Supporting our Local Islamic Community, One Bored Teenager at a Time

Last night in Fort Collins, Colorado, a few hundred people gathered outside our local Islamic Center for a candlelight vigil of support and solidarity. Our entire family attended -- me, my husband, our 12 year old daughter and our 14 year old son -- three of us willingly.

We are all Jews in our house, but we are not all faith-filled Jews. We celebrate the holidays, we usually light Shabbat candles and set aside Friday night for a family dinner, and we have lots of conversations about what it means to live a Jewish life without faith, to practice Judaism without God.


When children are young, the holidays don't have much meaning beyond a few parties, craft projects, and the many variations of Jewish holiday foods. They dress up in costume on Purim, open presents on Chanukkah, miss school on Yom Kippur, and choke down matzah during Passover. Living a Jewish life is a series of Sunday School, Hebrew School, and hopping from one holiday to the next, trying each year to guess when they'll fall on the "regular" calendar.

In the darkest days of winter we retell the story of the Maccabees and their fight for religious freedom. We fry up some latkes and talk about the miracle of the oil and play dreidel and tell our children that it was used by Jews to secretly satudy Torah when the government tried to prohibit it.

How awful it must have been, we say, to live in times like that.

Pass the applesauce.





Why is This Year Different from All Other Years?

Donald Trump invaded our Chanukkah this year, and I'm betting a lot of other Jewish families took the time to talk about him around their menorahs. What it means to be a Jew and what it means to celebrate Chanukkah were struck in stark relief this year.

We are all subjected to the rhetoric of Trump and those like him, but it is the Jews who must respond with the most force, the loudest voices of condemnation, boots on the ground.

I thought my kids were feeling the righteous indignation right along with me and felt the obligation to stand up and speak out. I thought they were ready and eager to jump into the fray with me, until the day of the march arrived.

Our 14-year-old wasn't into going.
At.
All.

• I'll be bored. 
• It doesn't matter. 
• What difference does it make if I go or don't go?
• No. I am not going.

I was disappointed, and surprised. He'd been interested in our political discussions over the past weeks, and I knew he agreed that the anti-Muslim chatter was worrisome. "Jews stand up," we had all agreed, and now was the time to do it. But when a 14-year-old gets it into his head that he does not want to do something, the parents have two choices: Fight or Flight. Pick the battle and fight until someone surrenders, or let it go and live to fight another day.


There was never any question in my mind: The was the hill I was willing to die on. He was going to the vigil. Period.

So we fought, and there were the usual threats, and eventually he capitulated. He may have been mumbling, grumbling, and stomping his feet, but he got into the car when it was time to go.

The Islamic Center of Fort Collins, completed in 2013.

The Moment 

We arrived late to the vigil -- there were no parking places anywhere near the Islamic Center, and even when we drove blocks away, all we saw were people bundled up and walking toward the Center.


We stood at the back of the crowd and listened to the speeches and sang along to a couple of songs about peace/salaam/shalom. It was dark, and cold, but there was warmth to be found in the crowd.

The Islamic Center of Fort Collins was completed in 2013 and is a large, two-story structure. We stood in the courtyard bathed in the light from the Mosque's curtain-less windows. There was a crowd inside as well, watching a simulcast on large TVs.

The view from above -- what the children saw.

Silhouettes in the second-story windows caught my eye, and I saw a group of children -- young boys and girls of elementary age -- looking down on the crowd. Some of the girls were wearing traditional head coverings, and one or two would occasionally raise a smartphone and take a picture of the crowd, of us.

What did it feel like to them to look down on this gathering of mostly non-Muslims, standing in their courtyard, the place where they probably escaped to play when they were restless or bored or had been dragged to the mosque by their own parents.

If this were our synagogue, those would be my children looking down from the window, looking out. What would I want them to see?

I pulled my son close to my side and pointed up to the window.

"Look. Look at those kids. Imagine how scared they might have felt recently. How they might have wondered what people like us thought about them. How do you think they feel now?"

"Safer?"

"If you weren't here," I told him, "this crowd would be just a little smaller. But they can see you. You made a difference."

He threw his arm over my shoulder and gave me a squeeze.

"Yeah," he said. One voice in a chorus.
 



(Want to know more about Chanukkah? Read here. The main themes are religious freedom, re-dedication of sacred spaces, and celebrating God's (limited) miracle of providing oil for the eternal light in the temple while the people took the required time (8 days) to make more.)

Multiplying the Chanukkah Lights against Trump's Hatred

Tonight, we silenced the Hitleresque, hateful rhetoric of Donald Trump and brought the light of Chanukkah - - the holiday of religious freedom - - into our home and our neighborhood.

We teach our children that, as Jews, it is our obligation and our moral responsibility to be the torch bearers and speak first. When they said, "But there's nothing we can do," we brainstormed some ideas.

And now I want yours. How can our kids (and us) live Chanukkah out loud and bring light to the world?

#AllWordsMatter

Whenever someone starts a conversation with, "I had the strangest dream last night," I always hope the story doesn't take a turn for the awkward. I do not need to know that a coworker dreamed about his sixth grade girlfriend stuck in a bathtub of uncooked rice. (You don't need to know that either. Sorry.)

Dreams are intimate, personal machinations of our brains. It's how we process our days and ruminate on our troubles without being overly troubled. Dreams are also where our brains take off into strange and fantastical worlds of horror, ecstasy, and crazy imaginative leaps.as a writer, I've gained and lost a million great ideas in my dreams. A few times I've been lucky enough to wake up and jot something down before it slipped away again.

In this week's Torah portion Joseph (the favorite son of Jacob/Israel) tells his older brothers about his dreams.

"There we were binding sheaves in the field, when suddenly my sheaf stood up and remained upright; then your sheaves gathered around and bowed low to my sheaf."

They already hated him because he was a tattle-tale when he was a boy. Now they really hated him. And Joseph couldn't help but make it worse by telling them about the second dream...

"Look, I have had another dream: And this time, the sun, the moon, and eleven stars were bowing, down to me."

The sun, the moon and eleven stars -- that included Joseph's parents. Jacob couldn't shake the insult from his mind, and the brothers' hatred grew. When his brothers found Joseph wandering in the desert, they decided to kill him, but eventually just threw him down a well and tried to sell him to nomads. In the end, they faked his death and reported back to their father that Joseph, his favorite, had died.

Terrorism in Colorado

It's been three days since the terrorist attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colorado, about three hours south of where I live. Nine people were shot and injured. Three people were killed:

• Garrett Swasey, a 44-year old University of Colorado Springs police officer who rushed to the scene when he heard about the incident. He was also the father of two, and elder in his church, and passionate about his faith. 
• Jennifer Markovsky, 35, a military wife and mother of two children, ages 6 and 10. She had gone to PLanned Parenthood to support a friend who had an appointment.
• Ke'Arre Stewart, a 29-year-old Iraqi War Veteran recently stationed at Fort Carson and father of two, was shot outside the clinic just minutes after learning his girlfriend was pregnant. He'd stepped outside to get better cell reception to share the good news. He told everyone else to Get Down! before he was shot and killed.

Don't Say It

How would Joseph's life been different had he followed the old adage, "If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything"? He carried tales back to his parents when he was a child, earning him the hatred of his brothers.

He was a spoiled brat who, instead of being punished for tattling, received his father's favor and amazing gifts like this colorful coat. 

Joseph had self-serving dreams which, had he kept them to himself, or even presented them in a nicer way, would have done no harm. But he did speak, with cruel intentions and a desire to make his brothers jealous. 

If he could have seen the real consequences, would he have spoken so freely? Did Joseph spend his time in the well, and his time as a slave, wishing he could take back his words and reverse the series of actions they had set in motion. 

#AllWordsMatter

I have to wonder if the right-wing spewers of anti-Planned Parenthood rhetoric understood the potential power of their words. A sampling of their comments, some made before the attack and some (incredibly!) made after.

• Ted Cruz in September: In the September G.O.P. debate, Cruz called Planned Parenthood a “criminal enterprise,” guilty of “multiple felonies.” 
• Cruz in October: “When millions of Americans rose up against Planned Parenthood, I was proud to lead that fight.”
• Jeb Bush has called Planned Parenthood’s practices “horrifying,” and has said that the group is “not actually doing women’s health issues. They are involved in something way different than that.”
• Marco Rubio, who seized on the shooting of Cecil the lion as a reason to ask where the outrage was over Planned Parenthood and “dead babies,” didn’t have anything to say about the victims in Colorado
• Chris Christie, in one debate, talked about Planned Parenthood engaging in “the systematic murder of children in the womb to preserve their body parts.” 
• And after the shooting, Trump was, well... Trump: “Well, I will tell you there is a tremendous group of people that think it’s terrible, all of the videos that they’ve seen with some of these people from Planned Parenthood talking about it like you’re selling parts to a car. I mean, there are a lot of people that are very unhappy about that.”
• Cary Fiorina claimed that a video showed what sounded like infanticide—the killing of a “fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking”—for the stated sake of harvesting a marketable brain. This was false, and demonstrably so, but Fiorina just kept saying it. 
• And today, before any of the victims are even buried, Cruz dismissed any suggestion of a connection between the shooting and the heated words of Republicans.

Maybe Cruz was right today and there is no connection between these statements and the terrorist attack on Planned Parenthood. It's quite possible that the shooter (who shall remain forever unnamed on this blog) was not consciously listening to the Republican candidates when he was making his plan to attack Planned Parenthood. It's also possible that he came up with "baby parts," a term he used during his siege, completely independently.

Even if that is all true, this 57-year-old man grew up and lived in a country where terrorist tactics on the part of anti-abortion activists have been accepted by many in the movement.

• Kill an abortion doctor to stop him from doing abortions? Acceptable tactic. 
• Burn down a clinic? Sure, why not? 
• Verbally attack women going into the clinic? It's a matter of course.

Don't believe me? Read this article from a Planned Parenthood worker who documented all the instances of attacks on her clinics:
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2015/11/heres-what-its-work-planned-parenthood

I understand that people are incredibly passionate about this issue, but how much of that frenzy-whipping has been achieved with outright lies? How much of the violence and terrorism against doctors, nurses, and women seeking health care has been encouraged and praised by anti-abortion rhetoric? How many of the fiery sermons have inspired the terrorists? Inflamed entrenched beliefs?

Radicalized true believers?


When are those who speak such things morally culpable for the actions their words inspire? Why do these candidates support going after other radical extremists who preach terror and violence but they are unwilling to look at what they say with a critical eye?



The lack of reflection on the part of the Republican candidates is distressing.

When will just one of them say, "You know, this guy may have been acting completely on his own, but let's say for a minute he wasn't. What if watching our debates inspired this kind of violence? What if there is someone else out there who might be inspired by address this issue, shouldn't we change how we talk about it? It's the very least we could do."

When?

Why I Finally Added a Flag Overlay to my Facebook Profile Picture

In the days after gay marriage was legalized in all 50 states, many people changed their Facebook profile pictures to celebrate and show their support. Even Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg got in on it:

In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, the new profile meme was a French flag overlay.
Again, Mark was in on it:

I didn't participate in these profile pic trends, but I'm not criticizing anyone who did. I did post quite a bit about both the Supreme Court decision and the attacks in Paris, so both events were on my mind and in my newsfeed.

Today, though, I did add a flag to my profile picture. This one:

To add this filter to your profile pic, go here: http://rainbowfilter.io/israel

The rainbow flag and the French flag overlays were provided by Facebook, and all users had to do was click a button and, wham!, profile picture changed. It was an official response from Facebook to world events and the currents flowing on social media. They saw a need -- users who wanted to express sympathy and solidarity -- and filled it.

But where were the other flags?

Beirut? Kenya? Israel?

Facebook did receive some public criticism for their lack of response to other terrorist events around the world. Twice as many people were killed by ISIS in the Russian plane bombing than in Paris -- was changing your flag to a Russian flag an option?

95 people were killed and 250 injured in Ankara, Turkey in a terrorist bombing in October. I didn't notice a Turkish flag meme.

In some ways  understand the reasoning. The Middle East is always embroiled in one violent affair or another, and we have come to expect bombings in places like Iraq, Beirut, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria and Turkey. They are foreign, distant places with cultures very different from the Average White Band America where me and my friends grew up, and in which we are raising our children.

But Paris. Paris is the city of American aspiration and admiration. Cultured and multi-cultural, fashionable, well-fed, and the epitome of good taste. It is the inspiration of art and artists, poets and novelists, film directors and songwriters. It's philosophers gave us the ideas upon which America was founded.

When we say, "We are Paris," we all understand what that means. We speak a common western, cultural language. It is more difficult for us to say


We are Kenya
We are Beirut
We are Ankara
We are Russia
We are Malli

So we don't.

And even if our prayers and thoughts go to those victims for a moment or two as a story flicks by on our newsfeed, we do not see a flood of those flags overlaying our friends' faces.

We are Israel.

For me that is the easiest of all. I read Israel, study Israel, sing Israel, and in my own limited way, pray for Israel.

I pray for no young man to have to return from Israel like this:

I pray for no one -- especially so many who are so young -- to ever sing a national anthem in grief:

WATCH: Ezra’s final journey. 18-year-old American volunteer, Ezra Schwartz was murdered in a terrorist attack in Gush Etzion last week. As Ezra was sent to his final resting place in the United States, his friends accompanied him to the airport. In a powerful gesture, they sang Israel’s national anthem, “Hatikva” as Ezra left Israel for the last time. May Ezra’s memory forever be a blessing.via: Ynetnews

I pray for peace.

You'd Run, Too

You'd run, too...


Take a close look at the picture of the medical center "before". That little white car on the right? That's the same year, make and model as my car.
 
Someone drove that car to a medical appointment that day.

Someone like me who had a normal life of car payments, doctor's visits, family dinners, fights about homework, errands to run, etc.

You'd run, too...

Where would you go?
Who would take you in?

You'd run, too...