Waldkappel and Harmutsachsen

Rolf meets us in Kassel…never stops offering stories…about everyone and every place…

He collects stories the way he collects music from South India…the Grimm Brothers come from Kassel…museum there…Rosenzweig comes from there…600 books from Rabbi Prager in the library…the Prince of Kassel’s Castle…museum…children dressed

Up like princesses and princes…

Drive to Waldkappel…lots of talk..

The scenery is perfect European countryside

Waldkappel and 15 other small villages all add up to less than 5000

Parsonage across from church..built 1521…though tower was finished in late 14^th century

St Georges…then Lutheran..becasue the prince said so.

Iris…takes care of her own 3 small churches

Rolf picked up the Jews of Harmutsachsen when another pastor died.

Only one Jewish family ever in Waldkappel but many in Harmutsachsen and other small towns…Jewish cemeteries seem to be literally everywhere…

Next day in Sorna, high school named after German martyr, Adam Von Trott… diplomat who worked with Bonhoeffer…met with more than 100 students 10-12^th maybe even 13^th. Amazing questions…how do you feel about visiting us? How do you feel about visiting Auschwitz? Students have never met a Jew…a couple thought they may have seen a Jew//Hassid in an airport???

How do you maintain memories of a community that are no longer living…even though there is a Jewish cemetery literally in front of the door to enter the school…just a few graves, the old cemetery up the hill in the forest…some students did not realize it was a Jewish cemetery…others had never thought about it…but school also has not done anything to make those names apart of their identity…why are Jews buried there when there are NO Jews???

Like Breisach and Irhrigen…communities caring for Jewish cemeteries and Jewish homes and Jewish “ruins”…with no Jews…oxymoronic or a significant new and essential hermeneutic…understanding Jews…with no Jews…ideas..theories…no praxis?

How do you help such communities? How do you///what do you teach…provide them

A theme of the two months…teaching about and FOR Jews where there are NO Jews..

Being the first or ONLY Jew ever to meet..talk…teach…represent???

DEAD JEWS or NO JEWS leaves a distinct impression so that teaching about or explaining about requires more than usual…different than SCSU where there are far more than I have ever realized who like the Germans do not know nor imagine Jews..

With less than 5000 Jews in India…and NO Jews in the villages and towns of Waldkappel and Harmutsachsen…Rotenberg…Sorna..etc..how does one teach in a vacuum? The purpose of the teaching…the goal…how do measure results…?

Creating individual museums…mikvehs…synagogues…gedenken buchen??? Are we doing the work of the Leibeskind museum in the villages…or the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe…for Sarah, social work student…Anne student for the ministry in Hamburg???

Seeing the Jewish homes in Harmutsachsen…like in Breisach…history that makes Jews live…listening to Walter Holstein…bringing a broken tea cup to the Jewish store for 5 cents worth of mustard!!! His smile..and animation in telling the stories…Hammershalg’s store…Ilse Hammershag whose legs were destroyed…who talked to Walter from the window…Jews WHOSE LIVES ARE STILL VIVID IN THE MEMORIES OF GERMANS…Walter whose friend wrote him that he saw Heinz Lorge in Riga>?? Or Kassel>?? And as member of the Wehrmacht gave him a loaf of bread…

How does one remember a class mate…photo from 1933…Heinz…whose home you walked past every day…and then they are GONE….what is the burden of that memory??

Is Walter Holstein indifferent…does he want to repent…for what…to whom…do Jews have an obligation…an opportunity to access those memories has healing…DO NOT FORGET…..BUT FORGIVE??? To whom…from whom Rolf??Iris?Gunther???Louise Jakob?

Louisa Jakob…101..blind…but more alive and sees more than ANYBODY!!

RUDE TO HER FELLOW OLD FOLKS????

Reads in brail and pissed off that books are now limited…novels???in German?

Looked out the window on Nov 9 1938 after hearing the thugs who were attacking Max Hammerschalg…go inside..we did not come to hurt you…she HEARD THE VOICES AND KNEW WHO THEY WERE…she is tough…maybe the TOUGHEST EVER!!!

She grew up with the Jews…is her memory of their lives..their living..more important than the Berlin Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe????

Spielberg testimonies of the survivors…yes, obviously….but of the witnesses???

Should we ask that Spielberg also tape…video…Louise??? Walter??? If only the survivors..then will we be able to hear the witnesses who lived with and among…

How do we help Rolf…how do we leave resources for Sarah and Anne??

We are leaving this wonderful new friend and the many people we never expected to meet and know we will be coming back...to fill the empty and abandoned synagogue of Harmutsachsen.

Reflections on Germany

Germany...we found it very difficult to get seats from India to Europe...finally we got on Air France from Bangalore to Paris>>>Frankfurt>>>Berlin

We went to Bangalore...had a lovely dinner with some of the faculty from UTC...went upstairs to check in for a 2:30 am flight and found out that a terrible storm in Paris had forced cancellation of our flight...hours later in the Bangalore Airport...we were put on Qatar Airlines.

Flying on the Qatar Airlines…was ONE long painful experience of GATE KEEPERS!

Doha…the skyline from afar…real Oil Arabs…Muslims from Indodesia..foreign workers and a Mosque in the Airport with entrances for males and females..

Finally....after arguing and then purchasing a different ticket...we got there

Berlin…a big city with great beer…

The Neue Synagogue…a second visit..climbing all the way to the top

Lots of school children visiting, non-Jews asking questions

Visiting the beautiful Lutheran Cathedral nearby…rebuilt in all its glory..

You can’t get in the small new shul only open for Shabbat..so most people see what WAS!

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe…in the middle of a neighborhood within 100 yards of the completely redone Brandenburg Gate..the street is closed off for the British Embassy…walking to the memorial there are no significant signs…though you see the steelea…we saw several teens playing on them..taking photos..smiling…I was upset..Machelle asked me not to make a scene…a security guard eventually found them and told them to stop…the rows of matte black different heights…”kittywampus”…all angles…NO straight rows…all the rows end at the street…houses, apts…souvinere stores…cafes…then you find the entrance down into the information center…NOT a memorial nor a museum…simple wall INFORMATION of history…then a room with names of the camps on the wall…and in the floor back-lit statements by victims…pictures of handwritten or original statements…translated…different ideas.. very well done…quiet…everyone is tooking down…then several large back-lit boards with families from all over Europe…their stories…large pictures…far right listing of everyone in the photo of who died and where…the diversity of Jewish life that was destroyed..

Shoah and Holocaust are according to Rolf, foreign idioms that do not translate immediately to German…issue of immediate accessibility…MURDERED has total clarity…forever changes KJV translation of Asseret HaDibrot…Nov. Pogrom NOT KRISTALLNACHT which is a REICH idiom…like the use of Maranos or Flashas..

Today Germans who know use, So-Called Kristallnacht

Berlin does really…own its own reality of being the origin of the Unthinkable.. USHMM is not a memorial site like Auschwitz or even Warsaw or Barbi Yar nor is it Yad VaShem where victims and survivors live…whose memory…purpose of the memory…who is asking me NOT TO FORGET??? Berlin understands…this is the place where it began or this is the place where the perpetrators gave the orders…led the attacks.

Train from Berlin to Kassel…beautiful and very quick

The caste system...is really EVIL

The REAL evil of Hinduism…is not idolatry, but the caste system. I have been tutored by several new friends about the ugly reality of the caste system that continues to systemically strangle India at every level. I had read in several books over the years I have been coming and certainly experienced it from afar as I witnessed the social structures as a visiting outsider. Now I am learning from those who live with their own burdens of discrimination how Dalits, the Untouchables and minority or ‘backward’ castes continue to face daily forms of this ancient Hindu social network…even though it is supposedly outlawed. The tragedy is that the caste system is now fully engaged even in the Indian Christian communities…and the missionaries had promised that Christianity was the ultimate anti-dote, the messianic egalitarian society.

My new tutors have all affirmed that my sense that Hinduism breeds pacifity…people accept their destiny-by-birth. Everything that the Manu, the ancient Hindu lawgiver, stipulated about the caste remains now after more than 3000 years.! While typing this blog entry, a student at UTC came to me asking for help, after caring for his wife’s serious health care needs, he requires help with his tuition costs…there are no grants, scholarships or even loans…he has been threatened and humiliated by the bursar’s office. When I asked why a seminary would treat him this way, he said, that the administrators were a higher caste…that he is from a very small minority group, which has no power in the church body. I met a physicist who is interested in Hebrew and has visited Israel and taught at the Hebrew University…he too felt that the caste limits him at his laboratory. Even among seminary professors there are painful experiences of caste not scholarship being the primary context of their destiny.

Caste confuses me because it is so OUTRAGEOUS that you would expect people to throw the system off as an ancient yoke of fundamentalism, but even the brightest people seem resigned to it being an anchor to the soul of India. It is far force that racism or social class competition…it defines every aspect of a complete destiny. It is expected that if you are in a caste which puts 18 above you….that you will be oppressed by all that are above you and that those below you EXPECT you to do the same to them. Regardless of your intellectual insights the entire village, family community, religious community, school and professional communities…they all sustain, maintain and expect the system to work.

I went to the Ghandi museum in Madurai and followed his famous Salt Walk in which hundreds of thousands eventually joined him to protest the British..I naively wonder why hundreds of thousands of Dalits and minority castes are not in the streets protesting even single Brahmin application of the ancient caste law..? Everyone of the children in the Living India Home of Hope is a Dalit…an untouchable so for me this is not just an intellectual concern.

I am wondering about Dalits and Jews…how the parallels work?

Temple Town...

Temple town….Madurai, Tamil Nadu…the ancient capital and famous for its Sri Mennakshi Temple, one of the three largest in all of India…where literally thousands of devotees flock to worship as Hindus..its sheer size is beyond description, 4 towers for the four directions..nothing in Madurai can be taller than these towers..in vivid colors, the many gods and goddesses of the Hindu culture

The Temple of Pandai…a much smaller local temple where I saw to live goats sacrificed..amazing experience. Surely this will be as close as I will ever come to physically experiencing the ancient cult of the Bible. The goats had garlands of flowers to signify that they were sacred…they were washed with buckets of water. Then a man, not a priest, interestingly, dressed in a traditional lungi and black shirt, with a long curved knife cut off the head of the goat and one hoof. The animal “kicked” for several minutes as it bled out and then was taken to the priests, the meat is cut up and made into food for the people of the local village. On a simple straw mat where the heads of several goats and chickens/roosters-cocks…it was very hot yesterday, nearly 90…the remains of the sacrifices were attracting “thousands” of flies.

I had tried to find some common religious realm in the large temple as I watched hundreds of Hindus offer baskets of ‘food’, flower garlands, incense, and fire to the many idols and priests. Again I tried to open myself to whether I could DO this, sacrifice animals as Leviticus requires in very detailed discipline…I actually wanted the animal sacrifice to be ‘extraordinary’. I have taught for many years that there is NO spirituality per se in the biblical act of worship…and as I witnessed yesterday, it is “work”…which is the play on the Hebrew-Avodah! I went with a new friend, John Samuel, an excellent OT/ Hebrew Bible scholar who wrote his second PhD on Gen 22-An Interfaith Perspective. John had never been to this Temple and was also deeply “shaken” by the experience. He said several times, if this is just two goats, a few severed heads…what must it have been like when tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands came during the festivals to Jerusalem, imagine the blood and physical remnants of the animals, the heat and stench. I no longer need to imagine what the Bible is describing, and can say without any equivocation that I could not and would not have “enjoyed” the religion of our biblical ancestors.

Temple Town...I have SEEN IT ALL...NOW!

Sights/Sounds/Experiences in Paris

Sights and experiences in Paris:

More fashion in every store window than I can fathom

Immigrants from Senegal are now selling the trinkets that 40 years ago..the French sold.

Lots and lots of expensive motor cycles/bikes with winter lap warmers.

Chocolate is everywhere…and I ate a lot of it.

The Metro like London’s Tube has the best people watching…

Walking in Paris, like NYC, London and Barcelona….is the breathing of global realities.

The Memorial to the Martyrs of Deportation in Paris near Notre Dame is a military memorial…highlights those who resisted…and Jews.

My heart is in very good condition..I walked to the top of Notre Dame and all the steps through Momartre up to the Scare Coeur…but I still gained weight eating.

Walking through the Paris Flea market…is amazing, right next to North African leather jackets and tennis/basketball shoes..

When you get out of the train station at Versailles the first things you see are a McDonalds and Starbucks!

Shouldn’t there be a law that outside of America we are banned from such shamelessness?

We need more cafes! In both Paris and Copenhagen..regardless of the weather, people stopped and sat down and talked…we need to bring European cafes to us if they get Starbucks and McDonalds?

The amount of Euros..guesses are as much as 12 Billion Euros (???) being spent on Versailles’ restoration is OBSCENE…no matter the source(s)…the greatest symbol of opulence in European history…nothing left of the peasants’ world except the Millennial Goals which could be reached sooner if the West chose to postpone the restorations of history’s extravagances… how strange that the gold leaf around window frames and roof frames is necessary in order to bring Versailles back to pre-revolution elegance…even as there are 6,000 children @ day that will die for lack of clean window…how can we do this…? In our world of truly obscene gaps between wealth and poverty we have yet to achieve even a consensus on human communal obligations to each other. I and my family have all we NEED and in my view should NOT have all we WANT at the expense of some having merely what they need to survive!

Marais…Paris’ Jewish quarter…we felt immediately at home…challah warm…great pickles…art…books…Jewish stars…

Louvre and Muse D’Orssey… Art that sustains the soul…provides perspective from within history..the restorations and modernization of the Louvre is thrilling…

Leaving Paris...and Denmark reminds me that the WEST is called DEVELOPED...past tense while India is called DEVELOPING...present tense. The truly historic and uplifting civilization of the WEST cannot be merely 'past', yet landing in Mumbai with its teeming streets filled with garbage is where the future is being forged...its past is surely as grand in every aspect but not as accessible as seeing Paris...I am wondering if our use of words has backed us into a corner of many misunderstandings.....I need to think about this...

Denmark..parenting...Paris...vacationing

Sorry...it has been a while since my last blog...I spent a couple of days teaching in Gujarat, think I ate something that is still creating problems...flew to Mumbai picked up T and Eve...then flew through Paris to Copenhagen to Aarhus...to bring Eve to school. Flying from 87 degrees to snow and 10 degrees in one day...from one of the largest cities/airports to one of the smallest, 400,000 with an airport smaller than a large strip mall...that is CULTURE SHOCK.
When we got in the cab in Aarhus, Eve said..listen Dad...and the taxi was playing "Casey Jones" by the Grateful Dead...the driver said he saw them in Copenhagen in the Day! It was a sign according to Eve.

Next few days I was only available to the girls...oh and that problem from Indian food!
Aarhus is really great...an amazing Lutheran Cathedral with 15th cent. frescoes and an organ we heard on Sunday...thrilling.

Had coffee at a wonderful bookstore that claims it has the BEST BARISTA (by competition!) in all of Europe....not sure I could taste...but NO big machines do the work...serious old time stuffing the cuff, the way my son believes it should be done. The weather was very cold, the coldest we are told in 23 years....Machelle surprised Eve by trying to get their on Sunday...she did several hours late because of weather in Copenhagen...we left her...and as of yesterday she is having a great time.

We spent 2 days in Copenhagen, in the midst of a mini-blizzard seeing the town, which I imagine during the summer is truly wonderful. Saw their new Jewish museum designed by David Leibskind...wonderful! Synagogue closed and no phone contact...bummer! Flew out very early yesterday to Paris, visiting our two nieces going to fashion design school...and to fulfill some promises to Machelle and Talia.

Our first day was great..wandering...Opera House, being completely redone on the outside, saw the Chagall ceiling...I saw it 40 years ago when I was here on my way to Israel to study...saw the Eifel Tower at night...dramatic! Our little apt is around the corner from a street that is right out of the movies...delightful.

Going to Notre Dame etc...this life is beyond wonder...travel...seeing your daughter get to the Danish school of journalism..where her classmates are from Prague...Belgium, Milan, Iran, Madrid...okay! More later....

Beshert just does not cover it!!

Beshert..just does not cover it!!!

Sunday..I preached two services at a CSI (Church of South India) Telegu church. This is a liberal inclusive Protestant including Anglican, Methodist, Lutheran and Baptist. Several of the students from UTC with whom I had become friendly served at this church. There was a small English service..maybe 50 people, but the 9:30 service in Telegu was packed with several hundred..nearly one thosand, outside watching on two tv screens. The entire service was in Telegu the dialect of Andhra Pradesh…these people had moved to Karnataka but worshiped in their own dialect. I used Isaiah 42:6, a light to the nations. There had been a dinner in my honor from the Biblical Studies dept and then coffee with some profs…then I packed. Needless to say, I did not write a sermon, but gave one…Victor, a wonderful new friend, translated the basic ideas of my sermon, in Telegu…I am certain was better than mine.

Just before the second service began, a German walked into the senior pastors’ office, he had been visiting areas in southern Karnatka which had been devastated by floods. We introduced ourselves to each other, he told me of many Jewish friends. Then he told me how the synagogue in his small town still stood and that he had been privately owned. I asked what that meant..he explained that someone on Stuttgard had bought it for the land and wanted to tear it down. The gov’t of both the state and Republic had denied him the right saying that the synagogue was German heritage. The gov’t paid for the synagogue’s complete rehabbing over 10 years at which point the owner, asked for the key back. The town has been fight him for 4 years in court but he wants a lot of money now for them to buy it. At this point we now need to enter the sanctuary for the service…which was entirely in Telegu…so all I thought about was how am I going to help this Lutheran Pastor and his town save this synagogue. The pastor and his town care for the Jewish cemeteries in the area. They have photographed all of the tombstones…and put them on line…in Hebrew, German and transliteration. After he told me how much he appreciated my sermon..I told him how much I appreciated meeting him and that I promised that I would help him free the synagogue from this legal limbo. Okay…maybe, just maybe, I was SUPPOSED to come to India for 2 months ONLY to meet Pastor Rolf Hoche! I need something else to do…some more $$$ to raise…another passionate distraction, since I don’t have enough. Imagine…helping a Lutheran German pastor acquire the rights to a saved shul…because we met in a Telegu Church in Bangalore! You believe this story don’t you???

I wish that was all that happened today…but after the service, the pastor surprised me by taking me to a Jewish burial ground which is now maintained by two Muslims! Really, I am not making this up. The land was donated in 1904 by the then King of Mysore, the last grave was in 2002. There is ONE Jew left in Bangalore from the original six families. He is married to a Northern Indian woman (not Jewish) but pays for the cemetery to be maintained. We called but he was out…next time! The synagogue once a home, is now a hotel….next time! I said Kaddish in the Jewish Burial Ground in Bangalore India…after preaching in an all Telegu service and meeting a Lutheran pastor who is trying to save a shul in his town. I would believe anyone telling me this story…I could not get the Sunday NY Times…had nothing else to do. Beshert just does NOT cover it.!!!

Shabbat in gardens, Ram Temples, Palaces and Quarries

Shabbat in gardens, Ram Temples, Palaces and Quarries..

Saturday I spent the day seeing Bangalore with a close friend of my brother-in-law, Scott. Charlie does leadership training…though he loves to tell everyone how he dubbed the 1979 film Jesus into 75 Indian dialects. He took me to a famous botanical garden..which happened to be having a fabulous flower show…we walked in short sleeves for 2+ hours. The colors were wonderful and given the winter fury back home it was truly grand.

Then to the famous Ram Hindu Temple…wild monkeys…a very large stone carved ram, Hindu priests offering me prayers-poojah. I thanked them…still had to push their hands away from my forehead. Walking down back to the car, I noticed several NEW cars and a Hindu priest with a fire bowl….that’s right, the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof blessing Motel’s new sewing machine…and these Hindu priests blessing cars and trucks! Take the coconut throw it on the ground..smashing it, place a small fruit under each of the four wheels, flowers on the hood..take your hands waving them through the fire bowl and then cover your face. Oh and take off your shoes, placing them under the car…then drive the car over the fruit and your shoes. Then place an offering on the plate for the priest…then watch the monkeys eat the sacrifice.

Then to one of the three palaces of the last King/Maharajah of Meysore who died in 1974. His son still lives in the palaces…has five very nice cars…but no title. The palace was built in 1860 with lots of European details…okay, I saw it.

My host and his wife wanted to eat at a Pizza Hut…okay, I was treating. I had an Indian pizza not much different. But the people in this new upscale restaurant were all young upper middle class professional Indians…interchangeable with any suburban group in America…dressed the same…kids dressed like little Americans..not sure how I felt about it until about 45 minutes later.

Charlie ended my quick tour by taking me to a very large granite quarry at the edge of town. I was not sure why I needed to see this…until I got there. I stood at the edge and looked down into a pit where human beings…mostly women and children were hitting the large granite boulders with hammers, steel rods and other rocks. Women, many of them Banjara women from Andhra Pradesh were throwing the smaller broken rocks into a trailer that would later be pulled by a tracker. When the trailer is filled the family gets 500 RS, a bit more than $10 for their work. These are bonded servants…slaves, rural peoples who caught in the draught of the last year..borrowed money they could not pay back. The loan was then sold plus interest to the quarry owner who takes the family as workers with additional threats I am told. They are given coconut-thatched huts, 3 X 6 feet for the entire family. I saw several and the gates with locks that prevent them from leaving…though there really is nowhere to go. I stood and watched a little girl play with an empty plastic bottle…the sun was very hot…no safety measures. Charlie told me that many get very sick long before the debt is paid…their hands cut and hardened…limbs damaged even severed. I found myself in disbelief..looking away..trying not to think about the foolish assumption that slavery is over. I remembered that Deut 5, a repetition of the 10 commandments, teaches that Shabbat reminds us of having been slaves and freed. It was Shabbat afternoon in Bangalore…I had walked through gardens, palaces and temples, I was free to even eat at a Pizza Hut with people from an India that was radically different than the one at the bottom of the quarry, it was very difficult to rejoice in my Shabbat.

Shabbat in gardens, Ram

Shabbat in gardens, Ram Temples, Palaces and Quarries..

Saturday I spent the day seeing Bangalore with a close friend of my brother-in-law, Scott. Charlie does leadership training…though he loves to tell everyone how he dubbed the 1979 film Jesus into 75 Indian dialects. He took me to a famous botanical garden..which happened to be having a fabulous flower show…we walked in short sleeves for 2+ hours. The colors were wonderful and given the winter fury back home it was truly grand.

Then to the famous Ram Hindu Temple…wild monkeys…a very large stone carved ram, Hindu priests offering me prayers-poojah. I thanked them…still had to push their hands away from my forehead. Walking down back to the car, I noticed several NEW cars and a Hindu priest with a fire bowl….that’s right, the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof blessing Motel’s new sewing machine…and these Hindu priests blessing cars and trucks! Take the coconut throw it on the ground..smashing it, place a small fruit under each of the four wheels, flowers on the hood..take your hands waving them through the fire bowl and then cover your face. Oh and take off your shoes, placing them under the car…then drive the car over the fruit and your shoes. Then place an offering on the plate for the priest…then watch the monkeys eat the sacrifice.

Then to one of the three palaces of the last King/Maharajah of Meysore who died in 1974. His son still lives in the palaces…has five very nice cars…but no title. The palace was built in 1860 with lots of European details…okay, I saw it.

My host and his wife wanted to eat at a Pizza Hut…okay, I was treating. I had an Indian pizza not much different. But the people in this new upscale restaurant were all young upper middle class professional Indians…interchangeable with any suburban group in America…dressed the same…kids dressed like little Americans..not sure how I felt about it until about 45 minutes later.

Charlie ended my quick tour by taking me to a very large granite quarry at the edge of town. I was not sure why I needed to see this…until I got there. I stood at the edge and looked down into a pit where human beings…mostly women and children were hitting the large granite boulders with hammers, steel rods and other rocks. Women, many of them Banjara women from Andhra Pradesh were throwing the smaller broken rocks into a trailer that would later be pulled by a tracker. When the trailer is filled the family gets 500 RS, a bit more than $10 for their work. These are bonded servants…slaves, rural peoples who caught in the draught of the last year..borrowed money they could not pay back. The loan was then sold plus interest to the quarry owner who takes the family as workers with additional threats I am told. They are given coconut-thatched huts, 3 X 6 feet for the entire family. I saw several and the gates with locks that prevent them from leaving…though there really is nowhere to go. I stood and watched a little girl play with an empty plastic bottle…the sun was very hot…no safety measures. Charlie told me that many get very sick long before the debt is paid…their hands cut and hardened…limbs damaged even severed. I found myself in disbelief..looking away..trying not to think about the foolish assumption that slavery is over. I remembered that Deut 5, a repetition of the 10 commandments, teaches that Shabbat reminds us of having been slaves and freed. It was Shabbat afternoon in Bangalore…I had walked through gardens, palaces and temples, I was free to even eat at a Pizza Hut with people from an India that was radically different than the one at the bottom of the quarry, it was very difficult to rejoice in my Shabbat.

Shabbat in gardens,

Shabbat in gardens, Ram Temples, Palaces and Quarries..

Saturday I spent the day seeing Bangalore with a close friend of my brother-in-law, Scott. Charlie does leadership training…though he loves to tell everyone how he dubbed the 1979 film Jesus into 75 Indian dialects. He took me to a famous botanical garden..which happened to be having a fabulous flower show…we walked in short sleeves for 2+ hours. The colors were wonderful and given the winter fury back home it was truly grand.

Then to the famous Ram Hindu Temple…wild monkeys…a very large stone carved ram, Hindu priests offering me prayers-poojah. I thanked them…still had to push their hands away from my forehead. Walking down back to the car, I noticed several NEW cars and a Hindu priest with a fire bowl….that’s right, the rabbi in Fiddler on the Roof blessing Motel’s new sewing machine…and these Hindu priests blessing cars and trucks! Take the coconut throw it on the ground..smashing it, place a small fruit under each of the four wheels, flowers on the hood..take your hands waving them through the fire bowl and then cover your face. Oh and take off your shoes, placing them under the car…then drive the car over the fruit and your shoes. Then place an offering on the plate for the priest…then watch the monkeys eat the sacrifice.

Then to one of the three palaces of the last King/Maharajah of Meysore who died in 1974. His son still lives in the palaces…has five very nice cars…but no title. The palace was built in 1860 with lots of European details…okay, I saw it.

My host and his wife wanted to eat at a Pizza Hut…okay, I was treating. I had an Indian pizza not much different. But the people in this new upscale restaurant were all young upper middle class professional Indians…interchangeable with any suburban group in America…dressed the same…kids dressed like little Americans..not sure how I felt about it until about 45 minutes later.

Charlie ended my quick tour by taking me to a very large granite quarry at the edge of town. I was not sure why I needed to see this…until I got there. I stood at the edge and looked down into a pit where human beings…mostly women and children were hitting the large granite boulders with hammers, steel rods and other rocks. Women, many of them Banjara women from Andhra Pradesh were throwing the smaller broken rocks into a trailer that would later be pulled by a tracker. When the trailer is filled the family gets 500 RS, a bit more than $10 for their work. These are bonded servants…slaves, rural peoples who caught in the draught of the last year..borrowed money they could not pay back. The loan was then sold plus interest to the quarry owner who takes the family as workers with additional threats I am told. They are given coconut-thatched huts, 3 X 6 feet for the entire family. I saw several and the gates with locks that prevent them from leaving…though there really is nowhere to go. I stood and watched a little girl play with an empty plastic bottle…the sun was very hot…no safety measures. Charlie told me that many get very sick long before the debt is paid…their hands cut and hardened…limbs damaged even severed. I found myself in disbelief..looking away..trying not to think about the foolish assumption that slavery is over. I remembered that Deut 5, a repetition of the 10 commandments, teaches that Shabbat reminds us of having been slaves and freed. It was Shabbat afternoon in Bangalore…I had walked through gardens, palaces and temples, I was free to even eat at a Pizza Hut with people from an India that was radically different than the one at the bottom of the quarry, it was very difficult to rejoice in my Shabbat.

Becoming the Rav of Bangalore

Becoming the Rav of Bangalore…

Teaching for me has always been a means of finding new relationships and of risking new ideas about old topics. The classes and meeting I had at UTC were all exceptional experiences in which there was little I could really prepare for the questions and surprises. I spent a great deal of working with the actual Hebrew text, trying to help students see what the text REALLY says.

I explained to everyone in as many ways as I could, that I understand why they choose to use the term, Old Testament, but if they are serious about Jewish/Christian Dialogue, I would prefer Hebrew Bible. By the end of the week, both faculty and students were using the term, correcting each other and promising me that they would continue after I left. It’s a small beginning…who knows maybe they will go out to their churches and say Hebrew Bible and then have to explain it.

My two special lectures went very well…at least from my sense of peoples’ reactions. I was fortunate to find a student from Hamburg, a woman studying in a Lutheran seminary who is at UTC for a semester. I asked her to come to the session during my Luther paper she agreed. During the paper, I suggested that the issue of Luther’s anti-Semitism is actually not a Jewish issue, but a Christian burden especially at the largest liberal Protestant seminary in India. Then I asked Ann if as a 25 year old Lutheran Christian she lived with the burden of these writings…yes, of course, our seminary acknowledges them but refuses to ever read or discuss them which she felt was worse than denying their existence. No one in a room of about 35 students, clergy and professors had ever read Luther on the Jews. I was pleased but did not smile, really, I promise I did not smile…much!

Friday late afternoon I gave my “public” lecture on Finding God in Between: Jewish-Christian Dialogue. More than 125 people came, I was very surprised and exceptionally pleased. I had a great time…lots of people ‘laughed’ and interacted with my shtick..and I taught them by doing a Midrash…taking three texts and opening them and working them the text…back and forth. Several professors told me that they loved it and had always wondered what rabbis did…I explained not to judge the rabbinate by me!

Friday evening I ate at the home of one of my hosts, a professor from the Biblical Studies dept who did graduate work at St Andrews in Scotland and wrote an exceptional article on the Midrash on Psalm 22, comparing Esther to the Dahlits in rural India. So imagine my surprise when I sat down at the table with he and his son and asked where his wife was sitting…he looked at me and said, wives serve meals to their men, it is their honor, they eat later! WOW! I tried to imagine our Shabbat table…ONLY men…Yeah, right!

Even sophisticated and highly educated people follow cultures that simply don’t fit. At the end of the meal, Jesuthram asked if I would bless David, since I was not home to bless my children…it was very touching. David, 16, asked if he could call me Rabbi Joseph instead of Dr. Joseph…it was a great Friday

If There are NO trees in the forest..should you discuss whether IT would make a noise?

In 37 years of being a rabbi..I have had my share of being the "first"...teaching at Union Theological College in Bangalore, India has been AN amazing experience of being the "first" rabbi, the first Jew...and for most of the students and faculty...the ONLY Jew and rabbi they have ever met...talked to...and questioned....and questioned....and asked to preach in their daily chapel and asked to meet with the master's and doctorate students...

This is a very sophisticated seminary...Indians from all over the country come here, Church of South India, Methodists, Orthodox (Syrian), Lutheran, Anglican, Mennonites, and Presbyterians.

Their services include the option of God as Mother, even in the Lord's prayer! The Women's Studies courses are full blown Feminist theology.

I have taught, Hebrew, Hebrew Bible IN Hebrew, Bible, Theology...and met individually with students about their many projects....I am weary but thrilled.

Tomorrow, I 'read' a paper during the Post-Colonial Theology conference on Luther's Anti-Semitism...I am the ONLY Jew at the conference...a surprise!

Then I deliver my public lecture on Jewish-Christian Dialogue...much publicity...I am worried about being too popular...too quickly.

I preach two services on Sunday at a Church of South India...one service in English and another in Teleghu...with a student from UTC translation my sermon!

Then on the way to the airport...they are taking me to the small Jewish cemetery in Bangalore! Who Knew?

Not sure what you are supposed to do on a Sabbatical...this is my first...but this has been a blast.. to be the first..and ONLY Jew/Rabbi at a liberal seminary in India...I am filled with hope.

UTC-HUC Redux...42 years later!

I am in Bangalore, Karnataka...at the Union Theological College...100 years old, one of the liberal combined Protestant Seminaries in India. I have been asked to teach..give a public lecture, preach, offer a paper at an international seminar...oh, did I mention teach!

What absolute fun today...it began at 8:30 am with chapel...student run, with a student leading the service he wrote and created...and during which he preached. The faculty sat in the center first few rows...I looked at this poor fellow...his eyes...his voice cracking and I was swept back immediately 42 years to my first year in rabbinical school, the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles..the old very small campus up in the Hollywood Hills...I remember leading that service, and preaching the first sermon ever in front of my teachers and classmates....it was an amazing instance of memory and complete and utter empathy for this young man! The prayers were by and large inclusive...God was referred to as Father/Mother...!!

I have taught three Old Testament-Hebrew classes! What an absolute blast...the first year students learning biblical Hebrew are using the old...and I mean very, old Weingreen textbooks. OMG! I got an instant headache seeing this textbook!...we studied together and we laughed...I reviewed the 10 Commandments in two classes...they were blown away by what they are not reading! This afternoon I spent 2 hours with 4 Masters Students and their individual projects...tonight after dinner I am meeting with some faculty.

Every day has several classes and pvt meetings..they want to find a way to continue the conversation...several students have asked for my help via e-mail. WOW! This is far more than I expected...could have dreamed of...and surely imagined.

So did you hear about this rabbi who goes into a Christian school in India where they have never met a Jew before!!!! What a treat....

Lots of questions about Israel and the Palestinians...some profs who strongly support the Palestinians who want to ask questions about do all Jews hate them? This will be interesting..and it is only the first day.

Living India's Home of Hope...and Laughing!

Going to Chandrakal...Living India's Home of Hope...where 53 amazing children all infected with HIV...some with full blown AIDS...means your life with be immediately aligned!

These are orphans...their parents dying of AIDS and stigmatized in a society that is already stratified by class (caste), gender, and let me emphasize it again...CLASS/CASTE.

Some of these children were literally abandoned on trains, in the huts where their parent's body was left untouched after dying, in the hospice where they watched as their parent died...and by remaining family who too old, too poor, or too lazy could not and would not care for them.

All of these children are now fed two hot meals every day and have clean drinking water and each has their own bed. Most importantly all of them get the meds that will surely prolong their lives and are treated by physicians who are trained in pediatric AIDS.

Every time we come we are greeted with hugs and smiles. Machelle knows the children better than I do after her many visits...Madame! Madame! When we are with Eve and Talia..they immediately get all the attention. Eve's camera has created a few 'rock-stars' who enjoy seeing the immediate image. Talia brought letters written my her classmates...and sat and read the letters with the children. Next week she will go back and get handwritten letters in simple English for students in Edina, MN.

We brought kites and string for all the children....for most of the kids, it was their very FIRST kite. The kites were paper...and simple wood...the string on little spools...and the life-span out in the field approx. 5 minutes per kite per child. Running...laughing...a few caught the wind and their faces would expand into amazing moments of joy.

They call me Uncle...a term used throughout India for an adult male...so there I am running, holding kites...trying my best to get them up in the air...Uncle...Uncle...Uncle! Then lots of Teleghu...not sure what they were saying/asking...so I would nod and run faster! Imagine me, still 25 pounds heavier than I should be...running...watching...running more...throwing the kites up into the air trying to catch a gust of wind...Right...a 63 year old Charlie Brown!

I loved every minute of it. Some of the older children realized that by climbing up to the roof there would be better wind! And then of course Eve had to climb up too, to capture their faces.

I am used to Fiddlers on the Roof...Now, Kite Flyers on the Roof too?!

It was great...for almost an hour...these were not AIDS orphans in rural India...just laughing kids trying to get their kites to fly. I suppose that has always been our goal...drop their status as poor orphans with an incurable virus....and give them the chance that every child wants every day....to laugh and run into the wind!

The Road Not Taken..An Indian Experience...

We all have heard Robert Frost's classic American poem...The Road Not Taken...too often!

I grew up in San Francisco in the 50's...and had no real experience with two lane rural roads until I lived outside of Chicago, in Michigan City, IN...over the years of living in the midwest, the rural two lane road has become very real...pleasant drives in the spring/summer/fall...the winter was often filled with stress.

Two lane rural roads require MORE than merely driving.

Two lane rural roads require your full attention, NO cruise control!

Two lane rural roads assume that drivers are willing to SHARE the road.

Two lane rural roads encourage that you experience the environment...what is on both sides of the road.

Two lane rural roads have nothing to do with lots and lots of traffic getting anywhere quickly!

There is a new gov't multi-lane highway that is part of the new international airport in Hyderabad. Seeing the highway construction in the daylight made me immediately think of what the WPA must have been...certainly different than I (we) have experienced the recent stimulus public funding.

After 30 minutes of new paved highway...then there is a 4 lane divided highway...the old paved road out of town.

Soon after the divided highway becomes rural paved road...sometimes it seems that it is wide enough for 3 but never 4 vehicles.

As you drive further from Hyderabad....the paving often needs repair....sometimes they have literally ripped up 20-30 feet of the cracked potholes down to the bedrock...quite the speed bump.

Two lane rural roads in India....are ALWAYS being shared by:

Water-buffalo...a few to a herd.

Flocks of goats....usually with a shepherd walking on the side of the paved road.

Three wheel small engine jittneys

Bikes

Motor bikes

Vespas

Motorcycles

Carts being pulled by water buffalo

tractors...pulling trailors filled with people

Very old/wide buses

old buses

new long wide buses

Pedestrians

Sharing a road with no 'shoulders' and NO signs warning you about curves...or speed bumps and NEVER any signs about speed of any kind!

Sitting in the front passenger seat...left front (where we are used to being the drivers) takes some doing for a control freak (ME???)

Hand-eye coordination is an absolute must!

Ignoring anything coming toward you...unless you are in THEIR lane...and always look away from the family carrying a toddler on their motor-bike...seated just in front of the driver...!

These two lane rural roads go through villages...that are crowded with people who ignore the traffic...and walk to-and-fro...with no traffic lights...stop signs of any kind.

It takes a long time to get to Chandrakal on these roads...but you get to see ALL OF THE LIFE in India....rice paddies...cotton fields...humans chopping wood from the dead tree branches..and small huts...tents...homes...and always smiling children.

Two lane rural roads in India...are truly the Roads NOT Taken...and they should be!

Take a Diversion...!

Hyderabad..Jan 12

Got in late last night, the new airport is far out-of-town...and there is a NEW highway being built. It was dark...out in the country...suddenly a sign: TAKE A DIVERSION! In the US it would have been: Detour!...The British influence on the use of English remains...how wonderful that the new highway construction ends and you are required to take the old two lane road...a diversion.

This country is a Diversion...modern, the new airport in Hyderabad makes the Mumbai airport seem old and tired. The work is still being done in Mumbai to finish the "fly-over" highway, it has been a decade long project...the modern along side the tent cities and women walking with mud and rocks on their heads in plastic buckets.

I spent time with a pastor in Mumbai who always asks questions about Hebrew in the Bible. He is now excited about a new translation of the Bible in daily spoken Maharati, the dialect of Mumbai, and he wanted to know how far off I thought it would be from the original. We talked about several passages that he knows by heart from the King James English that do not correspond to the Hebrew which was upsetting to him. I suggested that the more translations which begin with a poor translations, the further we get from the nuance of the original. Yes, he said...but the people need to read it in THEIR language even if that distorts the meaning more.

I did not think that arguing the point would be helpful...I promised to send him the most current translation that I use...he said that he would use it when he teaches. I wonder whether the gap between the latest English from Hebrew is compared to daily Maharati from the King James...as big as Detour and Take a Diversion?

Post 12/25/09...on Delta...through Amsterdam!
Okay...security is AN issue. Our plane was delayed 2+hrs in Amsterdam because of an additional security "random" check with dogs! There were also armed Army...and we watched as every single person going on to the plane to clean or cater was 'frisked' by additional security. The security at the gate was very high...every carry-on opened and the most were taken as baggage instead of being permitted on the plane...we were all patted down very carefully.

I noticed that this particular gate would be later used for a flight to Detroit. I wondered if this was THE gate that was compromised on Christmas...as I looked at all the faces of the many people, the many nations...I tried to imagine if any in the room would be willing to die....would be willing to destroy everyone else in the room. I was unsettled realizing that we were actually in the physical setting of terrorism. Too real...too close! The times in which we live are truly difficult to explain to ourselves...let alone solve.

We spent today catching up on sleep...we got to Mumbai at 2 am ...lost a bag..actually it was left in Amersterdam...by the time we got to the hotel it was 3:30 am...exhausted. We leave for Hyderabad in a couple of hours...so tomorrow we will begin our India...adventure.

“Leavin’ On A Jet Plane”…..Mary Travers died in 2009….I knew her for a few days in a former life.

I am leaving on a Jet Plane to Amsterdam…1/10/10….and then to Mumbai…and so begins my 2 months out of America and the beginning of my sabbatical.

Talia, my soon-to-be 15 year old on my left and Eve, my now-21-yr-old on my rt. Machelle is a few rows ahead. Eve is on her way to Aarhus, Denmark where she will study for the next 6 months…photojournalism, the only American woman chosen for the program…and Talia, taking a month off of her freshman year in high school….to see India a second time and visit Europe for her 15^th birthday.

I am teaching in a Christian Seminary in Bangalore for a week…and another not yet finalized…and spending lots of time at Living India’s Home of Hope where we now have 33 boys and 19 girls…in Chandrakal….time to think…write…and then think some more.

Two months in India, in Andhra Pradesh…in Hyderabad…where a new state, Telegana is trying to emerge. I hope to continue to some dialogues with Muslims and new conversations with Hindus…and Sikhs…

I am thrilled to have some time away…to take Eve to her apt in Denmark before she begins her experience of studying in Europe…to travel in Europe with both T and Machelle…to return to Paris after more than 35 years….

To write the chapter of a book on my teacher Paul Ricoeur….to write and teach some Christians who have probably NEVER met a Jew…and certainly not a Rabbi.

I will stay in touch with this blog that Eve set up for me…Leavin On a Jet Plane was the great song of the late 60’s…and no matter who covered it, it was always Mary Traver’s song…she was spoke and sung at my congregation in Michigan City, IN…while I was single…we might have flirted or something…now at 63…sit between my daughters and can’t even hum the damn song correctly…but no matter…I am TRULY LEAVIN’ ON A JET PLANE….

I will be back in the US…give or take a few days on March 10, 2010….

I am THE REBEL RABBI…