hier’s position must condemn hatred and bigotry, not condone it through blessing. In any other instance, it would be a significant honor to serve as the rabbi at a presidential inauguration, but the consequences this time are too significant. Rabbi Hier: Don’t spoil your legacy.

Originally published at Time.com

The Trump Inauguration and the Boycott Question

Does it make sense to boycott musicians? There are, after all, many forms of boycotts. When I was young I really enjoyed the music of Phil Collins. I really loved listening to his songs, which were played often on my favorite radio stations. One day, however, my mother declared that we would no longer listen to any Phil Collins music because he was an ardent supporter of the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and was a virulently anti-Israel. I remember feeling confused as I respected my mother for taking a stand, but I also didn't see the harm in listening to a Genesis song on the radio. It wasn't like I was supporting him by buying his cassette tape (it was the early 1980s) or buying his concert tickets. Nevertheless, for many years thereafter I refrained from listening to Phil Collins music even if such a boycott didn't make sense.

These days, there is still a lot of discussion when it comes to boycotting certain musicians. The most common example is Roger Waters of Pink Floyd. Waters has taken a very hard line, one-sided approach to criticism of Israel. While I still enjoy listening to Pink Floyd music, I confess that Waters' anti-Zionist views and determination to convince other artists to refuse to perform in Israel has led me to listen to his music differently. I still enjoy listening to Pink Floyd, but I can't help but think about his politics when doing so. Like Phil Collins, I don't boycott an artist's viewpoint by not listening to the music (on the radio, the Deezer app or an Amazon Alexa for example), but I also might not support them financially by purchasing their music or buying tickets to a concert.

Donald Trump meets with Kanye West [SETH WENIG/AP/REX/SHUTTERSTOCK]