I was a new mother and a young rabbi in the spring of 2004 and the world was in shambles. Maybe you remember. Every day, we heard devastating reports from the war in Iraq. There were waves of terror rolling across the globe. It seemed like humanity was spinning out of control. I remember the night that I read about the series of coordinated bombings in the subway system in Madrid, and I got up and I walked over to the crib where my six-month-old baby girl lay sleeping sweetly, and I heard the rhythm of her breath, and I felt this sense of urgency coursing through my body. We were living through a time of tectonic shifts in ideologies, in politics, in religion, in populations. Everything felt so precarious. And I remember thinking, "My God, what kind of world did we bring this child into? And what was I as a mother and a religious leader willing to do about it?
Bila sem mlada mamica, in mlada rabinka spomladi leta 2004 in svet je bil v razsulu. Morda se spomnite. Vsak dan smo slišali grozna poročila iz vojne v Iraku. Po celem svetu so se širili valovi terorja. Zdelo se je, kot da človeštvo uhaja izpod nadzora. Spominjam se noči, ko sem brala o seriji koordiniranih bombnih napadov na podzemni železnici v Madridu, in vstala sem in šla do zibke, kjer je moja šest mesečna dojenčica sladko spala, in slišala sem ritem njenega dihanja, in čutila sem občutek nujnosti, kako mi teče skozi telo. Živeli smo v času tektonskih premikov v ideologijah, v politiki, v religiji, v populacijah. Vse se je zdelo tako nestabilno. In pomislila sem: "Moj Bog, v kakšen svet sva prinesla tega otroka?" In kaj sem bila kot mama in verski vodja pripravljena storiti glede tega?
Of course, I knew it was clear that religion would be a principle battlefield in this rapidly changing landscape, and it was already clear that religion was a significant part of the problem. The question for me was, could religion also be part of the solution? Now, throughout history, people have committed horrible crimes and atrocities in the name of religion. And as we entered the 21st century, it was very clear that religious extremism was once again on the rise. Our studies now show that over the course of the past 15, 20 years, hostilities and religion-related violence have been on the increase all over the world. But we don't even need the studies to prove it, because I ask you, how many of us are surprised today when we hear the stories of a bombing or a shooting, when we later find out that the last word that was uttered before the trigger is pulled or the bomb is detonated is the name of God? It barely raises an eyebrow today when we learn that yet another person has decided to show his love of God by taking the lives of God's children. In America, religious extremism looks like a white, antiabortion Christian extremist walking into Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs and murdering three people. It also looks like a couple inspired by the Islamic State walking into an office party in San Bernardino and killing 14. And even when religion-related extremism does not lead to violence, it is still used as a political wedge issue, cynically leading people to justify the subordination of women, the stigmatization of LGBT people, racism, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. This ought to concern deeply those of us who care about the future of religion and the future of faith. We need to call this what it is: a great failure of religion.
Seveda mi je bilo jasno, da bo religija glavno bojišče, v tej hitro spreminjajoči se pokrajini, in že je bilo jasno, da je bila religija velik del problema. Zame je bilo vprašanje, bi bila lahko religija tudi del rešitve? Skozi zgodovino, so ljudje storili hude zločine in grozodejstva v imenu religije. In ko smo vstopili v 21. stoletje, je bilo jasno, da je verski ekstremizem zopet v porastu. Naše študije kažejo, da je v zadnjih 15, 20 letih število sovražnih dejanj in verskega nasilja naraslo po vsem svetu. Ampak za to sploh ne potrebujemo študij, ker če vas vprašam, koliko vas je dandanes presenečenih, ko slišite novice o bombardiranju ali streljanju, in ko kasneje izvemo, da je bila zadnja beseda pred pritiskom na sprožilec ali detonacijo bombe, ime Boga? Komaj še vzbudi začudenje, ko izvemo, da se je nekdo spet odločil, da dokaže svojo ljubezen do Boga s tem, da vzame življenja Božjih otrok. V Ameriki je verski ekstremizem v podobi belega krščanskega ekstremista, ki nasprotuje splavu, ki vstopi v Planned Parenthood (Načrtovanje družine) v Colorado Springsu in ubije tri ljudi. Prav tako je to par, ki ga navdahne islamska država, gre na službeno zabavo v San Bernardinu in jih ubije 14. In celo, ko verski ekstremizem ne vodi v nasilje, je še vedno uporabljen kot politični način, ki cinično vodi ljudi, da opravičujejo podrejenost žensk, stigmatizacijo LGBT ljudi, rasizem, islamofobijo in antisemitizem. To bi moralo zelo skrbeti tiste, ki nam je mar za prihodnost religije in prihodnost vere. Moramo reči bobu bob: to je velik neuspeh religije.
But the thing is, this isn't even the only challenge that religion faces today. At the very same time that we need religion to be a strong force against extremism, it is suffering from a second pernicious trend, what I call religious routine-ism. This is when our institutions and our leaders are stuck in a paradigm that is rote and perfunctory, devoid of life, devoid of vision and devoid of soul.
Ampak to niti ni edini izziv, s katerim se religija spopada danes. Obenem, ko potrebujemo religijo kot močno silo proti ekstremizmu, pa hkrati trpi za še drugim škodljivim trendom, ki mu jaz pravim verski rutinizem. To je, ko so naše institucije in naši voditelji zataknjeni v paradigmi, ki je naučena in enolična, brez življenja, brez vizije, in brez duše.
Let me explain what I mean like this. One of the great blessings of being a rabbi is standing under the chuppah, under the wedding canopy, with a couple, and helping them proclaim publicly and make holy the love that they found for one another. I want to ask you now, though, to think maybe from your own experience or maybe just imagine it about the difference between the intensity of the experience under the wedding canopy, and maybe the experience of the sixth or seventh anniversary.
Naj razložim, kaj mislim s tem. Eden izmed največjih blagoslovov tega, da sem rabinka, je stati pod belim ogrinjalom, s parom, in jima pomagam javno razglasiti ljubezen, ki sta jo našla drug v drugem, in jo blagosloviti. Sedaj pa vas naprošam, da si zamislite, iz lastnih izkušenj, ali pa si samo predstavljate razliko v intenziteti izkušnje pod belim poročnim ogrinjalom, in morda izkušnjo šeste ali sedme obletnice.
(Laughter)
(Smeh)
And if you're lucky enough to make it 16 or 17 years, if you're like most people, you probably wake up in the morning realizing that you forgot to make a reservation at your favorite restaurant and you forgot so much as a card, and then you just hope and pray that your partner also forgot.
In če imate srečo, da pridete do 16. ali 17. leta, če ste taki kot večina, se zjutraj zbudite, ugotovite, da ste pozabili rezervirati mizo v vaši najljubši restavraciji, pozabili ste tudi na čestitko in tako samo še molite in upate, da je pozabil tudi partner.
Well, religious ritual and rites were essentially designed to serve the function of the anniversary, to be a container in which we would hold on to the remnants of that sacred, revelatory encounter that birthed the religion in the first place. The problem is that after a few centuries, the date remains on the calendar, but the love affair is long dead. That's when we find ourselves in endless, mindless repetitions of words that don't mean anything to us, rising and being seated because someone has asked us to, holding onto jealously guarded doctrine that's completely and wildly out of step with our contemporary reality, engaging in perfunctory practice simply because that's the way things have always been done.
No, verski rituali in obredi so bili sprva zasnovani, da služijo kot obletnica, kot posoda, v katerem shranimo ostanke tistega svetega, srečanja spoznanja, ki je religijo sploh začelo. Problem pa je, da po nekaj stoletjih, datum ostaja označen, a ljubezen je že dolgo mrtva. Takrat se znajdemo v neskončnih, brezumnih ponovitvah besed, ki nam nič ne pomenijo, vstajamo in sedamo, ker nas je nekdo tako prosil, se oklepamo ljubosumno zastražene doktrine, ki je popolnoma in neverjetno nepovezana z današnjo realnostjo, ukvarjanje s površno prakso preprosto zato, ker smo stvari vedno počeli tako.
Religion is waning in the United States. Across the board, churches and synagogues and mosques are all complaining about how hard it is to maintain relevance for a generation of young people who seem completely uninterested, not only in the institutions that stand at the heart of our traditions but even in religion itself. And what they need to understand is that there is today a generation of people who are as disgusted by the violence of religious extremism as they are turned off by the lifelessness of religious routine-ism.
Religija upada v Združenih državah Amerike. Vsepovsod se v cerkvah, sinagogah in mošejah pritožujejo, kako težko ohranjajo pomembnost pri generacijah mladih ljudi, ki se zdijo popolnoma nezainteresirani, ne samo v institucije, ki stojijo v srcu naših tradicij, ampak celo v religijo samo. In razumeti morajo, da je danes tu generacija ljudi, ki se ji nasilje verskega ekstremizma gnusi prav tako, kot jih odbija mrtvilo verskega rutinizma.
Of course there is a bright spot to this story. Given the crisis of these two concurrent trends in religious life, about 12 or 13 years ago, I set out to try to determine if there was any way that I could reclaim the heart of my own Jewish tradition, to help make it meaningful and purposeful again in a world on fire. I started to wonder, what if we could harness some of the great minds of our generation and think in a bold and robust and imaginative way again about what the next iteration of religious life would look like? Now, we had no money, no space, no game plan, but we did have email. So my friend Melissa and I sat down and we wrote an email which we sent out to a few friends and colleagues. It basically said this: "Before you bail on religion, why don't we come together this Friday night and see what we might make of our own Jewish inheritance?"
Seveda je tudi svetla stran v tej zgodbi. Zaradi krize teh dveh sočasnih trendov v verskem življenju, sem se kakšnih 12 ali 13 let nazaj odločila ugotoviti, če obstaja način, da spet prevzamem srce lastnih judovskih tradicij, da bodo spet imela smisel in namen v tem svetu v plamenih. Začela sem se spraševati, če bi lahko uporabili nekaj velikih umov naše generacije, in na drzen in robusten in izviren način zopet premislili, kako bo izgledala naslednja ponovitev verskega življenja. Nismo imeli denarja, ne prostora, ne načrta, imeli pa smo elektronsko pošto. Z mojo prijateljico Meliso sva se usedli in napisali e-pošto, ki sva jo poslali nekaj prijateljem in kolegom. Pisalo je nekaj takega: "Preden se odpoveste religiji, zakaj se ne bi dobili ta petek zvečer in videli, kaj lahko naredimo z našo judovsko dediščino?"
We hoped maybe 20 people would show up. It turned out 135 people came. They were cynics and seekers, atheists and rabbis. Many people said that night that it was the first time that they had a meaningful religious experience in their entire lives. And so I set out to do the only rational thing that someone would do in such a circumstance: I quit my job and tried to build this audacious dream, a reinvented, rethought religious life which we called "IKAR," which means "the essence" or "the heart of the matter."
Upali sva, da bo morda prišlo 20 ljudi. Prišlo jih je 135. Bili so ciniki in iskalci, ateisti in rabini. Veliko jih je tisto noč reklo, da je bilo to prvič, da so imeli smiselno versko izkušnjo v celem življenju. In zato sem se odločila za edino smiselno stvar, ki bi jo nekdo v teh okoliščinah storil: pustila sem službo in poskušala zgraditi te predrzne sanje, na novo izumljenega, na novo premišljenega verskega življenja, ki smo mu rekli "IKAR," kar pomeni "esenca" ali " bistvo svari."
Now, IKAR is not alone out there in the religious landscape today. There are Jewish and Christian and Muslim and Catholic religious leaders, many of them women, by the way, who have set out to reclaim the heart of our traditions, who firmly believe that now is the time for religion to be part of the solution. We are going back into our sacred traditions and recognizing that all of our traditions contain the raw material to justify violence and extremism, and also contain the raw material to justify compassion, coexistence and kindness -- that when others choose to read our texts as directives for hate and vengeance, we can choose to read those same texts as directives for love and for forgiveness.
IKAR ni sam v današnji religiozni pokrajini. Tu so judovski, krščanski, muslimanski in katoliški verski voditelji, mnogi izmed njih ženske, mimogrede, ki so se odločili, da si ponovno prilastijo srce svojih tradicij, ki trdno verjamejo, da je čas, da religija postane del rešitve. Vračamo se k našim svetim tradicijam in prepoznavamo, da imajo vse naše tradicije v sebi surov material, s katerim lahko opravičujemo nasilje in ekstremizem, in prav tako vsebujejo surov material za opravičevanje sočutja, sobivanja in prijaznosti - ko se drugi odločijo brati naše tekste kot navodila za sovraštvo in maščevanje, mi lahko izberemo, da bomo te iste tekste brali kot navodila za ljubezen in odpuščanje.
I have found now in communities as varied as Jewish indie start-ups on the coasts to a woman's mosque, to black churches in New York and in North Carolina, to a holy bus loaded with nuns that traverses this country with a message of justice and peace, that there is a shared religious ethos that is now emerging in the form of revitalized religion in this country. And while the theologies and the practices vary very much between these independent communities, what we can see are some common, consistent threads between them.
Sedaj vidim, v tako raznolikih skupnostih, kot so judovski indie start-upi na obali, ženska mošeja, temnopolta cerkev v New Yorku in Severni Karolini, sveti avtobus poln nun, ki se vozi po tej deželi s sporočilom o pravici in miru, da je tu skupni religijski etos, ki se sedaj pojavlja v obliki revitalizirane religije v tej državi. Čeprav se teologije in prakse med seboj zelo razlikujejo med temi neodvisnimi skupnostmi, lahko vidimo skupno nit med njimi.
I'm going to share with you four of those commitments now.
Z vami bom sedaj delila štiri izmed teh zavez.
The first is wakefulness. We live in a time today in which we have unprecedented access to information about every global tragedy that happens on every corner of this Earth. Within 12 hours, 20 million people saw that image of Aylan Kurdi's little body washed up on the Turkish shore. We all saw this picture. We saw this picture of a five-year-old child pulled out of the rubble of his building in Aleppo. And once we see these images, we are called to a certain kind of action.
Prva je čuječnost. Živimo v času, ko imamo dostop brez primere do informacij o vsaki globalni tragediji, ki se zgodi na kateremkoli koncu sveta. V 12 urah je 20 milijonov ljudi videlo sliko telesa Aylana Kurdija, ki ga je naplavilo na turško obalo. Vsi smo videli to sliko. Videli smo sliko tega petletnega otroka, ki so ga potegnili iz ruševin stavbe v Alepu. Ko vidimo te slike, smo poklicani k akciji.
My tradition tells a story of a traveler who is walking down a road when he sees a beautiful house on fire, and he says, "How can it be that something so beautiful would burn, and nobody seems to even care?" So too we learn that our world is on fire, and it is our job to keep our hearts and our eyes open, and to recognize that it's our responsibility to help put out the flames.
Moja tradicija pripoveduje zgodbo popotnika, ki potuje po cesti in vidi prelepo hišo v plamenih in reče: "Kako lahko nekaj tako lepega gori in se zdi, da ni nikomur mar?" Tudi mi vidimo, da naš svet gori in naša naloga je, da imamo odprta srca in oči, da prepoznamo, da je naša odgovornost pogasiti te plamene.
This is extremely difficult to do. Psychologists tell us that the more we learn about what's broken in our world, the less likely we are to do anything. It's called psychic numbing. We just shut down at a certain point. Well, somewhere along the way, our religious leaders forgot that it's our job to make people uncomfortable. It's our job to wake people up, to pull them out of their apathy and into the anguish, and to insist that we do what we don't want to do and see what we do not want to see. Because we know that social change only happens --
To je izredno težko. Psihologi nam pravijo, da več kot vemo o tem, koliko stvari je na svetu narobe, manj verjetno je, da bomo kaj ukrenili glede tega. Temu pravimo psihična otopelost. Na neki točki se enostavno izklopimo. No, na neki točki so naši verski voditelji pozabili, da je naša naloga, da je ljudem neprijetno. Naša naloga je, da zbudimo ljudi, da jih izvlečemo iz apatije in v trpljenje, in vztrajamo, da naredimo tisto česar nočemo in vidimo tisto, česar nočemo. Zato ker vemo, da se družbene spremembe zgodijo -
(Applause)
(Aplavz)
when we are awake enough to see that the house is on fire.
le takrat, ko smo dovolj čuječi, da opazimo gorečo hišo.
The second principle is hope, and I want to say this about hope. Hope is not naive, and hope is not an opiate. Hope may be the single greatest act of defiance against a politics of pessimism and against a culture of despair. Because what hope does for us is it lifts us out of the container that holds us and constrains us from the outside, and says, "You can dream and think expansively again. That they cannot control in you."
Drugi princip je upanje, in o upanju želim reči to. Upanje ni naivno in upanje ni opij. Upanje je morda najboljše dejanje upora proti politiki pesimizma in proti kulturi obupa. Kaj upanje naredi, je, da nas dvigne iz tega prostora, ki nas drži in obdaja od zunaj, in pravi: "Spet lahko sanjaš in misliš razsežno. Tega v tebi ne morejo nadzorovati."
I saw hope made manifest in an African-American church in the South Side of Chicago this summer, where I brought my little girl, who is now 13 and a few inches taller than me, to hear my friend Rev. Otis Moss preach. That summer, there had already been 3,000 people shot between January and July in Chicago. We went into that church and heard Rev. Moss preach, and after he did, this choir of gorgeous women, 100 women strong, stood up and began to sing. "I need you. You need me. I love you. I need you to survive." And I realized in that moment that this is what religion is supposed to be about. It's supposed to be about giving people back a sense of purpose, a sense of hope, a sense that they and their dreams fundamentally matter in this world that tells them that they don't matter at all.
Videla sem, kako se je upanje manifestiralo v afriško-ameriški cerkvi, na južni strani Chicaga to poletje, kamor sem pripeljala svojo punčko, ki ima danes 13 let in je že višja od mene, da je slišala mojega prijatelja, častitega Otis Mossa pridigati. Tisto poletje je bilo ustreljenih že 3.000 ljudi med januarjem in julijem v Chicagu. Šli sva v to cerkev in poslušali častitega Mossa pridigati, in potem ko je končal, je zbor prelepih žensk, 100 žensk, vstal in začel peti. "Jaz rabim tebe. Ti rabiš mene. Rad te imam. Potrebujem te, da preživim." In v tistem trenutku sem spoznala, da je to smisel religije. Smisel je, da ljudem vrne občutek smisla, občutek upanja, občutek, da oni in njihove sanje nekaj pomenijo v tem svetu, ki jim pravi, da so nepomembni.
The third principle is the principle of mightiness. There's a rabbinic tradition that we are to walk around with two slips of paper in our pockets. One says, "I am but dust and ashes." It's not all about me. I can't control everything, and I cannot do this on my own. The other slip of paper says, "For my sake the world was created." Which is to say it's true that I can't do everything, but I can surely do something. I can forgive. I can love. I can show up. I can protest. I can be a part of this conversation. We even now have a religious ritual, a posture, that holds the paradox between powerlessness and power. In the Jewish community, the only time of year that we prostrate fully to the ground is during the high holy days. It's a sign of total submission. Now in our community, when we get up off the ground, we stand with our hands raised to the heavens, and we say, "I am strong, I am mighty, and I am worthy. I can't do everything, but I can do something."
Tretji princip je princip mogočnosti. Tradicija rabinov je, da hodimo okrog z dvema listoma papirja v žepu. Na enem piše: "Sem samo prah in pepel." Ne gre zame. Vsega ne morem nadzorovati, in tega ne morem početi sam. Na drugem piše: "Zame je bil ustvarjen svet." Kar pomeni, da je res, da ne morem narediti vsega, a zagotovo lahko naredim nekaj. Lahko odpuščam. Lahko ljubim. Lahko se prikažem. Lahko protestiram. Lahko sem del tega pogovora. Sedaj imamo celo verski obred, držo telesa, ki v sebi drži paradoks med nemočjo in močjo. V judovski skupnosti so edini čas v letu, ko se spustimo do tal, sveti dnevi. To je znak popolne podrejenosti. V naši skupnosti, ko vstanemo, stojimo z rokami, obrnjenimi proti nebesom in pravimo: "Sem močan, sem mogočen in sem vreden. Ne morem storiti vsega, ampak nekaj pa lahko."
In a world that conspires to make us believe that we are invisible and that we are impotent, religious communities and religious ritual can remind us that for whatever amount of time we have here on this Earth, whatever gifts and blessings we were given, whatever resources we have, we can and we must use them to try to make the world a little bit more just and a little bit more loving.
V svetu, ki se trudi, da verjamemo, da smo nevidni in nemočni, verske skupnosti in verski obredi nas lahko spomnijo, da kolikor časa imamo na Zemlji, katerekoli darove in blagoslove smo dobili, kakšne vire imamo, lahko in moramo jih uporabiti, in poskušati narediti svet malo bolj pošten in malo bolj ljubeč.
The fourth and final is interconnectedness. A few years ago, there was a man walking on the beach in Alaska, when he came across a soccer ball that had some Japanese letters written on it. He took a picture of it and posted it up on social media, and a Japanese teenager contacted him. He had lost everything in the tsunami that devastated his country, but he was able to retrieve that soccer ball after it had floated all the way across the Pacific. How small our world has become. It's so hard for us to remember how interconnected we all are as human beings. And yet, we know that it is systems of oppression that benefit the most from the lie of radical individualism.
Četrti in končni je povezanost. Pred nekaj leti je moški hodil po plaži na Aljaski, ko je naletel na nogometno žogo, na kateri so bile narisane japonske pismenke. Slikal jo je in jo objavil na socialnih omrežjih, in kontaktiral ga je japonski najstnik. V tsunamiju, ki je opustošil njegovo državo, je izgubil vse, a nazaj je dobil to nogometno žogo, potem ko je plavala čez cel Pacifik. Kako majhen je postal naš svet. Težko se spomnimo, kako zelo smo vsi povezani kot človeška bitja. A vseeno vemo, da so sistemi zatiranja tisti, ki največ pridobijo od laži radikalnega individualizma.
Let me tell you how this works. I'm not supposed to care when black youth are harassed by police, because my white-looking Jewish kids probably won't ever get pulled over for the crime of driving while black. Well, not so, because this is also my problem. And guess what? Transphobia and Islamophobia and racism of all forms, those are also all of our problems. And so too is anti-Semitism all of our problems. Because Emma Lazarus was right.
Naj vam razložim, kako to deluje. Ni treba, da mi je mar, ko temnopoltega mladeniča nadleguje policija zato, ker mojih belih judovskih otrok najbrž nikoli ne bodo ustavili zaradi zločina vožnje kot temnopolta oseba. Pa ni tako, ker je to tudi moj problem. In veste kaj? Transfobija in islamofobija in rasizem vseh oblik, to so vse naši problemi. In tudi antisemitizem je naš problem. Ker je imela Emma Lazarus prav.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)
Emma Lazarus was right when she said until all of us are free, we are none of us free. We are all in this together. And now somewhere at the intersection of these four trends, of wakefulness and hope and mightiness and interconnectedness, there is a burgeoning, multifaith justice movement in this country that is staking a claim on a countertrend, saying that religion can and must be a force for good in the world.
Emma Lazarus je imela prav, ko je rekla, da dokler nismo vsi svobodni, ni nihče. Vsi smo v tem skupaj. In nekje na križišču teh štirih trendov budnosti in upanja in mogočnosti in povezanosti, je tu hitro rastoče, večversko gibanje za pravico v državi, ki si je vzelo delež v tem obratnem trendu, ki pravi, da je religija lahko in mora biti dobra sila v tem svetu.
Our hearts hurt from the failed religion of extremism, and we deserve more than the failed religion of routine-ism. It is time for religious leaders and religious communities to take the lead in the spiritual and cultural shift that this country and the world so desperately needs -- a shift toward love, toward justice, toward equality and toward dignity for all. I believe that our children deserve no less than that.
Naša srca trpijo zaradi propadle religije ekstremizma in zaslužimo si več od spodletele religije rutinizma. Čas je, da verski vodje in verske skupnosti prevzamejo pobudo v spiritualnem in kulturnem premiku, ki ga ta država in svet nujno potrebujeta - premik proti ljubezni, proti pravici, proti enakopravnosti in proti dostojanstvu za vse. Verjamem, da si naši otroci ne zaslužijo nič manj.
Thank you.
Hvala.
(Applause)
(Aplavz)