Reb Laura…On Sophia Street

Holy Laundry

February 8, 2012 By reblaura in General 5 Comments
Friends, don’t you ever wonder why the Israelites were told to do laundry before receiving the Ten Commandments? Or why a priestly ritual was not complete until the priest did his own laundry???

Wonder no more. This long-lost passage of Talmud from “Tractate Laundry” explains the spiritual significance of it all. (Readers: it helps if you have read Talmud before.)

Mishnah. Never wash a new red anything with anything else. Gemara. In hot water only, or also in cold? A tanna taught: Always sort by color. Can this enter your mind? Is it not written “Make it blue, purple, and scarlet?” Said Rav Dimi, in Israel we sort by fabric weight. As it is written “a garment mixed of linen and wool shall not come upon you.” Another: sort as it is stored, “They built storage cities.” If laundry is overflowing, wash it randomly? Underwear must be first, as is written “breeches to cover their nakedness that they bear not iniquity and die.” What is die? Of shame. A tanna taught before Rav Nachman bar Yitzchak, anyone who whitens the face of his fellow in public is as if he sheds blood. Said Abaye’s nurse, wear clean underwear in case you are in a car wreck. Rav said, a malicious wife ruins laundry and you die. Beruriah laundered sixteen socks, eight returned. Said Rabbi Meir, “The Lord has given, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Rabbi Eliezer said, if halacha is in accordance with me, the washing machine will overflow. Imma Shalom fell on her face. It happened that Beruriah’s brother son of Rabbi Hananya ben Teradion requested a rule of laundry. She said twenty-six rules then came back with one, never wash a new red anything with anything else. After ten years Beruriah and the wife of her brother found under the bed of his friend his white towel splashed pink. Said his mother, “A foolish son is the vexation to his father.”

Contemporary scholars comment:

Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz: In the Torah, laundry is generally acknowledged to be the province of priests. Due to the secrecy surrounding this practice, after the destruction of the Temple no halakha was developed around it. Whether or not it is appropriate for women to do laundry is still a matter of controversy among rabbinic authorities.

Dr. Judith Hauptmann: By acknowledging that laundry is the province of women, yet giving it a scientific treatment, the rabbis are attempting to improve the status of women within the limitations of their social order.

Rabbi Judith Z. Abrams: The story at the end of this tractate shows it is really about the passing of tradition from family member to family member. Here “laundry” functions as a metaphor for Torah. Torah is like our clothing, endlessly renewable if we approach it with proper care.

Rabbi Jacob Neusner: We must ask ourselves, what is the logical form of this document before us? It relates an internally consistent set of propositions to another internally consistent set of propositions external to the first, by means of parody.

***

Note: I wrote this in 2002. The story about the rule of laundry and the pink towel is true, but the brother involved shall not be named. Images: blinkdecor.com, ehow.com
Finding God & Dog

February 6, 2012 By reblaura in Animals, General, God, Jewish Renewal Leave a comment

Sunday’s bnei mitzvah class began with me receiving an education. I had seen “Angry Birds” but never played. Who knew each bird had a specific talent that you have to deploy strategically? We thought that perhaps a Jewish version of Angry Birds exists: “Maccabees vs. Temple invaders!” or something like that.

We watched a delightful 22-minute movie made in 1998 called God@Heaven. A little boy named Adam, whose best friend is his dog, is curious about religion. He receives a flyer inviting him to send an email to God for $10. He composes an email, asking “How do I know you’re there?” and steals his father’s credit card to pay the fee. The email arrives in Israel, where a young man prints it out, brings it to the Western Wall, and places it in a crack. But the note falls out of the wall, and is swept into a trash can at the end of the day. Meanwhile, Adam waits eagerly at home, checking his email daily for an answer.

Finally, an email comes! It says:

“I’m here, Adam.”

Adam types a reply. “But where?”

And an answer appears on the screen. “Right here with you.”

Adam turns to his dog, and says, “YOU???”

Words continue to appear on his computer screen. “I know where you got the $10.”

Adam looks terribly guilty, then giggles and goes out to play with his dog.

It was a bit difficult for us to discuss the movie with a straight face, as the sound had not been working, and we spent much of the movie imagining voice-overs for the dog. Nonetheless, we managed a few thoughtful points.

Why does the movie show the boy thinking that the dog might be God? Daniel W: ”Because everything is part of God.”

Who was typing the reply? Maya: “The boy was imagining it, because he believed so strongly in God.”

Do you have any questions? Daniel S: “Why would someone charge money to bring prayers to the Kotel?”

We moved into the kitchen, where I announced that we were going to bake dog biscuits – healthy, vegetarian treats. Maya made the connection, “Because we watched a movie where a dog reflects God, so we’re going to do something nice for dogs.”

We discussed the concepts of mitzvah - ritual or good deed; tikkun olam - repair of the world; gemilut chesed - acts of loving kindness; and tzedakah - financial help.

Then we washed our hands, reviewed the recipe, assembled the ingredients, and shared the jobs. We read, preheated, measured, poured, mixed, kneaded, rolled, cut, placed our cookie sheet in the oven, and washed the dishes.

As the dog biscuits baked, we sat down for a snack of our own: chocolate covered biscuits, not a healthy snack for dogs!

Read on for the Talmudic discussion…

Not for Sale

January 28, 2012 By reblaura in General, Political Leave a comment

Yesterday’s Vancouver Sun newspaper was not delivered. A fire at the press sent five people to the hospital, and delayed the paper by many hours.

So you might have missed the heartbreaking cover story about a woman on welfare who placed her son in foster care because she could not find an affordable place for them to live.

It’s an upsetting story no matter how you judge it. Because there are some things in life we believe should not be bought and sold.

Like a young child’s right to be cared for safely by her or his parents.

We think of this as an inalienable right. It should be protected, not compromised, by a government.

If everything in life is purchased on an economic market, no principles guide our social life at all.

So Parshat Bo (Exodus 10:1-13:16) teaches.

Sometimes Torah will give the same message in two different formats: a teaching story, and a list of ethical or legal maxims.

Think of the story of tension between Rachel and Leah, and the Torah’s later instruction to a man not to marry sisters; or the story of Sodom and Amorah, and Torah’s list of terrible curses that social injustice brings upon us.

The story of the Exodus has that relationship to the Ten Commandments.

Pharaoh is well aware that he is in a contest with a divinity, but believes he can hold his own.

When his choices bring terrible consequences to other people, he does not care.

He hates the foreigners who were welcomed by his ancestor, an earlier Pharaoh.

He is jealous of their success.

He enslaves them with an oppressive workload.

He tries to kill the baby boys.

He toys with the idea of letting only the men leave, perhaps thinking he can use the women to breed more slaves.

He owns all the results of the Israelite construction labor.

He lies consistently to Moshe.

Yes, that’s Pharaoh.

After the Israelites and their mixed multicultural multitude of friends cross the Sea of Reeds into freedom, God calls them to a special meeting at Mount Sinai. At that meeting, God invites them to accept a spiritual charter for their new nation.

The spiritual charter calls them to avoid everything that created the hellish situation of their slavery.

They will recognize God.

They will not imagine that anything else in earth or heaven is God, certainly not themselves or their kings.

They will be aware that their deeds have consequences that last for generations.

They will give every worker basic rights – family member, foreigner, male, female, animal, human.

They will honor the generations that came before them.

They will not kill or lie or steal or dishonor marriage.

They will not allow envy of another’s success to take them down a terrible path.

They must resist even the beginnings of a Pharaoh within their thoughts and feelings. They must pledge that they will never compromise certain ideals.

Parshat Bo’s story offers more detail about the ideals no Pharaoh can own.

Read the full essay…
Belief

January 27, 2012 By reblaura in Dreams, General, God, Healing, Love, Philosophy, Spiritual Growth 1 Comment

What does it mean to “believe” in God? or in an afterlife?

Is it like agreeing with a statement? Where you have an idea that seems to be verified by logic or experience or an expert teacher?

Or is it more like an affective state, where a strong feeling overtakes your body? Where the presence of something is so integrated into your experience that no questioning is possible?

Today it seems to me to be neither of the above.

Today I dreamed:

In my role as rabbi, I am visiting an elder in the hospital. The unit is a wide room with many beds. I notice my father and an old friend of his lying in a nearby bed. The next day, I come back to the hospital to join my father for a special event in the auditorium. He is alert, sitting between two friends. One friend is wearing a diving mask and snorkel. My father glances at his friend and playfully rolls his eyes at me. I am ecstatically happy that my father has moved to Vancouver and that he is in the company of two close friends.

I woke from the dream into predawn darkness, too uplifted to fall back asleep.

It seems I had dreamed of heaven. Though my father has been dead for eleven years, I dreamed that he is happy, he is loved, and all is right with the world.

I’ve just one nagging doubt: I don’t believe in heaven. At least, not in the way that one agrees with a statement.

I do believe that heaven is a metaphor used by prophets and psalmists to describe the awesome power of God in nature — vast, beautiful, part of our world and yet beyond it. And I do believe affectively in this power when it overtakes my body and fills my experience. “Heaven” seems a good word for this power, because it evokes a sky so blue it hurts to look.

But I don’t believe that people’s bodies or souls go to a beautiful place called “heaven” after they die. I don’t believe in that statement.

In fact, I don’t often think about this kind of heaven at all. It isn’t part of the basic vocabulary that shapes my thinking. It isn’t an image that holds my personal longings and wonderings about death.

And yet, the dream came into my thinking, fulfilling my longing and soothing my wondering. Heaven – a place of love, comfort, and happiness so bright it hurts to feel – is just the right word for what I saw in this dream.

Of course I know the dream offers a reflection of my own self. My father has appeared to remind me that I am loved, so that I can be happy, and feel – even for one pre-dawn moment – that everything is right with the world.

For one moment, I believed in heaven in the affective way.

Now I know that I “believe in” heaven in a third way, a way that isn’t quite cognitive and isn’t quite affective.

Heaven, I now see, is a metaphor that shapes my thinking. It is an image that can hold my personal longings and wonderings.

I “believe in” heaven the way academic scholars of religion speak of believing in a “myth.” For them (us), a myth is neither true nor false; it’s just very, very basic. A myth is a story so foundational to a person’s thought that it shapes the very categories in which thought appears.

The myth of heaven certainly shaped my dream, and made it possible for me to represent and access the comfort I needed.

Thank you to prophet and psalmist, and to the theologians whose own teachings were shaped by the myths you taught them.

Image: your-nursing-guide.com

Learning Compassion

January 21, 2012 By reblaura in General, God, Healing, Jewish Renewal, Love, Philosophy, Spiritual Growth 2 Comments

The Buddha’s insecure students sometimes asked him if his enlightenment was truly the result of years of inner work. After all, if the master had grown through patient self-cultivation, they too could grow.

Of course, the master answered “yes.” Still, some students worried. “Master, are you sure you don’t have a special gift that sets you apart? a quality that has been with you since infancy? Do you remember your childhood consciousness?”

And the Buddha would tell a story that would both answer them and reassure them.

“When I was only five years old, my father took me to a farming ceremony in the early spring. With a great party, we celebrated the plowing of the fields before the first planting. But the adult fun didn’t mean much to me, so I sat under a tree and played in the grass. But my game came to a sudden end when I noticed some shoots of grass accidentally torn up by a sloppy plow. I saw that the tiny insects clinging to the grass had been killed. And I felt a terrible pang of grief, as if my own family had been killed. And I entered a state of altered consciousness.

As an adult, I now have words to speak about this experience. I now know that this moment of empathy took me out of myself. I felt a release of mind, and this release led to a profound feeling of joy.

You too can have joy by developing compassion.”

Par’oh’s story, as told in Parshat Va’era, is a shadow side of the Buddha’s story. Par’oh has no empathy for fish, frogs, insects, wild animals, domestic animals, human beings, or plants. Through all the seven plagues that strike these groups, Par’oh experiences no release of mind. In fact he experiences the opposite. His lev – his heart, or as it can also be translated, his mind – grows ever harder.

Obviously, he lacks good habits of feeling. But he also lacks habits of noble behavior that might compensate for his failure of feeling. He cannot even keep a simple promise. Seven times he agrees to let the Israelites go on a three-day journey; and seven times he changes his mind.

Without compassionate feelings and without habits of ethical behavior Par’oh is, according to the Hassidic classic Tanya, the absolute archetype of the rasha, the wicked person.

Into this stark portrait of a villain, Torah weaves philosophical hints about a path to goodness.

As Parshat Va’era opens, Moshe is having a crisis of faith in his leadership. He has done everything God has asked, and the result is more oppression for the Israelites. “Why?” he asks God. “Why did you make things worse for these people? Why did you send me if this was to be the result?”

God answers:

“Because I am yod-hey-vav-hey [YHWH]. I appeared to your ancestors as El Shaddai and I didn’t make known to them my name yod-hey-vav-hey. Look, I intend to uphold the covenant I made with your ancestors. I have heard the groans of the Israelites and I will remember my covenant. So tell them, I am yod-hey-vav-hey and I am going to save them. I will take you to be my people and I will be your God and you will know that I am yod-hey-vav-hey. I will take you to the land I promised your ancestors, I am yod-hey-vav-hey.”

Edit out the yod-hey-vav-heys and you have an answer: Do not despair. We have a relationship and I am going to come through for you.

So why are the five yod-hey-vav-heys part of the answer? A key rabbinic principle of Torah interpretation insists that no word of Torah is superfluous. So, what do the yod-hey-vav-heys add to the answer?

Read the full essay…

Image: wakinglot.us
Qur’anic Inspiration

January 14, 2012 By reblaura in General, God, Healing, Political, Prayer, Spiritual Growth 5 Comments

While in Israel, I had the opportunity to visit the Kotel three times.

On one visit, the plaza was nearly deserted.

So I walked right up to the front of the women’s section and placed my hands on the wall.

And I prayed for guidance.

Hints came in non-cognitive forms: feelings, images, random associations.

Occasionally I would take control long enough to formulate a question. “Why this image?” “What’s the message?”

But the rush of inchoate hints crowded out every question. Only one word stayed put: “Help!”

Finally my tears, heartbeats, and waking dreams gave way to a clear conclusion.

“There’s only one way to fix what is broken in my life: I am going to work on my relationship with you, God.”

The words may be trite, and the instructions vague, but the freedom is extraordinary and the way is suddenly clear.

I’m now attuned to accounts of people recognizing the limits of their powers, and placing themselves in God’s hands.

Last week, I found a beautiful one towards the beginning of the Qur’an.

This is the Book about which there is no doubt, a guidance for those conscious of Allah – who believe in the unseen, establish prayer, and spend out of what We have provided for them, and who believe in what has been revealed to you, O Muhammad, and what was revealed before you, and of the Hereafter they are certain in faith. Those are upon right guidance from their Lord, and it is those who are the successful. Indeed, those who disbelieve – it is all the same for them whether you warn them or do not warn them – they will not believe. Allah has set a seal upon their hearts and upon their hearing, and over their vision is a veil. And for them is a great punishment. – Qur’an 2:2-7, Sahih International Translation

I shared this sura with a group of university students. Some could not see the passage in a positive light.

“It seems harsh!” they said.

Yes, it does predict a great punishment.

“It seems paradoxical,” they said. “How could Allah close their hearts and then punish them for it?”

Yes, this is a good philosophical question about the nature of free will. If God controls our thoughts and feelings, can God hold us accountable for them?

Of course, you could whisk away both questions with a spiritual interpretation of the passage. Yes, God has placed veils over our eyes. In our natural, everyday consciousness we view the world through a filter. Self-interest, materialism, ego protection – God gifted us with these survival mechanisms. Spiritual development invites us to see past personal survival needs and lift the veils of everyday thinking. A new spiritual vision brings joy; never glimpsing it brings pain. Avoiding spirituality is its own punishment.

But I don’t think you have to leap to a Sufi-like intepretation to find positive inspiration in the passage. A more literal analysis can point you there.

Who is speaking in this passage? Not Mohammed – he is being addressed. Not Allah – Allah is one of the subjects discussed. Instead, the angel Gabriel is speaking to Mohammed about Allah.

Generalizing about Hebrew Bible, New Testament and Qur’an, Professor F.E. Peters says that scripture offers (1) words revealed by God; (2) transmitted by an authoritative prophet or teacher; (3) to a particular community of believers; (4) in order to provoke them into a new way of living. What a wonderful description of the similar missions of Moshe, Jesus, Mohammed.

In this sura, the angel Gabriel reminds Mohammed about the validity of his mission. “Yes, you have preached and preached. Not everyone in the community has listened; not everyone has been provoked into a new way of living. But that does not make you a failure. You still offer a genuine revelation, and you are still an authoritative teacher. But you alone cannot control or change everyone. Some things you simply need to leave in God’s hands.”

Here, between the lines, Mohammed has a crisis of faith. He has preached, promised, and threatened, using all his charisma and knowledge. But he still has not realized his vision. With a heart full of pain, he prays for guidance. And the angel Gabriel reminds him: There is only one fix. Let God take over.

Perhaps it’s risky for me to admit that I find inspiration in Muslim scriptures. Perhaps it’s uncomfortable for others to read. But Mohammed’s crisis of faith is not so different from Moshe’s after the incident of the Golden Calf. Moshe lets go of anger at himself and others, and prays to be led only by God’s compassionate nature.

When I stood at the Kotel, I did not know that was my prayer. But now that I know, the freedom is extraordinary and the way is suddenly clear.

Jerusalem’s Walls

January 1, 2012 By reblaura in General, Political Tags: Israel, Jerusalem, Walls 2 Comments

Jerusalem: not a neutral spot in it. Every inch of every wall vibrates with ideology, politics, and public statement.

The Western Wall: a rectangle of Jewish space interrupts a regional line of mosques. With this wall, a minority culture claims its small space.

The security wall: miles of concrete, barbed wire, trenches and technology protect Israeli Jerusalem and estrange the Palestinian West Bank.

A feral cat wall: a tough tom stations himself on a mound of food left by a cat-lover, keeping other hungry cats at bay.

A gender wall separates women into a small zone and requiring of them a muted self-expression.

A tent city near the Old City wall: young activists protest the high cost of housing and food in an increasingly gentrified new city.

Posted on a utility wall: “Armageddon is upon us! The Mashiach is in Tel-Aviv and will soon lead Israel.” A critic has scratched out Mashiach’s face.

On the wall of an abandoned building near a square of banks, a graffiti artist says, “End the Hate.”

A shared wall: On one side, it marks the courtyard of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher; on the other, the courtyard of the Mosque of Omar. As soon as the mosque’s broadcast of afternoon prayer ends, the church bells ring with a deafening percussive song.

A bathroom wall: in a public park, an urban prophet calls for an end to the inner walls that divide us one from another.

Photos: Tent city, flickr.com; Women’s wall, blog.christianitytoday.com; Western Wall & security wall, Charles Kaplan; others, Laura Duhan Kaplan
Crow Central (Kotel)

December 30, 2011 By reblaura in Animals, General, Jewish Renewal, Love, Political, Spiritual Growth Tags: crows, Jerusalem, Kotel, Western Wall Leave a comment

Today I am at Jerusalem’s Western Wall.

The weekday winter sun has just set and it’s time for evening prayers.

We know it’s prayer time by looking up at the sky.

Overhead, the first group of grey hooded crows flies home. They have worked all day foraging in their family territories. Now they will meet up with thousands of local crows to debrief, laugh, socialize and sleep.

On Friday nights, the Wall is a human version of crow central. Jews arrive in small groups, with members of their families and their own sects. Then they crowd into the prayer spaces with hundreds of strangers to debrief, laugh, socialize and sing.

But on this weekday afternoon, the Western Wall seems more like one family’s territory. In the comfort of the Wall’s Jewish presence, divisions between Jews come forward. Ultra-Orthodox men and women dressed in black dominate the scene.

Across the plaza, high-rise yeshivas define the space. Thin black lines of men gather on the roofs. They come and go, lean on the rail, form and re-form circles, randomly socializing.

Their long black coats look like military uniforms. They seem to me to be patrolling their space, and I am unnerved, maybe even afraid.

At the entrance to the women’s section, slender young women dressed in black pray quietly along a wall of aluminum scaffolding. The tapered cut and belt-buckle detail of their stylish coats makes them look like mini-military officers, too.

My daughter stands with me in the plaza, wearing jeans and bright hand-knitted rainbow scarf. She is unafraid. She pulls us through the crowd, bringing us about a meter from the wall. Here, it’s nearly impossible to move forward into the crowd, so we stop.

Then, everything stops.

Sound stops.

Thought stops.

Fear stops.

Anxiety stops.

Hundreds of women press against one in another in absolute calm and absolute silence.

Some women in the front row hide their faces against the wall, pouring their hearts directly into the cracks. One woman puts a cell phone to her ear but her conversation makes no sound.

Behind us, a woman whispers in irritation, “They need to switch with us!”

But her annoyance is not contagious. Several of us around beam smiles at her.

What can you do? Wherever you go, there you are.

The women in front of us need to pray. The woman behind us needs to be annoyed.

We will all get our turn to do and to be.

My daughter and I get our turn.

Then she takes my hand and leads me back out to where my husband is waiting. He is easy to spot in his bright green shirt. I realize I am wearing a bright red dress.

The judging mind that notes divisions and feels fear has returned.

But it doesn’t matter. For a few moments, I saw past the wall of appearances. I stood in a deeper space, where everyone can simply be.

Overhead, the last group of crows flies home. They head to a space where every crow can simply be. Suddenly, they look like a celestial reminder of a consciousness undivided by fear. They call us to a more primal reality.

After all, crows colonized Jerusalem millennia ago.

By crow law, even Jewish space belongs to them.

Photos by Charles Kaplan.

Doves in the Cracks (Rosh Hanikra)

December 27, 2011 By reblaura in Animals, General, Political 6 Comments

Old and new weave together in Akko’s old city.

An adult driver, a teen cyclist and a child on horseback squeeze together through a narrow cobblestone alley.

Construction workers with hard hats and electric tools restore a medieval Crusader fortress.

But Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs don’t weave so easily here – at least not the women I see.

Yes, they share the shaded, winding lanes of the shuk (market). But rarely does a mixed group walk together.

Israeli soldiers pass, draped in uzis, off duty in jeans and black hoodies. Arab faces tighten behind unconvincing masks of indifference.

In an Arab shop, I buy some jewelry featuring doves riding Jewish stars. But I imagine the peace symbol is for idealistic tourists and my heart sinks.

In another shop I buy six scarves. Here, women wear them like flags. Tie your scarf around your head and you are observant Jew; pin it around your face and you are an observant Muslim.

If I were an Arab in Akko, surely I would feel tense around a soldier’s uzi. In the new city, street names document Zionist history: Weizmann, Herzl, Trumpeldor, Anilevitch. If people came to my country and made it monument to their victory, I would be pained.

Such pain is nothing new in the bloody history of Akko’s prized fortress. It passed from Phoenicians to Egyptians to Hellenists to Persians to Romans to Muslims to Crusaders to Ottomans to British to Israelis. But knowledge of this history doesn’t necessarily soothe.

We leave the dark shuk and drive to the brightness of Rosh Hanikra. Brilliant blue waters carve their initials into shining limestone. We have come to tour the grottos.

The parking lot sits at a Lebanon Border crossing, used only to exchange prisoners and corpses. The tourist area is bounded by a barbed wire fence and overseen by orange and white watchtowers with spinning radar disks.

Inside the grottos, a self-guided tour sign says in awkward English, “It began with a series of underground shocks. When stormy, a wave of compressed air enters every crack, fragmenting the rock.” In the dim light, where edges blur, the turbulent sea seems a perfect social metaphor. When political storms blow in, social fissures widen, fragmenting cities and countries.

Outside at the edge of the sea, rock doves nest in the limestone. In real life, rock doves don’t carry olive branches. But a single rock dove family can include black, white, grey and brown birds. No two individuals look alike, and the birds do not care.

Even out in the bright light, this seems a perfect social metaphor. May the peace of the rock dove come upon us.

Photos of Akko and Rosh Hanikra by Charles Kaplan
Morning in Akko

December 25, 2011 By reblaura in Animals, Dreams, General, Political, Spiritual Growth Tags: interfaith Leave a comment

5:10 am. A beautiful tenor voice rings out in the darkness, calling me to wakefulness, if not yet mindfulness. The tune is a familiar Middle Eastern mode; the words are unfamiliar Arabic. A muezzin calls Muslims to prayer. I imagine the muezzin standing on the balcony of a nearby minaret, perhaps the one lit with the brilliant green light.

A hooded crow preaching from his own minaret adds a coda: a single sharp caw. His impeccable timing shows he is familiar with the mosque’s morning routine. He does not mistake any of the muezzin’s pauses for the end of the call.

I remember my morning dream:

I am attending a university class, where I am working as the Teaching Assistant. Though it’s late in the semester, this is the first time I’ve actually come to class. Tim S., a Christian minister with a passion for interfaith learning, is the professor. I feel guilty that I haven’t come to class, but Tim is calm and projects no blame.

I listen as a young man in the class speaks. Clearly, he has been shaped by a right-wing ideology, but he is speaking of his growing comfort with diverse points of view. He looks like a character in the movie American History X, the neo-Nazi gangbanger whose ideology is cracked open by his prison friendship with a black fellow inmate.

The dream expresses, in symbols dear to me, teachings in Brad Hirschfield’s book You Don’t Have to Be Wrong for Me to Be Right: Finding Faith Without Fanaticism. Hirschfield tells the story of his own journey from youthful certainty to mature seeking. He could be the student in my dream.

My own youthful certainty was no more than an ideological commitment to pluralism. (Philosophers: think of William James on indeterminism.) People do things for multiple reasons; problems have multiple solutions; knowledge grows by networking ideas and feelings in every possible direction. My grasp of metaphysical pluralism directed my thinking and feeling; it showed me what to look for.

Today’s dream suggests that I have missed something. The early morning sounds suggest that something deeper is calling. It’s not an end to pluralism, but it’s a deeper version of it. My dream characters roll up their sleeves and dip their hands into the work, in a way I haven’t learned to do yet.

Akko raises the question. It’s a multi-ethnic city, where Jews and Arabs live side by side. Is that enough?

Photos of Akko by Charles Kaplan and Laura Duhan Kaplan

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