On the occasion of IKAR’s 20th -A Cautionary tale and a Celebration

 Cautionary tale:

Close to 25 years ago, I began studying the central prayer in our liturgy.  The Shemoneh Esreh or Amidah, in its weekday form, consists of 19 prayers. We are supposed to read it thrice daily, so, over one thousand times per year.  I asked myself why.  After having invested many years in this endeavor, I reached the conclusion that the Rabbis who composed it had in mind that which I later named my work:  I call it NTAG.  Never Take Anything for Granted.
The middle 13, the petition prayers, ask for wisdom, health, forgiveness, good harvest, justice and more, and the frequent recitation of this is there to remind us not to take any of these attributes for granted. 
In life in general, I have come to realize, it’s a good policy to Never Take Anything for Granted.    
The same is true for IKAR. 
Yes, IKAR is soaring to ever higher altitudes and doing so well.  New members are constantly added, and even non-Angelinos join from afar. But we cannot take IKAR for granted. Will it always be the shining light it is today? 

Imagine 70 years from now, when the founding Rabbi turns 120, and decides she wants to spend her time with her grandkids and great grandkids.  What will happen then? Everything in your power must be done to secure a succession and make sure that this won’t be a “20-year fad”.  Just as a caution. 

A celebration
Thousands and thousands of Jewish people in the 20^th century, grew up Jewish, maybe
attended Jewish day school, had a Bar/Bat Mitzvah, maybe went to Jewish summer camp and then………….  The 1960’s.  The Civil Rights Movement, the Vietnam War.  So many of us turned progressive and felt alienated from our Jewish upbringing.  We simply had no use for Judaism in our lives. 

And still.  As intellectuals we were detached, but as humans we still had warm memories of a Jewish childhood, of food, music, history, stories, community, and friendships.   

Our intellectual and emotional selves were definitely on a collision course.

Then IKAR came along!

We were told that no longer do we have to choose!  Keep your good memories, the steaming good odor of your mother’s cooking, the Jewish jokes, the music.  BUT combine it with a progressive, outward-facing, conscious, smart, egalitarian, equality-centered world view. 

And voila!  Here is a group of (at the time) young professionals, angels in the city of angels, saying “Yes, we can!”  From a modest beginning with just a handful of couples rose an “empire” of likeminded, active, positive, funny people, who simply could not be stopped.
If this is not worth a CELEBRATION, I don’t know what is! 

From coast to coast, from all continents of the world, we raise a glass (or two) and say MAZEL TOV!

A translation of an interview with Rabbi Sharon Brous in a Swedish (!) Magazine...

JUDISK KRÖNIKA (Jewish Chronicle) -   

HEADLINE: “We must be able to see the other’s grief”

Intro paragraph:     
In a time of increased tension and conflict after Hamas attacks in Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, Sharon Brous, a Rabbi from Los Angeles, stands out as a clear sighted and humanitarian voice.  Through her new book, The Amen Effect and her work with the IKAR congregation, Brous highlights the importance of understanding and recognition of the deep grief and betrayal that many Jewish people experience, and at the same time, she emphasizes the acute trauma and the humanitarian catastrophe that the Palestinians are facing.

By Sarah Clyne Sundberg

Sharon Brous’ clear-sighted and humanitarian voice stands out in the media cacophony after Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7^th, 2023, and Israel's ensuing war in Gaza.  Brous is a rabbi in Los Angeles where she leads the independent congregation IKAR.
She manages to articulate the deep grief and the feeling of betrayal many Jewish people feel at the same time she reminds us about the Palestinians who are now experiencing an enormous trauma and humanitarian catastrophe of hard-to-grasp proportions.

-      An American Jew’s feeling of existential loneliness does not contradict that a Palestinian in the USA also feel existential loneliness.  I believe that it is something that can position us to understand each other on a deeper level, she says. 

Brous is in the news with the book “The Amen Effect”, which was released in January of this year.  The theme of the book is the witnessing and confirmation of the other’s grief, to stretch out your hand to someone who has difficulties is the only - and the most important - thing we can do.  The title refers to the Amen that a congregation expresses when a grieving person reads Kaddish. 

Brous thinks that grief rituals is one of the things that the Jewish tradition does the very best and that these rituals can help us understand the moment we are in right now, after October 7^th.

When you grieve in the deepest way, just after having buried a close family member, you sit Shiva.  You have seven days at home. Your near and dear take care of you and make sure that you get food and comfort. You don't go out, you do nothing. But you can't sit there forever. So, when the seven days are over you go around the block. You will see then that life still goes on out there.  Your neighbor is late for work, another one also grieves, while yet another one is happy.

Central in the book is a text, a Mishna, that concerns an ancient Jewish pilgrimage to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.  Those who are by and large feeling good, go into the holy place in one direction, while those with broken hearts walk in the opposite direction.  When they meet, the non-grieving is commanded to ask: “what happened to you”?

Brous Says that her attitude towards grief has shifted during the 18 months since she wrote the book. She tells me that when she wrote it, she belonged to the group non-grieving.

I would say that as a congregational rabbi I worked a lot with grief but I had never lost anybody in my core family. My father passed away just before Rosh Hashanah so now I go in the other direction as a grieving person for one year.

Then October 7th happened, and the perspective shifted for most Jews, in Israel as well as in the Diaspora.

- For American Jews I think many changed from having seen themselves as comfortable to feeling that they needed empathy and comfort in that moment.

Brous admits that she was a little nervous before reading through the text again when it was time to record an audio book. But she still felt that there wasn't a lot to change.

-      The book stands firm.  It is built around an ancient thought that that actually is multidimensional.  It's written by rabbis in the 300’s, who had experience of grief from both directions and therefore prescribed a ritual that works, regardless of what direction you're traveling.

She emphasizes the importance of emerging from the feeling of powerlessness to find a new role a new way of handling the grief that many of us feel towards the war in Israel and Gaza. 

-      Part of what I want to say with the book is that we in our grief must find a way to meet other grieving people. No group or individual has a monopoly on grief.

At the same time when a person experiences acute trauma and danger it is very hard to take a step back and be empathetic.  Social safety is the basis for empathy.  If you don't feel safe, it's not easy to meet people with an open heart.

-      For us who live here, far away from Gaza, from the kibbutzim and the villages at the border, can we allow the distance to give us room to open up and be curious about the other?  Not in order to persuade each other about something, only just because we are all human beings.

 

The American Journalist Ezra Klein has made an excellent series of interviews about the massacres and the war with those affected from many different ideological camps in his podcast, the Ezra Klein show. (Brous is one of them).  In one of the first episodes a person says “I have never felt so totally tribal in my thinking, and I don't like it. It frightens me!”

In her book Brous speaks about tribalism. Are there any positive sides to that?

-      Connection to other people is a fundamental need. We are social beings. And we are naturally drawn to those who look like us, speak like us, vote like us, people who have something we recognize in ourselves even if it's a shared feeling of estrangement.  To belong to a group can help us build self-confidence and well-being, it can challenge us. 

To feel part of a group is extremely important for humans. But it can also lead to indifference, or even animosity towards those outside the group.

-      That is extremely dangerous. And of course, this dynamic is much older than October 7^th.  But I think that many were confronted with this feeling of belonging to the Jewish group in a new way.  “It happened to my family why doesn't the world around us see what happened to my family.”

Brous says that it was a part of the agony many Jews have felt the last few months and that has been reinforced by the reactions of the outside world.   

-      Denial of the rapes that have happened, the justification of violence, posters with the hostage that have been torn down, the psychological warfare that happened the days after.  I believe that it influenced people and made them feel that they were maybe not part of a bigger society they've previously felt they belonged to. And that the feeling of Jewish belonging then became more important.

 

Brous tells me that more people than ever before now come to her services on a regular basis, that Jews to a greater extent are seeking community.

-      And at the same time there is a danger of digging yourself into a group or tribal belonging. It doesn't help us to understand those who stand outside our group. It instead has the opposite effect.

Brous has long worked with other religious leaders from different groups for coexistence.

- Building bridges is crucial in order to create a community, that I would like to live in. To create a just society is the ultimate goal.

Sharon Brous has worked for decades for peace, coexistence, and justice. She has even spoken in interviews of her feeling of betrayal and alienation from some of those she previously worked with, after Oct 7^th.

-      The first few days were painful. The silence.  To not hear from people that ought to have contacted me to say that that it's never OK for civilians to be exposed to violence.

I asked her if there's been any new development in that regard. 

-      It is very quiet. And then there were celebrations in certain quarters. It was shocking, it showed such a lack of moral clarity about what is OK and what is not OK. To see that some even wanted to justify such brutal actions in the name of liberation was extremely painful.  At the same time there were many who did contact me.

But as time went by, Brous realized that some of those who had not been in touch, they themselves had been hit by tragedies some had family in Gaza who had been killed, others had lived through private traumas that was unrelated to the war.  And yet others express themselves in a way that she felt was anti-Semitic and didn't even want to hold an individual dialogue with her when she contacted them.

Already on October 14^th, the first time that Brous gave a sermon after October 7th, she pointed out that many still had backed the Israelites who had been affected.

-      The US President, Joe Biden, the world's most powerful man, condemns these cruelties. My representative in Congress called me four times in the first week to see how my congregation was feeling. She is not Jewish.  So, we were not actually alone. We have friends and allies. But the absence sometimes feels stronger than the presence.

Brous also says that seeing the other, to see a human beings grief, is an obligation that we as Jews have towards Palestinian who grieve their own family members who have been killed, hurt or were forced to flee Gaza.

- Our anxiety, grief, and trauma must make us pay attention to those feelings in the people who live on the other side of the border.  After a few days I called my Palestinian friend who had not been in touch. It turned out that he had lost two family members that day in Gaza. We must be able to see and honor others’ humanity without dishonor our own pain as Jews.    
  
Sarah Clyne Sundberg -