This is the first week of the Jewish New Year, and like all New Years, we want to start them off right. Next week will be Yom Kippur, the final day when our names are inscribed in the Book of LIfe. This is the time for reflection, repentance, and change.
I have been thinking about my family, my conduct, the way I live my life and the life I want to create for others. It is no secret that I don’t separate my religion from my politics, so it isn’t surprising that my reflections on family values tonight has a lot to do with political news.
This Week in Family Values
1. Tikkun Olam, repairing the world. I saw my former rabbi, Aaron Sherman of Temple Judah, implore his students to help with Iowa flood efforts. Hey kids, I know you’re reading. There is nothing so important going on in your high school that you can’t pitch in one Sunday afternoon for clean-up effort. Your community needs you.
2. Kibbud av v'eim, honoring your parents. This week, my stepmother, the kindest woman I know, lost her mother, my Ima, while I was in shul for Rosh Hashanah. While I understand that all of us will pass, nothing hurt me more than knowing that my family member and dear friend was in pain.
I’ll travel home in a few days to give whatever comfort I can and continue on to L.A. for the memorial.
Last night, I watched as Joe Biden got choked up as he spoke about single parenting after his first wife and daughter died in 1972, showing us that real men do cry. Senator Biden is known for his emotions, especially when it comes to his family.
"The notion that somehow because I am a man I don't know how to raise two kids on my own," he says, "I know what its like to raise a child where you are not sure he's going to make it.
Perhaps he was also choked up because his son, Beau Biden, the Deleware Attorney General who joined the Guard in 2003, is deploying to Iraq with the Deleware National Guard. He travels to Texas today for training for a month before departing for Iraq.
More information on Beau's service in the Guard can be found here.
(For Beau's heartfelt introduction of his father at the DNC, check this blog entry.)
3. Finding your bashert (soul mate) and staying true to your marriage. So what has God been doing since Creation? Arranging marriages, the rabbis say. Barack and Michelle Obama celebrate sixteen years of marriage this week.
"You know what you guys could give us for our anniversary?" he said, turning to the television reporters. "Not have a camera pool outside of the restaurant, so that everybody knows that we're there."
4. Ganav, stealing. Bear with me here. The Torah says that even if we find a lost donkey, we are to care for it until we can return it to the rightful owner. This is called hashovas aveidah. Likewise, the Torah has just as much to say about thievery. Even stealing something without the intention of keeping it forever is just a bad as taking something permanently.
Today, Congress passed a bailout bill full of pork and goodies for big business that allowed for little protection of homeowners that were going to lose their homes to predatory lending.
We have a legal system of taxation and funding in which we have to trust Congress to “do the right thing”. What the majority of Americans did not want this week, however, was for Congress to take the money of hardworking Americans and give to Wall Street thieves – a system of predatory lenders, gamblers, and credit hacks that played on the trust of everyday Americans. Yet we were told that this was a necessary evil, a “mud sandwich” that had to be passed in order to save our crashing economy.
(Jewish law does allow for taxes, but my argument is that this bill is an unjust tax.)
Colorado Congressman Mark Udall, who is running for the US Senate, cast a courageous NO vote against the Bailout Bill – twice.
Quote: I believe we could have added provisions that (1) provided independent oversight of the Treasury's program, (2) strengthened the equity position of taxpayers in purchasing mortgage-backed assets, (3) required the government to help responsible homeowners refinance their mortgages, and (4) insured that taxpayers will not be on the hook for irresponsible compensation packages for CEOs. This bill claims to address these problems, but the exceptions in this bill swallow the rule. In short, the bill doesn't do what it claims to do.
On Tuesday, stronger provisions were within our reach and we should have worked to secure them.
I hope -- for the sake of all those people who have worked hard and played by the rules, only to see their retirement whittled away or their homes' values plummet -- that this package does what its supporters promise us it will.
But in the end, my responsibility is to Colorado families, and I continue to believe as I did on Monday, that I could not ask them to foot the bill for a bailout that costs so much, with so little accountability, so little reform, and so little protection for them.
L'Shanah Tovah. May your your name be sealed in the Book of Life and your Days of Awe be filled with introspection and good deeds.
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