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CaliforniaRabbi.com Rabbi Michael Mayersohn officiates at Jewish & Interfaith Weddings throughout Southern California & Destination Weddings. Rabbi Michael is a Reform Rabbi.

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09/29/2021

There is something disturbing and frankly hypocritical in regards to the frequent reactions to vaccine mandates and the religious exemptions that are offered. They too often are cravenly embraced by people with no honor or decency. One of my rabbinic colleagues asked our professional community for advice on his current dilemma. His daughter is opposed to vaccines, having nothing to do with any religious reasons. She wants her father to write her a religious exemption based on the Jewish principle of pikuach nefesh, the idea that we do anything to save a life. He struggled with the decision since it is at the very least a very difficult case to make. To a person, every rabbi who offered an opinion recognized the parental anguish this rabbi was feeling and then made clear that there can be no such religious exemption based on Jewish principles, in fact, quite the opposite. He made the right decision not to grant his daughter the letter to support her claim. Then I saw a nurse interviewed on tv who claimed a religious exemption to the vaccine. The interviewer asked her about her faith and she identified as a Catholic. The reporter then pointed out that Pope Francis has urged people to get vaccinated and calls getting a vaccine "an act of love." The nurse, when confronted with the Pope's very clear support of vaccines called him a hypocrite! I'm obviously no Catholic, but I find it offensive to the extreme to call the pope a hypocrite. What profound disrespect and hubris. I understand that Catholics can disagree with the pope on many things, popes very rarely claim infallibility (speaking ex cathedra), but the church understands him to be righteous and godly. How far have some gone in their mindless opposition to vaccines that bring healing to people, to a community to society. that a supposed member of the church will call the pope hypocritical? A little humility is called for, time to step back from ugly words and thoughts. How about some more acts of love?

09/21/2021

Can someone out there explain to me why the tragic story of Gabby Petito's disappearance and apparent murder has garnered so much breathless, sensationalist and manic news coverage? It is indeed tragic, a young person disappears and dies suddenly, perhaps at the hands of another person, maybe even at the hands of her boyfriend. We know none of that other than she was young and disappeared and apparently died suddenly. Does anyone believe we would be paying this much attention if Ms Petito were black or Latina? Would we be so breathless if this were not an attractive young white woman? How many young people die tragically and suddenly and families weep but no one out there notices? I do believe that if Ms Petito were an unattractive black woman and the same thing happened it would garner at most local press. Can there be any question of the clear racism of a society that makes such value statements? Lots of questions and some of the answers are clear.

09/10/2021

In the way of full confession, I will begin by acknowledging I'm not much of a flag-waver. I do not get how displaying a flag expresses patriotism, much as I appreciate symbols. Having said that, who can forget the unplanned display of flags in public and private spaces of American flags after the terrorist attacks of twenty years ago? How powerful a moment that was. But then I am reminded of the events of January 6 when people wielded flag poles with American flags on them to attack the police and other officials who were protecting the seat of American democracy. Perhaps we have to acknowledge that they voted that we be much more careful in our use of the flag as a symbol of patriotism. Those insurrectionsts and rioters have to take ownership of seriously damaging, even crippling the idea of using a flag as a powerful symbol of love of country. They turned it into a weapon turned against the nation. They own that transformation, especially on these days when we observe a symbolically important anniversary of an attack on the nation.

08/15/2021

I spent much of my formative, teen years, protesting, marching against and refusing to fight in an American war of intervention, a war in which we tried to come in, after others had failed, and put down a domestic insurrectionist force. Don't tell me the American experience in Afghanistan doesn't closely mirror this country's failed war in Vietnam. Millions of us went into the streets to demonstrate our opposition to the American war in Vietnam. It was tragic folly and so were the more recent years of the American war in Afghanistan. Fact is, a local insurrectionist and determined force cannot be defeated by a foreign, more powerful military. While the end in Afghanistan came suddenly, I cannot mourn the end of American involvement. The only huge difference between the two failed campaigns is that in Vietnam we forced and compelled people to go fight a failed war. The fact that American forces are now volunteer doesn't make the war more acceptable. It is a tragedy for the Afghan people, but American forces cannot protect all peoples in all places. We have to have learned that lesson by now. Maybe now.

08/10/2021

In the several years since I served as a congregational rabbi it has only happened rarely that I read or learned about a current event or topic that made me yearn to write a High Holy Day sermon. I learned relatively early in my career that no matter how insightful and eloquent and timely I thought some sermons were, they were very rarely memorable, even to me. Today's resignation and speech by soon-to-be ex-Governor Andrew Cuomo was one of those rare events making me want to write a sermon. In the Jewish calendar his timing could hardly have been more fortuitous, accidental as it surely was. This is the last month in the Hebrew calendar, Elul, a month for introspection and preparation for repentance. Imperfect as the speech and he were and are, Cuomo gave us something of a lesson in the Jewish work of Elul. He acknowledged, while denying the most serious charges, that he had failed and had acted badly and he expressed remorse. There is so much more for him to do, like approaching those he wronged directly and off-screen to acknowledge the harm he caused and his wrongdoing, but he made a start. We don't expect or even demand perfection in repentance and often we have to accept, even in ourselves the beginnings of an attempt at expressing how we have sinned. So while there is so much more for him to do, I actually applaud Andrew Cuomo for what I hope is a beginning of movement toward repentance. Note that in Jewish teachings, one cannot repent only to God for sins we have committed against others, we have to repent to the people we have harmed. He has to do that. We also sometimes have to move, to change our position to make it more likely we will not repeat the transgression. Let's give the man a little credit while acknowledging that he still has a long way to go. Now, for that sermon I would love to write........

07/15/2021

In America we talk a lot about rights. We have rights of free speech, assembly, religion, so many powerful and vital rights that stand as the foundation of American democracy. We powerfully fight against anyone taking away our rights guaranteed in the Constitution. Then come the efforts of Republicans this year to deny voting rights to millions of Americans, seeking to prevent some Americans from exercising their right to vote for the candidates they seek to support. The Washington Post columnist, Dana Milbank, points out a terrible irony. While Republicans are seeking to take away the rights of many people to vote, they are fighting vigorously to preserve the rights of Americans not to be vaccinated, fighting to give Americans the right to be infected with the Covid virus. People who depend on early voting, mail-in voting, absentee voting are being denied the right to vote while Republicans fight for the right of people to be infected, get sick and die. Does irony even capture the tragedy of this hypocrisy? They fight for the right not to be vaccinated while working to take away the right of people to vote. Surely they only want folks inclined to vote for Democrats to lose their right to vote but they want everyone to have the right to get sick and to infect others. They want less people to vote while wanting more people to get sick. And they seem to be succeeding---voting restrictions are expanding while people exercising their right to infect are getting sick in larger numbers. Do we need to know much more about people who want less people to vote and more people to get sick? Isn't that all we need to know?

07/08/2021

Over the years I have been willing to criticize Israel and the government policies when I felt criticism was warranted. Lately too many people, especially young people on the political left have been unrelentingly and at times unfairly critical of Israel. In the light of all this, the latest information about vaccination policies of the new Israeli diverse government toward the Palestinians in the occupied territories is remarkably revealing. Israel agreed to give 1.2 million vaccines to the Palestinians in the territories in exchange for future vaccines that would become available later this year. Israel worked hard to get the vaccines to the Palestinians to protect public health in a timely fashion. Due to their own suspicions about the Israeli government and widespread Palestinian resistance to Covid vaccines the Palestinian Authority rejected the agreement and turned away the vaccines. Since the vaccines were still effective, Israel made the same agreement with South Korea, which is in need of the shots. Palestinians will suffer and die because of their own hostility to Israel and their suspicions about vaccines. This is simply immoral and unethical and the whole episode shows that at least the new Bennett government of Israel is looking to help the Palestinian people. And we should all be taking note of such moments.

06/20/2021

I have been visiting Catholic churches since 1960 as a young child and more recently I have been invited to teach at some twenty-five parishes in Southern California and Arizona. There are churches in this area that I have visited to teach so often that when people see me on church grounds I am often greeted with, "There's our rabbi!" I have tremendous respect for the church and for its teachings. While I disagree with the church teaching on abortion I deeply respect the church's right, even obligation, to teach its parishioners not to seek an end to a pregnancy. For all those reasons and more I am disturbed by the efforts of the US Catholic bishops to deny parishioners, especially President Biden, the sacrament of communion if they support women's rights to seek abortion. It is not the prerogative of me or any other outsider to the church to tell the church what to teach. But when they publicly promote the idea that public officials should be denied communion because of their political and moral positions it seems to me awfully dangerous if not downright hypocritical. I have not heard about the church seeking to deny communion to public officials who support capital punishment in contradiction to church teachings. I am not aware of public statements of the church leadership working to deny communion to officials who oppose efforts to help the poor or who support birth control. The church clearly has the right to promote its teachings to its people and in the public square. What I dearly hope they will not do, as evidenced by this last week's US Bishops vote is selectively deny communion to Catholic public officials who deviate from church teachings. This will make the church into a political rather than spiritual entity. Politicizing church teachings will diminish a vital presence in the religious and spiritual life of our society.

06/09/2021

Many people in American culture have tried to express, reveal, depict the racist history of this country from slavery to Jim Crow to the bigotry and prejudice of our own times. They have done it through books, music, theater and visual art. One of the most outstanding such expressions I have come across is a poem, "Bitter Fruit," written over eighty years ago by a teacher, Abel Meeropol. The poem was turned into a song, "Strange Fruit," sung by Billie Holliday in 1999. The expression of art seeks to give all of us insight into the reality of racism in America and it is notable that it was originally written by a white Jewish man and sung by an African-American singer. This unintended collaboration creates what I regard as one of the most powerful expressions of the reality of racism in America. I share it here:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves blood on the root
Black body swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' in the poplar trees

Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh

Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to rot
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Let me just say that they are exactly right, race relations in this country is a strange and bitter crop. Thank you to Abel the poet and Billie the singer.

06/03/2021

Democracy can sure be messy and often even ugly. The venerable political system in the United States allowed the election, under strange circumstances including an outdated electoral college, of Donald Trump. He was clearly unqualified for office and corrupt. The younger democracy in Israel, a parliamentary system that allows only for coalition governments of various and varied small political parties, allowed for Benjamin Netanyahu to the office of prime minister for the last twelve years. He was more qualified for the office than Trump was but he was apparently also corrupt. They created a close and unholy alliance and now it appears both are out of office. Netanyahu, known to most Israelis by his nickname, Bibi, traded on the lowest and basest fears of some of the Israeli population and now, at last, he is finally going to be gone from office. Bibi encouraged Israelis to disregard, even mistreat the Israeli Arab population and to be even worse toward the Palestinians of the occupied territories. Both Trump and Netanyahu were harsh and mean-spirited toward those with less power, those they saw as unworthy of the protections of human rights. It is good for democracy that it appears we are rid of both of them from positions of power. In Hebrew we say, ken y'hi ratzon, may it be God's will.

06/01/2021

Yesterday and today there has been much belated and shallow talk of the sins one hundred years ago in Tulsa. I call it shallow because pretty much all the talk is about how sad it is what happened and next to nothing about what its truth might tell us about what to do now. But from my perspective coming from my Jewish heritage and sensibilities, the attack on the Black community of Tulsa has a much larger message. It is not enough for us to just "tut-tut" about how horrible the massacre was. From a Jewish perspective we know that this and other attacks on local Black neighborhoods and communities is nothing less than a pogrom. In Russia, when the local community, with the tacit approval and/or active support of the local officials, attacked the local Jewish part of town it was a pogrom. When the white community of the rest of Tulsa, the white power structure, attacked the local African-American community in Greenwood it was a pogrom. The pogroms, in Russian towns and in Greenwood and other American towns, carried a message. The message of pogroms is less about the horrific toll of murders and destruction. The message is about the victims being seen as unwanted outsiders, people who are not included and can be murdered and exiled. In America when we talk about Greenwood in Tulsa one hundred years ago we need to acknowledge that that and many other attacks carried the message of exclusion. These were ways to tell African-Americans they were not welcome in America. It is not enough to mourn the hundred year old death and destruction of a community. We need to rectify a society that tells people they are not welcome. The only way to grieve Greenwood and so many other massacres is to change the message to one of welcome and inclusion, no qualifications, no exceptions.

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