STOCKHOLM SYNDROME AND THE ECLIPSE OF COMPASSIONATE LIBERALISM

Let’s acknowledge reality: Talk radio is the province of American neo-conservatism. Even as an intrepid liberal, I believe that we should surrender that genre to them, not try to one-up them. Sometimes surrender is not surrender but a redeployment of ones best resources.

I listen to way too much talk radio. I justify my fascination by calling it “background noise” or “stylistically engaging.” I listen to the callers out of morbid curiosity, to hear what angry white men have to say in their delusions of disenfranchisement.

Naturally, I tend to overreact. Hearing talk radio and the rabble it rouses sometimes flummoxes me into believing that a reactionary, mean-spirited mindset dominates the American agenda. Then I return to reality and remind myself that talk radio is just another genre, one that is owned by a lowbrow, belligerent brand of conservatism, its overall influence questionable.

Liberals would be wise to realize that talk radio cannot and should not be the genre of their message. In the ideal, liberalism should be the antithesis of mainline talk radio’s cynicism, holier-than-thou-ism, black-and-white-ism, and shut-up-or-I’ll-cut-you-off-ism.

“In the ideal” is the pivotal phrase. I grew up on a liberalism that was hallmarked by its idealism, not by its belligerence, narrow-mindedness, and my-way-or-highway mentality. To the extent that contemporary liberalism has sold out to that kind of misanthropy, it has defamed its own legacy and been blinded by the Stockholm Syndrome – becoming like its captors instead of liberating itself from them. In the ideal, liberals do not see enemies as enemies. They do not resort to their enemies’ tactics in trying to transcend them. Hence, the fallacy of “liberal talk radio."

That prospect is a microcosm of liberalism’s descent into deservedly ugly disrepute. The images of liberalism that I venerate are of dignity, compassion, circumspection, honorable speech, openness, respect for ones opponents. They are images of JFK, Dr. King, Adlai Stevenson, Eleanor Roosevelt, Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

The bellicosity of James Carville and Al Sharpton betrays the virtues of classical liberalism. Likewise the sloth and boorishness of Michael Moore and the surly inarticulateness of Sean Penn. Al Franken is a terrific standup satirist. Trying to transform the same talents into substantive political commentary reduces his punchlines to little more than ill-tempered cheap shots. I am no great fan of Ronald Reagan. But, the demeaning treatment he is receiving from high-profile liberals in his debilitated state is not merely salacious. It desecrates the liberal virtues of compassion and respect, not derision, for the helpless soul.

We snicker at George Bush’s vaunted embrace of “compassionate conservatism.” The mission of today’s liberals must be to regain the defining genre of “compassionate liberalism.” The mandate is not to imitate our detractors but to rise above them. I have good faith that when the American public again hears the compassionate, visionary message of genuine liberalism, it, too, will reject mean-spiritedness and eagerly embrace the liberal values that we hold most dear.

So, feel free to call me a bleeding-heart liberal. I am not offended, but delighted by the genre. I would rather have a heart that bleeds for the poor and oppressed than a heart that is made of stone.

A HOUSE OF GOD, A HOUSE OF . . . CLEAN RESTROOMS?

Whenever I enter a house of worship, the first place I check out is the restroom.

Naturally, you will say. He is a middle-aged man. Regardless, I am always interested to see if the bathroom is clean. A clean restroom, I have found, is prima facie evidence of a congregation’s overall wellbeing – pride, stewardship, energy and honor for the house in which God’s spirit dwells.

The epiphany came a year ago as I was gathering up Christmas presents for homeless families at Brookwood Community Church. I already knew that this congregation had its act together, an exemplar – welcoming, God-filled, well functioning, uplifting preaching, engaged in myriad community service projects.

Brookwood conducts three Sunday services. I visited the restroom before the first one. Meticulous. Before the second service and then the third, I visited again. On each occasion, a layperson was touching it up. Wow. The correlation between bathroom cleanliness and congregational all-together-ness, I realized, must be more than coincidental.

Have I done definitive research? No, but I have a growing file of evidence: Christ Episcopal, First Baptist Greenville, Westminster Presbyterian, Tabernacle Baptist. . . all congregations of extraordinary vitality, and all with spotless restrooms.

Doing some organizational consulting for a congregation in the Northeast, I visited its cross-town competition. The competitor was succeeding; it was failing. Just as I expected: clean bathrooms. I returned and told my hosts, “No wonder they are winning. Their restrooms are clean!”

Likewise, I knew a congregation whose bathrooms were consistently untidy and malodorous. The rabbi regularly admonished the indifferent custodian and even complained to the leadership. Yet, time and again, especially before the Sabbath, he or the secretary would have to repair to the closet for supplies and do the cleaning him/herself. The point is that everything else about the congregation was also a dysfunctional mess.

As my grandmother would say, “Feh.”

I have a few theories about the relationship between clean restrooms and congregational vitality. Not rocket science:

First is the simple a fortiori notion that a congregation of clean restrooms must have well-functioning systems of responsibility, follow-through, accountability and professionalism that also extend to the “more important” facets of congregational life. Money can buy only so much janitorial service. The rest, only a committed, well-focused laity can achieve.

But, much more of it has to do with pride and dignity. They always seem to begat neatness: The spit-and-polish Marine. The luster of a beautifully set table. The car waxed to a glossy sheen. Children in their holiday best. “Poor but proud” invariably connotes dignity of ones place and presence that mere money cannot buy. And, “grunge” is not so much a fashion statement as it is a frame of mind. Likewise, a congregation and its spotless – or grungy – restrooms make an emblematic statement of its dignity or its basic lack of pride. Congregations with inferiority complexes almost always seem to have poorly kept bathrooms.

Ultimately, though, the correlation comes from a congregation’s understanding that the spiritual commitment affirmed in the sanctuary that “This is a House of God!” is the same one embraced in the boardroom, committee meetings . . . and restrooms. I laugh when someone blubbers about “more spirituality in the services,” when the occasion most bereft of spirituality is the monthly board meeting. The most vital, spirit-filled congregations are invariably those that assert through their deeds that “the greater glory of God and humanity” is not an empty platitude, but a virtue made manifest in every mundane cranny of God’s house.

An office building’s restrooms should be clean for hygienic and good-business reasons. A church or synagogue’s bathrooms should be clean because cleanliness in ones bodily functions is the fulfillment of a Divine imperative. We Jews bless God even on emergence from the bathroom for “creating within us miraculous systems of vessels and orifices.” Yes, it is a miracle.

So, take a look at other people’s houses of worship and see if my hypothesis is true. Then look at your own and ask yourself whether a congregation can be permeated by Godly wellbeing unless even the least of its facilities bears a sense of honor and dignity. See if you discover what I have: The pastor or rabbi can deliver the most inspiring sermon from the pulpit, but if the restrooms are not clean, it is a sign that the congregation still does not get the message.

AMBIVALENCE TOWARD RUSH’S CONFESSIONS . . . SO FAR

I cannot help but feel sad and sorry for Rush – no sarcasm, no cynicism, no schadenfreude. We all have our addictions, some more obvious and self-destructive than others. And, we all would do well to transcend them, knowing that we have the encouragement and good faith of decent people who only want to see a man who is hurting ascend to healing.

Admission of ones weakness and responsibility is the first critical step toward recovery. Hence, I have rarely met a guilty man in jail. Just ask him. He has invariably been set up by a crooked judge, a bribe, a competitor, a case of undeserved vengeance.

Rush appears to be on the path to doing better. But, he still has a harrowing challenge before him, as harrowing as actually being in treatment, one that is the essence of the self-scrutiny that leads to restoration. He must renounce any remaining vestiges of pleading “guilty with explanation,” a mincing step away from the nolo contendere copped by everyone from pedophile priests to the smugly ignominious Spiro Agnew. Anything less still bespeaks the victim mentality so excoriated by Rush and his dittoheads.

So far, Rush’s mea culpas, so eagerly accepted by his otherwise unforgiving apologists, have been tinged with equivocation: I am not a victim . . . but I had botched spinal surgery. I am not a victim . . . but at least I got there through licit means. I am not a victim . . . but I had to have something for my pain. I am not a victim . . . but I tried and failed at rehabilitation before.

I am not a victim . . . but please understand the circumstances.

Well, maybe we should, and maybe we shouldn’t. My empathy for Rush is complete. (How ironic that now he is caught in the conundrum of accepting or rejecting overtures from his supporters that begin with “I feel your pain.”!) A member of my own family is so wracked with chronic, but not terminal, pain that she, too, is hooked on increasing doses OxyContin, so far legitimately obtained. Neither she nor we know what we will do if/when her licit access runs out.

On the other hand, Rush, like most of us, came forward, confessed and submitted to treatment only when his back, literally and figurative, was up against the wall. It was still the honorable and therapeutic thing to do, and please God, not too late. But the mea culpa did not come earlier on, when his physician must have conveyed to him that his dependency had gotten out of hand, if only by refusing to prescribe more of the narcotic. A timely admission and the circumspection that should have accompanied it would have reflected the integrity and character that Rush so piously preaches.

Moreover, he resorted to illicit means to allay his pain. When he sought other modes of treatment that failed, he should have listened more carefully to the preachment that he routinely prescribes for other unfortunates who are on the down-and-out: Live with the pain. Who said life is always fair?

That is the essence: Everyone who turns to the illicit is responding to some kind of pain – yes, sometimes self-inflicted, but too often it is from fate of birth, abuse, endemic hopelessness, inescapable violence, insurmountable poverty, gang-driven join-or-die. These, too, are all backbreaking traumas, burdens to heavy to bear without something to ease the overwhelming pain. They are, to paraphrase Kipling, all reasons for failure, but not among them a single excuse. They can be transcended, but not without struggle, and certainly not without an environment full of empathy, support and encouragement. They can be transcended, but not through derision, cruel sarcasm, broadside judgmentalism and platitudes that border on hypocrisy. They can be transcended, but only when the transformation begins with “I make no excuses.”

Any one of us who has ever been in that situation, dependency on drugs or any other self-destructive habit, will tell you that that unequivocal confession of responsibility is absolutely preessential for restoration. It is true for inner-city crack addicts. But, it is equally true for Rush.

Rush deserves our empathy, support and encouragement, even/especially when they come from an unrepentant liberal like yours truly. He has already taken the crucial first half-step. The second awaits. He must yet make his commitment to “no excuses,” more for his own sake than for his audience’s. If he has already, then God bless him. And, if it ultimately brings him to another kind of sobriety, the sober humility that makes him less judgmental of the folks he so eagerly maligns, what a genuine moral exemplar he would become for his huge and doting constituency.

SOPHIE, MEET SOPHIE. UH, SHE ALREADY HAS!
I am delighted to share this essay that Ben wrote about his little niece and my granddaughter, Sophie . . .

Sophie is apparently Sophie. Yet, one Sophie never met the other. In fact, had Sophie the Elder not predeceased Sophie the Younger, their names would have never created such a wondrous connection.

Sophie the Younger is my very first niece, my sister’s daughter. She is named – most auspiciously, we discovered – after my late grandmother, my father’s beloved mother and matriarch of our family. The name they share is only the beginning of the incredible, even eerie, déjà vu.

Once upon a time, no one doubted that a person’s name expressed his/her essence. The Bible is full of these instances: Abraham is the “great father.” Israel “struggles with God.” Moses “draws forth” his people from slavery. The four-letter Hebrew name of God so embodies God’s essence that it is never even pronounced. Today, when a child is named after a deceased relative, the gesture is typically symbolic, reflecting honor and fond memories.

For two-year-old Sophie, the ancient significance has taken over. My mother’s genes are obviously so dominant that neither I nor my siblings look anything like my father’s family. But then came Sophie. Straight out of the womb, she looked precisely like her great-grandmother. Then came the little facial expressions that stunned us. How could it be? They were precisely the same as those by which we so lovingly remembered my Grandma Sophie. My father was once so startled that he peered at her through the bars of her crib and whispered, “Ma, you can’t fool me. I know you’re in there. It took you 79 years, but I know you’re back!”

As the months came and went, the déjà vu became even more profound. When we gather at the Sabbath table to sing Shalom Aleichem and welcome the ministering angels, Sophie sways back and forth to the rhythm, precisely like her great-grandmother did. Likewise, when we recite Eshet Chayil (Woman of Valor, Proverbs 31), she averts her eyes, apparently with the same humility that her namesake did.

And then there was the music. Sophie the Elder’s tastes ran to arcane Yiddish folk songs and show tunes. From the age of five months to this day, Sophie the Younger sits on my father’s lap as he sings her the very same songs, and she falls silent and listens intently for longer than anyone would expect.

None of these similarities, though, is anywhere nearly so profound as how Sophie’s emerging personality reflects my grandmother’s. Just like her namesake, she stops to study new situations with riveted fascination. Once, an older child nearby threw an awesome tantrum. Sophie stood in place, watching and watching, taking in every nuance of this “novelty.” Just like her great-grandmother would have, we all instantly commented.

Little Sophie’s instinctive compassion and caring are the epitome of the déjà vu. Sophie the Elder did not have an evil bone in her body. Every one of her instincts led her to be a calming spirit, full of compassion, offering solace and comfort, trying to help people, even strangers, over the hardest of times. And now, her spirit has been hauntingly resurrected. Little Sophie is compassionate by instinct. When she sees someone crying or appearing to be sad, she stops everything, even if she has been in a foul mood, runs to him/her, plants a huge hug and kiss, and tries to bring the sadness to an end. One Sophie just like the other.

What is the origin of a child’s basic demeanor? How does s/he embark on the path or compassion or cruelty, selflessness or selfishness, calm or angry? Psychologists will forever argue between “nature and nurture.” I cannot tell you how sweet, compassionate Sophie will affect the debate. This, however, I can tell you: She “appears to be on a good path.” Ironic, isn’t it, that those are precisely the words that her beloved great-grandmother would use to show her approval whenever we achieved something small or large?

Grandma, you can’t fool me. I know you’re in there!

WHAT WE DO IN THE NAME OF JUDAISM THAT DESECRATES JUDAISM

Being away from home for the Holy Days seemed only to amplify the most woeful meaning of “away from home.” I found no consolation in knowing that nowadays various forms of familial apartness make my own story all too typical. Moreover, the world has become an increasingly hostile place, full of contentiousness, mean-spiritedness, and cruel anonymity. The need for at-home-ness has become a full-blown emergency.

Where do we take refuge? One would hope that turning toward ones faith-community would provide some modicum of gentle kindness. We cannot deny that our Torah mandates that the community be a taproot of compassion, acceptance, and an antidote for the cold world “out there.”

How grievous is it when Judaism reneges on its calling and becomes a grotesque caricature of a hostile society? What happens when Judaism itself become the source of belligerence, even cruelty? What happens when its spokespeople become ludicrous mimics of the sanctimonious meanness of El Rushbo and Ann Coulter – and, lest we be accused of leaning leftward – James Carville and Al Franken?

How nice if Jewish compassion would come instinctively via Jewish inbreeding. It does not. It must be learned from the pulpit, yeshivot, seminaries, federations, teachers, periodicals, lay leadership, et al. More significantly, so must its negation, and it seems that negation is the order of the day.

A young ba’al teshuvah who went off to study in a respected yeshiva called me to report a dilemma and its proposed resolution. His niece was having her Bat Mitzvah at a Reform temple. Her parents were going through an ugly divorce, and the family was distraught. His rosh yeshiva had instructed him not to attend, given the prohibition among some Orthodox Jews against entering a Reform temple. What did I think?

I told him, “You should absolutely attend. As the only frummeh Yid – pious Jew – in the family, it would be a kiddush Ha-Shem – a sanctification of God’s name – for you to serve as conciliator, kindly presence, and promoter of shalom bayit. What a profound message about the essence of Jewish piety.”

Well, he brought this argument to his rosh yeshiva, then called to tell me that his rosh yeshiva had counseled him to tell the family that he would attend, then to call them a day before the Bat Mitzvah to tell them he had taken sick and could not be there.

“Your rosh yeshiva told you to lie?” Silence. “So, he believes that God is such a jerk that He is more pleased by lying and pouring frum salt on your family’s festering wound than by your being a peacemaker and Jewish symbol of compassion? Tell him that the God in whom I believe is not a jerk!” Did he attend? You guess.

Sadly, it is not an isolated incident. I have attended plenty of synagogues, shiurim, and lectures, rabbis’ eyes glinting with contemptuous smugness. The ratio of harangues to preachments about lovingkindness and against social injustice is at best four-to-one. The harangues are not all about Bin Laden and Arafat. They are more likely about entities at odds with their own vested interests, dogma, and worldview.

And, God knows, the mean-spiritedness is not merely public. It pervades private conversation as well – salacious gossip, rumormongering, defamation. One particularly embittering example: A prominent rav and posek who had never met a friend of mine nonetheless denigrated him behind his back for his divorce, not knowing, ironically, that he was speaking to a family member.

Neither is bellicosity the exclusive province of orthodoxy. If you have read Fried’s The New Rabbi or been privy to machinations of the other Jewish movements, you know that pettiness, backstabbing, ruthlessness, xenophobia, and bureaucratic intrigue are broadly nondenominational. Likewise, most congregations’ policies are long on hardnosed business processes and woefully short on basic compassion. All this contentiousness does not promote, but only impedes, the essential divine mission to “do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.” If your congregation and rabbi have done better, then consider yourself blessed, but also know that, sadly, you are the exception, not the rule.

At this moment you may indict me for the same kind of belligerence. I can defend myself only by responding that mine is a belligerence against belligerence. I have just delivered four High Holy Day sermons calling for a return to a “kinder, gentler” Judaism, as God, the Prophets, and the Sages had intended.

Might you challenge your rabbi and religious movement to do the same and to keep preaching and practicing it all year long? Sure, you and I will foul up along the way, let ego, anger, and nastiness get the better of us. Yet, as we so often tell our Christian questioners, God does not demand our perfection, just our continuing upward climb.

The plaintive refrain to one of the Shabbos zemiros beckons, “From whence will we find respite? From whence will we find joy?” The storms of life “out there” batter us and demean us with cold anonymity. The monsters abound. What a cruel nightmare when we think we have escaped the monsters by taking refuge in our Judaism, slam the door shut, then turn around only to find that the very same monsters are right in there with us.

We wake up screaming. We should be screaming. We should demand better. God certainly does.