Rosh Hashanah Day 1 for TAA

(Delivered September 12, 2026)

Shabbat shalom! Shanah tovah!

I want to start with a story from my life. Most of you know I have two sons, and once upon a time, they were quite little. The story I’m about to tell takes place in the sweet spot when they were big enough to think about תשובה—about return or repentance—but little enough that I was still tucking them in every night. It was a very sweet spot indeed.

One night at bedtime, during the month of Elul, I managed to get a quiet moment with each boy. Nobody else was listening, and I said privately to each son in his turn: “If I have done anything to hurt you or harm you in the past year, intentionally or unintentionally, I sincerely ask your forgiveness.”

I’m a very lucky mom, because even though I had made plenty of mistakes with them over the year, they both accepted my תשובה and offered me their forgiveness.

A few minutes later, as I was leaving the room, having tucked them both in, I heard a murmur from one bunk to the other one, as one boy said to his brother: “If I have done anything to hurt you or harm you in the past year…”

[…]

Dayeinu, that moment would be sufficient for its sweetness alone. But year by year, as I look back on it, I see new layers. Today, it speaks to me as more than just a teaching moment, but also as a moment that teaches.

At the pshat level, the level of basic, simple meaning, this is a story about תשובה, about the mechanics of asking and offering forgiveness. Going deeper, it reflects the strength that lies in vulnerability and the value of opening ourselves up to criticism or rejection, for the sake of getting closer. It reveals the ways that children can step up when given the tools to do so. And it suggests the ripple effect of not just telling but showing the people around us what’s most important.

We hear a lot these days about the generational transfer of wealth, the resources that one generation passes onto the next, and about how it extends and solidifies differences of advantage and disadvantage. In that context, we typically think of generational wealth as referring to material riches, financial resources like land ownership, money, family heirlooms.

Yet when you use your grandmother’s silver at Pesach, it’s about much more than how much you might get for it if you put it on eBay, much more than just the ornate spoons and forks. Chances are, that silver traveled a distance, gathering stories as it went. Chances are, you’re using that silver to serve and eat recipes that came from generations past. Chances are, you’re enjoying your meal with people from different generations who share some of your history and likely some of your DNA.

In Jewish tradition the generational transfer of wealth is not just material. It’s also cultural, religious, historical, and theological. It’s emotional and spiritual. Our Amidah says:

לְדוֹר וָדוֹר נַגִּיד גָּדְלֶךָ וּלְנֵֽצַח נְצָחִים קְדֻשָּׁתְךָ נַקְדִּישׁ
From generation to generation, we will declare the greatness of God,
and for ever and ever we will amplify God’s holiness.

From generation to generation לְדוֹר וָדוֹר, we will hold the objects and stories that are precious to us in trust, to transmit to the people we love. And although we have a history in Jewish tradition of revering our elders and our teachers, that’s not the whole story. Truly, the intergenerational sharing flows in all directions.

Take this teaching from the Talmud, on Taanit 7a:

אָמַר רַב נַחְמָן בַּר יִצְחָק: לָמָּה נִמְשְׁלוּ דִּבְרֵי תוֹרָה כְּעֵץ
שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: עֵץ חַיִּים הִיא לַמַּחֲזִיקִים בָּהּ
Rav Nachman bar Yitzhak said: Why do we compare words of Torah to a tree,
as in “It is a tree of life to those who hold on tight to it.”

In other words, how in the world did we get the image of the Torah being like a tree?

If you stop and think about it, it’s a reasonable question.

The Gemara continues: Just as a small piece of wood can ignite a larger one, so too a lesser Torah scholar can sharpen a more experienced one. This is why Rabbi Chanina says: I have learned much from my teachers, and more from my friends, but it’s from my students that I’ve learned the most.

And as the one person who gets to learn Torah with all the generations in our community—from the youngest students in our Sylvia Cohen Community School, to the Bnei Mitzvah students I work with in preparation for their Divrei Torah, to the folks in our congregation and around town who share Torah study and Backyard Mishnah, I can confirm. I often say I’m never so dim as when I study Torah by myself; but boy, do I learn from each and every person who comes to my classes!

Another story about intergenerational sharing of wisdom, from the very first mishnah of Pirkei Avot (Wisdom of the Ancestors), starts this way:

משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי, וּמְסָרָהּ לִיהוֹשֻׁעַ, וִיהוֹשֻׁעַ לִזְקֵנִים, וּזְקֵנִים לִנְבִיאִים,
וּנְבִיאִים מְסָרוּהָ לְאַנְשֵׁי כְנֶסֶת הַגְּדוֹלָה
Moses received Torah from Sinai, and passed it along to Joshua, and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets,
and the Prophets passed it along to the men of the Great Assembly.

On the basic level, this is a concrete way of talking about just what I was saying before, about the generational transfer of intellectual and spiritual wealth. But notice the first line: משֶׁה קִבֵּל תּוֹרָה מִסִּינַי—Moses received Torah miSinai. Literally from Sinai, but is that mountain in Egypt really the source of our wisdom tradition?

Sinai here is a metaphor representing the communal experience of receiving Torah, and not just at one moment in the Book of Exodus, but over the course of the forty years’ wandering, and over the course of the millennia since. Moses and the Israelites received the Torah step by step, and our tradition has been receiving and transmitting it ever since. The sages of the Rabbinic period, the architects of halacha, the midrashists, the women who made their voices heard and the women who couldn’t, the creatives who set it all to music and made images dance in our eyes.

And always, that receiving and that giving, taking shape in the context of a community of fellow-travelers. More than a place, Sinai is a complex, ever-evolving culture.

Sinai is what we experience in intergenerational community, the way tradition cements itself and becomes a part of us. We see it taking root when we wrap a baby in a family tallit for naming, and when the baby grows up and wears that tallit at their B mitzvah. We see it when the tallit becomes a chuppah and eventually, with fringes torn, a shroud for burial. We receive our tradition from one another in these milestone moments and at other stops along the way.

We are at Sinai when we are in the company of other Jews, singing, or arguing, or studying, or contemplating life’s big questions and themes. We are at Sinai when we come into the synagogue and when we go to the woods. We are at Sinai when we share Jewish cultural events and when we wrestle with ancient teachings. We are at Sinai when we suddenly recognize that the “trust-fall” scene in Mean Girls is communal תשובה, and when we join the circle of kavod at religious school each week. We are at Sinai when we are locked in with the words of our prayer book and when our minds wander to the beauty of the sunlight filtering in through the windows of this holy space.

Sinai is with us and in us.

And some of the most iconic words of our tradition—words that some of us say several times a day—teach us what to do and how, in order to access the Sinai that is our inheritance.

שְׁמַע! Listen, as if you’ve never heard them before.

וְאָהַבְתָּ אֵת ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ
And you will love Adonai your God

Ours is a teaching rooted in love: love for our people, and for our ancestors, and for all the forces that gathered somehow to make us what we are. Forces that, when considered collectively, some people call God.

בְּכָל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכָל־נַפְשְׁךָ וּבְכָל־מְאֹדֶךָ
With all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your being

This is not a halfway project. The tradition that we pass from generation to generation depends on our wholehearted commitment. Whole soul too. Everything we are, and more.

וְהָיוּ הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם עַל־לְבָבֶךָ
And these things which I command you today should be on your heart

OK, but why ON? The Kotzker Rebbe, one of our ancestors in 18th century Poland, used to teach that we have to set things on our hearts because there are times when our hearts aren’t open. Making it a practice to place our most cherished teachings and ideas on our hearts is a way of making sure that at those moments when our hearts do open, the wisdom is right there, ready to drop in where it is needed the most.

וְשִׁנַּנְתָּם לְבָנֶיךָ
And teach them to your children

Sometimes I think placing the teachings on your heart and sharing them with your children are actually the same action.

וְדִבַּרְתָּ בָּם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ בְּבֵיתֶךָ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ בַדֶּרֶךְ וּבְשָׁכְבְּךָ וּבְקוּמֶךָ
And talk about them when you sit in your house, and when you walk the path, when you lie down, and when you get up

This might be my favorite part, among favorite parts. This line speaks so deeply to the everyday practice of לְדוֹר וָדוֹר. The things we talk about all the time are the things that the people around us learn are important to us. And if they admire us, they begin to regard them as important too.

וּקְשַׁרְתָּם לְאוֹת עַל־יָדֶךָ וְהָיוּ לְטֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֶיךָ
And bind them symbolically on your hands and between your eyes

Keep these cherished teachings where you can see them, keep them in the work of your hands and in the way you view the world.

וּכְתַבְתָּם עַל־מְזֻזוֹת בֵּיתֶךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶיךָ
And write them on your doorposts and on your gates.

Not just inside your house but outside too. The words of our tradition sustain us and guide us in the way we encounter the world around us. They are an inheritance we pass up and down the generations, so much so that we are devoting ourselves to intergenerational learning this year through a series of community-wide programs organized and co-planned by the Sylvia Cohen Community School and the Adult Learning Committee. You’ll hear much more about this as the year progresses, and I hope you’ll join and support these programs as yet one more way we engage with one another across time and space, joining in the immortal conversation of our people.

On this Yom haZikaron—Day of Remembering—may we know the blessing of recalling our sacred past with reverence. On this Yom Harat Olam—Day of the World’s Birth—may we know the optimism of continual re-creation. And on this day of family togetherness, of gathering in beloved community, of apples and honey shared around a joyful table, may we know the sweetness of finding our place in the never ending flow of our beloved tradition.

Shanah tovah!

Erev Rosh Hashanah 2026/5787 for TAA

(Delivered September 11, 2026)

Shabbat shalom! Shanah tovah!

On the morning of August 7, 1974, a young man with a bold vision pulled off one of the most spectacular victimless crimes ever. For six years prior, he had been methodically planning and setting the pieces in place: bow and arrow, riggings, steel wire. He and his accomplices studied blueprints and weather patterns, structures and elevator schedules, all in the service of whimsy executed at an epic scale.

The young man was Philippe Petit, a French aerialist who dazzled Lower Manhattan for 45 minutes that day, as he walked, danced and even lay down on a tightrope suspended between New York City’s iconic Twin Towers. On that summer day, a mesmerized crowd gathered in the Financial District, hushed, watching, worrying, gasping, applauding in wonderment. High above, Petit dreamed with his body and his soul, magicking into being a world of joy and reverence suspended between life and death, a world where imagination could flower in a hundred directions, where space was unlimited, where gravity didn’t count.

Twenty-five years ago today, Petit’s dreamscape became a nightmare as those towers crumbled, destroyed by terrorists. Something broke on that awful day. Any notion of safety and justice lay twisted in the rubble. The suspension between life and death seemed forever decided, the delicate cord permanently snapped.

I say “seemed” because the tightrope between life and death ultimately remains eternal, something our tradition has been reflecting about for millennia, something we call into our souls deeply at this time of year.

A series of tales from the rabbinic period goes on flights of speculation to rival any modern-day fan-fiction, around the question of what lies beyond the boundaries of the known world. One such midrash, from Breishit Rabbah, chapter 4, reports an encounter between Rabbi Yehoshua and Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma.

וּכְבָר הָיָה רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן זוֹמָא יוֹשֵׁב וְתוֹהֶא
It happened that Rabbi Shimon ben Zoma was sitting in contemplation

R. Yehoshua passes by and asks how he is, once then twice, with no answer. On the third try, ben Zoma startles. Rabbi Yehoshua asks insistently: “Are you OK? What’s going on?”

Ben Zoma emerges from his reverie, only slightly.

The secret his contemplation reveals? There’s very little distance between the heavens and the earth. The רוח אלהים—the breath of the divine—that hovers over the waters in the Creation narrative, is interpreted by the Rabbis of this Midrash, to pass through a space smaller than your hand.

The space between earth and heaven, between life and death, is at once an unbridgeable chasm and a span no wider than a whisper or the flutter of a hummingbird’s wing.

As we enter these Ten Days of Teshuvah, we are suspended in this unfathomable yet delicate space between life and death.

After months of reflection, soul-searching, חשבון הנפש—taking the soul’s account—we arrive tonight at the starting line. Over the course of the coming week and a half, we will pin ourselves down in the crucible of our own lives, daring ourselves not to look away. This season, equal parts mounting dread and sweet hopes, days of bulky, complex, alienating liturgy and festive reunions with dear friends and family… The whole shebang invites us into the holy work of telling ourselves the truth.

And while we are each taking our soul’s account, tradition holds that God is working the other side of the ledger. The Talmud teaches on Rosh Hashanah 16b that God keeps track of humanity through three books, and during the Ten Days of Teshuvah opens them for review. There’s the book of resha’im gemurim (the thoroughly wicked), and the book of tzadikim gemurim (the thoroughly righteous), and the book of the beinoni’im (the in-betweeners). For people in the first two categories, God’s work is simple: the wholly wicked are summarily written and sealed for death; the wholly righteous are immediately written and sealed for life. But we, the beinoni’im, flutter between life and death for these Reverent Days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, while God examines our lives, to discern a final decision about the year ahead.

We walk the tightrope between life and death. If we take them seriously, these days of reflection demand that we acknowledge our worst moments without excuses, and open ourselves to judgment both human and divine. We picture ourselves facing the judgment of our Creator, as we catalog all that we have done wrong throughout the year. The urgency of teshuvah is matched only by our vulnerability. The machzor reminds us of life’s fragility and brevity. It teaches that our lives are short, shorter than we may think. Unetaneh tokef imagines the many ends that could await us:

מִי יִחְיֶה וּמִי יָמוּת
Who will live and who will die
מִי בְקִצּוֹ וּמִי לֹא בְּקִצּוֹ
Who in a good time and who untimely
מִי בַמַּיִם וּמִי בָאֵשׁ
Who by water, and who by fire

And yet in the same breath, it reminds us:

וּתְשׁוּבָה וּתְפִלָּה וּצְדָקָה מַעֲבִירִין אֶת רֹעַ הַגְּזֵרָה
Return, reflection, and righteousness can soften our harsh fate.

Into this liminal space between life and death, between thriving and emptiness, words from Isaiah, chapter 40 flow:

כָּל־הַבָּשָׂר חָצִיר וְכָל־חַסְדּוֹ כְּצִיץ הַשָּׂדֶה׃
יָבֵשׁ חָצִיר נָבֵל־צִיץ
All flesh is grass, and all its chesed like flowers of the field
Grass dries out, and blossoms fade

It’s worth pausing over the metaphor, for within its almost nihilistic view of human insignificance is tucked a glimmer of divine hope. Our physical beings and our deeds are like grass and flowers that become parched and die. But remember, flowers shed seeds. If human chesed is like a flower, it has the potential to endure, even as the bloom fades. The seeds of our kindness continue to blossom in the souls of others. Every act of caring we engage in, every mitzvah we fulfill, plants a seed for more chesed in this world.

On this thin thread between life and death that we dare to contemplate at this season, the choices we make form both the substance of our lives right now and what we will be remembered for after we’re gone. What we do in this one and only life, including the ways in which we reckon with our own failings, will become our legacy. Death is inevitable but while we walk the tightrope of life, let us strive for righteousness and love, in the hopes that when our time of flourishing ends, we have planted seeds that will continue to flourish. Our tradition is to say, זכרונם לברכה—may their memory be for a blessing—when someone dies. I can think of no more important aspiration than to live in such a way as to make our memory a blessing, when memory is all that’s left of us.

And so as we enter this period of intense reflection, may we find inspiration in the image of that space between life and death—Philippe Petit’s tightrope, ben Zoma’s delicate membrane. May the fragility of it all inspire us to plant the seeds of lovingkindness with our every deed. And at the times when inevitably we miss the mark, may we draw on the season’s invitation to conscience to realign our steps and write our way into the book of life.

Shanah tovah!

Ki Tavo for TAA

(Delivered August 29, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

Sometimes I feel like Sefer Dvarim—the book of Deuteronomy—has a split personality. On the one hand, it never tires of teaching, sometimes in a pretty threatening tone, about all the obligations that fall to us as soon as we enter the Promised Land, and about all the suffering we’ll experience if we don’t fulfill those obligations. On the other hand, the word שִׂמְחָה (joy) shows up a good deal more than you might anticipate in a book that is so focused on duty.

To our 21st-century eyes and ears, so inclined to think of joy as being synonymous with lazing around in the golden sunshine on the beach with a good book and a fruity drink, Dvarim’s definition of שִׂמְחָה seems incongruous and hard to fathom.

Ten times the root letters שׂמח—sin, mem chet—show up in Dvarim, typically exhorting us to rejoice before God with our families and our entire households as we bring our offerings to the Temple or as we contemplate fulfilling the mitzvot which God has commanded us. In this valence of rejoicing, it’s not worldly pleasure or self-satisfaction that is at the center, but service and community. Leaving our individual desires aside and doing for others. Doing for God.

Our Torah is teaching us a lesson that is downright counter-cultural for the current moment. Over the course of several parshiot, the lesson has been hammered over and over again: that what we have doesn’t belong to us but rather to God, and that the pathway to שִׂמְחָה passes through sacrifice. To that end, there is no such thing as the self-made person. Torah teaches repeatedly in Dvarim that when you come into the land, when your cherished hopes are finally realized, when the 40 years of wandering, and the 400-year history of enslavement that preceded it are finally redeemed, the obligation is to give. And not just to give dutifully or grudgingly, but with שִׂמְחָה.

It’s a lesson for us all.

Way back in Vaetchanan, Moses predicts that when the Israelites come into the land, there will be houses we didn’t build and vineyards we didn’t plant, and then Moses warns about the danger of forgetting about God when things are going well. In Eikev, there’s a similar warning that as we begin to prosper, we should not imagine ourselves to deserve full credit. Nobody is anybody without God’s help, and the Torah is at pains to teach this emphatically.

This week’s reading, Ki Tavo, opens with the tradition of Bikkurim (first fruits), in which once we come into the land, we are called to bring the first of the crops—before we even eat of them—as an offering to God. And when we do, we say, in so many words, My ancestors suffered and struggled, and I am now here in this extraordinary land. I am here because of the sacrifices of my ancestors, and because of what God has given me. Now it is my turn to give, בְּשִׂמְחָה—with joy.

This week, we lost a true exemplar of joyful giving. When country music icon Dolly Parton died this past Tuesday, dayeinu, the loss would have been significant enough on the strength of her voluminous music catalogue covering the full range of human experience. But in the days following her death, we have come to know not just the entertainer but the person who knew in her bones how to give back with joy.

Dolly Parton grew up impoverished financially but filthy rich with talent. Professional success brought wealth, and with wealth came not self-aggrandizement or ostentatious luxury but rather extraordinary generosity. When she arrived at her promised land of the Grand Ole Opry, she proceeded to redeem those years of struggle and sacrifice by joyfully supporting others in need.

She supported the education of people who couldn’t afford college; she supported fellow Tennesseans who lost their homes and their property to wildfire in 2016; she supported scientists in developing the technology that made the Covid vaccines effective; and she founded the Imagination Library in memory of her father, who himself had never learned to read. The Imagination Library sent free books to children. Anybody who registered would receive a book in the mail every month, courtesy of Dolly Parton.

In 2005, this last initiative caught the attention of philanthropist Harold Grinspoon, who, inspired by Parton’s idea, founded the PJ Library Foundation, which sends Jewish children’s books every month to households with Jewish children under age five. Again, all a person has to do is register.

It might be tempting to look at all the good she has done and make an idol of Dolly Parton. I understand the temptation, but our parsha teaches us about that, too. Chapter 27, verse 2 contains this puzzling instruction:

וְהָיָה בַּיּוֹם אֲשֶׁר תַּעַבְרוּ אֶת־הַיַּרְדֵּן אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ
וַהֲקֵמֹתָ לְךָ אֲבָנִים גְּדֹלוֹת וְשַׂדְתָּ אֹתָם בַּשִּׂיד׃
And on the day when you cross the Jordan to the land which Adonai your God gives you,
you shall put up great stones and cover them with whitewash.

The careful reader might bump on this teaching: elsewhere we were told explicitly not to set up monuments, for fear they could become idols. The question came up in this weeks’ Torah Study, and Doug Parsons illuminated the contradiction by likening the stones to people. It’s one thing to set them up to admire them, to take inspiration from them or see them as role models. But when that admiration crosses over to imagining them to be godlike, this is where it becomes problematic. Before idols we become passive and powerless.

If we allow ourselves to worship at the altar of Dolly Parton or any other admirable person, we abdicate the responsibility that should rightly remain ours. To put it simply, one person’s work and deep commitment to joyful service should inspire us to do the same. But if we allow ourselves to rest on mere talk about how great someone was, letting the responsibility remain with them, we miss the mark and fall into idolatry.

Regardless of our means, we all have the capacity to give what we can of our time or money, or both, in order to fulfill the vision that Parshat Ki Tavo and Deuteronomy as a whole lay out for us: to remember our past with humility, to credit the role of forces well beyond our control, and to share what we have, בְּשִׂמְחָה!

Shabbat shalom!

Re’eh for TAA

(Delivered August 8, 2026)

Shabbat shalom

You know me. You know me so well that—especially if we’ve learned Torah together—you know that I often say [say it with me] the Torah is always right on time. And I usually do feel that way, but this week has been different.

This week, I wondered a lot about that ‘always’. Is it really always right on time? What about those readings that are impossible to relate to? What about the blood and guts of Leviticus, the cringiness of Abraham’s “sister act” or Lot’s terrible abuses in Sdom? What about the Golden Calf?

Now, Parshat Re’eh is not so extreme, but still… I felt out of sync with it all week. Its timing was not matching with my own.

What I’ve had trouble getting friendly with in Re’eh is why the teaching is so rigid. Why, when it’s offering us wisdom about divine connection, does it couch it in so many rules and regs?

We have to meet at a particular place that God has chosen; the offerings are specified in nitpicky detail; the way the meat is prepared must be exactly just so.

If the aim is to elevate the everyday and make it holy, why is it so painstakingly prescribed? Why is it difficult, if not impossible, to fulfill the specifications? We tell ourselves that God wants us closer, so why the endless exactitude?

We know from living life that having a command of details can be essential in certain pursuits: architecture, baking, learning a language, filing your taxes.

But connecting with the divine? Shouldn’t that be a place of freedom, of expansiveness, of authentic and individual expression?

Re’eh is a Torah portion that makes its case through opposites—look at the topic sentence:

רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה
See, today I set before you blessing and curse

This is a world view that thrives on binaries, that divides everything into two sharp categories, blessing and curse.

What, then, can we make of the implication that fulfilling God‘s specifications for holiness is so very exacting? The terrifying subtext is that anything that doesn’t meet these relentless standards is a curse, not a blessing. The stakes couldn’t be higher, and neither could the demands.

For example: After mentioning the idolatry that the text insists we must destroy every trace of, the Torah goes on to present its opposite, directing the Israelites:

אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַר ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם
Toward the place which Adonai your God will choose

This is what I mean by rigidity! Rather than discovering for ourselves where we feel the divine presence, God insists on dictating it. This is the אל קנא side of God—the jealous—dare I say controlling?—God.

On the other hand, perhaps by linking our sense of the divine to a clear understanding of what’s expected of us, the Torah lets us off the hook in a way. It relieves us of the anxiety and responsibility of searching for meaning and rather gives us a way to focus our longings. For a nation that is just beginning to feel its own feet underneath it, maybe this is not so terrible. A sense of fulfillment is generated through trying to satisfy God’s expectations. After all, if any place could be a holy place—if offerings could be made without taking the effort to go where God shows—the sense of reverence for the newly established religious practices might get watered down. I’m reminded of the line from the movie The Incredibles: “When everyone’s super, no one will be.”

The Torah is careful to differentiate between functional and holy. The animals that we slaughter and eat as part of ritual are categorically different from those we slaughter and eat for the sake of our bodily needs.

The passage goes on with more requirements, this time describing who is part of the Temple rite::

אַתֶּם וּבְנֵיכֶם וּבְנֹתֵיכֶם וְעַבְדֵיכֶם וְאַמְהֹתֵיכֶם
וְהַלֵּוִי אֲשֶׁר בְּשַׁעֲרֵיכֶם כִּי אֵין לוֹ חֵלֶק וְנַחֲלָה אִתְּכֶם
You, your sons and your daughters,
your male slaves and your female slaves,
and the Levite within your gates,
who has no inheritance or share of his own.

The Torah stipulates that the holy offerings be shared with children, with slaves, with the Levites. The lesson, of course, is that holiness is more fully achieved when we are able to keep in mind the powerless, the isolated, and the economically limited.

It’s true that we’re allowed to slaughter an animal and eat its meat when we’re hungry. But the text is showing us that it’s different when we do so in a holy place, in the company of others, mindful of those in our midst who may need an invitation in order to participate. We read last week that a person cannot live by bread alone. Our Torah is inviting us to remember that when we gather as one, caring for the people who care for us, mindful of our spiritual purpose, something else becomes possible.

And what is that something else? Let’s look again to chapter 12.

וַאֲכַלְתֶּם־שָׁם לִפְנֵי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם וּשְׂמַחְתֶּם בְּכֹל מִשְׁלַח יֶדְכֶם
אַתֶּם וּבָתֵּיכֶם אֲשֶׁר בֵּרַכְךָ ה’ אֱלֹהֶיךָ
And you shall eat there before Adonai your God—
and you shall rejoice in all the works of your hands.
You and your households, whom Adonai your God has blessed.

In other words, when God’s conditions are met, we rejoice and are blessed. At first I thought the rejoicing was yet another requirement. Not only is God telling us exactly where to worship and forcing the issue of who’s included, but also our emotional tone is subject to divine dictates.

Turning the lens, I came to see that the rejoicing is a natural consequence. Not a demand but an invitation. Gathering with others with a spiritual purpose in mind, sharing food together, and including those who might not otherwise be able to participate is a source of joy and of holiness. When we’re looking for a way to infuse meaning in acts that would otherwise be utilitarian, the method is religious ritual, and the medium is community. We are told to go to the particular place, to include everyone in the household, everyone in the community, in order to experience שמחה together.

When God sets before us the two extremes בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה—blessing and curse, the choice seems stark, almost obvious. But the ensuing text unpacks the subtlety and the ways in which the choice is up to us. When we choose one another, and when we choose the mitzvot, we can’t help but choose ברכה.

Shabbat shalom!

Vaetchanan for TAA

(Delivered July 25, 2026)

A dear friend of mine is sitting shiva for his mother this week. Although we have plans to visit in person for Shacharit tomorrow morning, I didn’t want to take the chance that we might oversleep or have car troubles or whatnot. So I attended the zoom shiva yesterday. It was there that I heard my friend use a phrase I’ve been mulling over ever since. He talked about how part of the process of shiva is discerning his mother‘s forever story. After all, now that she’s gone, there are no new memories to make, no new conversations to have together. The file is closed. Her forever story takes shape as memories and moments get sculpted into the architecture of a life.

Part of the poignancy of forever stories is that in some sense, they’re not really forever. Any story is just a snapshot. Just as becoming parents helps us to recast our own parents in a different light; memories and impressions of the past will change as we do. And of course, we almost always have some kind of unfinished business. The file never really closes. Even when someone dies after having lived a long and fruitful life, even when we’ve had the opportunity to say goodbye and thank you, and I’m sorry, and I love you, the mystery of death—its very power—is that it always leaves us with question marks and words unsaid. Likewise, with other moments of transition, moments with significantly less finality, there is still and always the sense of things left undone.

Life’s rhythm comes in stops and starts and ellipses. Even forever stories shift as the light changes, as we grow and change and reconsider.

Our Torah teaches this, with the narrative of Moses’s life as Exhibit A. Throughout Sefer Dvarim—the Book of Deuteronomy—Moses is wrapped up in the drama of an aspect of his life that remains tantalizingly unfinished. In various ways over the course of the book, this theme recurs like a spiral as Moses works it out. And if we are sensitive readers, we can learn from his process.

This week’s reading, Parshat Vaetchanan, begins with a heartrending scene, as Moses pleads with God for the chance to bring his life‘s work all the way to fruition.

וָאֶתְחַנַּן אֶל־ה’ בָּעֵת הַהִוא
And I implored God at that time

Interestingly, the opening word וָאֶתְחַנַּן takes the root letters for grace חנן (chet nun nun) and puts them in a relatively unusual conjugation for this root: the hitpael. (The Hebrew word for praying לְהִתְפַּלֵל also takes this form.) There isn’t a precise translation that makes sense in English for the hitpael with these two examples. But it can’t be an accident that they take the same form, a form which in more easily translatable cases, indicates the reflexive, or something one does to or for oneself—like, I told myself.

I think, for Moses, there is a sense that he feels his very self depends on God’s answer.

He continues

אַתָּה הַחִלּוֹתָ לְהַרְאוֹת אֶת־עַבְדְּךָ אֶת־גָּדְלְךָ
You have just begun to show your servant your greatness…

In other words, You started this thing with me, God. Why does it have to end? This is agonizingly human! We so often say Dayeinu but we don’t always mean it. It’s awfully hard to feel like what we have is enough.

Moses so dearly wants to see the end that sometimes I think he forgets the beginning or begins to devalue it. If someone had said to him, look at where you’ve come from! I think it would be hard for him to hear. But truly, let’s look at where he came from:

Here is Moses: who dodged genocide as a baby and was rescued for greatness; who grew up in privilege; who was given an extravagant second chance after he made a youthful mistake; who overcame his own perceived limitations to seize an opportunity to do something of enormous consequence; and who became the leader of a people and a revered figure we still talk, think, study, and sing about today.

And yet, this isn’t enough for him. There is a reason our tefillah calls for us to say שַׂבְּעֵֽנוּ מִטּוּבֶךָ—let us be satisfied with Your goodness. It’s so easy to disregard the goodness in front of us, in search of that one more thing that we think will make it all lock into place.

And when Moses asks for that one more thing, saying, אֶעְבְּרָה־נָּא—please let me cross over—you can hear the pain in his voice. Between the alef and the ayin, it’s almost impossible to pronounce this phrase without a little catch in the throat.

The unfinished business of Moses’s world threatens to overcome him in this moment. And yet, as I said, in our times of transition we all tend to think of what is still unfinished, no matter how much wisdom and experience we’ve accrued, no matter how deep and rich our relationships are.

I’m feeling this acutely as the summer passes. In less than a month, my younger son will be starting college. There is nothing like preparing to send your youngest off to college to get you thinking about the passage of time. Looking back on these past two decades, what stays in my mind—more than the cliches of baby’s first steps or first words—are all the things I’ve tried to tuck into my childrens’ souls on the off beats. The summer days of Ima Day Camp, when we went looking at bugs or walking to the local deli for a root beer to share: those days were not about the bugs and the root beer floats per se (although the latter were delicious!) but rather about trying to teach the boys to notice the world around them, to attend to even the smallest creatures, to delight in simple treats that we could prepare together. All those years, we were accruing life experience and deepening our tender connections. And the day when I tossed them the house key so they could tumble home through the woods without me for a Brother Party was more about allowing them the right amount of freedom than it was about the key or the woods.

And still it feels like so much is unfinished. How have we not yet watched The Shawshank Redemption together? When will I teach him how to whistle? Have I imparted enough of our Jewish values to enable both boys to lead lives of kindness and usefulness? No matter how much I’ve tried, I always wish for more time together. Like Moses’, my voice will surely crack as I say goodbye to him and leave him on campus that first time.

Through the story of Moshe Rabeinu—Moses, our teacher—the Torah gives over this bittersweet lesson: that nobody, even the greatest and most revered person, gets everything they want. All of us, as we move from stage to stage, want to have more, do more, be more. Like Moses, we watch helplessly as the past shrinks too quickly into the distance. Like Moses, we long for one more chance. And like Moses, eventually, we accept what’s real, stir up our courage and our אֶמֻנָה—our faith—and lovingly toss the house key to the next generation.

Shabbat shalom!

Dvarim for TAA

(Delivered July 18, 2026)

There is something in the air at this time of year, and I don’t mean the yellow haze we’ve been experiencing. Although on the one hand it seems incongruous to think of teshuvah in the middle of summer, the High Holidays have a long on-ramp. On purpose. It’s hard and painstaking work to prepare ourselves, not to mention preparing to prepare ourselves. So we start early.

With Tisha b’Av this Wednesday night, the bottom is about to drop out. And then the pull starts to get stronger and stronger over the coming two months. Somehow we need all that time.

In rabbinical school and out, there is typically a sense of frenzy and overwhelm in the fall. Between regular work and gearing up for holiday pulpit work, the vibe among rabbis is joyful but stressful. Students and rabbis alike find that there’s a lot of energy around—what tune do you use here? How in the world am I going to get all these verses of Al Chet Shechatanu L’fanecha to sound fluent enough? Will my voice get tired and start to fade by N’ilah? Will I remember the right tunes at the right moments?

For clergy—and perhaps especially for student clergy—preparing for the holidays feels like standing at the base of a mountain that we’re both required and terrified to climb.

My wonderful teacher, Rabbi Allan Lehmann, taught me a lot about this during my time at Hebrew College. Allan had served as a congregational rabbi for over 40 years, and even after he left his pulpit to do other kinds of rabbinic work, he continued to lead high holidays in various communities, basically wherever he found himself. That’s almost half a century worth of carrying a community through the cycle of rebuke, consolation, return, and atonement.

One fall, Allan—who was not doing high holidays that year for the first time in basically forever—commented that he was still experiencing the symptoms, the old familiar worry and overwhelm. This was a guy who had led more services than anyone I know, and who knew every word and every nuance…and who wasn’t even scheduled to lead that year… and he was feeling stressed out.

He said to me, I thought when I retired from doing this stuff that I would be able to relax in this season. But I still feel it in my guts. I still feel the angst.

Allan’s wisdom was this: It’s not just about the standing in front of the community and leading. It’s about the meaning within the holidays themselves. We feel anxious because that’s the design of this time of year. It’s topical, and it’s inherent. We can’t help thinking: Is this going to be the year that God says my time is ending? Is this going to be the year I lose someone dear?

The more we are attuned to Jewish life and Jewish rhythm, the more the cadence of the calendar evokes this inner churning. The tug of this season is strong—like the tides we live by in our beautiful seaside community.

It’s not the yellow fog at all, but there IS something in the air… about needing to face ourselves and our mistakes. When we think of what teshuvah—real teshuvah—entails, it’s unsurprising that we need this on-ramp. Even admitting a small mistake can be hard for many of us. To face our most consequential errors—the ones that have resulted in hurt feelings or in shattered relationships—that takes a good deal of courage and readiness.

And so we take our time to find our way.

Our parsha this week, which is always read on the Shabbat before Tisha b’Av, suggests the model and tries to give us the push we need. The entirety of Sefer Dvarim (the book of Deuteronomy) consists of Moses looking back over the story of the Israelites—retelling, recasting, rethinking—as he reckons with the reality that he will not be privy to how the story ends. He describes many of the misdeeds of the Israelites as he sifts through the shards of the eventful journey he’s led and tries to make meaning of it. In the chaplaincy world, this is called life review and is a normative part of aging.

In a way, life review is also what we do in our souls in this long leadup to and through the High Holidays. We look carefully at our past and try to make meaning of it, searching for ways to make peace where needed.

So our parsha gives us a role model, fallible as he may be. And still, the language needs to noodge us along. Three times in our Torah portion, we encounter the phrase רַב־לָכֶם indicating a kind of too-much-ness. Two of the three are direct orders to get moving!

Dvarim chapter 1, verse 6 reads:

ה’ אֱלֹהֵינוּ דִּבֶּר אֵלֵינוּ בְּחֹרֵב לֵאמֹר רַב־לָכֶם שֶׁבֶת בָּהָר הַזֶּה׃
Adonai your God spoke to you at Horev, saying,
“You have stayed too long at this mountain.”

In the next chapter, verse 3 reads:

רַב־לָכֶם סֹב אֶת־הָהָר הַזֶּה פְּנוּ לָכֶם צָפֹנָה׃
You have circled this mountain too long; turn northward.

On the one hand, Moses is deep in reflection. On the other, the story he’s telling is one of pushing on, making our way. The parsha is balancing ruminating and movement, in a way that speaks to us if we listen.

And yet, listening is hard. And this is where the magic of Shabbat Chazon comes into focus. The call to movement, toward the work of teshuvah begins this week, with a faint whisper. Rather than coming at us with a blunt force, the wave of self-reflection starts as something like the still small voice we read about in the story of Eliahu haNavi.

It enters like a distant music that gradually but insistently comes closer, like a spiritual doppler effect. This Shabbat, we turn that corner not only through words (dvarim, ironically) but through melody. As you probably noticed, both the Torah and the Haftarah readings contained interpolations of a less-familiar sound, the sound of Eicha trope. I’ve mentioned before that Jewish liturgical music helps us tell time, and this is a beautiful example. The elegiac tone of the musical expression hits us in a place where resistance is lowered. The mournful tune cracks our defenses, allowing us to break, so we can heal.

The music speaks to us in a language that bypasses language. And so our tradition offers a multi-modal invitation into the work of teshuvah. Where words might tell us it’s time to move; it’s melody that actually moves us.

Shabbat shalom!

Matot-Mas’ei for TAA

(delivered July 11, 2026)

As we’ve talked about many times, our tradition makes a study and a practice of contradiction. And so it is that in the beautiful summertime, in the midst of beach days, family visits, and spontaneous ice cream cones, we hold some space for soul-searching, and even grief. In the Three Weeks preceding Tisha b’Av, the prevailing emotional tone is one of anguish and regret. The haftarot in these Three Weeks are known collectively as the tlat dePoranuta, the three haftarot of rebuke.

The combination of the mood of rebuke at this time of year, and this week’s teachings about vows, worked a particular spell on me, as I recalled an incident that occurred in my first few months of serving as TAA’s rabbi.

In the spring of 2024, before I even started my official job here, Rabbi Kudan, my predecessor, forwarded me an email from the staff at Camp Ramah about clergy visiting day. A good number of our students were planning to be at camp, and although I didn’t really know them yet, it seemed like a great opportunity to connect. Bright-eyed and full of ambition and desire to serve, I signed up for not one but two clergy visiting days, one for each session. After all, we had students in both sessions and I didn’t want anyone to feel left out. What if I go to one and not the other? Then the kids in session one will resent the kids in session two or vice versa. Well, I thought. No problem. I’ll do both. What could be hard about that? So it’s two hours’ drive each way on a Thursday, big deal!

But as I got used to the rhythm of the week and the challenge and time commitment of composing a Dvar Torah for every Shabbat, as I learned that my personal cadence of work involved writing on Thursday afternoons after a long walk in the sunshine, I got more and more nervous as the time for my first camp visit approached.

In the event, I ended up canceling both visits because I just couldn’t get myself organized well enough to both drive across the state and back and prepare for Shabbat in a way that felt sufficient. Not to mention being away on a Thursday meant that I wouldn’t get to learn with our Torah study group, which is often a critical component of my writing prep.

Of course, on the first day of religious school that year, one of the students, a precocious and delightful person whom I have come to love very much, came up to me and with disappointment in their eyes, said, Rav Naomi I thought you were going to come to visiting day, but you never showed up.

If you had pierced my heart with a rusty dagger, I think it would’ve caused less pain than what I felt for having tried too hard and disappointed one of our students.

It was through that lens that I read the passage in Parshat Matot-Mas’ei dealing with vows. The parsha asks us to consider earnestly what is binding about those promises, and what the consequences of broken vows can be. Chapter 30, verse 3 reads, in part:

כְּכָל־הַיֹּצֵא מִפִּיו יַעֲשֶׂה
All that a person speaks, they must do

This phrase lands as a rebuke, reminding us of times when our words and our expectations of ourselves were overly aspirational. I suspect we can all think of situations when we’ve made a promise with the best of intentions and found ourselves unable to fulfill it. Encountering this teaching in the season of reprimand—as we begin the tender communal process of looking at our deeds—carries a heavy weight.

But if you look at the structure of the season, begadol, you know that as much as our tradition invests deeply in the mourning and grief of Tisha b’Av, we don’t remain there. The three haftarot of rebuke are followed by more than twice as many (seven!) of consolation. All this grief and admonishment is part of a larger process, with an ultimate emphasis on repair rather than reproach. This long arc brings us through the psychological phases we need in order to make teshuvah.

In these Three Weeks approaching Tisha b’Av, we take on traditional practices of mourning. Some observances include no haircuts, no public celebrations, no weddings. We allow the three haftarot of rebuke to permeate the crevices of our lives as we remove the distractions that allow us to ignore our own shortcomings. The grief comes to its fulfillment with the fast day of Tisha b’Av. Then, afterward, in the seven weeks that follow through the course of the month of Elul, we take on self-reflection and return, as time moves inexorably through its cycle.

Reflective Elul takes us into the 10 days of teshuvah (return), as we work deep inside and in our relationships to mend what can be mended.

With Yom Kippur, we let it all go. We release our burdens with the faith that God will forgive us, even for the vows we were not able to keep. Four days later, we go outside and despite all the fragility that life gives us, we rejoice in community—and then, in the wisdom tradition that teaches us to be a community.

I thought of this rhythm deeply over this past week because this past Thursday, I had a chance to make things right. I made arrangements with my Torah study folks for lay leadership, and planned to give less time and energy to the Dvar Torah, so that I could devote the time to be with some of our youngest members on clergy visiting day at camp.

I am happy to share that it was great to see our children joyfully immersed in a Jewish environment without any pressure to conform to the non-Jewish world. I got to visit with our campers (including four whose B’nei Mitzvah I officiated this past year): to spend a little time with them, obviously to take some selfies, and to pass along messages from their families and small gifts from their congregation.

And most blessedly, I had the opportunity to see the student who had been so innocently disappointed in me two years ago; to look them in the eyes and to see how much it meant to them that their rabbi showed up this time.

כל היוצא מפי עשיתי
All that I said I would do, I did

May we all be blessed with such second chances, with a forgiving reception when we try to clean the slate, and with the perspective to see that the cycle of time invites us into reflection so that we can do better by the people who matter to us.

Korach for TAA

(Delivered June 20, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

With the rising hoopla surrounding the US semiquincentennial—in other words, the 250th anniversary of the founding of this nation—I am thinking not about fireworks, nor about military parades, nor about historical re-enactments.

In the shadow of Parshat Korach, I am thinking about arguments.

This nation’s founders really knew how to argue. They had to. Although they had a shared goal and a somewhat shared vision, they were not of a single mind, and they had little precedent to go on. They probably had one solid common principle. Like Shmuel in today’s haftarah they had serious misgivings about being under the rule of a king.

But beyond knowing what they didn’t want, in order to move forward, they had to invent an alternative. And the way they did that was to talk it out. To argue.

Argument in the service of something greater than ourselves has intrinsic value, as our founders demonstrated. Had they not taken on the responsibility of thinking out loud together—sometimes peacefully and sometimes less so, but always with the goal in mind—we would not be here 250 years later to celebrate their labors. It took maturity and forbearance to work it out together, “in order to form a more perfect union.”

It was, in a sense, holy work.

Of course, our Sages had this model in mind, millennia before George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and the gang got into it. In Pirkei Avot, Chapter 5, Mishnah 17, we have the famous teaching:

‏כָּל מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁהִיא לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם.
וְשֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם אֵין סוֹפָהּ לְהִתְקַיֵּם.
Every argument that is undertaken for the sake of heaven,
its result will endure.
But every argument that is not undertaken for the sake of heaven,
its result will not endure.

The Mishnah goes on to cite the ongoing halachic disagreements between the students of Hillel and those of Shammai as an example of a מַחֲלֹקֶת לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם, an argument for the sake of heaven. Hillel and Shammai’s respective schools saw just about everything differently. BUT because they shared a common purpose—to preserve and codify Jewish tradition in a time of upheaval—their arguments were courteous enough. They managed to regard each others’ viewpoints with respect, even when they disagreed vehemently. Keeping their minds on their shared intention allowed them to soften their ego-engagement in order to prioritize searching for the truth.

Meanwhile, the Mishnah’s example for מַחֲלֹקֶת שֶׁאֵינָהּ לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם is the argument that we have in our parsha this week, מַחֲלֹקֶת קֹרַח וְכָל עֲדָתוֹ—the argument of Korach and his whole group.

We are living at a time when more and more Americans are polarized beyond the willingness even to hear one another’s viewpoints, much less to examine them humbly in search of the truth. At times, it starts to seem like healthy argument is a lost art. And so, I think it’s worth looking closely at what happens in the parsha, if only to teach ourselves what not to do.

Consider, for an example, the way the infamous Moses temper is already beginning to flare just a few verses in. Korach and his fellow rebels know how to push Moses’s buttons and Moses plays his part. Rather than respond to Korach’s provocation with de-escalation, he is activated right away, throwing the rebels’ words back at them and calling for direct confrontation the next morning, with God as the arbiter.

After laying into Korach, Moses tries to settle in and make some progress with Datan and Aviram, making an overture toward a separate meeting to work things out. But Datan and Aviram nurse their grudges rather than try to have a useful conversation. Their refusal to talk pushes Moses even further into hardening his own position. His anger boils over:

וַיִּחַר לְמֹשֶׁה מְאֹד וַיֹּאמֶר אֶל-ה’ אַל־תֵּפֶן אֶל־מִנְחָתָם
Moses became very angry, and he said to God: don’t accept their offerings.

When Moses grows angry, he presses his own advantage by using his elevated position to get God to reject the insurgents.

Throughout the confrontation, Moses and the rebels alike are talking right past each other, refusing to listen, and allowing their fury to get the better of them. And in Chapter 16, Verse 21, after Moses’s anger boils over, even God gets into the fray, threatening to destroy the entire community.

Only after Moses sees God amplifying his own anger does he, Moses, begin to settle down and behave more rationally, asking God to reconsider the impulse to collective punishment. Seeing our own behavior mirrored in another person can sometimes snap us out of our worst tendencies. Is that really what I look like? we ask ourselves. Surely I’m better than that.

Even prior to the fateful clash, Korach’s mode of argument is unfair and definitely not לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם. One commentator’s reading of our Mishnah illustrates why. The Malbim, a 19th century Ukrainian rabbi, notes that in the construction of the end of the Mishnah, the argument not for the sake of heaven is that of Korach and his whole group, not of Korach and Moses. He notes that rather than take his grievances directly to the person he wants an answer from, Korach triangulates with 250 other people, gathering an army that ultimately pays a price.

Korach uses his verbal skill and attention to human nature to speak to the ego of each of those 250 people. Preying on their resentments, insecurities—their sense of outrage—he stokes in them a feeling of injustice, which he then leverages against Moses for his own aims. He creates the illusion of a shared purpose, but there was never any intent for all of the נְשִׂיאֵי עֵדָה—these pillars of the community—to assume leadership roles. It was useful to Korach for them to imagine they might. He incites them to an insurgency that they think they’ll benefit from, but in the end it’s only to further his own hopes for power.

None of this is for the sake of heaven.

By contrast, the American founders had strong disagreements on many fundamental issues: federal vs. state power; industrial vs. agrarian basis for the economy; and especially, slavery. But despite those disagreements, they worked it through to the best of their capacity, with the greater good in mind. I don’t claim that their solutions were perfect, or permanent, as we can see all too clearly today. But their method was one that sought unity even in the absence of uniformity.

There’s a recurring phrase in Parshat Korach, thrown back and forth between Korach and Moses: רַב־לָכֶם. In the parsha, it can mean: this is too much, or you’ve gone too far, or you take too much for yourselves.

And although this is clearly not the intent in context, I can’t help thinking about another meaning of the word Rav: teacher. Injecting this way-outside translation, we can read רַב־לָכֶם to mean, a teacher for you. And indeed this passage has something to teach us, a lesson we 21st-century Americans dearly need to learn. Discord without a shared purpose can be catastrophic, can swallow you whole.

As we celebrate 250 years of the search for wholesome, enduring American values, let us each consider how we might turn toward one another in friendship and community, not ignoring disagreement but acknowledging it. May we recommit ourselves to מַחֲלֹקֶת לְשֵׁם שָׁמַיִם: to seeing our neighbors’ humanity. May we defuse the assumptions that encourage us to view everyone outside our own circle of understanding as villainous and stupid. Instead, may we discern the common purpose that American ideals at their best point us toward, and be tireless in holding that purpose in mind and heart as we move forward together.

Shabbat shalom!

Behar (Bechukotai) for TAA

(Delivered May 9, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

We find ourselves today at the end of Sefer Vayikra, the Book of Leviticus, which I must admit is almost nobody’s favorite book. The text of Leviticus בְּגָדול—overall—is full of rules and regulations, blood and guts, sacrifices, rituals, restrictions.

My teacher, Rabbi Nehemia Polen, on the other hand, loves Leviticus. Loves it, loves it, loves it.

In Nehemia’s world, Leviticus becomes almost romantic: he reads it as a tender description of acts of profound devotion: of the gifts that God asks of humanity and that humanity lovingly offers. Where the rest of us see the mind-numbing details of alienating ritual, Nehemia sees care and softness, a desire for deeper connection and partnership.

The emotional drama underneath those boring details is of God and humanity reaching toward each other, repairing the sense of abandonment arising from centuries of enslavement, moving past the savagery of the Golden Calf, dwelling in sacred companionship in a holy place, that God designs and the Israelites construct. To put it another way, the Mishkan and the many elaborate religious practices that take place within it are the embodied expression of the covenant that defines the Jewish people.

Although I passed Nehemia’s class and wrote a pretty good final essay, I have some lingering skepticism for this reading.

But Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, particularly what we encounter in the first shlish—the first triennial reading—offers a wink here and there of the passion and adoration that my teacher sees in the book overall.

Consider the loving care that God commands us to have for one another and for the land. The system of שְׁמִיטָה and יוֹבֵל—of letting the land rest every seven years, and of rebalancing wealth inequities every fifty—speaks to a strong theme of generosity and good will toward one another. It also demands a level of faith in the unseen, to be able to accept the enforced no-harvest period. Between us and God, and amongst ourselves, these principles teach and demand a kind of tenderness.

The parsha’s many lessons about economic justice likewise point to an ethic of love and חֶסֶד, commanding us to uphold the dignity of the migrant or the servant with as much energy as we would do for our own kin. It would be enough that the parsha forbids taking economic advantage of someone who is struggling. But our Torah goes further, to command that if we see someone beginning to struggle, we must intervene to support and strengthen them (וְהֶחֱזַקְתָּ בּוֹ). Rashi compares this to a heavy load on an animal. If the load begins to wobble, it’s better to catch it quickly before it falls to the ground. Once it has fallen all the way, it’s that much harder to lift it up. With this teaching, the Torah is demanding that we not look away from suffering, that we see the struggles of the world as our own and labor to help. That these teachings are couched in the refrain: אֲנִי ה’ אֱלֹהֵיכֶם—I am Adonai your God—completes the circuit of love and compassion. The more empathic the human-to-human interaction, the more it aligns with God’s primary principle of עָרֵֵבוּת—of taking responsibility for one another.

But let me tell you about one particular pasuk that encapsulates the divine-human connection and love that Nehemia believes permeates Vayikra. In chapter 25, verse 23, God says:

וְהָאָרֶץ לֹא תִמָּכֵר לִצְמִתֻת כִּי־לִי הָאָרֶץ כִּי־גֵרִים וְתוֹשָׁבִים אַתֶּם עִמָּדִי׃
But the land will not be sold in perpetuity, for the land is Mine.
You are strangers and sojourners with Me.

The final word of that pasuk עִמָּדִי—with Me—opens a world of theological questions and possibilities. When the verse says we are with God, what is the quality of that with-ness? Are we wanderers being accompanied by God, our footsteps monitored from the middle distance by an all-knowing presence? Or is God also a stranger and sojourner, wandering alongside us as we go about our lives?

Surely the ambiguity is not an accident.

It is comforting enough to imagine the former: that God is watching peacefully over us, guiding our every choice. The strangeness and the sojourn never get out of hand because God is with us. Yet if God is also a stranger and sojourner, if we are walking beside God in wonder and sometimes bewilderment, how does that obligate us, to God and to one another?

This, I believe, is the sense of depth and companionship that makes Nehemia Polen so devoted to Sefer Vayikra. Ultimately, it’s the idea that God and we are sojourners together, learning from one another and holding one another steady in the whirlwind of life. As the spiritual teacher Ram Dass—born Richard Alpert—said, “We are all just walking each other home.”

We are all just walking each other home.

May our footsteps be guided by kindness.

Shmini for TAA

(Delivered April 11, 2026)

The nature of God: a lesson in three parts.

Part One.

כִּי הַיּוֹם ה’ נִרְאָה אֲלֵיכֶם
For today God will be revealed to you (Vayikra 9:4)

Could any phrase be more promising? At the opening of Parshat Shmini, we find ourselves at a moment of new beginning. The labor that has taken up the last half of Sefer Shmot—the Book of Exodus—and the beginning of Vayikra—is, at long last, complete. The Mishkan is ready, along with the vessels and utensils of the sacrificial rite. The Priestly garments are woven and sewn, with embroidered bells and pomegranates, and twisted threads of crimson and blue and eggplant purple. The Kohanim are trained. They have completed the seven day period of מִלּוּאִם—of ordination, with its isolation, reflection, and preparation. They are poised now, arrayed in their finery.

The day has arrived, and God will be revealed.

There’s nothing like a clean slate. New beginnings offer us a sense of freshness and possibility. They whisper to us, making us think that optimism is earned and that nothing will ever change or decay. In the world of new beginnings, life is perennially rosy and sweet, we are young and full of potential, easily convinced of our rightness.

It’s opening day and your team hasn’t lost a game. It’s the day of your first child’s birth and you have neither changed a single diaper nor startled awake at 3am in their teen years wondering when they are going to be home. It’s the moment of your first kiss, and you haven’t discovered your love’s actual humanity.

As the Mishkan opens for business, Aaron and the priests begin to place holy offerings on the altar: a young calf, a ram without blemish, a grain offering. Everything is as it should be.

Everything is perfect.

כִּי־יָשָׁר ה’ צוּרִי וְלֹא־עַוְלָתָה בּוֹ
For God is upright, my rock, in whom there is no wrong (Psalms 92:16)

Part Two.

כִּי הַיּוֹם ה’ נִרְאָה אֲלֵיכֶם
For today God will be revealed to you (Vayikra 9:4)

Everything is perfect. Until it isn’t.

Next, Parshat Shmini takes us into one of the most horrifying, inexplicable scenes in the Torah—a catastrophe so unthinkable that most of us can barely get the words out to talk about it. The priestly rite begins as anticipated, and then goes horribly wrong. Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, approach the altar with אֵשׁ זָרָה—with a strange fire.

Once, back in Parshat Mishpatim, they had sat at the foot of the divine, on a surface blue like sapphire.

And now, memories of eating and drinking with their father and the elders of the community in the presence of God spark them to come closer than they should, to love God more than they should, to make their own path. They break the boundaries of their roles as Kohanim, and are put to the flame. In an instant, they are gone. וַיִּדֹּם אַהֲרֹן—and Aaron did not speak. In the face of such a thing, their shellshocked father can only be silent.

The sudden misfortune is impossible to explain, yet it sends us, in all our story-seeking humanity, flailing about, searching for reasons. Rabbi Yishmael suggests they were drunk. Rabbi Eliezer says they dared to render halachic rulings in the presence of Moses their Elder and Teacher. Big-hearted Ibn Ezra wonders if perhaps they thought they were doing something favorable towards God; maybe they were just misunderstood.

Something else occurred to me, a thought almost too painful to articulate. Maybe Aaron, who sinned so grievously in creating the Golden Calf, has become the embodiment of

פֹּקֵד עֲוֹן אָבֹת עַל־בָּנִים
God visits the misdeeds of the parents on the children (Shmot 20:5)

Ultimately the reasons don’t matter. The implacable situation remains. Aaron started the day with four sons and ends it with two.

The mystery of God’s decrees—who shall live and who shall die—is not for us to know or understand. The mind of God cannot be fathomed in the human realm.

Part Three.

כִּי הַיּוֹם ה’ נִרְאָה אֲלֵיכֶם
For today God will be revealed to you (Vayikra 9:4)

Immediately after the calamity come halting attempts at recovery. Moses—already known for not being a good talker—struggles to find the right words, offering explanations where none could possibly satisfy. Still, he attempts to move forward, ordering the removal of the bodies.

Moses tries to relieve Aaron and his remaining sons Elazar and Itamar of the burden of mourning but the words don’t come easily. Eventually he says what many readers probably wish he’d led with: אֲחֵיכֶם כָּל־בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵל יִבְכּוּ—your brothers, the whole house of Israel weep. Moses and the community proceed to feed the bewildered survivors and to offer them a place of honor as befitting their status as Kohanim in mourning.

As the Torah unfurls, the names of Nadav and Avihu are not forgotten. The two remain threads in the fabric of the Israelite community.

This, too, is an aspect of the divine: יָתוֹם וְאַלְמָנָה יְעוֹדֵד—God gives courage to the orphan and the widow. (Psalms 146:7)

Epilogue.

Parshat Shmini takes us to the terrifying core of the human relationship with God, the mystery at the heart of our existence. It asks us to bear the unbearable, to struggle with what truths might be hidden inside this story of wild, unfathomable loss. The lesson, I think, is that God is the unifying logic underneath each and every moment in this chaotic, unfolding universe.

כִּי הַיּוֹם ה’ נִרְאָה אֲלֵיכֶם
For today God will be revealed to you (Vayikra 9:4)