Rosh Hashanah Day 1 2026/5787 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-witted 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!

Korach for TAA

(Delivered June 20, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

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

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

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

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

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

It was, in a sense, holy work.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

None of this is for the sake of heaven.

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom!

Behar (Bechukotai) for TAA

(Delivered May 9, 2026)

Shabbat shalom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surely the ambiguity is not an accident.

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

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

We are all just walking each other home.

May our footsteps be guided by kindness.

Shmini for TAA

(Delivered April 11, 2026)

The nature of God: a lesson in three parts.

Part One.

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

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

The day has arrived, and God will be revealed.

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

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

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

Everything is perfect.

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

Part Two.

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

Everything is perfect. Until it isn’t.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Part Three.

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

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

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

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

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

Epilogue.

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

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

Ki Tissa for TAA

(Delivered March 7, 2026)

Years ago, in my singing phase, I was enamored of a short song by the Austrian composer Hugo Wolf, called Auch kleine Dinge. With poetry by Paul Heyse, this little gem from the Italienisches Liederbuch sang the praises of small things. Maybe it’s because I am small myself, maybe it’s because I’m a middle child: Ever since I turned my attention to Torah, I have always been drawn to the small details that might otherwise be overlooked. I can linger over a phrase or a word. I can outright obsess over a passage that, if I were a quicker reader, I might just breeze through.

Parshat Ki Tissa, this week’s portion, is chock full of iconic passages; it’s… eventful. It’s mostly known for עֵגֶל הַזָהָב—the golden calf, and for Moses’s deep encounter with God at the cleft of the rock. Yet what spoke to me in this eventful week was six psukim that focus not on events or actions but on their absence. I’m referring, of course, to the parsha’s brief, stark, mildly confusing passage about Shabbat.

In chapter 31 verses 12 and 13 we read:

וַיֹּאמֶר ה’ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר׃
וְאַתָּה דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל לֵאמֹר אַךְ אֶת־שַׁבְּתֹתַי תִּשְׁמֹרוּ
כִּי אוֹת הִוא בֵּינִי וּבֵינֵיכֶם לְדֹרֹתֵיכֶם לָדַעַת כִּי אֲנִי ה’ מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם׃
God said to Moses, “You speak to the Israelites, to say:
‘Indeed you will keep My Shabbatot, for it is a sign between Me and you for the generations,
to know that I, Adonai, make you holy.’”

This couplet sparks many questions in my mind. The way pasuk thirteen is phrased is quirky enough to raise the commentators’ curiosities as well. For example, why does it say וְאַתָּה? Typically when God speaks to Moses, there’s a formula: וַיֹּאמֶר ה’ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה לֵּאמֹר—and God spoke to Moses to say, and then it just launches with the verb: דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל—speak to the Israelites. Here, it specifies וְאַתָּה. Why? Inserting the vav prefix before a pronoun is a way of drawing attention—think וַאֲנִי תְפִילָתִי. Why might that emphasis be needed here? The Mechilte de Rabbi Shimon proposes that the emphasis is to show that Moses specifically should speak to the Israelite people, not a messenger, not an angel. Moses himself. The Emek Davar sharpens this point: it’s Moses and only Moses who is responsible for sitting down with each and every person working on the Mishkan, to make sure they understand they have to pause for Shabbat. Despite all that took place in Parshat Yitro, with Moses carefully establishing a system of delegation, teaching about Shabbat is important enough that it can’t be outsourced. Some things you simply have to do yourself. The vav and the pronoun here are meant to slow us down and get our attention.

Then there’s the question of that אַךְ. Another untranslatable particle, אַךְ can mean indeed, or nevertheless. There’s a world of difference, though, between, “Indeed you will keep my Shabbatot,” and, “Nevertheless, you will keep my Shabbatot.” The first represents continuity, assuming and reinforcing that we’ll keep the commandment; the second represents a rupture. The second presupposes there’s a reason not to. The ambiguity of the vocabulary points to an underlying tension in the whole notion of Shabbat, with “indeed” representing what we should do, and “nevertheless” representing the temptation not to. In case you think your personal flavor of resistance to Shabbat practice is unprecedented, the Torah is here to remind us all that, as Fern said at Torah study this week, spirituality is difficult.

It’s tempting to wonder why bother.

The continuation of the pasuk attempts an answer, but, again, it’s not simple. Shabbat is a sign throughout the generations between God and the Israelites לָדַעַת כִּי אֲנִי ה’ מְקַדִּשְׁכֶם—to know that I, Adonai, make you holy. It seems perfectly obvious till you think about it. What does this actually mean? How exactly does Shabbat help people to know that God makes us holy? What are the mechanics of that knowing? For Rashbam, the knowing is in the doing. He says the Israelites keep Shabbat in imitation of God, and this is how we know we belong to God. The Rashbam doesn’t allow for an intellectual understanding of Shabbat that might infuse us with knowing that God has made us holy. We have to experience it. It’s in the doing—or, more accurately, in the not doing— that Shabbat has its way with us. This is how we come to know the ways in which God has made us holy. Elsewhere, the Midrash Aggadah teaches that when a person observes Shabbat, it’s as if they themselves have invented it.

The passage in our parsha goes on to say that those who desecrate the sabbath by working will be put to death, will be cut off from their kinfolk. Although our ancestors may have lived in a world in which that was taken literally, we have the privilege and perspective to read this metaphorically. In fact, I’d say we have an obligation to read it as metaphor, rather than simply dismissing it as impossibly draconian and therefore irrelevant. The warning is not that our physical lives will end if we don’t keep every teaching about Shabbat. Rather, that if we continue our labors without pause, if we work as if work is the only thing that matters, we suffer a kind of spiritual death. In this way we are definitionally cut off from our kinfolk, for we lose our sense of connection to others when we focus only on our own pursuits.

Of course the Torah offers another vision. In verse 17, we read וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי שָׁבַת וַיִּנָּפַשׁ—on the seventh day, God paused וַיִּנָּפַשׁ. This word וַיִּנָּפַשׁ dances around meanings of: soul, mind, breath, life, desire, self. In other words, in resting, the very breath of God was restored. In resting, God’s self returned.

That’s a strong message for a mere six verses. And yet, leveling up to view the verses in context, the message becomes even more vivid. The sequencing of this passage, the smichut parshiot, is a teaching in itself. Our six verses about Shabbat are tucked in, as if into the cleft of a rock, between the מִשְׁכָּן (the tabernacle) and the עֵגֶל (the Golden Calf). Between labor and disaster.

You might think that the exhaustion of a full week’s work would force our hand, would inspire us to rest. But the Torah knows us better than we know ourselves. It knows that the momentum of work is a powerful force. It knows that work offers us a shiny distraction from the sometimes much more difficult life of the spirit. It knows that, much as we need that holy pause that revives the soul, there will always be a part of us that resists it. After all, even with the warning that Shabbat should be observed on pain of death, we still struggle with it.

The nineteenth-century Zionist thinker Achad haAm is famously quoted as saying, “More than the Jewish people have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jewish people.” Despite having drifted away from his Orthodox upbringing, he got the message about Shabbat and why it’s important. If labor continues without pause, it leads to spiritual disaster. Desecrating Shabbat—that is to say, removing its holiness—cuts us off from what makes us whole, cuts us off from our very selves.

And so I say, as a prayer and a wish, for today and for every Shabbat to come:

Shabbat shalom!

Terumah for TAA

(Delivered February 21, 2026)

We live in a noisy world. Having just spent a few days in New York this week, I can attest to the near-constant cacophony of voices that permeates the streets there. Voices wooing, voices arguing, voices philosophizing, so many voices preparing for auditions. Our media environment, social and otherwise, offers more of the same. The sheer number of issues about which people are raising their voices is staggering.

Is the new mayor of New York a dangerous antisemite? Is the former Prince Andrew guilty as charged? What, as a society, should we be doing with respect to revelations of rampant sexual abuse and trafficking? What are the merits of the Board of Peace? Can we even give credence to a Board of Peace while simultaneously executing a military buildup in the Middle East? Can the founding of a country be canceled because its origin story is one-sided? Because we don’t like its current policy? Was the late Jesse Jackson a visionary for equality or an unrepentant antisemite?

Just how many servings of vegetables are required per day? Is wine good for you or bad for you? Were the American ice dancers robbed of a gold medal by nationalistic favoritism from the French judge?

You probably have opinions about many, if not most, of these things. So do I. In the cacophony of voices that comprises our world today, it feels increasingly difficult to discern where the truth is. With so much shouting and fist-shaking, with bumper-sticker slogans replacing nuanced discourse, how do we begin to bring order to the cacophony? Which is the voice of ultimate truth, and how do we know it when we hear it?

Our parsha this week, Terumah, is inviting us to think about what that might look like, and offers a fantastical image that could shed some light.

Beginning at chapter 25, verse 17, we read:

וְעָשִׂיתָ כַפֹּרֶת זָהָב טָהוֹר אַמָּתַיִם וָחֵצִי אָרְכָּהּ וְאַמָּה וָחֵצִי רָחְבָּהּ:
וְעָשִׂיתָ שְׁנַיִם כְּרֻבִים זָהָב מִקְשָׁה תַּעֲשֶׂה אֹתָם מִשְּׁנֵי קְצוֹת הַכַּפֹּרֶת׃
Make a covering of pure gold, 2 ½ cubits long and a cubit and a half wide
And make two כְּרֻבִים of hammered gold at the two ends of the covering.

The passage continues with more specifics about the כְּרֻבִים or cherubs: they should be fashioned of a single piece of gold, one כְּרֻב facing the other, with their wings spread out to form a canopy over them and over the covering. This covering will be set over the Aron after the tablets containing the commandments are placed inside it.

And God says:

וְנוֹעַדְתִּי לְךָ שָׁם וְדִבַּרְתִּי אִתְּךָ מֵעַל הַכַּפֹּרֶת מִבֵּין שְׁנֵי הַכְּרֻבִים
And I will meet you there, and I will speak to you from the covering,
from between the two כְּרֻבִים

Digging into this image as metaphor, we can begin to discern a teaching about listening.

Firstly, the two angels face one another. Their posture is one of focus and attention. Neither one is looking at a screen or otherwise distracted by the surroundings; rather each of them is locked in on the other. They have their wings raised above themselves, to create a mutual shelter. These two כְּרֻבִים are tuning out the cacophony to invest in hearing one another. They are not interested in 500 cable channels or what this or that pundit said on X. They model the choice of real listening. Everything about their physical position suggests care, trust, and respect. The Kitzur Ba’al haTurim writes:

וּפְנֵיהֶם אִיש אֶל אַחִיו כְּמוֹ שְׁנֵי חַבֵרִים שֶׁנוֹשְׂאִין וְנוֹתְנִין בְּדִבְרֵי תּוֹרָה
And their faces, each toward his brother,
are like two friends exchanging words of Torah

The voice of the divine is embodied in this image of two equals engaged in speaking about holy things.

Additionally, verse 19 teaches that the two כְּרֻבִים are to be made from the same piece of gold. Taken metaphorically, this is a reminder to us that the deepest truths contain internal contradictions. That a single piece of gold could hold space for opposites squaring off in dialogue should give us a sense of the possibility of finding something of value across a continuum of opinion.

Verse 19 is also phrased in a way that scrupulously avoids taking sides:

וַעֲשֵׂה כְּרוּב אֶחָד מִקָּצָה מִזֶּה וּכְרוּב־אֶחָד מִקָּצָה מִזֶּה
Make one כְּרֻב at one end, and one כְּרֻב at one end

The language is important. It’s not one and the other; there is no other. Each כְּרֻב is its own thing and is offered at least the validity of a hearing. This may be hard for us to translate into our current-day environment, when polarization is the name of the game and admitting to any ambivalence is seen as a sign of weakness. Yet the Torah does not speak in pithy slogans. It isn’t interested in easy answers, nor in black and white. This model of the one and the one is telling us that there can be something worthy of consideration in a wide range of positions. Even someone with whom we deeply disagree deserves a hearing.

I want to be clear that I’m not saying this means everybody is right, or that every opinion is of equal validity. What I am saying is that everybody’s viewpoint is real to them. What I am saying is that if someone has come by an opinion through genuine reflection and humble consideration, we may learn from hearing what they’ve discerned. What I am saying is that there is little to be learned in shouting someone down, or in flattening their viewpoint into something easily swept away, or in dismissing the possibility that the world looks different depending on where we’re standing, that there could be something we’ve missed.

Parshat Terumah, in its description of how we can hear God’s voice, demands courage and tenderness in equal part. It asks us to imagine that God’s voice comes through the middle, the ultimate in balance and in-between-ness. The כְּרֻבִים are one and one—each with its own internal integrity. And by facing one another and sheltering themselves and one another, they form an amplifying shell around the One.

Shabbat shalom!

Vaera for TAA

(Delivered January 17, 2026)

Torah study folks have heard me say quite a bit since I came here: the Torah is always right on time. No matter what’s happening in the world, or in our individual and communal narratives, somehow the Torah hits a nerve, often several. And so, as we find ourselves this week in the sweep of one of our foundational stories, the echoes and resonances to our current world abound. At some moments these past few weeks, it has seemed to me like there are Pharaohs everywhere I look. Even when I look in the mirror.

Let me explain.

The beginning of Sefer Shmot—The Book of Exodus—stacks the deck for confrontation. The Israelites in Egypt have become numerous, and where previously they had enjoyed the favor of Egyptian society by association with Josef; as we roll into Shmot, the shine has worn off. The current leadership has no idea that Egypt’s status was built on the backs of Josef’s foresight and charisma. The new leadership looks at all these foreigners and sees only a drain on society, a threat, people who are barely human.

The stage is set: when God urges Moses to go make it right, and Moses shows up, the Pharaoh is already on edge and the Israelites have had enough. In Parshat Shmot—last week’s Torah reading—God hardens the Pharaoh’s heart against the Israelites’ righteous cause of freedom. And just that little whisper from God is all it takes for the Pharaoh’s heart to form the habit of hardness. By the time we get to Vaera—this week’s Torah reading—the Pharaoh’s heart has learned its lesson all too well.

The hardened heart is not a virtue but it has capacities that, in times of intense upheaval, can start to seem appealing. It’s strenuous labor to hold prejudice, hard work to nurse a spark of hatred into a flame. It’s also hard to go about daily life in the presence of such hatred. The tough heart can more easily face the world without being subsumed.

And so, in this time, our time of mounting chaos and trauma—with political turmoil, violence, and antisemitism raging—I find myself simultaneously wishing for a harder heart and worried about becoming numb. I worry that finding ways to cope with the horror of corruption and violence, with the hardness of hearts all around, will turn me into a Pharaoh myself.

Our tradition does not look kindly on the toughened heart. We are not meant to look up to the Pharaoh, and certainly not meant to become like him, hardening our own hearts until we cannot bring ourselves to care about the suffering around us. Our haftarah this week from Ezekiel has the Pharaoh exclaiming more than once:

לִי יְאֹרִי וַאֲנִי עֲשִׂיתִנִי
My Nile is mine, and I made it

These are the words of a person who sees himself as a god, as our historical knowledge of ancient Egypt supports. There is a midrash that teaches that God tells Moses to go to the Pharaoh by the river at dawn, because that’s where and when he is most vulnerable. That’s where the Pharaoh relieves himself. He is so committed to reinforcing his elevated status that he cannot allow the populace to see him as having human bodily functions. His complete self-absorption leaves him unable to see, much less care about, the people in his midst.

Our task as Jews and as humans is to take the opposite approach. Our tradition demands it; God commands it.

A friend from rabbinical school who now serves a congregation in the Twin Cities texted me a little the other night. He talked about how scared and frazzled and drained everyone he knows is. It’s hard even to take it in. Nothing in rabbinical school would have prepared him for the reality he is currently facing. But rather than cut himself off from the world around him, he described how he and his congregants are rallying around neighbors who are at risk. My friend now carries a whistle on his keychain so he can alert people about ICE. Three short blasts mean ICE is in the neighborhood. Longer blasts mean they are actively taking someone. My friend now delivers groceries to families who are afraid to leave their homes. His community has, virtually overnight, established a Justice Committee to mobilize and help where they can.

This is the opposite of the hardened heart. And rather than succumbing to the danger of קוֹצֶר רוּחַ—the crushed spirit which numbed the Israelites even to the possibility of change, my friend and his local colleagues are managing to face the world as it is and spark in one another a commitment to human flourishing.

To walk a spiritual path is to cultivate flexibility, to allow our hearts to remain open even when it is painful. Because the alternative—of disengagement or numbness—leads to harm and destruction. Just as the Pharaoh’s hardened heart allows for him to hold onto the enslaved Israelites despite the blood and vermin and disease, so too our hearts must retain enough “give” to keep us here in the world, even when the reality seems too much to face.

It’s not that we should wallow in every heartache, nobody can function that way. But the practice of resilience requires a balance of hardness and softness. There is a teaching from Rebbe Menachem Mendl of Kotzk that speaks to this alchemy. In the first paragraph of the Shema, familiarly known as the v’ahavta, we are taught that the love of God should be at the core of our every action, so that we love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our strength.

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

The Kotzker Rebbe wonders: Why are these words ON your heart and not IN it? He goes on to answer: the way we begin is to is settle the words on our hearts, and then, when there is a moment of opening, the words will enter. A hardened heart cannot allow the divine in, but if we keep the words on our hearts and soften just a touch, the words will find their way. Opening leads to opening. The love of God derives itself from the love of God.

This is similar to the two types of rain we encounter in the second paragraph of the Shema, the soft rain and the hard rain. The autumn rain—יוֹרֶה—is a gentler rain; its role is to soften the ground. On its own, it is not sufficient to make crops grow, but if we don’t have that soft rain, the soil cannot support life. The spring rain, on the other hand—מַלְקוֹש—actually comes in a volume sufficient to make the crops grow. If the ground is hard from not having יוֹרֶה, it cannot take in the מַלְקוֹש. The soft rain is the words landing on the heart. This prepares the way, but it’s the hard rain of taking those words in that enables growth.

May we each find the strength to be soft, and find the softness that strengthens us and reawakens us to our deepest values.

Chayei Sarah for TAA

(Delivered November 15, 2025)

You probably remember. For months, I wore a number on my shirt, first with masking tape and sharpie, then with a safety pin and numeral-imprinted beads. Each morning as I was getting dressed, I made a ritual of changing the number. One more day. One more day. One more agonizing day.

We Jews, of course, have a painful history with having numbers on our clothing or on our bodies—and although the practice I kept over those many months was voluntary—it reflected and refracted that ancient, modern, eternal pain. I am talking, of course, about tracking the days since October 7, 2023 and the embodied symbolism of counting the days of captivity that the hostages of many nations taken that day had to endure.

On October 13, just over a month ago, the living hostages were released, and I stopped wearing my pin. In the excitement of celebrating the ceasefire and the homecomings, it felt like the right moment to start fresh, with nothing on my lapel.

This week’s Torah reading from Parshat Chayei Sarah has me reconsidering. As we just read, the parsha opens with Avraham’s transaction with Efron ben Tzochar to acquire the Cave at Machpelah. In a different world with a different Torah, this purchase could easily be one imaginary pasuk, maybe two:

וְקַנָּה אַבְרָהָם אֶת מַּעֲרָת הַמַּכְפֵּלָה מֵעֶפְרוֹן הַחִתִּי בַּאַרְבַּע מֵאֹת שֶׁקֶל־כָּסֶף
And Abraham bought the Cave of Machpelah from Efron the Hittite
for 400 silver shekels.

End of story.

But in the real world, in our real Torah, the transaction unfolds in lengthy and almost comical detail: there is so much happening in this event, so much more exposition than we might imagine to be necessary. Over almost the entirety of chapter 23, we have Avraham—still grieving the death of his wife Sarah—approach the Hittites and ask for a burial plot. They generously say: you are a person of a higher status than all of us; just take what you want. He replies, essentially, let me speak to someone in charge. Efron emerges from the crowd and offers the land as a gift, Avraham insists on paying, and they go back and forth and back and forth. Finally Efron names his price, Avraham pays it, no questions asked, and the land passes into Avraham’s possession.

Given that this all could have been a single pasuk, we have to ask why the Torah has elongated and emphasized this exchange. After all, our scripture is often rather sparse on the details of the interactions between people. There tends not to be a lot of dialogue, even in dramatically rich scenes. For example, we famously don’t know what Cain said to Abel in the field, nor how Abel responded. We only know the murderous outcome of their conversation. So often the marrow of a scene is left unspoken. Here, it’s quite the opposite.

It could be that the Torah is simply reflecting the prevailing social customs for land acquisition, but this seems to me a pale explanation. In general, the Torah is not all that interested in teaching about sociological detail; that gets left more to the Sages of the Rabbinic Period. The Torah’s pedagogy is typically in the realm of theology and morality and ritual innovation.

Obviously I think there’s more going on here, as the Torah study folks and I discussed in detail the other day. Many of our commentators point to the dialogue between Avraham and Efron as being proof positive of the Jewish claim to the land: In Breishit Rabbah 79:7, Rabbi Yudan bar Shimon describes this passage as one of three where אֵין אֻמּוֹת הָעוֹלָם יְכוֹלִין לְהוֹנוֹת אֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל לוֹמַר גְּזוּלִים הֵן בְּיֶדְכֶם—the nations of the world cannot disparage Israel and say these places were stolen by your hands. Rather, this dialogue—witnessed by the entire local community of Hittites—demonstrates that Abraham claimed ownership of the Cave of Machpelah fair and square. He paid the asking price. The entire city saw the deal go down.

Perhaps also this scene represents the next step in the fulfillment of God’s covenant with Avraham. Avraham followed God’s commandment to make his way to the Holy Land, in the belief that he and his descendants would become a great nation. He’s been there a while, has already had many adventures and misadventures. Perhaps the text is telling us: now, with Sarah’s death, it’s time for him to put down roots and stay.

This explanation is more compelling to me, as far as it goes. But I think there’s more still. The other day, at the memorial gathering for Jean O’Gorman, Rabbi Geller reminded us of the beautiful oral history curated by our member Sarah Dunlap, with the help of Jean and a few others (including Marilyn’s mother Janet Schlein). In that familiar green book, we learn that in October of 1904, just a few months after the founding of what would become TAA, the chevra, as it was known then, purchased the land that would become Mount Jacob Cemetery. As is customary across the Jewish world, one of the first—if not the first—acts of a group of Jews settling in a place, is the establishment and consecration of a graveyard. One of our core values—precious because it cannot be repaid—is חֶסֶד שֶׁל אֱמֶת, caring for the dead. Once a person’s earthly time is done, they should be buried with dignity, with the community standing alongside loved ones left behind.

We learn this from Avraham.

When he hears of Sarah’s death, he comes from Beersheva to Hevron to attend to her, he weeps over her, and then he does whatever it takes to make sure that her body will be buried nearby, in a setting that offers her the kavod she deserves, and offers him and Isaac a place to locate their grief and loss. Avraham intuits—and our tradition reinforces—that the honor of the dead cannot be trifled with. Halachic sources are unanimous in their emphasis of this point: from the simple burial shroud devised so that rich and poor will look the same in death, to the practices of mourning that allow us space and time to recall the loved ones who have meant so much to us.

Our tradition knows that relationships do not end with death, and that we must treat the bodies of our loved ones—created בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים in the image of God—with a reverence that befits that status.

It is a savage understatement to say that those who were taken on October 7 have received nothing close to resembling the respect that an image of God merits. That some of them have not yet returned is a heartbreak and a violation of the divinity in each of us.

As of yesterday, there were still three murdered hostages whose remains were being held in Gaza, and as I reflected on this sobering reality in the shadow of Parshat Chayei Sarah, I understood that my embodied practice of acknowledging the days of captivity is not yet complete. Inspired by Abraham’s example, by his piety and devotion even to his estranged wife, let us continue to hold Sudthisak Rinthalak, Dror Or, and Ran Gvili in our hearts and minds. Until the very last hostage comes home.

Shabbat shalom.