Laughter and Repairing the World
D'var
Torah: Chayey Sarah
November 21, 2008
Standing on our Bimah Thursday evening was an Egyptian Muslim. He asked if there were any Muslims in the crowd. The crowd laughed. I don’t know if there has been a Minyan of Muslims in our synagogue over the years, surely not on the Bimah. Ahmed, Ahmed was one half of the Laugh in Peace Comedy Tour with another comedian Rabbi Bob Alper. You can tell by his name he is Jewish.
Perhaps this is something only a Rabbi would say, but there was holiness in this comedy night even with a few questionable words thrown in. A Muslim appeared before a Jewish audience in a synagogue and we laughed a lot. There is holiness in laughter to begin with and there is greater holiness when a funny Rabbi and an Egyptian team up to joke about themselves and their people. We all laughed in what was a perfectly enjoyable evening and without any intention, we participated in an act of Tikkun Olam - repairing the world. The show ended close to 9:00pm and they were then on their way to Rider College for what is, in college time, an evening performance. They would repair a few more broken pieces in New Jersey as they did in Richboro. I don’t think a lecture by a learned Muslim scholar on breaking the stereotypes of the Muslim people would have been any more effective than the funny monologue of this comic Mr. Ahmed Ahmed.
Tuesday evening I reviewed a wonderful book at the annual Sisterhood Book Review, The Faith Club. I found the book so meaningful, I invited the entire Adult Confirmation Class to read it and join us for the review. It is the story of three women, a Christian, a Jew and a Muslim (which sounds like the beginning of a joke Mr. Ahmed might have told) who set out to write a children's book on the similarities of their three faiths. They quickly discovered that there are enough glaring differences in their religions that they could not write this book without attempting to work through these issues. Some of the women attending the review were unhappy with the book because of the weakness of the Jewish participant, Priscilla (not your usual Jewish name). Her weakness was in her lack of knowledge and her inability to defend the Jewish and especially the Zionist position vis a vis her Palestinian Arab Muslim counterpart Ranya. Her weakness is upsetting but for me it did not detract from the fact that this is still a fine book.
These three women came together weekly for some years to honestly discuss their differences in their religious beliefs. At times they confronted each other and these confrontations took great courage. One such case was Priscilla, the Jewish participant, confronting her Christian counterpart Suzanne. Each member of the trio was to bring a biblical text that would tell an important story of their faith. Suzanne brought a New Testament text that tells the story of Jesus's condemnation and crucifixion. The Gospel points to those condemning Jesus as being the Jewish crowd. Priscilla conveyed how this text is highly offensive to the Jewish ear as it portrays the Jews as taking an active role in Jesus’s condemnation and death. For this reason, Priscilla rightly explained that we have suffered religious Anti-Semitism over the ages as we have been called Christ killers. Suzanne claimed never to have heard this term. She may well have been naively innocent and this shows the importance of this interfaith dialogue. That these three women continued to talk is holy. That they developed a friendship along the way is holy as well.
There aren’t many jokes in our Parsha this week though we do have Isaac as an important character and his very name means laughter. There isn’t much to laugh about however as our Parsha opens with the death of our beautiful matriarch Sarah. Abraham mourns her and is in need of a burial plot. Abraham says to the local populace “I am a stranger in your midst” and as he needs a place for Sarah’s burial Abraham enters into negotiation with a local land owner Ephron Ben Zohar to purchase a plot of land. At first Ephron tells Abraham to take the plot with no payment needed but as the exchange continues, Ephron comes to charge Abraham quite an exorbitant amount. Abraham pays every shekel. We still point to this as our first purchase of land in the Holy Land. Even though Ephron may have overcharged knowing Abraham had not made pre-need arrangements, at least Ephron talked and entered into negotiations with Abraham and he deserve credit for that.
There is holiness when we talk to each other. There is holiness when we talk to our friends. There is holiness when we talk with our adversaries. There was holiness when Nixon went to China and when Reagan spoke to Gorbachev. Even though President Reagan called the Soviets the evil empire, he talked with their leader. At other times, however, it is truly impossible to talk. You can’t sit and talk to people who are committed to destroying you like the Taliban in Afghanistan. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai is wrong in inviting the Taliban to the table. His behavior is disappointing. There are, however, many in the world to whom we can talk. It is a leader's responsibility to know when and to whom to talk and when to refrain from talking. When we can and we do talk, there is holiness in the encounter.
Thursday night's comedy program was a great evening. Yasher Koach to our Executive Director, Fred Poritsky on bringing this Laugh in Peace Comedy tour to Ohev Shalom. I have a dream in how wars will be fought in the future. Each side appoints their best comedian to represent them. They both get out on the stage and do their best material, tell their best jokes. Whoever gets the most laughs wins and the other side surrenders. Actually if we could get together and tell jokes and laugh together there would be no victor and no surrender, we would all laugh and win together.
I hope it's fair to say that there is holiness in our Sanctuary on Friday nightsand Saturday morning and this week there was holiness on Thursday night as well. We’re not yet ready to sit in a circle and sing Kum Baya with Joan Baez but we took a baby step and it was a baby step in the right direction.
Shabbat Shalom,
