dvar Torah

Bo for TAA

Delivered February 1, 2025

If I were to call you up in the middle of the night to ask what’s the main action in the first half of Sefer Shmot—the Book of Exodus—you would rightly say Yetziat Mitzrayim—the escape from Egypt. And if you still hadn’t hung up on me, and I got to ask a follow-up question about the reason for the exodus, you would probably say freedom.

Freedom is a word that we hear a lot these days. It’s a core concept in the framing of our democracy, and it comes up rhetorically in contexts ranging from electoral politics to tropical vacations to drug commercials. But the Torah’s understanding of freedom is rooted in ideas that seem to be absent from many modern conceptions of the word. In a moment when freedom has become a buzzword to represent so many different things, it’s worth going back to our primary source, to think about how the Torah defines freedom, and what, according to our tradition, it demands of us. 

It’s become axiomatic these days to say that freedom isn’t free. This is usually meant as a slogan in support of military or law enforcement personnel. The people who bear the weight of fighting for or defending our nation and its laws know the price of freedom more than most of us ever will. 

Yet there are many ways in which freedom isn’t free.

Take freedom of speech, for example, one of the main principles on which our society is built. There seem to be more and more people who regard freedom of speech as meaning that they can say whatever they want regardless of consequences. Nasty comments on the internet? Go for it! Lying about someone else’s private life? By all means! Antisemitic conspiracy theories? Be my guest!

These examples (and many more) remind us that, even in a society that values freedom, actions have consequences and so does speech. The rise of social media has taught us a hard lesson, and it keeps teaching us the same lesson. An anonymous rumor—whether or not it’s true—can have devastating consequences. Think back to the suicide of Rutgers student Tyler Clementi in 2010, shortly after two fellow students outed him as gay on twitter. 

It isn’t always in situations regarding the shocking or the prurient that freedom gets twisted. In a more mundane sense, there are people who think that freedom means less government regulation and oversight. To an extent, I agree. Not everything needs to be dictated from Washington. And yet, part of the point of such oversight is to ensure that someone is taking responsibility for the good of society as a whole. A laissez-faire government that doesn’t bother to supervise the safety of its food supply or ensure quality control over vaccines could wind up with a population that gets sickened unnecessarily.

Freedom is complicated, in another way. As the ceasefire and hostage deal plays out, we are seeing all too clearly the ways in which freedom for one party can be costly for another. As thousands of Palestinian prisoners are released from Israeli prisons, in exchange for a fistful of our hostages, Am Yisrael faces an impossible bind. Knowing that some of those who were recently released had been imprisoned in the first place because of past terror attacks means that their freedom is purchased at the cost of increased anguish for the families of their victims. And knowing that the architect of the October 7 massacre is  one of the prisoners exchanged for the freedom of Gilad Shalit back in 2011, we cannot help but have the sinking feeling that the next butcher is no longer in prison but rather is biding his time and envisioning future carnage.

Freedom sounds shiny and easy, but it has a gravity to it that we do well not to forget. Parshat Bo implies this, for in the passage that precedes the aliyot we chanted today, we read:

וְהָיָה כִּי־תָבֹאוּ אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר יִתֵּן יי לָכֶם כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֵּר 
וּשְׁמַרְתֶּם אֶת־הָעֲבֹדָה הַזֹּאת
And when you come into the land which God is giving you as promised,
you must observe this avodah, this obligation.

The careful reader will recognize that the word avodah harkens back to our prior history of enslavement. When we sing Avadim Hayinu at Pesach, we are saying we were slaves. Yet our pasuk from Parshat Bo says that when we finally arrive in the promised land we are bound by a different avodah. Indeed when God tells Moses what to say to the Pharaoh, one repeating phrase is: שַׁלַּח אֶת־עַמִּי וְיַעַבְדֻנִי—send My people out so that they may serve me. Same root letters for the avdut of slavery and for the avodah that we are enjoined to, upon our release.

This passage teaches that when the Israelites finally reach their goal, when they are finally am chofshi b’artzeinu a free people in our land, then the real work of freedom begins. That’s when the multi generational task of preserving the story starts. We are told, we must keep Pesach, not because it’s fun and the food is great, but because we have a responsibility to retell the story to our children, so that they can tell it to their children, who can tell it to their children to follow, and so on, forever. Perhaps counterintuitively, we don’t tuck away our difficult history, saying, that’s all over now, everything is fine. Being free doesn’t release us from hard memories. Rather we keep these memories—enshrine them even—to remind us of what we’ve overcome and what it cost us, but most of all, to remind us that when we thought that the worst was upon us and that things could not possibly change, they did. 

Freedom, it turns out, is a big commitment: a privilege that requires us to be informed and responsible, and that demands our loyalty to higher ideals and principles. Freedom is not about being able to say or do whatever you want, but rather about being willing to acknowledge that ultimate power is not ours to have, and that when we receive the gift of more possibility, we owe it to ourselves and to our Creator to use that possibility in the service of something nobler, braver, and more consequential. 

Shabbat shalom!

Vaera for TAA

I was still at home sick this week. A sympathetic congregant read this to the community in my absence. January 25, 2025.

I had almost forgotten. The mood swings. The chaos. The sheer exhaustion of it all. Every day a new outrage, sometimes several per day. Every interaction undergirded with distrust, every encounter threaded through with unspoken questions. What’s really going on? Is the situation what I think it is? Does this person see the humanity in the person they are talking to?

I am speaking, of course, of the ever-tightening vise of the ten plagues, as it plays out against the backdrop of an already unsettled people. What did you think I meant?

Our parsha gives us an almost shockingly relevant description of the moment—theirs and ours—with the words קֹּצֶר רוּחַ (kotzer ruach). This colorful phrase can be translated variously as shortness of breath, anguished spirit, diminished patience. It comes up in chapter 6 verse 9, as Moses comes to the Israelites to try to rally them. God has remembered the covenant with their ancestors and is poised to deliver them (us) from this misery. 

וְלֹא שָׁמְעוּ אֶל־מֹשֶׁה מִקֹּצֶר רוּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָה קָשָׁה
And they did not hear Moses because of kotzer ruach and hard labor

Rashi takes kotzer ruach quite literally, as shortness of wind. After all, when we are experiencing unimaginable stress, it can start to feel like a labor even to breathe. Ibn Ezra leans into the impatience of it, noting that the years of servitude and worsening conditions have taken their toll on the Israelites. Exile and backbreaking work have made them desperately impatient for relief. Chizkuni poignantly says that the Pharaoh has even caused the Israelites to forget their dreams. The midrashic literature even suggests that the Israelites are so downtrodden, they get caught up in idolatry. Unable to endure the conditions they face, they numb themselves with the easy answers of false gods. In this state of emotional, physical, and spiritual exhaustion, the Israelites have nothing left for Moses. Even when he brings good news they are too empty to take it in.

If you have been too depleted to read the newspaper, or if you have been doomscrolling to the point of oblivion, or if you have been unable to sleep because of the huge number of upsetting things happening here, in Israel, and around the world; I would suggest that the diagnosis is probably kotzer ruach. The truth is, like the many viruses floating around including the one that has knocked me out, kotzer ruach is practically epidemic right now.

And when we are compromised in our own spirits, when taking a deep breath feels impossible, when the constant assault of unsettling news takes root in us, it’s hard to jolt ourselves out of the space of narrowness and distress. The rut becomes a pattern and the pattern takes on the air of inevitability. 

Similarly, the interplay in Parshat Vaera between Moses and Aaron on the one side, and the Pharaoh on the other, feels like a pattern that has taken on the air of inevitability. As each of the Ten Catastrophes unfolds, it’s with a sense that both sides are playing their parts, locked in a cycle of what Phil has taught me to call the repetition compulsion. Moses and Aaron approach the king asking for the Israelites to be released. The Pharaoh responds ranging from maybe to no, sometimes teasing the Israelite brothers with the prospect of success, only to pull the rug out from underneath them. And in between, the Pharaoh’s heart occasionally softens almost enough to relent, only to harden and return to resoluteness. Even as things go more and more badly for Pharaoh and the Egyptians—and of course we know they are going to get unthinkably worse—the king tightens his grip on power against any and all opposition. There is a whiff of kotzer ruach even in the Pharaoh, and no wonder: As Rabbi Lewis taught us last week, there’s a little bit of both sides in each of us. When we are overly committed to our own point of view, or even overly committed to our own misery, this is a reflection of the Pharaoh in us. 

So what’s the antidote to this soreness of spirit? I can’t claim that there is one answer for everyone, but an experience I had this week reminded me of what it often is for me. This week, my Hebrew College cohort and I eased our way into going back to school for the semester with a seminar which, among other things, exposed us to several guest speakers. (Speaking of exposure, I attended online so as not to share my lovely germs.) One set of guest speakers gave us each the chance to talk about how we’d chosen the rabbinate, and when it was my turn, I talked about the feeling that characterized my 20s and 30s: a longing to come home to my people. As I said this, I watched our guest speakers’ faces soften in recognition. This same longing was what had brought them together as a couple decades ago, and what had inspired them to get deeply involved in the Jewish community. 

And the sense of purpose and belonging that ensued from that original choice—for them as for me—has been an ongoing source of broadness of spirit, the very opposite of kotzer ruach. 

In these times of near-constant anxiety and distress over the state of the world, being tucked into our Jewish community offers respite from the feeling of being squeezed from so many sides. There’s no substitute. 

Being stuck at home, sick for the past 10 days, the truth is that I’ve been able to do much of my job remotely: I’ve kept up with most of the messages and moved various projects along, even prepared “self-driving” Torah study plans so that the group could continue to learn in my absence. Staff and congregants have gone to extra trouble to make sure that I was well cared for and included in conversations that I needed to be included in. Still what’s been missing for me is being in the synagogue, near my community. 

The work that we do here congregationally strengthens us through simple proximity and a commitment to shared values. In a world that seems to be in constant crisis, we can resist kotzer ruach by building community together and by caring for one another. We can make it a point to reach out to those for whom coming into the synagogue is not easy, due to health or mobility or geography. And we can  make every effort simply to keep close.

We cannot change the big sweep of history, but we can ride the waves together and derive strength from that. Shabbat shalom!

Shmot for TAA

I’ve been a little sick, so the service was lay-led this week. This is the drasha I would have given, had I been in shul January 18, 2025.

Some years ago, when I was relatively new to Torah learning and eager to explore, I was doing parsha study with a group of friends, and we came to Shmot chapter 1, verse 8. 

וַיָּקׇם מֶלֶךְ־חָדָשׁ עַל־מִצְרָיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדַע אֶת־יוֹסֵף׃
And there arose over Egypt a new king who knew not Josef. 

Familiar from my family’s rendering of the Pesach seder, this was a verse that felt like I’d always known it; but that day, for some reason I saw something radically different from our normative understanding. Cautiously at first, and then with the unearned confidence of the misguided, I made an impassioned argument that this pasuk—I would have called it a line back then—was full of rosy optimism. It speaks, I said, of the possibility of new beginnings. Perhaps it was because I grew up in the shadow of an extravagantly talented older brother, a spectacularly gracious older sister, and a brilliant and adorable younger sister. The idea of finding myself in a place where I wasn’t automatically filed under the category of So-and-so’s Sister sounded refreshing. I thought: maybe it was good that the new king didn’t know Josef; maybe it would give the Israelites a chance to reinvent themselves, independent of Josef’s skill, cunning, and power. It’s good to wipe the slate clean and start fresh, right?

We kept reading that day, and I began to see it differently. 

The new king who knew Josef neither by deed nor by reputation had no way of understanding that it was because of Josef’s skill and foresight that famine didn’t wipe out the entire known world. To this new king, Josef’s descendents—the Israelites, our people—were a nuisance, a growing minority, a foreign presence. To this new king, they were immigrants, outsiders. 

The language in the passage is telling. The verse right before the new king is mentioned, says:

וּבְנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל פָּרוּ וַיִּשְׁרְצוּ וַיִּרְבּוּ וַיַּעַצְמוּ בִּמְאֹד מְאֹד וַתִּמָּלֵא הָאָרֶץ אֹתָם׃
And the Israelites multiplied and swarmed and increased and grew strong very very much. And the land filled with them. (Exodus 1:7)

The careful reader might remember the word יִשְׁרְצוּ from the story of creation, day five, when God fills the seas and the earth with, among other things, creatures that creep and crawl. The dehumanization begins.

The fifteenth-century Rabbi Avraham Saba, known as the Tzror haMor, interprets the new king with great disdain for the Egyptian citizenry. His view was that the Egyptians wanted nothing to do with any king who might have favored Josef. Therefore they purposely disrupted the typical hereditary transfer of power and installed a new king, one who was purposely chosen because he knew not Josef.

The Tosafists of Da’at Zkenim suggest something darker still. Because the text doesn’t explicitly say that the old king has died, these medieval scholars imagine that the so-called new king isn’t even new. Rather, they suggest a scenario where the citizens try to influence their ruler to attack the Israelites. He resists their suggestion, and so they depose him. Three months later he makes his way back to power by promising to attack. Under the influence of mob rule, the king renounces his own principles and becomes a new person, giving up some of his own humanity in the process. As we’ve talked about before, dehumanization cuts both ways.

Each of these commentaries is grappling with the question of how societies come to turn against outsiders. Sadly their dim view of the Egyptians echoes their contemporary real-life experience: during the Tosafist period, the study of Talmud was outlawed by the church and volumes of our sacred texts were burned in the street. And the Tzror haMor spent much of his life fleeing persecution and expulsion. Not unlike what happened to the Israelites toward the beginning of Shmot, his children were taken from him and forcibly converted to Christianity. 

It must have been all too easy for these sages to take the Hebrew name for Egyptians—Mitzrim—literally. The root word צר—narrow—practically shouts that the Israelites were squeezed into a corner. The narrow-minded people in power, and the narrow-minded people who influenced them, replaced knowledge and relationship with fear and contempt, resulting in a new king who did not know the worth of Josef’s years of service.

Clearly, the relationships we form and the reputations we earn can protect us. And in their absence, all too often, dehumanization takes root. Knowing is a potential antidote to the harm that dehumanization can cause. In people of good will, knowing one another and understanding each other’s stories can help us to see the best in each other, even when we disagree. This is the approach I am continuing to take with regard to the questions around antisemitism that have cropped up in recent months. The Beverly arrest last week brings home the fact that helping our well-intentioned neighbors to understand the role of antisemitism in Jewish history may be one of the most important tasks on my agenda these days. 

In times of narrowness, it takes courage to allow ourselves to be known, but it could be our best hope. The moment may not call for grand gestures—after all, the quiet, subversive heroism of the midwives Shifra and Puah is a reflection of tremendous courage. Rather, what I believe this moment demands of us is to gently and thoughtfully articulate why antisemitism is a problem that merits earnest attention—whether it’s in the form of online threats backed up with a supply of ammunition or in the form of local government wavering on its commitment to stand up side by side with the Jewish community. The more we cultivate our allies—in relationship, through quiet conversation—the deeper we can sink our roots into this place we love.

In about two months’ time, we will recall Queen Esther’s courage in letting herself be known, when Haman’s ruthlessness and hatred, coupled with Achashverosh’s gullibility threatened the safety of the Jews of Shushan. Soon we will read this famous line evoking the power of knowing: 

מִי יוֹדֵעַ אִם־לְעֵת כָּזֹאת הִגַּעַתְּ לַמַּלְכוּת
Who knows if perhaps you reached your royal position for such a time as this. (Esther 4:14)

Who knows indeed? My teacher Nehemia Polen taught me that the world can change on a dime, maybe even for the good. Perhaps in such a time as this, our courage in allowing ourselves to be known can lay the groundwork for that very change. Perhaps my naive understanding of the new king who knew not Josef can be redeemed, to reveal the possibility of a renewed energy for genuine connection and sincere solidarity.

Vayigash for TAA

(Delivered January 4, 2025)

Shabbat shalom!

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

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

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

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

In Chapter 47 Verse 2 we read:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom!

Vayeshev for TAA

(Delivered December 21, 2024)

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

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

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

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

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

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

וַיִּוָּתֵר יַעֲקֹב לְבַדּוֹ וַיֵּאָבֵק אִישׁ עִמּוֹ עַד עֲלוֹת הַשָּׁחַר׃

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

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

מלאך היה שהיה רוצה לְהַפִּילוֹ אלא שהק’ עזרו

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

בְּמָקוֹם שֶׁאֵין אֲנָשִׁים, הִשְׁתַּדֵּל לִהְיוֹת אִישׁ:

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

Shabbat shalom!

Vayeshev for TAA

(Delivered on December 20, 2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom!

Vayetze for TAA

(Delivered on December 7, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

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

Or is it?

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

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

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

Obviously both of these narratives are true. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Chayei Sarah for TAA

(Delivered November 23, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shabbat shalom!

Lech L’cha for TAA

(Delivered November 9, 2024)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

אֵי־מִזֶּה בָאת וְאָנָה תֵלֵכִי

Where are you coming from? Where are you going?

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

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

חַדֵּשׁ יָמֵינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם

Renew our days, like before

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

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

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

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

וְאֶעֶשְׂךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל

And I will make you a great nation 

וַאֲבָרֶכְךָ

And I will bless you 

וַאֲגַדְּלָה שְׁמֶךָ

And I will magnify your name. 

וֶהְיֵה בְּרָכָה

And you shall be a blessing.

And you shall be a blessing.

And you shall be a blessing.

Shabbat shalom.

Lech L’cha for TAA

(Delivered November 8, 2024)

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

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

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

כִּי לִישׁוּעָתְךָ קִוִּינוּ כָּל הַיּוֹם

All day long we hope for Your deliverance

We have grown accustomed to waiting, it seems.

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

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

אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר אַרְאֶךָּ׃

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

And then comes a shower of blessing: 

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

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