There is a thread of Christian theology that has run rampant in the media. It is one of sacrifice, the view that for some good to occur someone must die. One can readily understand that their paradigm is based on the central drama of Christianity’s passion narrative in which Jesus’s death is a necessary key to individual redemption from sin. While our ancient history did provide for animal sacrifice as a means for atonement, human sacrifice was verboten.

Another annoying aspect of the film which Judaism ever so slightly embraced in the past is this predestination view of an apocalypse. We have more positively imagined a golden messianic age and jettisoned whatever apocalyptic anticipations were once entertained. The atavistic view of God as a puppeteer does not prevent some of our more traditional brethren from embracing such intolerable views. One Haredi rabbi in Israel commented that the recent earthquake that afflicted the Syrians in the North and the citizens of Turkey in the south was God’s way of punishing Israel’s foes. Such pernicious thinking is not only bothersome and antiquated, but cruel when I consider such theology justifies little children being buried alive for days. The hell with that! Our Jewish community can claim no full immunity to such thinking. One Jewish historian of great merit once commented in a lecture “We thank the six million for their sacrifice, so that Israel could come into being!” We must clearly assert that those six million were not offering their lives as sacrifice, their lives were snuffed out. Nor should any such horrors of the Holocaust be used to support any justification! Such a view is deeply repugnant to Judaism’s regard for every human life.

Christian theology tends to influence so much of our culture. And I am most concerned that so many of us are unable or disinterested in articulating better and more sensible theologies. We have a Spinoza and his naturalistic views. Buber and his profound philosophical offerings. Richard Rubenstein author of After Auschwitz and his evolving Jewish theologies. So many of us do not know how to fend off such thinking such as when a former president had the audacity to appeal to evangelicals by boasting he was the “Chosen
One!” Really? Jews could and should draw deeply from their heritage which contends with demagoguery and false messianic claims. God bless America! It is a land wherein we have the freedom of religion that tolerates various forms of religion some bordering on the cultic. But there is no shame, nay there should be pride in articulating our own faith’s views, even if they differ from that of the majority. Hanukkah was a rebellion against embracing the Greek obsession with externals and opulence. We Jews looked for the eternals not the externals. We built synagogues places of study, worship and charity and not museums that would only worship the past. “look not at the container but what is contained therein!” so we read in Pirke Avot the Ethics of our an- cestors. In our hope for acceptance we often go overboard in diminishing those aspects of our heritage that do not concur with other faiths, for fear of non-acceptance. Years ago, one rabbi bravely wrote a book which was widely celebrated Where Judaism differed! I wonder if it would be so embraced today!

Rabbi Yossi J. Liebowitz D.D.

But back to Avatar and in this context trees. The worship of trees or at least as a way of apprehending the divine is nothing new. Long before Julie Andrews sang “the hills are alive with the sound of music,” (including trees as well I would imagine.) trees were the major source of focus for many
faiths. Long ago, we Jews did our share of co-opting that custom. Abraham at the “terebinths of Moreh! communed with God and the angels, Moses had great conversations with a bush from time to time and Ezekiel had no shortage of visions with oily producing trees. The Jewish people’s most enduring symbol is not the Magen David, the Shield or Star of David (not widely used till 1400 in S.E. Europe) but the Menorah, the seven branched candelabrum still on exhibit in Synagogues as it had been for centuries in the Jerusalem Temple of old. It does not take too much analysis to realize the connection between our usage and prior pagan observances. That we elevate it to sustain the idea of the one God does makes it somewhat forgivable.

Coming to the end of my four decade involvement with congregational life, I do review some of the things that I have relaxed about and others not so much. Never did memorial services for cremations once upon a time. Didn’t officiate at intermarriages nor did I offer prayers at interfaith services. Of late I think of Jordana, a lovely American Israeli teacher I knew three decades ago in California. Taken young, not yet 43, her Hungarian Israeli family preferred cremation over traditional burial. They loved the beaches and tossing Jordana’s cremains into the ocean worked for them in ways I could not fathom (no pun intended). Thinking that Jordana deserved if not better than a sandy and watery goodbye and that the kids in our religious school needed to say “farewell!” I organized on the Temple ground a tree planting to memorialize her. Much to my surprise dozens of members of the community showed up (word does get out!) along with her family including her mournful mother. It went from being a simple planting to a funeral immediately. Weeks later Jordana’s mom showed up to my study to talk and in her conversation with me she mentioned that she had been talking to her daughter. At first, I thought, “was she attending a séance?” Noticing my puzzlement, she said, “the tree, the tree, that’s where my daughter is, the tree!” Jordana’s mom had found a place to pray far from the ocean. Not in a forest, not along the shore! But along the side of the Temple’s building where a little tree was planting and growing each day.

There is something about having a place to focus and pray that is so essential to Jewish life. This is why I chose serving congregations for all these years. This is why I hope you too can so serve.

Rabbi Yossi J. Liebowitz D.D.