Religious leader
Sep. 30th, 2014 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livOh. My. Life! It's the middle of the High Holy Days, right, I'm up to my eyes preparing half a dozen major events in 3 weeks. And term started yesterday and I have a new PhD student, so work is fairly overwhelming too. So the day before the New Year, I get an urgent message from an old friend in Sweden asking me to come and run the Progressive Jewish community's big annual showcase event, because the person who was supposed to be doing it has pulled out for overriding personal reasons. And obviously every Jewish professional is massively busy at this season, and apparently they remember me fondly from 5 years back...
I mean, I can do a full weekend of activities with a mix of social, liturgy and Jewish study. I can even do it at short notice, if I have to. I can liaise with a bunch of people in a different country who have strong views about how they want to run things and haven't necessarily come to a consensus before consulting me. But to do this when the two weeks between hearing about it and it actually happening contain Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur and the start of term, that's a big ask. To cap it off, I am walking into two politically fraught situations, both at the national politics level (Sweden has just had national elections with a massive swing to the far-right party), and at the community politics level (the broader community just sacked their rabbi because he was too successful at his brief of attracting young people to synagogue and making things more dynamic, and it turns out the old stalwarts don't like change.) And again, I can handle politically fraught, but only if I have really plenty of time to prepare, not just intellectually but talking to people and sounding out what the issues are and where I need to tread carefully.
Also, would you believe that the theme for the weekend is "how to deal with legitimate criticism of Israel in a climate of anti-semitism". Um. That is waaaaaay the hell outside my comfort zone, very hard to teach in a text-based way, and likely to provoke some really passionate and potentially conflicting responses.
I should note, "climate of anti-semitism" in the Swedish context does not mean unpleasant posts on Facebook and Tumblr, or even tactless newspaper articles and cartoons, thought goodness knows there's been plenty of those especially over the summer. It means literal violence, people getting beaten up for wearing visible Jewish symbols in public, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and institutions including a primary school. Not to mention the ugly anti-immigrant politics which is becoming scarily mainstream, (and some people on the political left are trying to blame the Jews for this). I don't think that as an outsider, vaguely following this stuff via Swedish friends on FB, I want to blunder in and tell people who are actually living in fear of ethnic violence what to think.
I'm a little bit nervous of posting about this here, but do you have any suggestions of how best to run this weekend event? I don't at all want to get into any kind of debate about whether Israel's actions, recent or historical, are justified, that's not the point. I'm taking it as a given that there is such a thing as legitimate, non-racist criticism of Israel, and I'm taking it as a given that primary school kids in Europe do not deserve to be subjected to violence because of any given bad thing Israel is believed to have done. Basically if you're not Jewish and would like to comment, please try to be tactful. I've already written about what I personally think of anti-semitism vs Israel criticism and I don't want to get into a flame war about it. If things get nasty I'll lock the post, I need advice and support here, not political debate, please.
I think what I mainly want to do is to let the community talk, given them a forum to express their fears and ask them to tell me about what things are like on the ground in Sweden right now. But moderate heavily so it doesn't slip into any anti-Arab or Islamophobic nastiness. I may also talk about Shmita, the year of release which is just starting, cos that's pertinent to the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, and it gives me the opportunity to learn some Torah in among the politics. But I don't know, this feels like a hugely scary brief to be handed, especially in these circumstances!
In addition to that stuff, I have to do a baby-blessing where there is some anxiety about the parents being in a mixed marriage, and nobody has bothered to tell me the genders of anyone involved, so I don't know whether the birth parent is the Jewish one (nor whether they identify as female, which the liturgy tends to assume). Oh, and a session for three kids I've never met who are hoping to celebrate their bar mitzvahs in spring, and who for various reasons have been let down by the person who was supposed to be teaching them. So currently they're only learning how to read their Torah portions and I'm supposed to provide a two-hour session to encourage them to take their BM as a personal journey into adulthood, not just a hoop to jump through. It might be the only teaching worthy of the name they get.
In short, you might say I'm bricking it. Much as I'm excited to get this opportunity to go back to Sweden and hopefully catch up with some of my Swedish friends, even in weird circumstances. Though I haven't exactly got a lot of time in the next two weeks to sort out the logistics.
Oh, and in other news the university has invited me as a special guest to attend a lecture by former Archbishop The Rt Rev & Rt Hon Lord Rowan Williams. I assume because they wanted to showcase interfaith diversity, but it's weird that I've ended up as someone the university trots out to meet VIPs. The lecture is public, but I get to attend a formal dinner as well. I'm kind of excited about this, but also I could do without it being 24 hours before the start of Yom Kippur.
I mean, I can do a full weekend of activities with a mix of social, liturgy and Jewish study. I can even do it at short notice, if I have to. I can liaise with a bunch of people in a different country who have strong views about how they want to run things and haven't necessarily come to a consensus before consulting me. But to do this when the two weeks between hearing about it and it actually happening contain Rosh haShana and Yom Kippur and the start of term, that's a big ask. To cap it off, I am walking into two politically fraught situations, both at the national politics level (Sweden has just had national elections with a massive swing to the far-right party), and at the community politics level (the broader community just sacked their rabbi because he was too successful at his brief of attracting young people to synagogue and making things more dynamic, and it turns out the old stalwarts don't like change.) And again, I can handle politically fraught, but only if I have really plenty of time to prepare, not just intellectually but talking to people and sounding out what the issues are and where I need to tread carefully.
Also, would you believe that the theme for the weekend is "how to deal with legitimate criticism of Israel in a climate of anti-semitism". Um. That is waaaaaay the hell outside my comfort zone, very hard to teach in a text-based way, and likely to provoke some really passionate and potentially conflicting responses.
I should note, "climate of anti-semitism" in the Swedish context does not mean unpleasant posts on Facebook and Tumblr, or even tactless newspaper articles and cartoons, thought goodness knows there's been plenty of those especially over the summer. It means literal violence, people getting beaten up for wearing visible Jewish symbols in public, vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, synagogues and institutions including a primary school. Not to mention the ugly anti-immigrant politics which is becoming scarily mainstream, (and some people on the political left are trying to blame the Jews for this). I don't think that as an outsider, vaguely following this stuff via Swedish friends on FB, I want to blunder in and tell people who are actually living in fear of ethnic violence what to think.
I'm a little bit nervous of posting about this here, but do you have any suggestions of how best to run this weekend event? I don't at all want to get into any kind of debate about whether Israel's actions, recent or historical, are justified, that's not the point. I'm taking it as a given that there is such a thing as legitimate, non-racist criticism of Israel, and I'm taking it as a given that primary school kids in Europe do not deserve to be subjected to violence because of any given bad thing Israel is believed to have done. Basically if you're not Jewish and would like to comment, please try to be tactful. I've already written about what I personally think of anti-semitism vs Israel criticism and I don't want to get into a flame war about it. If things get nasty I'll lock the post, I need advice and support here, not political debate, please.
I think what I mainly want to do is to let the community talk, given them a forum to express their fears and ask them to tell me about what things are like on the ground in Sweden right now. But moderate heavily so it doesn't slip into any anti-Arab or Islamophobic nastiness. I may also talk about Shmita, the year of release which is just starting, cos that's pertinent to the relationship between Israel and the Diaspora, and it gives me the opportunity to learn some Torah in among the politics. But I don't know, this feels like a hugely scary brief to be handed, especially in these circumstances!
In addition to that stuff, I have to do a baby-blessing where there is some anxiety about the parents being in a mixed marriage, and nobody has bothered to tell me the genders of anyone involved, so I don't know whether the birth parent is the Jewish one (nor whether they identify as female, which the liturgy tends to assume). Oh, and a session for three kids I've never met who are hoping to celebrate their bar mitzvahs in spring, and who for various reasons have been let down by the person who was supposed to be teaching them. So currently they're only learning how to read their Torah portions and I'm supposed to provide a two-hour session to encourage them to take their BM as a personal journey into adulthood, not just a hoop to jump through. It might be the only teaching worthy of the name they get.
In short, you might say I'm bricking it. Much as I'm excited to get this opportunity to go back to Sweden and hopefully catch up with some of my Swedish friends, even in weird circumstances. Though I haven't exactly got a lot of time in the next two weeks to sort out the logistics.
Oh, and in other news the university has invited me as a special guest to attend a lecture by former Archbishop The Rt Rev & Rt Hon Lord Rowan Williams. I assume because they wanted to showcase interfaith diversity, but it's weird that I've ended up as someone the university trots out to meet VIPs. The lecture is public, but I get to attend a formal dinner as well. I'm kind of excited about this, but also I could do without it being 24 hours before the start of Yom Kippur.
(no subject)
Date: 2014-10-01 04:55 pm (UTC)And yes, I definitely need to make clear that I know we're talking about their actual experiences, I am an outsider and quite the opposite of an expert. Thank you for reminding me of that. I'm trying to sound out the situation in advance as much as I can, but I'm so pressed for time it's hard.