janetawel

The Broken Circle

By Jane Tawel

April 28, 2019

Yesterday afternoon, while Raoul and I were being metaphorically “blown away” by the eternally classic and in this production, at the Pantages Theatre, phenomenally performed “Fiddler on the Roof”, more people, in my country this “land of the free”, were being literally blown away because they are Jewish. The horrible “inhuman” who did this latest evil, said in his obvious and utterly hateful stupidity, that one of his inspirations was the greatest Jewish human who ever lived, Jesus, who some believe was the Jewish Messiah. I wish I could say, oh, how ironic, but this surpasses irony which I usually get at least some enjoyment out of noting.  This claiming Jesus the Jew as inspiration for violence against Jews, is instead a meta-example of what I have come to believe is the worst plague ever visited upon humans – the plague of ignorant hatred. It is the sickness that happens when people let their hatred make them stupid. It is the stupidity that we allow when we do not teach people the difference between right and wrong. It is the false sense of identity we get when we allow ourselves to choose traditions that are easy to keep and a religion unmoored from its historical basis. It is what people who call themselves “little Christs” do when they focus on something other than the traditions God has entrusted them with as followers of Yahweh.

If we as humans do not start trying to figure out and teach truthfully, intelligently, humbly about The God of Abraham and Sarah, Moses, Deborah, and David – and frankly, also the God of Ishmael, Jesus, and Paul– we will continue to live with the violence born from our godless fear of “the other”, whomever that “other” happens to be. If we do not see “the other” as we do the  men and women we like so much at a distance, those we choose to accept as Jews if they  entertain us on our televisions or that we like to claim as our own now, those Jewish heroes we like to quote from like Joshua or Jonah—if we do not change our hearts and do something about the continuing prejudices that lead to yet another tragedy– then we are not following a God that we claim to find in The Bible.  Oh, we all love Tevye, that iconic Jew in the musical – the one that makes us laugh and cry, that Jew that we “all just love!” as long as he stays on the stage and doesn’t talk back to us. But if we don’t teach our children more than a few musical song and dance routines about a God and the people He has chosen to carry-on the traditions of the type of faith and worship that God has given and required of all human beings, of all nations and tribes –then we will keep waking up to a world where our own personal Sabbaths are in vain and our traditions of faith are nothing more than the lies of entitlement we cling to.

We have to do something more than shake our heads and talk; especially those of us who want to be “grafted on” to Jesse’s tree,  but who seem to have tragically and perilously thrown out the tree and kept just our “Christian” lopped off branches. We have thrown out the traditions that all God’s Chosen People are encouraged – nay! required to follow. We have stopped telling the Passover Story. We have stopped meditating on the stories of redemption that God commands His people to humble themselves with in the telling. “Remember, I am the God who brought you out of Egypt”, God says with every single command He gives. We have used the current and modern nation of Israel as an un-criticised and misunderstood shield against truthfully figuring out who exactly does God choose as His. We have thrown out Shabbat and Sabbath rest and replaced it with some psychological feel-good pep talks by well-paid speakers, followed by brunch, shopping and football.  We have thrown out the study of Torah and the meditation on the Tanakh and refused to accept that the One we claim to be The Son of God had only those books of Torah to teach him and bring Him close to God’s Kingdom on Earth. We have stopped creating circles of peace and instead have formed lines of entitlement.

As I watched the character of Golde, the Jewish mama in the play, prepare the Shabbat Seder meal, unbeknownst to me at a Passover Shabbat meal preparation in San Diego, Jewish families were once again mourning the tragic persecution of loved ones due to the prejudice against Jews the world has long stoked and looked away from. I sat in my cushy, front and center chair—the tickets were a wonderful, special gift from my daughter for my husband’s birthday. My daughter, Verity, has a tradition of gifting us with extravagant tickets to plays, concerts, shows that we otherwise would not see. It is a tradition born out of her love and generous heart.

In the play, Tevye too, has a deep love and a generous heart, for his family, just like my daughter. Tevye also has a tradition of taking his problems off to one side and talking in asides to God. This has been a tradition for centuries of course, of the men and women who talk to God. Talking to God can be done as a group- event, but it really works best when done in humbled solitude and in private – just the human being talking with and listening to The God-Being. There are famous recorded asides to God even before God chose the Hebrews to talk with and listen to. What is considered possibly the earliest book of the Bible has a long and famous aside by a character called Job.  Abraham went in private off to one side  and gambled with God over Lot and the ten good men he hoped God could find in Sodom.  Moses spent forty days in that historically famous aside with God on the mountaintop, receiving the Torah and God’s commands for the people that God alone could lead to the Promised Land. Samuel, who became a great prophet of the Jews wouldn’t have existed without the private prayers that Hannah his mother, would pray alone to her God, begging Him to hear her cries. Later, Mary, the mother of Jesus would, as an aside, recite a Hebrew psalm of praise for her chosen status as a poor and persecuted Jewish woman, who was nevertheless to be highly exalted because she as a Jew, was  called to do God’s will. And then there is that Jewish man, that my own religious tradition holds to be our Savior.  That Jew named Jesus spent more time in asides  and in prayer to Yahweh, God of the Hebrews, than he did in talking with the characters in his own story.

But as I watched Tevye and Golde, Lazar Wolf, and Yente, and all those amazing characters brought to life by the actors on stage; and as Tevye walked to one side of the stage to say in an aside to his God: “God I know we are Your chosen people but every once in a while couldn’t You choose someone else?” –as I laughed with the ironic humor of Tevye’s words — a Jewish woman named Lori Kaye had been shot dead, and three people were injured —  Noya Dahan, an eight year old Jewish girl who is just a little younger than that  famous and in the hindsight of history beloved Jewish girl named Anne Frank; and the Jewish Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, and a Jew named Almog Peretz – those Jewish people were not walking off stage after gathering for the traditional prayers to their God.  Those Jewish people from the Chabad Synagogue in Poway – those Jewish people were joining the age-old tradition of people being targeted, persecuted, and killed because, and only because – they are Jewish.

This phenomenal production I saw, of “Fiddler” stays true to the historical time and place of the original: “The Pale of Settlement of Imperial Russia around 1905”.  Of course, it must stay true to the setting in a play that is as historically specific as this one.  But there is one slight change the director made that for me made a world of difference.

At the top of the show at the gorgeous and glorious Pantages Theatre, the patriarch, the “Papa”, Tevye, walks onto a completely bare stage. He is not yet dressed in the garb of a poor 1905 Russian Jew. The actor comes out, minus the head covering that Jewish men wear to humble themselves and to show that God is over and above them in power and respect.  He is minus the tallit, whose four tasseled corners will hang down from Tevye’s waist throughout the performance.  The tallit is worn by Jewish men because they are commanded in the Torah, “to recall all the commandments of the Lord, Your God, and to observe them”.  Tevye, that iconic and beloved Jew of fiction, comes out instead as modern man in a maroon anorak, hatless, his brown, slightly greying hair curling up like a halo around his ears, wearing modern eyeglasses pushed up on his trim nose, looking like any one you might currently meet on any street in America. In the actor’s hands, he carries a small leather book that he is silently reading. He just stands there for a bit in silence, reading something in the pages of the book.  And then without speaking yet, he hands the book off to another villager  just then coming onto the stage, whisks off his red winter coat, to reveal underneath, his costume as Tevye, and the play begins with the introduction to the song, “Tradition”.

At the end of “Fiddler on the Roof”, Tevye’s entire village is forced to leave their homes and livelihoods and although they have no money and little means, they are forced to find somewhere else to live. Tevye, Golde and their two remaining young daughters are off to throw themselves on the kindness of a relative who lives in America.  One of Tevye’s daughters and son-in-law are going to Warsaw, Poland. It hit me for the first time yesterday, that the author of the musical’s book probably chose Warsaw as a foreshadowing of what would happen to the Jews there, just as it was happening to them in the musical’s setting of pogrom-ready Russia.  It hit me, as I sat in my plush theatre seat yesterday, when I heard the hopeful young couple tell their parents, Tevye and Golde that they would join them soon in America – I thought, they will never make it to America.  They will die in Poland. The little Jewish baby that Tevye’s daughter holds in her arms will be about thirty-four years old when Germany invades Poland.

Meanwhile, another Jewish woman – a descendant of a Jewish couple who surely had to flee somewhere in the world at some time in the world’s history– was dead in America and three others wounded, including a Rabbi. Six months earlier in Philadelphia, eleven other Jewish descendants of other Jews were targeted and slain. Tevye’s village leaves still holding on to a  strong hope for their futures, but of course we know in the audience, that soon the Jews will be slaughtered by the millions and the world will be witness to a holocaust that will only end when  metaphorically once more the Red Seas are parted and the hands and chariots of destruction of those who would eradicate God’s Chosen People are stayed again by the God who has promised to never break His covenant with His People.

As the play ends, and all the villagers carry their belongings away from the only home they have known, the character of the Rabbi carries only a large scroll. The Rabbi may have to leave his home with the others, but he will carry Torah with him wherever he goes. The characters, rather than leaving the stage one by one as in past productions, push carts of their belongings and walk single file, until they eventually are walking around and around the stage in a tight and closed circle. The circle of actors keeps going around and around, and in this show, the symbolic character of the fiddler on the roof, does not stay behind but rather joins Tevye and the others, to go fiddle precariously in a new and foreign land. The circling Jews are being expelled, being robbed of their goods and homes, having been beaten, separated from loved ones, imprisoned –but they are holding fast to their faith and wherever they go they will cling to their identities as God’s Chosen People and they will trust in The Lord Who Took Them Out of Egypt.

The Jews of “The Fiddler on The Roof” form a circle on the stage that keeps going round and round, and round – a circle of silent resignation; a circle of community that will stay strong no matter where they disperse to; a circle of hope for the future of God’s people born out of their suffering and yet intent on grasping at joy; a circle of identity they share, not in any nation—any nation—but only in God’s community of humble followers; a circle of tradition.

At the very last moment of “The Fiddler on the Roof”, when the audience expects to rise as one and applaud, suddenly, out of the circle of Russian 1905 Jewish characters, and without warning, steps the modern looking– maybe American? maybe European? maybe even Israeli or Palestinian– man?  He is dressed again, not in the peasant clothes of the character Tevye, but in the eyeglasses and the maroon anorak, minus the skull cap, minus the prayer shawl, with his greying hair uncovered before His God. And this modern-day Tevye comes silently out of the circle. It is Tevye, but it is not Tevye.  In his hands, the man holds that same leather-bound book and he is silently reading it. Then he looks up from the book, looks at the circling, circling, ever circling cast of Jewish men, women and children going around and around the stage, as if he is gazing at Jews on this spinning globe, going around and around the world. Then the man in the modern coat looks back at the book.  The circle of villagers begins to break apart and leave the stage until the man is left alone with the leather bound book. Finally, he looks up and out at us the audience, and then – did I see it or just imagine it? – he takes a quick look up at His God, the God of The Book, as if to ask in a private aside:

“God, when will this cycle of pain and persecution end? When will Your People live in safety and freedom and joy? When will the circle be unbroken, Lord?”

I Am Woman, Hear Me Implore

By Jane Tawel

April 24, 2019

Sometimes I really have to respond, and I found this was true recently when a young friend I know was struggling with some ideas about what he termed, “feminism”.  I have learned to my chagrin that it is often pointless to engage with people and other times I hold out hope. This time I decided to hope and my responding briefly to this man, in turn, led to this poem and enlarged meditation.

I Am Woman, Hear Me Implore

A Poem By Jane Tawel

April 24, 2019

I Am Woman, Hear Me Implore!

Love stands ready at the door.

I am different, it is true.

But are we so disparate, I and you?

If I hurt you, will you not bleed?

Do we not suffer from the same needs?

Do men always have to throw in a spanner,

If I come at things in a unique manner?

And if I choose to use my heart,

Well, doesn’t that mean I’m just different-smart?

God doesn’t see me as mother or whore,

Oh, I am Woman! and I implore,

Please look at me, my friends and brothers,

Just as you would your beloved daughters.

And I promise you back, all you masculine ones,

I will love you as I would love my own son.

I Am Woman, and will not be labeled,

For I am strong and I am able.

But wouldn’t it be even more grand,

If we men and women would live life hand in hand?

I am Woman, a name Jesus could tell

To those like his own mother and the one at the well.

It’s a label befitting a daughter and queen

Who can rule with God in His World, yet unseen.

Oh, I am Woman, and I kindly implore,

Do not wait for heaven on some future shore.

We, brothers and sisters, can bring heaven to earth,

If we give no more labels but each other, true worth.

I Am Woman and I merely implore,

Love is ready and at the door.

We live in a world that makes me tired. And sad; one in which people seem to make up their minds based on either a herd mentality or a mistaken self-centered rationale. With these two attitudes, people justify pointing the finger at non-PLU’s. And rather than making a concerted effort to increase their intelligence or, God forbid, a desire to grow wiser, they argue their points to calm and address, not the world’s injustices, but their own “quiet lives of desperate fears”.  But I found I had to dredge it up within myself to get into the ring with this friend of mine, and by extension others, both male and female, and by using as much kindness but truth as I can muster.

The post was about “feminism”, a label that I guess is trending again and used by both women and men as if they all mean the same thing by it, which I am darn sure from reading and listening to what people say, that they do not. This recent post was about ideas the writer had on two kinds of people I have been at times identified with – Christians, and women. It intrigues me when someone purports to discuss something that I identify with, in this case, women. Especially when as in this case it is something this other person is not, since he is a man. The worst part of it for me was that he chose not to talk about women, but about “feminism”.  And I do get my dander up a bit and climb onto my high horse, whenever anyone has to choose a label for other human beings to express ideas or philosophies. I think using labels should be reserved for food that has an expiration date, not for human beings, and I dislike labels for people, whether that label is feminist, liberal, conservative, or vegetarian. I especially go into over -drive when the person using the label is not putting said label on him or herself as well as on others. But labeling is just as bad when used to identify myself with perhaps not enough actual proof that I am acting in ways, doing things that are implied by my label.  For instance, if I label myself a vegetarian because I am upset about the way animals are treated before becoming meat, but I am not doing anything else to protest the way animals are treated, well, then do I honestly think my labeling myself is going to do any good for any one? I just metaphorically want to take all the little label makers and devices in the world and run them until they are all out of paper or plastic or metal or whatever they use to make labels, and force people to try to talk without the use of sticky notes. Labels do imply sticky issues, though, don’t they? This sticky-wicket issue I have with labels is one reason I just can’t use the shorthand labels I used to use for myself, like “Christian”, or “Independent” or even sometimes the label, “American”. But I am still rather proud and content to be labeled “woman”.

When men decide to discuss “feminism”, I need to point out that the attitudes of men are usually very obvious to us women, no matter what men say or how they may spin it. The underlying male belief that somehow feminism is about them, would be hilarious if it were not part of the problem. Men are almost always in positions of power so that even if they talk about change, it is excruciatingly apparent, from the metaphors they choose and the language of their “pep talks” to women that they see little risk they themselves will need to change. For people who claim a worldview of “Christianity”, I can only suggest that they might want to meditate on the greatest person who was ever labeled a feminist– Jesus Christ.

It’s not such a bad idea for all people around the globe, whatever religion they might label themselves with, to frankly and humbly start looking at the radicalization of stereotypes that the religion of the Hebrews originally espoused and that Jesus Christ took to the next level. This is in fact what all those who have managed to change the world have done. It is what Gandhi did. It is what Martin Luther King, Jr. did. It is what Mother Teresa did. It is what Nelson Mandela did. It is what Jesus did. And it is what the women who became disciples of Jesus did, long before the word “feminism” arrived as fodder. Sadly, even those early Jewish female world changers have had to take a back seat, a Rosa Parks type seat, in the pantheon of world-changers.

And I’m sorry but much of this prejudiced injustice is actually done by the spreading of misinformation,  sleight of hand, and the rewriting of history – even to the point that books that are meant to be holy, like Christianity’s New Testament,  are rewritten to deny women the first places they deserve, not just the honorable mentions they sometimes get. When we put labels on strong women who want to change the world for the good of others, we are using the power of words to deny the righteousness of their cause. If these ideas about feminism that I am raising, make a man uncomfortable as even just the word “feminism” tends to do, then if he wants to grow and be wise, or especially if he wants to claim to think like God thinks, he should figure out why it makes him uncomfortable. Because the bottom line is that men have been making women “uncomfortable” for centuries.

Where I personally start on this is where I try to start on many things, especially in this day and age. I forbid myself the luxury of labels. When we label people, we are on a very, very slippery slope and eventually, labeling people lets those who have the power gain even more power over those people they stereotype as “lesser -thans”. Labeling has been the justification for a world of horrific things; from the American justification of slavery to the Nazis’ justification of The Holocaust. Does it not frighten you as much as it does me, that no matter where you are living today in the globe, the people in power –power in the halls of governments, in the temples and churches and mosques of religions; power in educational institutions, and the powers of color and monetary status– are once again justifying their shorthand labeling of those not like themselves, in order to gain more power to act unjustly, to deny people basic human needs, to destroy?

I have come to absolutely hate labels like “liberal”, “conservative”, “feminist”, “evangelical” etc., because frankly most people use those labels  — either for others or themselves—to merely choose a shorthand for their prejudices and / or their ignorance. They may be trying to hide their prejudices from others so as not to be judged, but often I think they are hiding their prejudiced minds and angry, frightened hearts from themselves. When we hide things about ourselves from ourselves it enables us not to have to work at being a better person and not to have to change. Changing ourselves could lead to changing the world, and that, especially for those already with any amount of power over others, is frightening.

For those of us who want somehow to follow a God who chooses women, people of color, and poor people to change the world, we must learn to identify ourselves  first, foremost, and only with The God  who labels us images of Him. We must study and choose to live in The Way of a man-god who spoke to women as equals. We should tremble to label ourselves “little-Christs”. For if we label ourselves as those who are like Jesus, then we will be judged on the way we are causing others to label The Christ. If men must be careful, we women need to be equally careful that we do not fall into the trap of setting ourselves apart, neither reveling in our  strength or in our weakness, neither choosing a feminist role lived in antagonism to men nor in an anachronistic feminine attempt to live in the past.

We all, men and women, must always be referred back to our lives in Christ and our need to understand what God tried to tell us in various ways through His Word and revelations. In terms of human gender and sexuality, we are called to such a different idea about what is important and what is not, what is meant to be different between us and what is not, and what most importantly of all, we will all be changed into when we are made like Jesus in His Kingdom. It is no amount of irony that some of the people who have lived on this earth have been most like Christ while not being at all “Christian”.  And I fear labeling anyone a  “Christian” today comes with more dangers and flat out lies than is worth any amount of identification short-hand. It is ironic that the term “Christian” was used originally as a demeaning label by those in power, and was not used by those who followed the Jewish religion of The Christ. This of course was at the same time that being labeled a “woman” was as destructive as any profiling has been in the history of the world.

There once was a man named Saul who was a really prejudiced guy; a racial profiler, a misogynist, an intelligent but completely wrong-headed, wrong-hearted evangelical –a guy who labeled others so he could use his power as a religious leader against them. Then this guy named Saul had a real encounter with a God who refused to pick people to serve Him based on their labels. That God chose Saul, despite all the labels I have just given him.  And that man spent the rest of his life trying to tear down the walls of prejudice that had been built around the city of God’s love. Saul, who became Paul, spent the rest of his life teaching and believing that a community of God-followers is meant to be a kingdom on earth where all peoples, tribes and genders are welcomed, and respected, and honored, and equal, and yes, even loved. Tragically, much of what is now attributed to Paul, maybe most especially those that some people quote about women and men, were added later as falsehoods or “tweaks” by the religious and government leaders who rose in the ranks of power. But Paul did write down some important words we should take to heart when we are labeling others. As Saint Paul learned after equal parts of suffering and joy, in the Kingdom of God, there is “neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, liberal nor conservative, misogynist nor feminist”.

If as Charis Kramarae has said “feminism is the radical notion that women are human beings”, then the radical notion of the Judeo-Christian worldview, is that human beings are gods and God’s. As a woman, I must strive to see others in the way that “The IAM Who Refuses All Labels” sees them. I must pray as we were taught to pray by “He Who Refused to See Others as Stereotypes”. And I must treat others in the here and now, so that it may be so in us, uniquely created, equally worthy, “on earth, as it is anywhere God is truly present.”

I Am Woman, Hear Me Implore

A Poem By Jane Tawel

April 24, 2019

I Am Woman, Hear Me Implore!

Love stands ready at the door.

I am different, it is true.

But are we so disparate, I and you?

If I hurt you, will you not bleed?

Do we not suffer from the same needs?

Do men always have to throw in a spanner,

If I come at things in a unique manner?

And if I choose to use my heart,

Well, doesn’t that mean I’m just different-smart?

God doesn’t see me as mother or whore,

Oh, I am Woman! and I implore,

Please look at me, my friends and brothers,

Just as you would your beloved daughters.

And I promise you back, all you masculine ones,

I will love you as I would love my own son.

I Am Woman, and will not be labeled,

For I am strong and I am able.

But wouldn’t it be even more grand,

If we men and women would live life hand in hand?

I am Woman, a name Jesus could tell

To those like his own mother and the one at the well.

It’s a label befitting a daughter and queen

Who can rule with God in His World, yet unseen.

Oh, I am Woman, and I kindly implore,

Do not wait for heaven on some future shore.

We, brothers and sisters, can bring heaven to earth,

If we give no more labels but each other, true worth.

I Am Woman and I merely implore,

Love is ready and at the door.

 The Saturday Between

By Jane Tawel

April 20, 2019

Today is the day that should set us apart.

Not yesterday– everyone dies.

And tomorrow remember –the ones whom He knew

Were still afraid or just surprised.

Today is the day we should soberly start

To ask ourselves Who He might be.

And what it might mean if we take up his name,

And die with Him on our own Tree.

This Saturday when we are rushing around

Just doing whatever we do in our town,

Well, that is the day Jesus lay in a tomb

So that I could be born again in Yahweh’s womb.

So this — this is the day that I should be changed

In anticipation of molecules rearranged.

For the Savior who on this day in the grave rested

Tomorrow He will rise and be resurrected.

If I want to be different

And call myself a small Christ,

I must stay dead on Saturday

And that is a small price,

Compared to the sacrifice God made today,

When He stood by in heaven while His Son in death lay.

In Saturday’s tomb we can find God ‘s own Son

And there we will know the true depth of God’s love.

We too will one day meet our own mortal decay

Just like Jesus Christ did on this Saturday.

And so that Tomorrow I may be resurrected,

I dare not  make Saturday  — this day – neglected.

Oh, yes Saturday’s holy, a day to be respected

For Sunday’s a-comin’! And Our Lord’s Resurrected!