Seems we’ve been hearing a lot about tefillin lately: The plane diverted because they were a suspicious object. The World Wide Wrap and related events going on at synagogues.

I recently participated in a mind-body medicine program at a major hospital. It’s given me new appreciation of the ritual, as tefillin connect prayer (mind, spirit) to the body and through that connection strengthen the experience of both. Specifically, the shel yad and shel rosh (hand and head tefillin), reflect body and mind. I learned in the mind-body medicine program that neurologically, achieving a higher level of awareness meant increasing the high-level activity in the prefrontal cortex (as opposed to the primitive brain stem) which is the area the shel rosh sits just on top of (and apparently the same area is significant in other spiritual tradtions).

I bought my tefillin at the beginning of my semester in Israel in 1995. I’d been exposed to the practice as that summer as a counselor at Camp Ramah. My first roommate at Tel Aviv University, Steven, was a fellow American Jew who was a bit more advanced than I was in Israeli and Judaic knowledge. Eventually he used that knowledge to leave the dorm for an off-campus apartment but, first, we took a trip to Jerusalem together where he took me to a sort of tefillin factory in Mea Shearim and ordered me a pair. Mine are “smoli,” left-handed, and tied in the Ashkenazi manner; the sofer tied them and cut the outer plastic case to that specification at the time. They were one of if not the largest single purchase I made as a student that semester, costing around 900 shekels, which was around $300 at the time, if I recall. I think they are a bit larger that what you could buy in the States at that price which impresses people in some circles.

My tefillin go on my right hand because I’m left handed. I drew this cheat sheet for wrapping shel yad on the hand, based on reversing the diagram in a book (possibly Aryeh Kaplan’s Tefillin) I found in the Hillel library back in college. I’ve added color to show how it spells out the name of God Shaddai. I’m not sure I’m parsing the letters in an entirely traditional way here, but it looks right.

While I never put them every day, after Hannah was born I did not use them for years. Largely because by the time I got children off to daycare or school I was late to work, but also because I’d heard from Orthodox sources that tefillin should be inspected regularly and putting on a pair that was no longer kosher was worse that wearing none at all. Then, about a year ago, my own Conservative rabbi held a tefillin “learners minyan.” I asked him about the need for inspection, and he said that we didn’t need to worry about it when in our community we just needed to get more people to use tefillin at all; and besides mine seems to be in better shape that others in our congregation.

Tefillin still seem strange. I’m wired to my iPod and smartphone and it seems perfectly normal even though these were futuristic dreams a few years ago. Tefillin have been around for hundreds of years and I never lose the sense that they are foreign. Some people translate the word into English as “phylacteries,” which I think is an inside joke: is there anyone who does not know what “tefillin” means but knows what “phylacteries” are? I picture an ancient equivalent of Reform Jews coming up with a Greek word to make them seem more normal; they must have seemed foreign even then.

Pope Benedict wrote yesterday:

Priests can rightly be expected to be present in the world of digital communications as faithful witnesses to the Gospel, exercising their proper role as leaders of communities which increasingly express themselves with the different ‘voices’ provided by the digital marketplace….
No door can or should be closed to those who… are committed to drawing near to others. (The Priest and Pastoral Ministry in a Digital World: New Media at the Service of the Word.)

Aside from the specifics about Jesus, I pretty much agree with his message.

Are Jews similarly obligated to spread a religious message through Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and other new media? (That is, mainstream Jews–Chabad obviously considers themselves obligated.)

Should we even be reading much less caring about what the Pope thinks?

Can we survive if we don’t?

In my family, we have a ritual on Saturday morning. Max and I are usually the first ones up, so I take him downstairs and let the girls sleep. And by the time they are up, I’m doing actual cooking for breakfast, which we don’t do any other day of the week. At one point, challah french toast was the favorite; more recently, it’s been pancakes or banana muffins or even vegan double-chocolate waffles and pumpkin scones.

Saturday, of course, is also the Jewish Sabbath, Shabbat. Shabbat should be about resting and recharging and spending peaceful time together as a family, and my ritual fits nicely with this. Waking up early, rushing out the door after a bowl of cereal and stopping to buy coffee on the way to where we’re going would not be in the spirit of Shabbat. The only problem is that cooking breakfast isn’t really in the spirit of Shabbat, either; cooking itself is a type of work that traditional Jews don’t do on the Sabbath at all.

This past week I did something different. Every Saturday at 8:30 a.m. our rabbi holds a study session. He e-mails the congregation the day before with the topic. It’s always an interesting topic, but not usually reason enough to leave my wife with both children on her hands on the one day she can stay in bed a little late. This week, however, the topic was so personally compelling that I put a batch of banana muffins in the oven, kissed the family goodbye, and went to learn about why Jacob Neusner, a prominent academic Conservative Rabbi who was raised Reform (like I was) was is returning to reform.

The interesting topic is not Neusner’s choice per se, but what differentiates two denominations that, in real ways, are competing and converging. Our rabbi said that he and a colleague in the Reform movement he is friends with both describe their jobs as encouraging congregants to “make Jewish choices,” and if that meant they are much the same, so what?

Having been fairly involved myself in both movements for different parts of my life I have my own ideas about the differences, and think that when lifelong Conservative Jews call our left-of-center (using “left” colloquially in a non-political sense) Conservative synagogue “like Reform” it’s because they don’t really know the Reform movement. It’s like when people say France is Americanized because of McDonald’s and a Disney park, ignoring the system of laws, work ethic, decentralized public education, religious history, etc. that make America unique.

The next day, I recalled a conversation that made the difference crystal clear. A couple years ago, I had the chance to talk to a local Reform rabbi about my Shabbat observance as a participant in CJP’s Ikkarim program. I asked him specifically about my pancakes-on-Saturday-morning conundrum: how it felt appropriate for my young family, but wasn’t the highest level of observance that I hoped to eventually (like, when the kids went off to college) achieve. His answer was that if cooking breakfast is the Shabbat practice that works for me, I should do it. From the Reform perspective, making a Jewish choice was not about making a choice guided by Jewish law, and there was no “credit” given to a choice that was not meaningful just because it honored Jewish law. This appeals to a lot of people, but it left me unsatisfied. And that’s why even though I agree with Jabob Neusner’s platform, I’m still not a Reform Jew.

Michael Chabon, in The Yiddish Policemen’s Union (admittedly a novel, not religious teaching) writes about the “shortfall…. Between commandment and observance, heaven and earth, husband and wife, Zion and Jew. They called the shortfall ‘the world.’” Pancakes on Shabbat are part of “the world.” Figuring out how to live in the world is the challenge.

At the urging of a health care provider, and armed with a new copy of Veganomicon: The Ultimate Vegan Cookbook, I tried an essentially vegan diet for two weeks. This means no mean, poultry, fish, eggs, or dairy. It also means no cream in my coffee, and rules out most commercial baked goods, which usually contain some egg or dairy ingredient.

How did it work out? I feel great! Then again, I expected I would; for whatever reason, I’ve never particularly enjoyed a lot of meat in my diet. I feel more relaxed and energetic, and may have even started to lose a little weight.

Of couse, I can’t tell if I’m actually reducing my risk of diabetes or cancer, as Colin Campbell claims of no-animal-protein diets in The China Study. I’m not sure anyone can conclusively prove that one long-term diet is better than another, and discern its impact from genetic and other factors that cause disease. But it seems right, and it doesn’t make sense to ignore reasonable evidence when it’s impossible to have a conclusive proof.

I feel that the whole exercise was a bit of a Trojan Horse. For two weeks, I did a lot of cooking from scratch, ate more and better vegetables and less junk food, and rarely ate from restaurants. I think I would have been healthier than usual on that plan even with a piece of fish or even a hamburger added in.

This experience did cement in my mind the uselessness of an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet. There was a period in my early 20’s when I primarily ate “kosher dairy” that included fish, dairy products (lots of cheese), and eggs. I don’t think this is particularly healthy, especially as it’s pretty easy to follow such a diet eating processed junk foods (which was its appeal to me at the time. And, from a moral perspective, did your egg-laying hen really have a better life than its cousin in the oven? And does not eating them maybe acknowledge them a little less?

(I should mention that I don’t have a moral or ethical desire to be a vegan to not harm animals. I do make some efforts at keeping kosher, out of respect for God and what He’s created; and as a very general moral principle don’t want to leave a larger “footprint” on the planet than I have to. But I consider humans eating meat just part of the whole circle of life.)

So, do I continue? I timed the suggested two-week trial period to fit in between two trips out of town. Yesterday, the two weeks up, I put some cream in my coffee when I was out of the house, rather than taking it black. Then, I decided to cook a chicken that had been in my freezer for at least two weeks, but I let the rest of the family eat it and didn’t have any myself. This is the hard part: it’s great to eat a plant-based diet when I can cook at home, but I don’t always want to have to cook at home, or seek out special food everywhere. I want to be able to travel and eat meals with people in restaurants or as a guest in their homes (plus, I still need to worry about foods I’ve tested allergic to). I expect I’ll keep putting soy milk in my coffee and trying to bake without eggs at home, but I’m not sure I’ll avoid Dunkin Donuts completely.

For a class in college, I was required to buy a volume of Adin Steinsaltz’s translation of the Talmud from Aramaic into Hebrew. We mostly worked off photocopies of an English translation in class, though, and as a testament to my ignorance, 13 years later, I still have just that one of the 63 tractates on my shelf.

So, when I heard that the famous Talmud scholar was giving a lecture in my neighborhood–at the JCC, where I take Max to preschool every day–I decided to attend.

The topic of the lecture was “love and hatred,” and it was essentially a talk on the direction the Jewish community needs to take. Because we already know how to cope with hatred, but we don’t know how to cope with being loved, which is the situation today.

He gave the example that animals either have a shell or a backbone. For an animal to survive outside of its shell, it needs a backbone. All too often, it has been the shell–the response to an external threat–that has kept Jews together. (I’m not sure if he meant this an an evolutionary metaphor, but it sounds good to me to say we must make an evolutionary leap.)

He also gave the example of a Jewish woman who become a Buddhist nun, who says she doesn’t find anything in Judaism because it’s about kneidlach, and she’s a vegetarian. And he admitted that kneidlach aren’t enough. Which I wholeheartedly agree with, but it’s a pretty radical idea. The voice of the typical Jew that I imagine, perhaps not of my generation, but certainly of Steinsaltz’s, would be offended. Jews who prided themselves on secular learning and achievement and on sticking together for chicken soup and to remember the Holocaust would be quick to respond to such an idea with a litany of people who still hate us.

I think that we may have, very recently, reached an inflection point, accelerated by the weakened economy. Jewish institutions that speak to people’s needs for meaning, connection, celebration and wisdom are thriving; those that exist now simply for historical reasons are threatened. People who maintained a traditional life out of guilt have fallen away, and people who practice out of personal motivation have joined. (Though I might have a skewed perspective, because I have sought out a certain sort of community and base my knowledge on that.)

In response to a question, he indicated that a single lecture to a general audience could not provide specific solutions, but rather was a way to get people in thinking about certain questions. The main point was the need to focus on the “backbone” problem. Which is not entirely black-and-white, because there is still antisemitism; and Judaism already has a strong backbone of culture, philosophy, ritual, literature, etc. (but far too few learn it).

It seems obvious to me, but I’m often surprised how often Jewish institutions don’t see it as their fundamental mission to get as many people as possible “turned on” to Judaism. When I worked at United Synagogue (which does, in fact, have a few programs that do “turn on” people) I was struck that the talk was more about service to members or at best outreach to a static group of members rather than a a true mission to reach as many people as possible with something we believe in. This is not to ignore that different organizations have different tactics and competencies and will reach different people; but we also can’t ignore the sacred mission that we all (should) share.

On this topic, Steinsaltz quoted from Alice in Wonderland: “It takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!” (This was somewhat déjà vu, too, because I seen a children’s theater program perform Alice in Wonderland on that same stage earlier this year.) Jewish life is just like an other endeavor in this regard: if you’re focused on what you’re doing, and not growing in some dimension, you may feel like you’re running but you’ve actually been left behind.

I suspect that sometimes Jewish groups are reluctant to promote their work because it is a special mission, so let me be clear: When I say “turned on” I don’t mean converting people or anything on that level. As in other enterprises, a great product still needs to be sold. In my field, computer software, a developer can write a perfect, elegant, efficient program and no one might use it; while a company with a less perfect program and great marketing wins in the marketplace. Similarly, keeping the treasures of Judaism locked up in books accessible only to scholars does not protect it; it is only preserved as much as people can learn it. We don’t want to be hated; the more learning, the more we can cope with being loved.

Steinsaltz (quoted on Wikipedia) said, “I never thought that spreading ignorance has any advantage.” I agree with that. There are many organizations, some of which I’m a part of, that are already doing a great job spreading Jewish knowledge, but there is much more that can be done.

For those of you who know about the Innovation project I did at work last year, this is a lot of what we researched. These are the ideas that will actually reduce costs (hopefully after we’ve achieved coverage reform nationally, as we already have in Massachusetts). While they only briefly mention computers in the article, just as in any industry, predictable, better organized, more measurable care will in large part depend on IT.

The health care debate of 2009 has had so many moving parts that it has sometimes seemed impossible to follow. The crisis behind the debate, though, is about one thing above all: the scattershot nature of American medicine. The fee-for-service payment system — combined with our own instincts as patients — encourages ever more testing and treatments. We’re not sure which ones make a difference, but we keep on getting them, and costs keep rising. Millions of people cannot afford insurance as a result. Millions more have had their incomes pinched by rising insurance premiums. Medicare is on a long-term path to insolvency. The American health care system is vastly more expensive than any other country’s, but our results are not vastly better.

via Magazine Preview – If Health Care Is Going to Change, Dr. Brent James’s Ideas Will Change It – NYTimes.com.

It seems like you can find everything on the Internet. Which is why it’s so important to point out when things that matter aren’t on the Internet.

Bogus copyright and trademark complaints have threatened all kinds of creative expression on the Internet. EFF's Hall Of Shame collects the worst of the worst.

via Takedown Hall Of Shame | Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Especially now that I am allergic to apples it feels very much like going to a low-budget amusement park. The horticulture is better at Disney World or Storyland anyway:

Apple picking is a cherished rite of fall, a wholesome and fun family outing, a throwback to a simpler time when people weren't so disconnected from the production of their sustenance. I look forward to it every year. It's also a wasteful scam.

via What pick-your-own-apple orchards teach about the American economy. – By Daniel Gross – Slate Magazine.

I received the following e-mail about a program from CJP. Working out in the suburbs, it’s not something I can attend, but I’d like to, as it’s on my favorite bit of wisdom:

The Genesis Forum, a free noontime adult learning program, features Rabbi Seth Farber at our next session on October 28. Rabbi Farber is a dynamic speaker whom the New York Times describes as a “pragmatic idealist.” Formerly of Boston, Rabbi Farber now directs Itim: The Jewish Life Information Center in Israel. Together we’ll explore the modern day ramifications of Rabbi Tarfon’s ancient teaching, “You are not required to finish the work, nor are you free to desist from it.”

All sessions held from 12:00 – 1:15 p.m.
9th floor of CJP
126 High Street, Boston

I’ve pretty much adopted “you are not required to finish the work, nor are you free to desist from it” as my philosophy of life, in secular matters even more than religious ones. I see it meaning “leave the world a bit better than you found it.” Or more specifically, as I wrote in my Facebook profile, “Repairing the world, one byte at a time.” Not just fixing software bugs, but “repairing the world” in a Lurianic sense. Get it?

Fortunately that won’t be too hard now that my mother has started a blog. If you know me well, you probably already know about her peanut allergy or accomplishments as a working mother. But now you can read them for yourself:

I am not by nature, a perpetually cheerful person. I kvetch, I complain, I argue, I yell. I try to see my life in melodramatic terms: after struggling to build a career in a male dominated firm, I am felled in my prime by chronic degenerative illness. But to be honest, it's not that bad.

via Perspectives of an Inadvertent Optimist: The Fragility of Life.