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!

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!

The Borrowed Son

(Dvar Torah on Parshat Shmot from 2023/5783)

PROLOGUE

I was sitting in a women’s Torah study years ago with my then-toddler son on my lap when I first saw it. We were studying Parashat Shmot, Chapter 2 to be precise, and suddenly it was clear as crystal, even through my tears. I clutched my boy tighter and said, “Moshe’s mother gave him up twice.” I had been told, of course, that our children are always separating from us, that childbirth is only the first step toward the inevitability of giving them up. But that day it was unthinkable; I wept and wept, and tried to learn. That little boy is in college now, and the lesson never ends.

THE FIRST TIME

וְלֹא־יָכְלָה עוֹד הַצְּפִינוֹ וַתִּקַּח־לוֹ תֵּבַת גֹּמֶא וַתַּחְמְרָה בַחֵמָר וּבַזָּפֶת וַתָּשֶׂם בָּהּ אֶת־הַיֶּלֶד
וַתָּשֶׂם בַּסּוּף עַל־שְׂפַת הַיְאֹר׃

And she could no longer hide him, so she took an ark of papyrus, and sealed it with asphalt and tar, and she put him in it, the little boy, and she put it in the reeds by the mouth of the River Nile. (Exodus 2:3)

All around me, desperate mothers trying anything to keep their babies alive, to find some way to skirt the decree. We were living amongst the Egyptians and knew all too well we were being targeted, each and every baby boy to be drowned in the great river. This was the second decree, the one that deputized ordinary Egyptians to do what our righteous midwives Shifrah and Pu’ah would not.

Even so, we tried everything we could think of, babies hidden in crawl spaces, families encamped in out-of-the-way caves, boys disguised as girls, given false names to throw Pharaoh’s willing executioners off the scent. Women gave birth to baby after baby, even as we watched them die in our arms or had them taken from us. Our will to outlive them kept us both numb and strong, the callouses on our souls enabling us to persist, even as our families were unraveling.

The pressure came from all sides, starting subtly and getting imperceptibly worse. Pharaoh knew how to influence the public without saying a word. First he placed extra taxes on us, then the secret plot with the midwives. Then he enlisted the population at large to drown our children. Eventually the Egyptians did Pharaoh’s work on their own; his idea became their idea. Pharaoh’s cleverness was in disguising the violence, to allow for his own deniability. By the time we realized how ensnared we were, it was too late to save ourselves, too late to speak up.

Our crowded settlements made the desperate even more desperate. People say Pharaoh engineered the overcrowding. Along with the forced labor under impossible conditions, he made sure we were loaded into cramped, too-tight quarters, to increase our burdens and dull our minds.

I made the neighborhood think I’d lost the baby at birth. A baby boy was a blessing and a problem. A liability. Better they think he was gone than ask questions. Attempts at consolation: you still have your older son Aaron, and your Miriam. Maybe someday it will be different, and you can try again. Painful words, meant in kindness. Painful not for the usual reason—children are neither replaceable nor interchangeable—but because he was living on borrowed time, as were we all.

He was a perfect baby. When he was born, I looked at him, and I knew. I knew he was special. I knew he was in danger. I knew I would have to give him up.

I waited as long as I could. Made friends with the darkness to hide him until he could no longer be hidden. Three months of heartbreaking sweetness, every moment knowing he would be taken from me, one way or another. And every moment loving him with my whole heart.

That day, I took the basket and covered it over and over with dark tar. It was my only hope; he had discovered his voice and I couldn’t shush him anymore. I followed the letter of the law and placed my cherished baby in the water, with Miriam following close behind, as close as she dared.

He was only three months old. He was already three months old. Such a beautiful baby, my secret baby.

THE SECOND TIME

וַיִּגְדַּל הַיֶּלֶד וַתְּבִאֵהוּ לְבַת־פַּרְעֹה וַיְהִי־לָהּ לְבֵן וַתִּקְרָא שְׁמוֹ מֹשֶׁה וַתֹּאמֶר כִּי מִן־הַמַּיִם מְשִׁיתִהוּ׃

And the boy grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son instead. And she called him Moshe, for she said, “I drew him out from the water.” (Exodus 2:10)

My heroic Miriam borrowed some time for me, three years to be precise. She saw Pharaoh’s daughter see my son, and she saw an opportunity for me to be with him again. Miriam bravely offered to find the princess an Israelite nurse for the baby. For three glorious years, I raised my own son, half in secret. Of course everyone around me knew I was nursing a baby for Pharaoh’s daughter. What they didn’t know, what I never dared to say, was that the baby was my own. They thought I’d lost the baby, and I let them think so.

Inside my home, though, we were whole again. The violence outside our four walls was getting worse—harsh words, brawling in the streets—but inside, we were together. We watched the little one grow, I held him close, nursed him as long as I could. All that shushing from before had made him shy to speak, but his lively brown eyes, observing everything, told us his substance.

Soon, too soon, he nursed less and less until he stopped completely. Our days of sweet entanglement were ending. His future would unspool without me. It was time to give him up again.

That day, I whispered in his ear, as I had done for each of the thousand days we were together, “You are an Israelite, and your Israelite family will always love you.”

And then I returned him, my borrowed son.

In those thousand precious days, he taught me.

All time is borrowed. All sons are borrowed.

Sukkot for TAA

(Delivered October 7, 2025)

Two weeks before Rosh Hashanah, I got an abnormal mammogram result. The day before Yom Kippur, I got the all clear. In the three weeks in between, I was living a double life. In my head, I was writing the happy ending and the tragic ending at the same time. On the one hand: reminding myself that abnormal test results are not uncommon; noting that for now at least, I felt fine; reassuring myself that nothing had happened yet. On the other hand: imagining myself telling my children the sobering news; picturing my family rallying around me; envisioning the community bringing me meals and holding my burdens with me, while I bravely faced my fate. I was living in the question mark opened up by that unsettling message in my doctor’s online portal, but I was also living my life: preparing Rosh Hashanah sermons, attending to the needs of the community, planning and working and eating and sometimes sleeping and reflecting and walking in the sunshine. The world kept turning, history kept churning.

So it did. So it does.

And here we are at Sukkot. We are, still and always, living a double life, and the world keeps turning in its never-ending cycle.

As so beautifully conceived by Rabbi Alan Lew in his book This is Real and you are Completely Unprepared, the cycle begins at Tisha b’Av, as the destruction of the ancient Temple is symbolically echoed in our own inner breaking—a breaking that teaches us to begin again, to strengthen our structures from the inside, through the spiritual work of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and the days that separate them. Through that process we are forged anew: we look carefully at what we’ve lost, where we’ve gone astray, whom we’ve hurt, the shards of what, when it remains unexamined, seems unbreakable. When we force ourselves to look, though, we notice the cracks. When we slow down over the difficult places, our stomachs howling with fasting, we learn where we need to rethink our approach. We allow regret to be our teacher. The breaking is as essential as the repair. Mishnah Rosh Hashanah teaches:

שׁוֹפָר שֶׁנִּסְדַּק וְדִבְּקוֹ פָּסוּל
A shofar that was cracked and glued back together, is unfit to use.

But we are not shofarot. We are constantly in the process of cracking and reassembling ourselves. Breaking and repair is the natural order of things.

And as soon as the repair is complete, the cracks begin to form again. This is the story of being human. The Book of Kohelet, which we turn to during Sukkot, reminds us over and over:

הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל׃
Vaporous mist, says Kohelet, vaporous mist. Everything is vapor.

The mist of impermanence hangs over the Book of Kohelet, the word הֲבֵל appearing 30 times in that short book. Likewise, the impermanence pervades Chag Sukkot, our flimsy huts as tentative as our souls. If we’re lucky, the holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur have broken us open, so that we feel the wind in our very beings, as we feel it in our sukkot. If we did it right, our atoning shows us we’ve made mistakes and we’re still here. We’re worthy, we’re weak, we’re thoroughly human.

There was a video that went around the internet at this time last year, featuring the great Broadway performer Gavin Creel, who had died last fall at the cruel age of 48. In the video, Creel recited a passage he’d found on a scrap of paper in a secondhand art shop. It read:

Everything is both
Wonderful and terrible
Boring and exciting
It’s OK that it’s both
Obvious and hidden
Simple and complicated
What a relief that everything can be both
Light and dark
Celebratory and melancholy

This passage meant so much to Creel that he had the word BOTH tattooed on his wrist. The both-ness of life can be hard to keep in mind; holding it close lends a sense of meaning to the churn.

The overlap of Zman Simchateinu and October 7 could hardly make the point more starkly. During Sukkot, tradition commands us to be joyful before God for seven days, but these anniversaries—first day of Sukkot on October 7, the secular anniversary, plus the Hebrew anniversary which will always be Simchat Torah—these anniversaries press us to the bone.

Yet as I so often say, our joy is our secret weapon. We Jews do not simply survive, we crawl our way back to thriving. There was a slogan that arose out of the Nova Music Festival—at which, on that hateful day, over 350 young revelers were murdered while dancing, and another 40 kidnapped into Gaza. The slogan said, We will dance again. Not just, “We will survive, we will limp through the rest of our lives, hollowed by trauma and rage.” We will dance. Zman Simchateinu, the time of our joy, is now. Our Jewish spirit is renewed by doing Jewish things with Jewish people. The world will keep turning, history will keep churning, and we will dance again.

Chag sameach.

Re’eh for TAA

Delivered August 23, 2025

Shabbat shalom!

I bet you didn’t know this, but I am a thief. I try not to talk about it too much, it’s a little bit embarrassing, but it’s the truth. Not the kind of thief who sneaks about in the night and breaks into fancy houses. Nor the kind of thief who goes into stores and pockets things off the shelves. Nor the kind of thief who cheats on income taxes or tries to get unearned advantages.

Rather, I have a long criminal record of stealing from God.

Let me explain. From Masechet Brachot 35b:

אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בַּר פָּפָּא: כָּל הַנֶּהֱנֶה מִן הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה בְּלֹא בְּרָכָה
כְּאִילּוּ גּוֹזֵל לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וּכְנֶסֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל
Rabbi Hanina bar Papa said: Everyone who enjoys something from this world and does not make a blessing, it is as if they have stolen from the Holy Blessed One and from the community of Israel.

Before I began my journey home to Judaism, I stole ruthlessly from God. So many meals unblessed, so many mornings without Birchot haShachar—the everyday blessings—so many rainbows and first bites of summer peach and transitions into starlit evenings unacknowledged and unblessed. So many opportunities for gratitude squandered.

Everyone who enjoys something from this world and does not make a blessing, it is as if they have stolen from the Holy Blessed One and from the community of Israel.

Elsewhere, the Tosefta takes up the topic of this particular kind of theft, citing the first pasuk of Psalm 24. This should be familiar to my Sunday morning people:

לַיי הָאָרֶץ וּמְלוֹאָהּ תֵּבֵל וְיֹשְׁבֵי בָהּ׃
The earth and everything in it belong to God; the world and its inhabitants.

The tradition is reminding us in these passages that whatever we have—no matter how hard we think we may have worked for it—is not ours solely due to our virtue. We benefit, constantly and in myriad ways, from the labor of other people, particularly our ancestors; from the systems and structures that make things work; from sheer dumb luck; and especially from God. In fact, looking at Psalm 24, we might say that all those things—the people, the systems, the luck—are manifestations of God.

By living all those years without blessing—Jewish without Jewish practice—I was in regular violation of this principle, a repeat offender, so to say. According to this standard, I suppose many of us are. It’s all too easy to go about our lives experiencing deep enjoyment, without pausing to bless the ultimate Source of that enjoyment. But our Torah is interested in teaching us perspective—in showing us that what feels like it’s ours isn’t fully ours, isn’t truly ours.

The earth and everything in it belong to God; the world and its inhabitants.

Parshat Re’eh opens with a stark choice. In the first pasuk, which we’ll study in more depth next year, Moses says:

רְאֵה אָנֹכִי נֹתֵן לִפְנֵיכֶם הַיּוֹם בְּרָכָה וּקְלָלָה
See! I place before you today: blessing and curse.

Moses goes on to teach that the choice is ours. If we live a life aligned with God’s commandments, blessing will be ours. And, of course, the reverse.

The parsha goes on to review various topics: the laws of kashrut, the practice of shmita (loan forgiveness), the sacrifices, tithing, the manumission of slaves, the three Festival holidays of Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot. And the biggie: resisting idolatry.

Woven throughout these teachings is the thread of blessing. Over and over in Parshat Re’eh, we encounter some variation of the phrase: יְבָרֶכְךָ יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ—Adonai your God will bless you. These words crop up as we’re reflecting about property and prosperity, and the impermanence of both. The teachings dwell at length on how to treat people who have fewer resources than we have: people who are enslaved, impoverished, or indebted.

In context, these reminders of God’s blessing reveal more about the nature of blessing. For example, in the section on tithes, the practice is that the Levites, as well as widows, orphans, and non-citizens are to be welcomed to come and eat their fill

לְמַעַן יְבָרֶכְךָ יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־מַעֲשֵׂה יָדְךָ אֲשֶׁר תַּעֲשֶׂה
So that Adonai your God will bless you
in all the works of your hands that you take on

Similarly in the passage about shmita, the Torah teaches that when contemplating offering a loan to a needy person, we shouldn’t hesitate if it’s toward the end of the shmita cycle and the repayment rate will be low. Rather:

נָתוֹן תִּתֵּן לוֹ וְלֹא־יֵרַע לְבָבְךָ בְּתִתְּךָ לוֹ

כִּי בִּגְלַל הַדָּבָר הַזֶּה יְבָרֶכְךָ יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ בְּכָל־מַעֲשֶׂךָ וּבְכֹל מִשְׁלַח יָדֶךָ
Give enthusiastically with no regrets in your heart for the giving,
For because of this, Adonai your God will bless you in all your works
and in everything you set your hand to

In this week’s Torah study, we paused over the passage about lending to the poor without regard to whether we will recoup that outlay. The text warns not to harden our hearts or close our fists but instead to give readily, to open a hand to all who are in need. Our sages elaborate: Rashi urges us to prioritize the needy over others, and not to agonize over whether or not to give, even multiple times. Just give. Ibn Ezra extends the generosity, not just to material goods but to comforting words. He writes:

לֹא תְאַמֵּץ אֶת־לְבָבְךָ לְדָבֶּר עַל לִבּוֹ דְבָרִים טוֹביִם
Do not harden your heart but speak to their heart in words of kindness

The gentle heart and open hand the parsha teaches about allow us, rather than stealing from God, to imitate God. Perhaps this is why there are so many customs around reciting these words from Psalm 145, better known as Ashrei

פּוֹתֵחַ אֶת־יָדֶךָ וּמַשְׂבִּיעַ לְכָל־חַי רָצוֹן
You open Your hand and satisfy the desire of every living thing

The Shulchan Aroch teaches we must have clear focus when saying this pasuk, and if we later realize we weren’t fully concentrating, we should go back and do it again. The importance of open hands—ours or God’s—warrants this special attention. The parsha makes this connection: to be generous is a blessing, which in turn benefits the work of our hands. There is reciprocity in blessing. The hands that open are also ready to receive. By blessing others, we are blessed. And when we receive, it is our obligation to give the blessing right back to God, in the form of acknowledgement, gratitude, and service.

I said before that Parshat Re’eh reviews many topics, including resisting idolatry. I think this is actually related to whether or not we engage in the practice of offering blessings. To offer a blessing of thanks keeps us in relationship with the divine. And the converse is true. When I was living my old life of untethered enjoyment, this was a low-impact form of עבודה זרה, of idolatry. The thread of blessing that weaves its way through our parsha reminds us that there’s another, more wholesome way. In each moment there is something to bless. When we open our hands to catch what comes, we open ourselves to the divine. And when we imagine, experience, and appreciate the openness of God’s hands, there is nothing to do but bless.

Shabbat shalom!

Pesach for TAA

(Adapted from my Pesach column for the Jewish Journal and delivered on April 12, 2025)

Chag Sameach!

What a time we live in! By some accountings, Nissan is the first month, and so, in a way, we are at the beginning of the year, even as we’re in the middle. Beginning, middle, or end, the moment we find ourselves in feels tender and fraught. Living in a divided community, in a divided country, in a divided world, we can sense all too plainly the cracks in the foundation.

Within the Jewish community as a whole, there are people of strong ethical and moral fiber who disagree passionately on fundamental issues regarding the Jewish future. Heartfelt convictions as to what the Israeli government should and should not do vary widely from person to person. And all across the country, we are seeing ever more political polarization, as we grapple with the profound implications of the new regime and its forceful moves to reshape our democracy and our society. The world, meanwhile, is gripped by multiple wars and conflicts—from Israel to Sudan to Ukraine—and by all manner of natural and human-caused disasters. Jews are scared. LGBTQ+ folks are scared. Immigrants are scared.

The literal sense of Mitzrayim—narrow places—and the metaphorical sense of what it was like to be enslaved in Mitzrayim—oppressive, confining—feel all too real as we pray for the release of our hostages still remaining in Gaza and as we watch with agonizing concern as the global trend toward authoritarian extremism heats up, for Jews and for humanity in general.

The arrival of Pesach seems both implausible and desperately necessary. To contemplate the miracle of redemption in a time of political discord, angst, and rising antisemitism feels chutzpadik at the least, and perhaps even downright absurd. Who can speak of a parting sea when we ourselves are drowning in grief over relentless violence in the Holy Land? Who can sing of freedom when our people—after more than 500 unbearable days—are still in dusty tunnels while their captors gloat? Who can fathom staying up all night to recount miracle upon miracle when we are, individually and collectively, exhausted to the brink of collapse?

And yet when redemption feels decidedly unattainable, that is when we most need to come together and raise our voices, as we remind ourselves and one another that the impossible is actually possible. What better time to remember the signs and wonders with which God signaled that our moment had arrived? What better time to remember the splitting of the sea, an event that set all Israelites on an equal footing, such that, according to Midrash, the lowliest housemaid saw the same glimpses of the divine that Moses himself saw? What better time to remember the way an unassuming, debilitatingly shy person with a too-hot temper grew into the leader who was entrusted with the task of setting God’s people free?

Everything about Pesach is suffused with possibility: that those who have been downtrodden can rise up, that freedom can come, that things can change.

Our Pesach Torah reading describes the moment of change like this:

וּמוֹשַׁב בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲשֶׁר יָשְׁבוּ בְּמִצְרָיִם שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה׃
וַיְהִי מִקֵּץ שְׁלֹשִׁים שָׁנָה וְאַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת שָׁנָה וַיְהִי בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה יָצְאוּ כּל־צִבְאוֹת יי מֵאֶרֶץ מִצְרָיִם׃

“The Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt was 430 years. And at the end of the 430th year, on that very day,
all of God’s multitudes went out from the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12:40-41)

I was struck anew this year by a phrase בְּעֶצֶם הַיּוֹם הַזֶּה (on that very day) that appears not once but twice in the Pesach readings. (It also appears just a few psukim prior to the beginning of our Torah reading, and in the haftarah that we read today.) That cluster of words is so unassuming that we might skip right past it, but like Moses himself, it contains astonishing potential. This is a phrase that shows us that everything has its moment, that there comes a last day for every hardship.

This profound teaching—that something new is ever possible—is a message of hope, from the Author of hope. It reminds us that the future is God’s time. While we can’t know when the sea will split and the suffering will be behind us, we do know that everything has an endpoint.

And while we wait, the seder invites us to remember: We’ve been in tight spots before. In every generation forces have risen against us. We are much stronger than we’re sometimes given credit for. Our commitment to one another strengthens us yet more.

And every year—even as we end the seder with the bread of misery on our lips—we say L’shanah haba’ah bi’Yerushalayim. Next year in Jerusalem. May it be so, in a world at peace. Chag sameach!

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.

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.

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.