Rebel, Rebel: a lesson from a bar mitzvah

Modern-day people have a hard time with Parshat Korach, the section of the Torah we read in synagogue today (Leviticus 16-18).  Korach is one of three tribal leaders who stand up to Moses and Aaron and accuse them of taking all the power and the glory for themselves.    The response?  God causes the ground to open up and swallow them and their supporters.  Impressive, but hardly an answer to the charge.

The next thing you know, the “whole Israelite community” blames Moses and Aaron: “You two have brought death upon the Lord’s people!”  The response?  More death.  Plague spreads through the camp and kills something like 2% of the entire population.  Only when Aaron stands “between the dead and the living” and burns incense as an atonement offering does the plague go away.

I want to think a lot more about this story and what we can learn from it about how to lead, how to rebel, and what makes a claim to exercise just and rightful authority valid from a Jewish perspective.  Expect a series of blog posts about that.  But first, let me share what David Matthews said at this bar mitzvah today at Temple B’nai Brith.  

David pointed out that even though Aaron was personally singled out for attack, he was the first to rush in and stop the violence of the plague from spreading.  This is consistent with what we hear about Aaron in other stories, where he is consistently pictured as a peacemaker.  David traced a line from Aaron to modern-day practitioners of nonviolence, including Mohandas Gandhi, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the vast majority of the Occupy movement.  In his view, they are all followers of Aaron.

What an ingenious interpretation!  David makes us look at Aaron (and to a lesser extent, Moses) as not just calling down divine wrath on people who oppose their authority.   He makes us see Aaron as the inspiration for generations of people who oppose authority, as well.  Yes, one person can be both.  Reality can be that complex. The Jewish tradition can contain resources for both authoritarian rule and rebellion.  And, a thirteen-year-old can be that acute.

Look for more in future posts.

The Courage to Change, a lesson from a bat mitzvah

I have to paraphrase something I wrote at this time last year:  I have tutored a lot of bar and bat mitzvah students on Parshat Sh'lach Lecha, the portion of the Torah before the wandering in the wilderness when Moses sends twelve spies to scout out the promised land--but no one has ever talked about it the way Anna Carton-Smith did today at Temple B'nai Brith.  What is it about this parshah that gets such interesting readings out of thirteen-year-olds?

Anna gave me a completely new way to read the spies' majority report.  They told Moses:

All the people that we saw [there] are men of great size...and we looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.  (Numbers 13: 32-33)

Anna hypothesized that it wasn't the physical stature of the Anakite residents of Canaan that made the Israelite spies feel small.  It was their freedom.  Unlike the former slaves who had just come out of Egypt, the people of Canaan were used to making decisions for themselves, and to dealing with the changes and challenges that life throws at all of us with the resources they had.

The Israelites were used to being told what to do.  They found every new and unfamiliar aspect of life in the wilderness disturbing--even when it was literally manna from heaven.  Looking at people who lived without masters, they trembled.  How small their own lives looked to them, and how gigantic the Canaanites' lives!

Perhaps Anna read the portion this way because adolescents face the grown-up world with some of the same trepidation that the spies brought with them to Canaan.  But I haven't yet met an adult who has completely grown out of that fear.  The courage to speak up (like Joshua and Caleb), to confront change, and to imagine that things can be different--and better--is something we can all seek, no matter what our age.

"Transparency is the New Black"

Review of Share This!

Deanna Zandt has written a wonderful guide to social networks for people who don't feel at home there.  She explains what's new about building relationships through Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the like, and she encourages us all to participate. 

"Sharing is daring," she says.  By putting more of yourself out there, within limits that you consciously set, you increase your credibility with people who are just getting to know you.  As you become more well known, you win people's trust.  At the same time, she argues, sharing personal and professional information helps build a better world.  If someone reads and enjoys a tweet I send out about good communications AND they go to my blog and find my Jewish musings, then it registers that a person they respect can be serious about being Jewish (or gay, or a feminist, or...whatever you are.  Fill in the blank.)  It may be overstating things to say that this will change the world, as she does in her subtitle, but at least it will show what the world is already.

In any case, sharing more about ourselves is the direction we are all heading.  "Transparency is the new black."  So, better try it on and find a style of social networking that compliments you.  In the Resources section of the book, you'll find tips for individuals and tactics for organizations that she recommends.  Try a couple and see how they work for you.

Reading this book, I felt as if I were a traveler in a new and foreign country, with a helpful guide pointing out the landmarks and explaining local customs.  At the same time, paradoxically, I felt as if I'd come home.  Really being interested in other people, helping them with what they're doing, and offering them ways to help me too (or promote a cause we both care about): this is what I've always done.

Back in 1986, when Rona answered a personal ad I'd placed in a newspaper, I realized that we already had met through the local chapter of a progressive Jewish organization.  It would have been very awkward if I had kept that to myself and didn't tell her that right away when I wrote her back.  By letting her know, not only did I show that I cared about honesty in relationships right from the start.  I also (not realizing it at the time) let her see that she knew people who knew me and shared some of the same values that moved me.  That was the basis for beginning to trust me.  Reader, she married me. 

Organizations are also looking to woo people, and they will have to open up more to build lasting relationships with volunteers, supporters, donors, customers, or investors.  I would like to focus on helping them do it, online and off.

The First Step

I'm 55 pages into Deanna Zandt's Share This!  I've had two big surprises so far.  One is that the book has said very little about techniques or tactics for using social media: it's mainly about the attitude you bring to it.  I tried to summarize that attitude in my very first tweet:

Recipe for good conversation: Listen. Ask questions. Pay attention to answers. Contribute when you can keep the conversation going.

(And, I might add, be yourself.  Not necessarily your whole self, everywhere, all the time...but nothing but yourself.  People will trust you partly because you show you consider them trustworthy.)

Surprise #2: most of this is what I do already, face to face.  I would never dream of walking into a room and telling everybody, "Listen to me because what I have to say is the most important thing"--so why would I walk online and do that?  And on the positive side: I try to share information and ideas and make introductions that I thing people would benefit from.  Does it really matter whether I do that face to face, on the phone, by email, or on Facebook or LinkedIn?

What We Have Here is Tailored to Communicate

"Tell me a story."

Beginning in childhood, we all ask to hear stories.  They entertain us.  They delight us.  They help us make sense of a world that's been there before us and that's going on all around us, which we spend our lives trying to understand.  As adults, we discover new techniques for making sense of the world: measurements, statistics, correlations, theory.  Graphs and charts help us make discoveries.  Photos and artwork call our attention in ways words can't, and music touches us in places that words don't.  Still and all, when people mobilize to get things done, it's usually because we have seen ourselves as characters in a story.  The pictures, the numbers, and the words all come together and we see the present moment as part of an ongoing drama.  When the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice," that was one of the shortest stories ever told...and one of the most compelling.

I've come to realize that in my work life, what I do best and what I like to do the most is to tell the story of an organization, to make its case, so that people want to devote their time, their money, their energy, their ideas to helping it succeed.  In my years at CAAS and in the nonprofit world, I've enjoyed many ways of communicating, from in-person and on-air interviews to written proposals, from helping Reflection Films produce a video about CAAS to helping Andy Metzger write articles about poverty for the Somerville Journal--and of course, writing this blog.

I'm starting a journey toward making Communications a bigger part of what I do every day.  Come along with me.  I'll share some of the sights and sounds and reflect on what I meet along the way.  Some of you may be experienced travelers who can give me tips for the journey and point out milestones as they pass.  All of you are welcome.