Author: Rabbi Naomi Gurt Lind

Rabbi Naomi Gurt Lindhttps://jewishthemes.com
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Vayigash for TAA

(Delivered January 4, 2025)

Shabbat shalom!

Years ago, before I had children, I used to spend a lot of time hanging around in my local independent bookstore. For those of you familiar with Newton, it was the old Newtonville Books, back when it was actually in Newtonville. It was the kind of place where the booksellers chatted with the customers and so the eavesdropping was usually pretty good.

One winter morning, as I was browsing the shelves, I overheard the store owner shooting the breeze with another customer, a man wearing a woolen ski cap pulled low over his ears. They were talking about the then-recent David Mamet movie State and Main, which I had also seen. Their comments ranged from enthusiastic to rapturous. Truth is, I had a dissenting opinion, but despite the bookstore’s general approval of banter, I didn’t speak up. This might have been a stroke of luck for me. A few moments later, someone else entered the store and joined the conversation. The owner introduced the new person to the man in the woolen hat he’d been talking to. You guessed it: David Mamet.

Mamet has been on my mind ever since I read his op-ed in last Thursday’s Wall Street Journal. In it, he likens the Jews to the world’s foster children: at times flourishing, when in the context of a healthy “family”—and at times abused and persecuted, when not. In either paradigm there is a sense of wariness due to the rupture of having been displaced to begin with. The Jew is likely to, as Mamet puts it, “accept any indignity rather than risk a tenuous momentary acceptance. He has no voice at the kitchen table.” Whether or not one agrees with everything in his essay, I think Mamet’s metaphor of complicated family dynamics raises a good point about the realities of our being a minority in a majority culture. The pressure to assimilate in order to survive is always there, and we all make our choices as to whether and how much to do so. Sadly, history teaches us repeatedly about the limits of assimilation as a survival strategy. 

With this in mind, it’s interesting to look closely at the scene in Parshat Vayigash where Josef’s family joins him in Egypt. Once father and son are reunited, Josef immediately goes into practical mode. He shares his plan to settle his family in Goshen, instructs his brothers on how to introduce themselves, and sets out to go speak with the Pharaoh, bringing a few of the brothers along with him. 

In Chapter 47 Verse 2 we read:

וּמִקְצֵה אֶחָיו לָקַח חֲמִשָּׁה אֲנָשִׁים וַיַּצִּגֵם לִפְנֵי פַרְעֹה׃
He chose five from among his brothers and set them before the Pharaoh.

Many translations interpolate the word carefully, as in he carefully chose five from among his brothers, and indeed Rashi reads this ambiguous pasuk to suggest that Josef purposely chose the brothers who looked the weakest, wanting to make the newcomers appear as non-threatening as possible. Perhaps to reinforce the message that they are mere shepherds as opposed to conquerors, or perhaps to ensure that they would not appear strapping enough to risk being conscripted as soldiers. Whatever the reason may be, it’s clear that as an insider, Josef knows his way around the Pharaoh’s inclinations and is working the system to advantage his long-lost family. Josef, with his Egyptian wife and his high government position, has a foot in two worlds. Although he is not fully Egyptian, he has a voice at the kitchen table, so to say, and he uses it to help his birth family settle in Goshen in order to survive the famine.

Jacob, on the other hand, understands that he is an outsider, and when Josef brings his father to meet the Pharaoh, Jacob knows his place. The Jacob who manipulated his brother and father to serve his own purposes, the Jacob who stood up to Lavan demanding his rightful wages, the Jacob who wrestled with the divine and prevailed—this same Jacob behaves quite differently upon encountering the Pharaoh. In their short first meeting, Jacob only speaks three times. Two of these times are to bless the king, or to genuflect. And in the third, when the Pharaoh asks how old he is, here is his response:

וַיֹּאמֶר יַעֲקֹב אֶל־פַּרְעֹה יְמֵי שְׁנֵי מְגוּרַי שְׁלֹשִׁים וּמְאַת שָׁנָה
מְעַט וְרָעִים הָיוּ יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיַּי וְלֹא הִשִּׂיגוּ אֶת־יְמֵי שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי אֲבֹתַי בִּימֵי מְגוּרֵיהֶם׃
And Jacob said to the Pharaoh: the years of my sojourn are 130. The days of my life have been short and difficult, and I have not achieved the lifespan of my ancestors in the days of their sojourns.

When asked a simple question, Jacob responds awkwardly, essentially making apologies for the length and quality of his life. Formerly fiery Jacob, in this unfamiliar context, has become deferential to the point of indignity. He is painfully aware in this conversation that he does not, in Mamet’s metaphor, have a voice at the kitchen table.

As the story continues, the assimilated Josef rises to ever greater status in the Egyptian hierarchy. In my friend Matthew Schultz’s phrase, over and over Josef plays Pharaoh like a harmonica. This works out well for Josef and his brothers, but not so much for the rest of the Egyptian population as Josef amasses all the wealth in Egypt and forces the local residents into servitude. 

And in just a few short weeks, we will see what happens when there arises a Pharaoh who knows not Josef. 

With this episode, I believe the Torah is asking us to think long and hard about assimilation and its limits. Is there such a thing as the right amount of assimilation? Is there a way to be in the minority and not compromise our integrity? Where are we at home, and where are we visitors? In a time when antisemitism is on the upswing, these are not idle questions. In a moment that finds the Jewish people—both within and outside the Land of Israel—increasingly the subject of cynical scrutiny, harsh rhetoric, and sometimes outright violence, what does having a voice at the kitchen table sound like?

I don’t presume to answer for all places and all times, but what I have experienced in my role thus far, as Gloucester’s sole pulpit rabbi, is that knowing when and how to speak up is essential. My experience with the interfaith Thanksgiving service is a case in point. As you might remember, the folks planning the service made sincere efforts to be inclusive, but did so at first without consulting me. The result was a first draft that missed the mark of being authentically interfaith, for a host of innocent reasons. Until I articulated for them why that original service plan was not fully inclusive, they had no way of knowing. I’d even go further, to say they had no reason to know. But once they did, all kinds of doors opened, and relationships amongst the group deepened. A bit of open-hearted education changed the tenor of the discussion and brought the service much closer to the standard we all held for ourselves.

And now, with the flap over the City Council’s antisemitism resolution and concerns about its inclusiveness, the same principles apply. The general public—and even the activists calling for rescinding the original resolution—may have no way of knowing the role antisemitism has played in the sweep of Jewish history. Our task in this moment is to educate: calmly, clearly, and with an approach that takes to heart the teaching from Pirkei Avot Chapter 1, Mishnah 6.

הֱוֵי דָן אֶת כָּל הָאָדָם לְכַף זְכוּת
Judge every person on the side of their merits

I was recently invited to speak with the folks down the street at St John’s Episcopal Church. In the course of the conversation it became clear to me that most of the parishioners there had never thought about antisemitism as a repeating pattern in Jewish history. Tears formed in their eyes as I shared what the world looks and feels like to the Jewish community right now, and the sense of trauma that seems to lurk in every corner. Hearing their sincere offers of allyship and support taught me the value of speaking up, and showed me that between assimilation and isolation there is a middle path.

Building authentic relationships with people of other cultures expands our perspectives and gives us a platform for helping others to see things they don’t even know to look for. This work is more important than ever in this complicated and scary time. 

Ultimately it is not the Jews’ job to solve the problem of antisemitism, any more than it’s the responsibility of the Black community to end racism. We can, however, play a role in educating others. With trust, good will, and thoughtful communication, we can—and must—fortify our relationships in this community. 

May we go from strength to strength, and from isolation to integration. And over time, with gentle candor and open hearts, may we build up our courage to find our collective voice at the kitchen table.

Shabbat shalom!

Vayeshev for TAA

(Delivered December 21, 2024)

There’s a teaching from Pirkei Avot that I return to again and again. In Chapter 2, Mishnah 5, we read:

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be a human

I understand this beautiful teaching to mean that while the opportunity to do the right thing is always there for us, it’s much easier when the circumstances push us in the right direction to begin with, when the wind is at our backs. But in a setting where the impetus is toward cheating or inflicting pain or lying or simply doing nothing, it takes real courage and striving to resist the prevailing winds and walk the path of righteousness. 

In the middle portion of Sefer Breishit—the Book of Genesis—there are two instances where the Torah teaches us about an encounter with an אִישׁ (ish). Both Jacob and Josef have such encounters, and each of them is changed in surprising ways through their respective experiences. 

In last week’s parsha, Vayishlach, Jacob is preparing to be reunited with his estranged brother Esav after many years apart. He sends his family ahead across the river Yabok. Then:

וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר׃

And Jacob remained alone, and he grappled with an אִישׁ until daybreak.

The tradition explores the meaning and nature of this אִישׁ. There are all sorts of possibilities: is it God? An angel? And if it is an angel, what kind of angel? In Breishit Rabbah, the Midrash posits that perhaps the אִישׁ is Esav’s guardian angel. The Bechor Shor, a 12th century French rabbi, suggests:

מלאך היה שהיה רוצה לְהַפִּילוֹ אלא שהק’ עזרו

It was a messenger who wanted to cause his downfall,
but the Holy One helped him

Many think that the אִישׁ represents Jacob’s conscience: as he reflects on the chaos that his youthful deceptions caused, as he wonders and worries about how his brother will receive him, his inner churn is embodied through this mysterious encounter. 

However we might understand the nature of Jacob’s אִישׁ, we do know that this dustup has a strong and lasting effect on him. When the stranger renames him Yisrael it is כִּי־שָׂרִיתָ עִם־אֱלֹהִים וְעִם־אֲנָשִׁים וַתּוּכָל׃—because he has reckoned with both God and man and held strong. The felt sense of struggling with forces larger than himself, forces he doesn’t fully understand, helps Jacob see himself more clearly. And his new name gives him—and us—a model of relationship with God that admits complexity, ambiguity, and struggle. Becoming God-wrestlers turns out to be central to Jewish identity, and our capacity for considering and reconsidering contributes to our resilience throughout our history. Only God-wrestlers could have endured the millennia of hardship and struggle and still maintained faith in God and a sense of purpose as a religious group, even as fractious as we are. Jacob’s encounter with the אִישׁ and his transformation into Yisrael lay the groundwork for what we would become as a culture. 

On the other hand, the אִישׁ that Josef encounters is of a different sort, indeed their meeting is so short and seemingly mundane that we might overlook it in the sweep of the overall narrative arc. It comes in this week’s parsha, Vayeshev. The Josef cycle opens with a depiction of Josef and his brothers, a relationship full of conflict & rivalry, which, frankly, Josef doesn’t handle well. Meanwhile his father Jacob, widowed of his beloved Rachel and perhaps overwhelmed by the difficulties between and among the brothers, plays favorites and ignores problems. And in this dynamic of Jacob not really fully seeing how his other sons regard Josef, it happens that when the brothers go off without Josef, Jacob sends his beloved favorite child to catch up.

Josef, wandering the fields to try to find his brothers and the flocks of sheep they are allegedly tending, runs into (you guessed it) an אִישׁ.

וַיִּמְצָאֵהוּ אִישׁ וְהִנֵּה תֹעֶה בַּשָּׂדֶה וַיִּשְׁאָלֵהוּ הָאִישׁ לֵאמֹר מַה־תְּבַקֵּשׁ׃

An אִישׁ came upon him wandering in the field, and the אִישׁ asked him,
“What are you looking for?”

It might be tempting to write off Josef’s אִישׁ as a random minor character, a mere plot point for getting Josef physically near enough to his brothers that the conflict can play out through the cruelties they are about to inflict. But I actually think there’s more there. This אִישׁ is a model for the Jewish tradition of chesed, of caring for one another and offering companionship and support when needed. Josef’s אִישׁ has no particular reason to approach and could just as well have passed right by the young man with the colorful cloak wandering aimlessly by. The Torah doesn’t say that Josef was in distress, but something makes the אִישׁ take note of him and offer gentle assistance. And in so doing, the אִישׁ teaches us a mode of offering care and a clarifying question. 

Of course, where would we be without this essentially anonymous figure? His gentle question and then pointing Josef in the right direction opens up the whole grand story—of the brothers faking Josef’s death and selling him off into slavery in Egypt; of Josef leveraging his wit and skill to make something of himself, even as a slave in a foreign land; of the famine that made Josef a hero in the region and eventually brought his brothers back into his orbit in a stunning scene of reconciliation—and eventually, of the rise of a Pharaoh who knew not Josef and the ensuing enslavement and redemption that is at the core of Jewish identity. 

Both Jacob’s אִישׁ and Josef’s are formative, representing the chesed and the gevurah—the kindness and the strength—of Jewish culture. These two mysterious beings teach us about ourselves and our values, even as they resist easy explanation. 

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

Both of these אֲנָשִׁים —these ishes—show us that each and every life, no matter how long or how short, has the potential to be meaningful and to make an impact. Over the course of our unfolding lives, we too can read our small encounters as sources of learning, insight, and meaning. And each one of us can be an אִישׁ in someone else’s narrative; in fact we never know when we will be. Through seeing the importance of everyday moments and everyday people, we become more fully human.

Shabbat shalom!

Vayeshev for TAA

(Delivered on December 20, 2024)

This week’s Torah portion, Vayeshev, kicks off the cycle of stories about Josef. The favored son whose youthful arrogance alienates his brothers. The hapless youth who is so loathed that he gets thrown into a pit by those same brothers, and later sold into slavery in Egypt. The survivor of sexual harassment who is falsely imprisoned. We love our Josef—he’s an endlessly intriguing character—but he has a lot of tsuris.

Yet, as my friend Rav Hazzan Ken Richmond points out, three times in our parsha Josef is described as מצליח—successful. And each of those times, it’s in the context of his being in a situation of peril and compromise, the kind of situation that most of us would not regard as fertile ground for success. The first two times he’s called successful—in chapter 39, verses 2 and 3—Josef has been purchased as a slave by an Egyptian nobleman called Potifar. Yet even in this state of degradation, a human being, bought and sold, the Torah says he is מצליח. 

Because of his unique personal qualities, Josef attains a high position in Potifar’s household. He is put in charge of more and more things, until he is essentially second in command. Still he is a slave and has no actual power, so when Potifar’s wife makes persistent moves on him, he has no recourse. Eventually, having refused her advances once too often, Josef is falsely accused of assaulting her. On the strength of Eshet Potifar’s position of power and her proximity to the Pharaoh, Josef is imprisoned. And there in the prison, he is again called מצליח. 

For the Torah to make a repeated point of describing a person—a person who is first enslaved and then imprisoned—as successful, makes me wonder how the Torah is thinking about success. 

Looking more closely at the verses, though, the connection is clear and surprising—downright radical in our culture that so equates success with wealth and power. Chapter 39 verse 2 reads:

וַיְהִי יי אֶת־יוֹסֵף וַיְהִי אִישׁ מַצְלִיחַ וַיְהִי בְּבֵית אֲדֹנָיו הַמִּצְרִי׃

And God was with Joseph, and he was a successful man, 
and he was in the house of his Egyptian master.

The text does not whitewash his enslaved status as it calls him successful; the tension between his economic reality as a slave and his so-called success is unresolved. Therefore the Torah seems not to care about financial position when it considers the matter of success. Rather, as Rav Hazzan Richmond writes, it’s Josef’s experience of the presence of God that differentiates him and makes him successful. The Italian commentator Yitzhak Abarbanel writes about this verse:

והנה יוסף עִם היותו עבד מושלים 
תמיד היתה יִרְאָת אֶלֹהים לנגד עֵינָיו ובכל מעשיו

For though Josef was enslaved to the ruling class,
the reverence of God was always with him—before his eyes and in his doings

Josef kept his mind on his relationship with God through all the hardships he faced. By Abarbanel’s lights, through his religious faith, Josef’s dignity remained intact even in the most undignified settings. Josef kept his eyes on the horizon, such that his divine companionship lent him the glow of success even through the debasement of slavery and imprisonment. 

If the chill in the air, the early darkness and the full moon didn’t remind us, our calendars would: it’s almost the 25th… of Kislev. In other words, it’s nearly Chanukah. The origin story of Chanukah deals in part with the desecration of the Temple and the Maccabees’ subsequent recovery. It centers around the well-known (if probably untrue) legend of the lamp oil that was only meant to last one night but somehow lasted for eight nights. As the Maccabees regrouped from experiences of antisemitism, violence, and humiliation, their faith inspired them to light the one bit of oil they had in their possession, even though it seemed like it could never suffice to the task of rebuilding. In fact, some say that the miracle was not the eight nights, but the courage to kindle the light that first night. Similarly to Josef, the Maccabees located their sense of confidence in something other than the promise of material wealth and comfort. To me, the miracle is that what they had, turned out to be enough. Their success was in their belief in the presence of God to carry them through. 

As the dark days of winter approach, we prepare to fill our homes with light, festivity, and especially, with beloved family and friends. Our tradition invites us into the practice of פרסומי ניסא—of publicizing the miracle, through placing our chanukiyot where others can see them. By adorning our windows and doorways with light—a little more each night—we remind our neighbors—and ourselves—that what truly fills us is not material plenty but the success that Josef models, the contentment of divine accompaniment. 

Shabbat shalom!

Midweek Musings from Gloucester Daily Times

(This weekly column rotates among local clergy members on Cape Ann. This week it was my turn. Read it on the GDT site here.)

Jewish tradition makes a big deal about gratitude. The first words (or at least, the first official words) that we say each morning are words of thanks. Modeh ani l’fanecha—I am grateful before you, eternal giver of life, who has mercifully returned my soul to me. Your trust in me is great. This blessing we recite daily reminds us that, as one of my congregants likes to say, every day we get to wake up is a good day. The gratitude continues throughout the day, with some Jews holding to the tradition of saying 100 blessings per day. Any moment can be a source of appreciation, elevated from its daily-ness through the conscious act of blessing.

Of course, we know that life is complicated. It’s true that every day we get to wake up is a good day, but many of us wake up to physical or psychic pain, or we wake up to difficult relationships or uncertain economic circumstances. Being grateful is easy when everything is going well, when the world outside our windows is lovely and makes sense. But sometimes the landscape is blurred by disappointment, insufficiency, and regret. 

It has been a difficult period for the Jewish community. Since October 7 of last year, we have been reeling from Hamas’s ruthless attack, and from the slow but quickening boil of antisemitism that has followed. This antisemitism has been at times merely rhetorical and at times shockingly violent. Even in wonderful, peaceful Gloucester, the echoes of world events are cause for concern, and for reawakened trauma. 

The warning attributed to George Santayana, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” turns in my mind as I rearrange the words. Perhaps the Jewish version might be: Those who cannot forget the past are doomed to relive it.

They say that history doesn’t repeat itself but it rhymes. For my people, that means an age-old pattern of making our way in a society, settling into a community, only to watch relationships curdle and our safety come into question. When the world gets unsettled, so do the Jews. We know all too well that things can be going along well, until suddenly we’re in first century Rome, or in fifth century Minorca, or in eleventh century Mainz, or thirteenth century England, or seventeenth century Vienna, or Kentucky in 1862, or Kishinev, or Weimar, or waking up to the sound of explosions and gunshots one October morning in southern Israel, after a night of dancing to trance music at the Nova Music Festival.

To be Jewish is to carry this history in your bones.

And yet to be Jewish is also to say a hundred blessings every day. Telling the lachrymose version of the Jewish story is one way, but turn the lens and you see things differently. This people, this culture I cherish, has survived for millennia. Another way to see Jewish history is as a tale of innovation and thriving, of faith and vitality, punctuated by occasional catastrophe. Our sorrows are ancient, but so is our resilience.

The great first-century sage known as Rabbi Akiva was no stranger to loss, uncertainty and heartbreak, having lived in the time of the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, which was itself a violent antisemitic attack. In Mishnah Brachot (6:8), Rabbi Akiva taught, “Even if a person’s entire meal is overboiled vegetables (shelek), they should make three blessings afterward, [i.e. the traditional Jewish grace after meals].”

When I first encountered this text, I was puzzled. I hadn’t given much thought to blessing things that were unappealing. And yet—upon reflection, I began to see Rabbi Akiva’s wisdom. You might not enjoy the soggy vegetables as you’re eating them, but afterward, your belly is full. Sometimes having enough is truly enough. Stirring up our gratitude in the complicated moments can help us notice what’s worth blessing.

When life is difficult and anxious-making—as it surely is for the Jewish community at this moment in history—leaning on our practice of blessing can help us to hold steady. Blessing what is before us—even blessing the difficult—is like a lifeboat in a stormy sea. It cannot change the weather, but it gives us something to hold onto. 

Vayetze for TAA

(Delivered on December 7, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

Settle in, I’m going to tell you the story of the Jewish people. The Jewish people has a tragic history, following a familiar and terrible pattern. For as long as anyone can remember, the pattern has consisted of the Jews settling in a place, making it home, and then… something snaps. It starts with a vicious rumor or an unsettling event that can’t be explained. The malice swirls into a storm of hate, the Jews are blamed, and violence erupts. Innocent people are driven out or brutalized or even slaughtered. Those who can escape in time run for their lives. Eventually equilibrium returns, at least for a while, and we settle in again somewhere else. The destruction of the Temple. The Inquisition. Kishinev. The Holocaust. October Seventh. The story of the Jewish people is mournful in the extreme, a tale of unending woe.

Or is it?

Settle in, I’m going to tell you the story of the Jewish people. The Jewish people is known for its resilience, its cleverness, its adaptability. No matter what challenges crop up, the Jews find a way to move forward, innovating when disaster strikes and caring for one another in times of hardship. When the Temples were destroyed and the Jews exiled to Babylonia, they established an institute at Yavneh in order to preserve what remained of their tradition. In their project of preservation, the rabbis of that time period developed a new way to think about the teachings of the Torah, and a new way to engage in study. They developed spiritual practices that could be performed in the absence of the original Temples. The underpinnings of these practices became the prayer service we do here each week. In times of relative calm, Jewish people have become prominent writers, doctors, Supreme Court Justices, artists, and inventors. The polio vaccine and the Theory of Relativity and West Side Story all came from brilliant Jewish minds. The story of the Jewish people is exhilarating, a tale of progress and triumph.

Jews are a hapless people, lurching from disaster to disaster. Jews are a glorious people, contributing to world history and culture.

In the words of the brilliant educator Zohar Raviv: The Jews are an ever-dying people, and the Jews are an ever-living people.

Obviously both of these narratives are true. 

Opposites can be true, more often than we’d like to acknowledge.

Indeed, toward the end of Parshat Vayetze, Yaakov and Lavan have a knock-down, drag-out fight, laying into each other about all the wrongs, real and perceived, that each has done to the other, twenty years worth of resentments and demands. Also toward the end of Parshat Vayetze, Yaakov and Lavan make a covenant with each other, an agreement to let each other be. Together they gather stones and construct a monument delineating the boundary between them. Lavan calls the monument Yegar-Sahaduta; Yaakov calls it Gal Ed. The two names mean the same thing: mound of witness. It’s the same pile of rocks but each man sees it differently, according to his own perception and experience.

Yegar-Sahaduta. Gal Ed. Mound of witness. In this place where Yaakov and Lavan have it all out and then determine not to fight anymore, this jumble of stones takes on the role of witness, these inanimate objects somehow seeing that both the quarrel and the covenant are true, that the Aramaic name and the Hebrew name say the same thing.

This week my teacher Rabbi Sharon Cohen Anisfeld reminded me of the phrase geologic time. For while we are busy with our human lives, thinking in days or weeks, or occasionally decades, the earth is forming and reforming on a much grander scale. Rocks are changing all the time, but they do so at a pace slow enough to be imperceptible to humans. Geologic time reminds us that we are part of a much larger narrative, one that plays out over generations or even millennia. The things we perceive as outcomes are no more than an eye-blink in geologic time. 

The story goes on. Yaakov and Lavan part. Lavan says an affectionate goodbye to his daughters and his many grandchildren and heads home, while Yaakov goes on his path. As it turns out, the rocks are not the only witnesses, for as Yaakov sets out he encounters מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים—messengers of God. Yaakov sees the angels and remarks, מַחֲנֵה אֱלֹהִים זֶה—this is God’s camp. In this place where two people manage to embrace the multiple narratives of their relationship, gather stones to mark their differences, and then move on, the presence of God can be felt.

And Yaakov names the place Machanayim—two camps, the duality enshrined in the place, where—over the course of geologic time—these two antagonists will not matter one bit as individuals. Only their two stories and the stones will remain.

Commentary for Cape Ann Interfaith Thanksgiving Service

(Delivered November 25, 2024)

הַלְלוּ אֶת־יי כׇּל־גּוֹיִם שַׁבְּחוּהוּ כׇּל־הָאֻמִּים׃
כִּי גָבַר עָלֵינוּ  חַסְדּוֹ וֶאֱמֶת־יי לְעוֹלָם הַלְלוּ־יָהּ׃

All peoples, praise God! Praise God, all peoples!
For God’s mercy is strong upon us, and God’s truth is eternal. Hallelujah!

At just two verses, Psalm 117 is the shortest chapter in our shared Book of Psalms. Yet tradition teaches us that the Torah—the Bible—is exactly as it’s meant to be. There are no extra words, nor is anything missing. The brevity of Psalm 117 points us in a direction. It asks no questions, poses no problems, simply makes the bold statement that each and every one of us can and should praise God.

When this is easy, this is easy.

It isn’t always. Many of us are troubled by: acrimony over labor disputes in the local schools, political uncertainty at the national level, hostages barbarically held for over a year, devastating war grinding on in too many places. Our souls are shaken by hateful words and violent actions. Where can we find the energy to praise God?

Another of the shorter psalms, number 13, itself just six verses, suggests an answer. Psalm 13 begins in deep desolation and anxiety—a crisis of faith. God, how long will You ignore me? How long will You hide Your face from me? How long will I feel weighted down with my own griefs and sorrows? How long will my enemies lord it over me? The Psalmist describes a space where many of us might find ourselves, in these thickening days hurtling toward winter. 

The beauty of Psalm 13 is in the way it turns the corner. A simple vav, the word AND. The final verse begins: va’ani b’chasdecha vatachti. And I trust in Your kindness, God. There is a magic in that simple vav—in that and—a magic that tells us the story is not over yet. That at any given moment, things can turn around and we can put our trust in the divine to carry us through.

From there, the journey to 117 is simple. The power of “and” makes praise easy. 

In these days of many burdens, simply pausing to be in companionship with others in the community to notice what’s good—sharing words, sharing song, sharing bread—is a precious source of “and”. Jews and Christians, locals and newcomers, neighbors and friends and friends who just haven’t met yet. This is the and that gives us the courage and strength to renew our faith, in God and in one another. 

All peoples, praise God! Praise God, all peoples!

Chayei Sarah for TAA

(Delivered November 23, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

What I’m about to say this week might be troubling or uncomfortable for some of you to hear. Some of you may even be offended, for the same reasons or maybe for opposite ones. I’m going to have to let that be, in the hopes that something in it may also inspire you. As always, I’m happy to talk and, more importantly, to listen. But we’ll get to that.

As you know, there is an Interfaith Thanksgiving Service on Monday afternoon at the Episcopal Church just down the street from us. I’m looking forward to sharing this experience with my new colleagues, with our fellow citizens of Cape Ann, and, of course, with you. But getting to this point has not been simple. The planning process has been filled with misunderstanding, awkwardness, and some well-intentioned cultural appropriation. Knowing that it’s worked out well, I want to share a bit about how it unfolded and what it’s taught me. 

Believe it or not, this will tie back to the parsha. 

When I first saw the service plan for the interfaith event, my heart sank: the primary musical expression was hymns; some of the names for God were atypical in Jewish parlance; there was an offertory planned, complete with collection plates! And the only explicitly Jewish thing was something that’s so out of place for this season and setting as to be absurd. My well-intentioned colleagues, knowing that we Jews don’t believe in Jesus as a divine figure, had studiously avoided any reference to him. But still, the absence of Jesus did not make it authentically interfaith. In that first iteration, this was clearly a Christian service at which I was to be a welcome guest. 

I knew I couldn’t participate in something like that, but also—once I cooled down—I knew that if I just walked away and didn’t speak up, not only would I be the one who was unable to do interfaith work, but I would be giving up on the chance to help our treasured Jewish values and culture be more known. So with my heart in my throat, I wrote a message to articulate all the ways in which the service as it was then configured missed the mark as an authentically interfaith endeavor. And, not wanting to just point out the problems, I offered some suggestions for how to bring it more into alignment with our shared intention.

Thankfully, my colleagues were more than receptive, and eager to learn why elements of the service—things that are totally normal to them because of the world we live in—were actually just not quite right. They took my feedback without defensiveness, and what we’ve gone on to create feels like a truly interfaith effort. And in the meanwhile, these folks who couldn’t have known any better about what they were doing wrong, now know a little bit more and will surely do better next time.

That feeling of misalignment, of being a minority in a majority culture is something that we as Jews experience all the time. Although we are blessed to live in less difficult times than many of our ancestors did, there are still occasions, such as my experience with the interfaith clergy, when the dominance of the dominant culture is so strong that it begins to seem more like wallpaper. We don’t even notice it. All the more so, the folks who hung the wallpaper in the first place really don’t notice it.

This feeling of being slightly out of step with our surroundings, the sense of being here but not here, is part of the Jewish soul. I think it has always been with us in one way or another. We see it in the opening of our parsha, Chayei Sarah. Avraham, who has made his way to Eretz Cana’an—the land of Canaan—in fulfillment of the divine message he heard years ago, pauses from mourning his wife Sarah. Then, he sets about finding a place to bury her. Seeing as he has no ancestors and no land holding of his own in that region, he has to seek assistance from the Hittites, the very people God has told him to supplant. He begins:

גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁב אָנֹכִי עִמָּכֶם
I am a stranger dwelling among you

Ger: stranger, toshav: dweller, these two words pulling in opposite directions. Even the calligraphy in the scroll shows it, connecting the two words with a makef, a slight horizontal line that visually counteracts their inherent tension. There’s a whole world in that makef, a sense of the paradox that so many of us live inside. 

From the stories I’ve heard, both past and present, the experience of being Jewish on the North Shore, of being Jewish in Gloucester, has a lot of resonance with that makef. In decades past, there was a thriving Jewish merchant presence in downtown Gloucester and, at the same time, the beach clubs didn’t allow Jews on the premises. Ger v’toshav. Here and not here.

Perhaps that tension is still present today, as evidenced by my experience with the Thanksgiving service, and as evidenced by the strong feelings that are surfacing with respect to the Gloucester City Council’s back-and-forthing about whether and how to both acknowledge the realities of antisemitism and be even-handed in the matter of rejecting all forms of bigotry and hatred. Both of these are important values that deserve to be uplifted. Antisemitic attacks and rhetoric have increased at alarming rates in the past year. This needs our attention and advocacy. But surely that does not negate the necessity to vigorously reject other forms of bigotry and hatred like Islamophobia, racism, homophobia, and transphobia. While local City Council votes don’t appear to have a great deal of influence on the course of history, the manner in which this debate plays out will tell us a lot about the community we share, both within these walls and outside them. 

This is a matter about which there can be a wide range of reasonable, ethical, well-considered, and deeply-felt responses. If there were one obvious response, we would all agree on it, because we are all good and moral people. The fact that there is disagreement indicates that it’s complex and doesn’t lend itself to slogans or sound bites or oversimplification. What this moment demands of us is not to silo ourselves with our own ideas but rather to listen for what we might be missing. Our tradition makes a spiritual practice of considering multiple viewpoints, as even a cursory glance at a page of Talmud will demonstrate. Our core theological teaching begins with the word שמע—listen! Our way of being in community asks us to remain in conversation, even when what we hear challenges our own assumptions and preferences. 

Going back to the matter of ger v’toshav: the 12th century French commentator, the Bechor Shor, reads our pasuk along with the one after it, in which the Hittites answer Avraham saying, oh no, you are no stranger but a prince of God among us. The Bechor Shor fills in the space between psukim, making this lovely connection. He writes: 

גר שבאתי מארץ אחרת ותושב שדעתי להתיישב עמכם 
והם השיבו אין אתה גר בעינינו רק נשיא אלקים 
Stranger: for I came from a different land. Resident: because I intend to settle here with you. And they answered him: you are not a stranger in our eyes, but rather a prince of God.

Avraham, the stranger who dwells among, the figure known for his own sense of hospitality and capacity to connect, had become known in the eyes of the Hittites and, for the Bechor Shor at least, this made all the difference. I imagine them listening well enough to get beyond the trap of thinking he is completely different and therefore unreachable—and also to get beyond the trap of thinking he’s just a slightly different version of themselves. 

By working through those misconceptions, they are able to see his humanity, and thereby to soften the strangeness with which they’d regarded him prior. They come to see the צֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים—the divine image—within him. He becomes, in their eyes, a prince of God.

As we face the gathering darkness, may we meet it with the courage to allow ourselves to be known by those whose intentions are wholesome, and may we listen carefully to the voices around us that challenge us, locating the divine every place it can be found. As we read in Avot chapter 2, mishnah 5:

בְמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ
In a place where there is no humanity, strive to be human.

Shabbat shalom!

Lech L’cha for TAA

(Delivered November 9, 2024)

For most of human history, the size of the known world was small. People were rooted in place, often for generations, unless a violent rupture upset the established order. We were thickly woven together, for better and worse. Many generations lived under one roof or close by; we knew our neighbors well; we lived lives of interdependence. Communication was in-person and travel was primarily by foot, with an animal and maybe a cart. As such, we might have known what was happening in our own village or the next one over, but that was it—that was as big as the “big picture” got. In contrast to the way many of us live our lives today—taking vacations that bring us all around the globe, spending half the year in one state and half in another, or even schlepping back and forth from Gloucester to Newton on a weekly basis—for most of human history, our existence was mainly about staying put.

So in Parshat Lech Lecha, when God says to Avram—he was still Avram then—

לֶךְ־לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ

Go—go!—from your land, the your birthplace, from your ancestral home,
to the land that I will show to you

this is truly momentous. What God is asking of Avram is to have the courage to leave everything that makes sense, everything that is familiar, because some unknown destiny awaits. To pick up and go, not because something is chasing you, but because something is calling you. This is the experience our Torah invites us to reflect on. Unlike Adam and Chava leaving the Garden of Eden, Avram is not going into exile. And unlike the Israelites leaving Egypt in Sefer Shmot—the Book of Exodus—he is not leaving because conditions have become intolerable. Rather, he is subject to what the biblical scholar Avivah Zornberg calls a divine imperative. God says it’s time to go, so he goes. 

And as I said last night, God sweetens this instruction with the promise of blessing: that God will make Avram’s descendants into a great nation, that God will bless Avram and magnify his name, and that Avram himself will become a blessing. This reassurance of blessing jolts Avram, his wife Sarai, and their nephew Lot, and they set out. The journey will take them places they were expecting to go, but also to places they weren’t expecting. When famine strikes in Eretz Canaan—the Land of Canaan—Avram gathers himself again and takes his family down to Egypt for the sake of survival. Over the course of many decades Avram amasses wealth and position, so when he and his ever-growing entourage return again to Canaan, he and Lot find that they have become too wealthy to share the land together. They agree to split up and as they contemplate who should stay where, who should take which parcel of land, the forward motion that has characterized the parsha gets a revealing sliver of an interruption.

In chapter 13 verse 10, Lot looks around the land and, seeing how well-watered and fertile it is, compares it to two things: Gan Adonai and Eretz Mitzraim—God’s Garden, and the Land of Egypt. With this comparison, the text pumps the brakes on all this relentless movement. With this comparison, our Torah acknowledges that with every step forward there is an equal and opposite impulse within us to look back. At moments of change, we paraphrase the divine messenger that speaks to Hagar in the portion we heard chanted today:

אֵי־מִזֶּה בָאת וְאָנָה תֵלֵכִי

Where are you coming from? Where are you going?

At moments of change, something primal inside us says, why can’t things be the same as before? We long to go back to a simpler time, and we idealize even the places we needed to leave. 

At moments of change especially, the words we chant every time we place the Torah scrolls back in the aron ring in our hearts, maybe even make our voices falter:

חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם

Renew our days, like before

When the inexorable unfolding of time and history catches us in its grip, we imagine that there was a time when the path was different. We imagine perhaps that the past held us more tenderly than it did. But it was a hunger for life that made Eve test the fruit, which ultimately led to banishment. And it was conflict in Egypt that led to Avram continuing on his journey, doubling back to a land that ultimately held his fate as religious innovator, the father of three traditions. 

This week, this historic week, the inexorable unfolding of time and history has us sharp in its grip. Political division; another antisemitic attack, this time in Amsterdam; a government shakeup in Israel—all these events and more conspire to tell us, there is change and journey ahead, and it’s going to be harder than we thought. Our unity will be tested in ways that we can’t imagine. Yet in the words of the great Leonard Cohen, whose yahrzeit was this week:

The birds, they sang at the break of day, Start again, I heard them say. 
Don’t dwell on what has passed away or what is yet to be.

We cannot recapture what is gone; all that is granted us is to move forward. Like Avram our ancestor, we can lean on the divine presence for strength. Like him, we can think critically about the dominant culture that surrounds us and speak up for what feels most true. The blessings that were offered to Avram—perhaps they weren’t promises after all, but consequences. There’s faith and courage in Avram’s story, and that’s where the blessings come from. Those blessings still speak to us today.

וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל

And I will make you a great nation 

וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ

And I will bless you 

וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ

And I will magnify your name. 

וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה

And you shall be a blessing.

And you shall be a blessing.

And you shall be a blessing.

Shabbat shalom.

Lech L’cha for TAA

(Delivered November 8, 2024)

As you might have heard, we recently had an election, the culmination of a campaign season that felt to many of us monumentally consequential, to the point of dread. Never before in my lifetime has the American populace felt so at odds, so willing to turn away from each other, so poised to dismiss the humanity of fully half the citizenry. It’s easy to feel that, although a winner has been declared; at some level, America—or at least the idea of America—has already lost.

The campaign was long, unimaginably long, as we waited and wondered and worried. No doubt there will be more waiting and wondering and worrying; there always is. Yet a tradition that has endured and thrived for millennia has something to teach about taking the long view, especially when the short view looks bleak to half the nation.

Each morning, as I get to the late innings of the weekday Amidah, this phrase often catches in my throat:

כִּי לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּינוּ כָּל הַיּוֹם

All day long we hope for Your deliverance

We have grown accustomed to waiting, it seems.

We cannot know how a new Trump presidency will play out—whether the predictions of chaos and fascism will turn out to be accurate or hyperbolic, but we can derive strength from the manner of waiting. Our parsha this week opens, famously:

וַיֹּאמֶר יי אֶל־אַבְרָם לֶךְ־לְךָ מֵאַרְצְךָ וּמִמּוֹלַדְתְּךָ וּמִבֵּית אָבִיךָ 

אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ׃

And God said to Avram: Go—go!—from your land, from your birthplace, from your ancestral home, to the land which I will show you.

And then comes a shower of blessing: 

I will bless you
You shall be a blessing
I will bless those who bless you
All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.

God urges Avram to move forward into an unknown future. And then, the promise of blessing. Now, as the nation prepares to deal with the election results, we have no choice but to go into an unknown future. May there be blessing upon blessing upon blessing to follow, and may we find a way, each and every family, to be blessed through one another.

Breishit for TAA

(Delivered October 26, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

When my Akiva was first born, I fell immediately and irreversibly head over heels in love. Also, I was newly a mother and it’s fair to say I struggled with every single part of that new role. He was not a big fan of sleeping at night and the sweet personality that we now know and love was… slow to develop. Meanwhile, I was exhausted, and hopped up on postpartum hormones, with the result that, as happy as I was, I could lose my temper at the drop of a hat, and I cried with alarming frequency. As a free-range adult, pre-children, I was used to being awesome, and in this new phase of my life, I felt anything but. At some point, a very wise friend said to me: The first baby is the hardest baby, the first night is the hardest night, the first month is the hardest month… and so on. New things—even new things we look forward to and embrace, even new things that make us starry-eyed with hope and optimism and soul-melting love—are hard. Newness is hard. Beginnings are hard.

And so this week, as we find ourselves back at the beginning of the Torah, with the delightfully unresolved ending still churning in our minds, we’re forced to contemplate the nature of beginnings. Our Torah opens, famously, 

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

At the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

About which Rashi said:

 אֵין הַמִּקְרָא הַזֶּה אוֹמֵר אֶלָּא דָּרְשֵׁנִי

This verse practically screams, explore me!

I’m paraphrasing Rashi, but only slightly. This mysterious beginning to our most sacred text sets the table for the millennia of questions and answers, and more questions that opened up. 

The text continues:

וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם
וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃

And the earth was tohu vavohu—emptiness and chaos—
with darkness on the face of the deep;
and the spirit of God hovered on the face of the water.

which sparks all kinds of questions: What was this tohu vavohu really? What about the deep, and the water? What was before the beginning?

The rabbis of the midrash practically have a party with these questions. In Breishit Rabbah chapter 1 midrash 9, a non-Jewish philosopher challenges Rabban Gamliel, baiting him with the question—and again I paraphrase: Well, your God is a great artisan but the materials were already there. The second verse talks about tohu and vohu and darkness and spirit and water… What’s the big deal? Anyone can make a world with enough emptiness, darkness, enough depth and spirit. Just add water! Oh wait, that was there too. 

Rabban Gamliel goes on to prove through scripture that God created all those other things too, that God’s labor was unbounded by time because even the things that were described in pasuk 2 were created by God, as evidenced by other verses from all over the Tanach. 

Still intrigued by the mystery of the beginning, the rabbis keep exploring. In the very next midrash in Breishit Rabbah, they spin out different answers to the question, לָמָּה נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם בְּבת—why does the world begin with bet, in other words, with the second letter of the alef bet and not the first? A beginning that starts somewhere other than the beginning is bound to draw raised eyebrows.

The rabbis begin to answer: Rabbi Yonah, in the name of Rabbi Levi, cites the shape of the bet. The way that it blocks from view anything that might have come before it and forces us to look only forward. In this way, it reminds us to perceive the works of creation and attend to the future. The world was created with sharp-edged bet, closed on all sides but one. The tangible, remember-able world is our concern, what came before is above our pay grade. We are not permitted even to peek behind the bet. Bet is the boundary, the backstop that keeps us from asking too many questions. It’s the lock on Pandora’s Box.  

Davar acher—another take. An unnamed commentator in the same midrash says the world was created with bet to show an orientation toward bracha, toward blessing. If it had been created with alef, it would instead be oriented toward arirah, toward curses.  

For the rabbis of the midrash, whose communal memory held the destruction of the first and second temples, this approach is striking. Their determination not to look behind the bet, and their dogged commitment to seeking out blessing, have much to teach us. As we find ourselves in a world with its own measure of tohu and vohu, we can look to these ancient figures who, when facing tragedy, oppression, and destabilization, found a way not only to go on, but even to innovate. When their sense of security crumbled, they picked up the pieces, preserving and transforming our tradition. Our ancestors’ resilience can inspire our own.

So we’re back at the beginning again—a new Torah cycle for a new year, and in so many ways the world we’re in echoes the watery mess, the chaos and catastrophe of the first few psukim of the first parsha. Elsewhere, the midrashic literature suggests that God has tried making worlds before and then destroyed them: scraps on the cosmic cutting-room floor. Yet, something—something!—makes God say, I’ll try again. I can do something with this. Maybe a little light will help.

And it was so.