Breishit for TAA

(Delivered October 26, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

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

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

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃

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

About which Rashi said:

אֵין הַמִּקְרָא הַזֶּה אוֹמֵר אֶלָּא דָּרְשֵׁנִי

This verse practically screams, explore me!

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

The text continues:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it was so.

Sukkot for TAA

(Delivered October 17, 2024)

Four days later, we choose exile.

I wrote those words twelve years ago, as I tried to map the arc of the fall chaggim in relationship to the narrative arc of Jewish history. On Rosh Hashanah the world is created, and our story begins. On Yom Kippur we fall spectacularly from grace as if from Gan Eden itself. We reckon with our human frailties and weaknesses, with the ways we will never quite be good enough. And we find ourselves, four days later, fully invested in the impermanence of life.

The book of Kohelet accompanies us through these seven days of embracing the elements. Where Yom Kippur liturgy reminded us that human life is brief, vanishing like a curl of smoke when the wind blows hard enough; by the time we get to Sukkot, we say, OK let the wind blow. We’ll build some walls, the best we can, we’ll invite friends and strangers into our flimsy shelters. We’ll eat and we’ll drink and we’ll sing, we’ll peek at the full moon between the branches.

That curl of smoke from Unetaneh Tokef? By the time Sukkot rolls around, we’ve almost made peace with it.

הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶל׃

Total vanity, Kohelet says. Total vanity. Everything is vanity.

This year feels vainer than most, this year it feels at times as if a whole world is vanishing with that curl of smoke. Will we ever recover a sense of safety and wholeness? Or will the simmering rage and violence boil over yet again?

הַכֹּל הָבֶל

It’s all temporary, and will vanish like a fever dream.

Meanwhile, here we are.

Sukkot tells us that the meanwhile is the point. Zman simchateinu—the time of our joy. We are commanded to rejoice for seven days before God. Today we are here together. We won’t wait until life is perfect and calm and orderly again before we rejoice. Today is the day. As we sang in Hallel:

זֶה־הַיּוֹם עָשָׂה יי נָגִילָה וְנִשְׂמְחָה בוֹ

This is the day God has made: let’s rejoice and be glad in it.

This day today. This is the one we have. As long as we have voices to sing with, minds to think with. As long as we have each other, we will find the joy lurking in the marrow of the hardest moments.

Elsewhere, Kohelet teaches, famously, that there is a time for everything: a time for birth, a time for death, a time for planting, a time for uprooting. A time for killing and a time for healing. A philosopher-king in a melancholy mood, Kohelet says: whatever you see or think or feel right now, wait. It will change. It always does. Investing yourself in keeping everything the same is a fools’ strategy.

In the words of the great Israeli poet Yehudah Amichai:

A man doesn’t have time in his life
to have time for everything.
He doesn’t have seasons enough to have
a season for every purpose. Ecclesiastes
Was wrong about that.

A man needs to love and to hate at the same moment,
to laugh and cry with the same eyes,
with the same hands to throw stones and to gather them,
to make love in war and war in love.
And to hate and forgive and remember and forget,
to arrange and confuse, to eat and to digest
what history
takes years and years to do.

A man doesn’t have time.
When he loses he seeks, when he finds
he forgets, when he forgets he loves, when he loves
he begins to forget.

And his soul is seasoned, his soul
is very professional.
Only his body remains forever
an amateur. It tries and it misses,
gets muddled, doesn’t learn a thing,
drunk and blind in its pleasures
and its pains.

He will die as figs die in autumn,
Shriveled and full of himself and sweet,
the leaves growing dry on the ground,
the bare branches pointing to the place
where there’s time for everything.

I often say—and I’ve probably said it more often this year than in every prior year combined—that our joy is our secret weapon. As Jews, we live in a state of paradox. It’s not for nothing that some of our happiest songs are in minor keys. Our story is one of constant persecution, anxiety, and isolation. Also our story is one of incredible growth and triumph, punctuated by occasional catastrophe. Both of these are true. Life has never been unambiguously easy for us, and when the short view looks terrible, we look toward the long view. Every time we say the Amidah, we are locating ourselves in a line that goes all the way back to Abraham. If the God of Abraham came through for him, we may yet find our way through the current catastrophe.

On Sukkot, we grab hold of what remains and say, yes it’s awful, but let’s go outside and feel the sharp wind on our faces. We’re alive and that is all there is right now.

Yom Kippur Sermon for TAA

(Delivered October 12, 2024)

Shabbat shalom! Shanah tovah!

In one of my previous incarnations, I worked as a singer and actor, and as such, I became deeply devoted to the TV show, “Inside the Actor’s Studio.” On the show, host James Lipton would interview high-profile actors about their approach to the craft, citing examples from their work and talking about how they built this or that character. The conversations were individual to whichever actor was in the hot seat, but each episode ended the same way, with Lipton giving his guest a questionnaire consisting of, I don’t know, seven or eight questions—what sound or noise do you love? What is your favorite word? Your least favorite word? And so on. Lipton’s final question was the most intriguing: If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?

Admittedly, the Christian image of the pearly gates might not resonate. But even if we don’t relate to the mental picture, we can surely relate to the question: If we had a chance to meet God panim el panim—face to face—what might we wish for God to say to us? What would we like to learn is God’s essence, God’s true nature, God’s message for us?

In my days of watching Inside the Actor’s Studio religiously, I was not in the habit of thinking about God, much less imagining a personal meeting. But also, in those days, my sense of God’s nature was fairly one-dimensional, a very conventional one in our culture: I pictured an old white guy with a long beard and billowy robes, either sitting on a throne or floating around on a cloud. This image in my head was informed by children’s books and the occasional New Yorker cartoon, and had so little to do with my actual experience as to be laughable. Although I was an adult by then, my idea of God hadn’t really changed since I was about six.

Over the ensuing decade or so, I guess I got a system upgrade when it comes to how I think about God. And so, with more trepidation than you might think, I’d like to use this time to talk about God. I figure since I’ve already talked about Israel and Gaza, I might as well take a real risk. But all kidding aside, if your rabbi doesn’t take God seriously, who will?

The image called up by James Lipton’s “pearly gates” question is in tension with today’s Torah and Haftarah readings, and with the depth and breadth of the universe of Jewish thought. So let’s look at the readings first.

This morning, in Parashat Acharei Mot, we meet a rather forbidding God, a God who, after the sudden and unexplained deaths of Nadav and Avihu, seems to return to business as usual, giving instruction about the proper way to approach the Beit haMikdash (the ancient Temple). This leads into a fairly detailed imagining of the Kohen Gadol, the High Priest, encountering God—not in the heavens, but rather in the earthly realm, in the innermost chamber of the Beit haMikdash, the Holy of Holies. In this moment of solitude and heightened occasion, with the weight of the community and its sins on his back, the Kohen Gadol will have a fleeting encounter with the presence of God. And because he will be entirely alone—he being the only human with this security clearance—we are left on the outside to wonder what it might be like. This exclusivity is in sharp contrast to the Haftarah, in which we read:

דְּרָכָיו רָאִיתִי וְאֶרְפָּאֵהוּ וְאַנְחֵהוּ וַאֲשַׁלֵּם נִחֻמִים לוֹ וְלַאֲבֵלָיו׃

בּוֹרֵא נִיב שְׂפָתָיִם שָׁלוֹם שָׁלוֹם לָרָחוֹק וְלַקָּרוֹב אָמַר יי וּרְפָאתִיו׃

I have seen their ways, and will heal them: I will guide them,

and comfort the mourners among them.

Create consoling words, bring peace, peace to far and near,
and heal them, says Adonai.

The Haftarah’s God is a God who sees human imperfection with compassion. In contrast to the Torah reading, we find here a God who is present with the people, a God who heals and consoles, a God who makes a particular point of offering peace and consolation to those who need it. Rashi doubles down on this more accessible God, saying that the “near and far” refers to those who are accustomed to the ways of Torah and to those who are either new to it or have fallen away and returned. Importantly, by Rashi’s estimation, שְׁנֵיהֶם שָוִין—the far and the near are equal.

The mincha Torah reading this afternoon will add another layer to consider, with instructions for holiness punctuated by the repeating refrain of אֲנִי יי אֱלֹהֵיכֶם—I am Adonai, your God. Be holy, because I am holy, and here’s how. The mincha Torah reading lays out standards for behavior that, if followed, allow for us to become more like God. By honoring parents, rejecting idolatry, cherishing the dignity of the economically needy, treating all with integrity, including speaking up rather than letting resentments fester, we are emulating God. The face of God that emerges from this description is one of high ethical and moral standards.

Our final scriptural reading of the day, the Haftarah for mincha, is the Book of Jonah. There we find a God who performs an improbable rescue, redeeming Jonah from the belly of a huge fish. Of course, Jonah is in there in the first place because he runs away from God’s instruction to serve as a prophet, so God decides to teach him a lesson. The teaching doesn’t stop there. When, later, Jonah is angry with God for accepting the teshuvah of the citizens of Nineveh and therefore not destroying them, God gives Jonah a profound teaching in empathy. So now to the images of God as stern rule-giver, or as comforter of mourners, or as moral exemplar, we add the idea of God as teacher.

Expanding our vision beyond today’s readings to the biblical corpus as a whole, we discover seemingly endless dimensions of—and metaphors for—the nature of God. In Psalm 146 God is One who

עֹשֶׂה מִשְׁפָּט לָעֲשׁוּקִים נֹתֵן לֶחֶם לָרְעֵבִים [יי] מַתִּיר אֲסוּרִים

יי] פֹּקֵחַ עִוְרִים [יי] זֹקֵף כְּפוּפִים [יי] אֹהֵב צַדִּיקִים]

Brings justice to the oppressed, gives bread to the hungry,
frees the captive, restores sight to the blind,
lifts those who are stooped over,
and loves the righteous.

Then again, God is also creator of the natural world, as we’ll read in the opening chapters of Breishit in a couple of weeks. Many of us, unlike the Kohen Gadol, find God’s abiding presence in the woods, by the ocean, or surrounded by living beings.

God as bringer of justice, feeder of the hungry, healer of life’s wounds, author of creation… These hopeful images work well when things are going well. But I have to admit they are a tough sell in this moment of deepening crisis in the Jewish world. When Israel is under attack from multiple fronts, when many both in Israel and the diaspora worry that the current leadership has lost its moral footing, when antisemitic rhetoric becomes less and less unacceptable, when the world feels perilous for us, the notion of God coming to the rescue can be eclipsed by the sense of הֶסְתֶר פָּנִים—that God’s face is hidden. A concept rooted in a verse from Parshat Vayelech, הֶסְתֶר פָּנִים has become a way to talk about those historical periods when God seemed absent from the scene, a way of addressing the question of how God could allow great tragedy or unbearable pain in a world which is supposedly suffused with God’s glory.

This past Monday was the secular anniversary of the barbaric October 7th Hamas attack on Israel. Seeing photos of the destruction, hearing survivor stories, remembering the hostages who were killed and those who may yet be alive but are surely suffering, it’s all too easy to wonder, where is God in all this? Where do we turn when catastrophe is suddenly plausible?

For this, we need to resort to the long view, the eternal nature of God that we encounter in daily prayer when we say:

אַתָּה הוּא עַד שֶׁלֹּא נִבְרָא הָעוֹלָם

אַתָּה הוּא מִשֶּׁנִּבְרָא הָעוֹלָם

אַתָּה הוּא בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה

וְאַתָּה הוּא לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא

It was You before the world was created
It is You who created the world
It is You in this world
And it will be You in the world to come

Let me repeat that in all its gorgeousness:

It was You before the world was created
It is You who created the world
It is You in this world
And it will be You in the world to come

This beautiful verse locates the unity of God, and God’s enduring nature, in the ever unfolding universe, in the passage of time. As we learned from the Sfat Emet last night, the unity of God encompasses that which appears good and that which is not yet assimilated into goodness. Even the ashes of the burnt offering—an image that may make us shudder a bit—might unlock something good in the future. The world and its goodness are ever unfolding.

This is not an easy metaphor to get close to; we may long for a less abstract sense of God, for a God who is right here by our side. And the idea that horrific tragedy might someday give rise to something better runs the risk of sounding like justification. I know I’m treading dangerously close to “everything happens for a reason” territory, and I want to be clear that’s not what I mean. But things are happening all the time, and the happening itself is an aspect of God, and what it will come to mean is often still being revealed and created.

To have a non-corporeal, singular, unfolding God means that sometimes God seems hidden or distant. Think about a folded piece of paper. As it unfolds, different shapes manifest themselves. Edges and planes move away as a natural part of that process; geometry demands it. That moving away can really sting. But inevitably things change and change again. Time does its magic. The unfolding continues.

And as this beautiful, terrible, mysterious world unfolds, we can find our connection to the divine in so many ways: in nature, in the riches of our tradition, and in one another. To paraphrase the Sefer Hasidim, a 19th-century halachic work by Yehuda HeHasid: “Two people carrying a load would not be able to carry it as well separately, as together. Two people raising their voices are more apt to be heard than if they cry separately.” If each and every one of us is created בְּצֶלֶם אֱלֹהִים—in the image of God—then every encounter with another person has the potential for holiness, for the experience of God’s presence. Singing together, praying together, laughing, crying, talking about things that matter, or simply being together in companionable silence can all draw us closer to the divine, and draw the divine closer to us. I think of the last words of Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh of Liska, as reported by his grandson Rabbi Zev Wolf. As he lay on his deathbed, surrounded by several generations of his beloved family, Tzvi Hirsh, the Lisker Rebbe, said: “My children, if you cling to God, it will be good for you.” My dear community, may it be good for you, and may you find the face of God that can hold you close and that you can hold close in these trying times.

G’mar tov and shanah tovah!

Kol Nidrei Sermon for TAA

(Delivered October 11, 2024)

Shabbat shalom & Shanah Tovah!

A saying in the recovery community that has jumped the tracks to mainstream usage holds that doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results, is the definition of insanity. Turns out it’s also an uncomfortably accurate description of how we humans sometimes approach the process of teshuvah. Maybe it’s different for you, but every year around this time, I settle in and focus on what went wrong in the past year and what I hope to improve in myself. I talk to the people in my life that I think I may have hurt and ask to make peace. I resolve to be more patient, more thoughtful, more generous. I plan all the ways I’m going to contribute to my communities: the meals I’ll deliver, the people I’ll call, the donations to worthy causes I will make. I imagine myself a year from now, glowing with the shine of authentic virtue. And then, even so, somehow my humanity gets the better of me every single year.

I first started to realize this while doing a family Tashlich several years ago, when Akiva and Gideon were little. Bill and I scouted out a place in Newton near a body of water, packed some snacks, got everyone dressed and into the car, and headed over. After a short walk, we found ourselves in a clearing in the woods and talked earnestly about what we wanted to throw away from the past year and what we wanted to do better. What struck me—with both hope and rue—was how much our comments resembled those of years past. The things we wanted less of in the new year—arguing, thoughtlessness, impatience, meanness—were exactly the things we had wanted less of in the year just ended. Did we really do such a bad job of it the last time (and the time before and the time before the time before) that we’d have to work on the same things yet again this year? It’s discouraging to name the same errors year after year, to set the same intentions as the year before and know that we’re likely to be setting (or re-setting) them—same time, next year.

But our wise liturgy already knows this about us. Kol Nidrei is literally a legal formula that admits to failure before we’ve even started. It says, essentially, we have the noblest of ambitions and incredibly good intentions. But we don’t really have such high hopes that we’ll fulfill them. In fact, our expectations are so muted that we’re saying out loud—three times—that we are going to do our best but we already know we’re going to miss.

Because missing is what humans do.

In tomorrow morning’s Torah reading, we’ll hear about the origins of Yom Kippur: the High Priest’s ritual for taking on and discharging the whole community’s errors. We’ll hear about his sacrificing animals, about his sending off a goat invested with all the sins of the Israelite people, about his entering the Holy of Holies to encounter God and make atonement on behalf of his community. And the final move we’ll hear about is the commandment to do it again every year, for all time. From the beginning, teshuvah was destined to bear repeating. It’s a feature, not a bug.

If you’re feeling cynical, you might start to think: Teshuvah doesn’t work! So why do we do it?!

After the realization I just mentioned, I wondered the same thing. A lot. What is the point of all this self-reflection, all this redirection, all this apologizing? Where’s the payoff if I still have to do it next year, sometimes with the same people, and about the same issues?

Little by little, I’m coming to see that when it comes to teshuvah, process and results are both important—and in fact, process has its own unique value. It’s the process of heshbon ha-nefesh, literally the accounting of our souls, that helps us improve. That is to say, while the things we resolve to do differently may or may not come to fruition exactly as we imagine them, the process of soul-searching wears away at our inner defenses in a way that helps us grow. Widening our perspective to truly understand how something we have said or done was harmful helps us grow. Finding the humility to offer a sincere apology helps us grow. Like so much in our tradition, it’s not about instant results but rather about the long game. Even though we may never fully overcome our worst instincts, even though we won’t completely stop making mistakes, this process of working towards teshuvah offers the possibility that in the future we can, at least, make different or softer mistakes, and perhaps move sooner and more devotedly toward making amends when we do.

Despite our best and most earnest wishes, and our most focused efforts at teshuvah, the existence and structure of Yom Kippur remind us that it’s part of being human to need regular reminders and scaffolding for the process of resetting our moral compasses. Rav Avraham Yitzhak Kook, who lived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, located teshuvah at the core of creation: just as the purpose of creation is its ongoing striving to return to the perfection of Gan Eden, so too the human work of teshuvah is seen as an ongoing, ever spiraling endeavor. It is, like each of us, always in the process of becoming.

Or perhaps even in the process of being. I sometimes liken the inner work of Yom Kippur to that moment in meditation when you realize your mind has gone away, and you simply bring it back. That moment of homecoming doesn’t mean you’ve “achieved” meditation and can wash your hands of it. And the moments of monkey-mind don’t mean you stink at meditation and shouldn’t even bother. Rather that moment of return means simply, for that moment, you’ve come home to yourself. You’ve exercised the muscle of return. And every time you exercise that muscle, it… gets a little more exercise.

In his teaching about Parshat Tzav, the late nineteenth century Hasidic master known as the Sfat Emet, spins out a beautiful metaphor for the ashes that remain after the completion of the korban olah—the burnt offering. In the Sfat Emet’s rendering, the final mitzvah of that offering is תְּרומָת הַדֶשֶן—elevating the ashes. Rather than being a mere cleanup operation, removing the residue of the ashes becomes a way of lifting up to God even the parts of ourselves that we might imagine have no value: the hard edges, the self-involvement, the dark thoughts. But in the Sfat Emet’s words:

הֲרֵי הַכֹּל בִּכְלָל בְּרִיאַת השי”ת

See, all of this is included in the creation of the Holy Blessed One

Every aspect of us, like every aspect of the world, is part of the work of creation, and as such has intrinsic value. Even those things that appear to be, in my teacher Nehemia Polen’s phrase, unassimilable into goodness, are part of the divine labor and have the potential for transformation and renewal. The dark sides of human nature—those things we wrestle with each year as we do teshuvah—are also reflections of God, waiting to be uplifted and made whole. This is the work of teshuvah, and it is more urgent than ever. The ashes of our lives, this is what we confront every year at this time. Lifting up the parts of ourselves that we wish were different and the actions we’ve taken—that we wish we hadn’t—is a way of acknowledging our humanity, God’s divinity, and the holy power of trying again.

So while I wish I could promise you that I will always be nice to my spouse and patient with my children and attentive to my parents, while I wish I could tell you that I will give tzedakah as often as the thought arises in my mind and tend to the planet as much as it deserves, past years and my own humanity suggest that I will try and fail and try again. We can’t erase our past mistakes and walk away as if they never happened, and we can’t look at our future mistakes with a casual “oops, oh well” and move on. Instead we keep the mistakes for learning, like the Israelites kept the broken tablets in the Ark along with the new ones. Both the shards and the unbroken tablets remind us what we’re capable of—the countless and even terrible mistakes we will continue to make, and the repair for which we will continue to reach. Over the course of this challenging day of reflection, self-denial, and soul-searching—let’s come back to ourselves. And let’s support each other, as we attend to the ways that our ever-broken lives are dreaming of wholeness and holiness.

Gmar tov and shanah tovah!

Rosh Hashanah Sermon for TAA

(Delivered October 3, 2024)

“How are you?”

“How are you?”

“Rav Naomi, so good to see you, how are you?”

How are you, how are you, how are you, how are you? […]

I never thought I would dread a question more.

How am I?

Exhausted. Full. Empty.

It’s complicated.

For the last almost-year, the world has felt both amazing and terrible. On the amazing side, I have rejoiced at so many things: watching my children grow beautifully into their own interests and pursuits, my own learning at Hebrew College, and of course being swept up into a job process that landed me literally in paradise.

Yet meanwhile, there has been deep suffering both communally and globally. Our congregation has suffered many losses, including several in the past week. Each of us carries our own private griefs, some of them very fresh. And of course, over the past year, the Jewish world has faced unspeakable violence, terror, antisemitism, confusion, and moral injury. The heartless attacks on October 7, 2023—last year at Simchat Torah—have opened up a wound in the Jewish soul, and the months of war and conflict that followed have poured bleach into that wound on a daily basis. The unfolding catastrophe in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon holds horrors and traumas that are hard to fathom.

Once the initial period of rawness after October 7 subsided, and for most of the past year—actually for many years—I have resolutely preached, and practiced, Jewish resilience. Like many of my friends and colleagues, the basic plan is this: do the work, meet the obligations, take care of business, do the needful. Just keep going. I often say that we Jews have a practice of moving forward, even with tears in our eyes.

I am starting to see the limits of this strategy. In one of the saddest years in memory for my generation of Jews, my tears seem to have gone underground. I hold my grief—about the October 7 attack and the horrific war that is unfolding in its wake, about the explosion of antisemitism and other hatreds, about the way my sons’ high school and college years have been colored first by a global pandemic and now by a global political crisis that places our people at the center of some heartbreaking dynamics […]—all this grief I keep somehow at arm’s length, titrating it so as to prevent it from taking over every corner of my life. Although it’s with me constantly, it’s always a bridesmaid, never a bride. Even when I allow myself to be on the verge of tears, both the enormity of the circumstances and the urgency of the next deadline keep it in check. All this moving forward might be more like running in circles than I realized.

When it comes to expressing our heartbreak, many Jewish texts, including those we heard chanted today, point us in a different direction. Both our Torah and our Haftarah readings show us women—in particular—in the grip of deep, uncontainable emotion. Where heartbreak can sometimes leave us in a defensive crouch, protecting ourselves from our own depth of feeling, for Hagar and Chana both, that depth of feeling simply is. They don’t shy away from it or control it. When stranded in the wilderness and faced with what seems like the imminent death of Ishmael, her only child, Hagar lays down his weary, dehydrated little body and goes a distance away:

וַתִּשָּׂא אֶת־קֹלָהּ וַתֵּבְךְּ

And she lifted up her voice and wept

In this remote environment, having finished the bread and water Avraham supplied them with, no other tools at her disposal to help her son survive, she has nothing left but her tears.

Then, in the Haftarah, childless Chana, wounded by her sister-wife Penina’s cruel gloating, goes to the Temple to pour out her sorrow and frustration about her infertility.

וְהִיא מָרַת נָפֶשׁ וַתִּתְפַּלֵּל עַל־יי וּבָכֹה תִבְכֶּה

And her soul was embittered, and she prayed to God and she wept

This repetitive grammatical form “vacho-tivkeh” is used for emphasis, to show the hearer the depth of Chana’s pain, a pain that bursts out in inevitable weeping. Having opened herself to the tears begging to be shed, she moves, as the brilliant Torah scholar Dr. Judith Kates writes, “from that wordless expression of her inner reality to giving eloquent and even daring voice to her needs, desires, and hopes for the future. … She creates a previously unknown pathway to God.”

The Sages of the rabbinic period regard Chana as a teacher in this way; in her vulnerability and authenticity, she shows us how to pray. The rabbis come to regard the expression of emotion as a pathway to the divine. From Masechet Brachot 32b comes the poignant teaching:

מִיּוֹם שֶׁחָרַב בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ נִנְעֲלוּ שַׁעֲרֵי תְּפִלָּה

Since the destruction of the Beit haMikdash—the ancient Temple—
the gates of prayer have been locked

וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁשַּׁעֲרֵי תְפִילָּה נִנְעֲלוּ, שַׁעֲרֵי דִמְעָה לֹא נִנְעֲלוּ

But despite the gates of prayer being locked,
the gates of tears remain unlocked

For these devoted scholars and preservers of the tradition, these innovators who lost everything and started again, there were times when praying didn’t feel like enough, but weeping did. Elsewhere in the Talmud—on Bava Batra 15a—there is a tradition that Moses—who arguably was closer to God than any human being—wrote the last few chapters of the Torah not in ink but with his own tears.

Our society tells us—either explicitly or implicitly—that crying is a sign of weakness. We are taught to keep it under wraps; some of us have learned this lesson so well that we can’t cry even when we want to or need to. Somehow we feel shame either way; whether we’re crying too much or not enough. In either case, the tears seem like an embarrassment. Think how often you see someone making a big speech on a big occasion preface their talk by saying, “I promised myself I wouldn’t cry,” or, “I might cry.” The tendency to announce that we’re going to cry—as if our audience wouldn’t recognize it and might mistake it for sneezing or tap dancing—feels like a way of distancing ourselves at the very moment we are actually getting closer to ourselves. There’s something about a good cry that resets our systems and opens the channel for something new to happen. Think of the toddlers in your life, those people who have no problem bursting into un-self-conscious, full-throated tears. Then, when the storm has passed, they simply move onto the next thing, refreshed and aligned.

Rather than being a sign of weakness, can we instead see crying as a sign of wholeness, or even holiness? For both Hagar and Chana, those moments of deep emotion, of the waters overflowing their banks, are met by divine reassurance, a sense of being caught like a newborn and held when they most need it.

Which might explain why, on Rosh Hashanah, a day of return, and renewal, and even rebirth, we read these two texts which speak of moments of overwhelming heartache. Something about their pain awakens us to the fullness of life. Rabbi Isaac Luria, known as the Arizal was quoted by one of his students as saying,

מִי שֶׁאֵין בֶּכִיָּה נוֹפֶלֶת עָלָיו בַּיָּמִים הָאֵלּוּ
הוּא הוֹרָאָה שֶׁאֵין נִשְׁמָתוֹ הֲגוּנָה וּשׁלֵּימָה

A person for whom weeping doesn’t befall them in these days,
it is a sign that their soul is not respectable and complete.

When the moment requires it, when the era requires it, weeping can help us to keep our souls intact. I’m not saying that you have to cry to do this right, but I am saying that there may be a part of your soul that is looking for permission.

The season of teshuvah—of return—invites us into a space of reflection and soul-searching, asks us to take hold of our selves and find our way back into wholeness. There’s a teaching from Rav Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of what was then called Palestine, in which he says: It is only through the great truth of returning to oneself that the person and the people, the world and all of existence, will return to their Creator, to be illumined by the light of life.

A few weeks ago, we read in Parshat Shoftim:

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ

Be wholesome with Adonai your God

This sense of being fully present with the divine is the reason for our teshuvah, and its goal. Teshuvah is the how; a deeper relationship with God is the why. In this time of deep emotional and moral distress, may we allow ourselves to feel what needs feeling and be renewed by it. May these lines, excerpted from the poem Sadness by Daniel Joel Cohen, fill us with the courage to embrace our tears and let them teach us. He writes:

Tears—please do not wipe them away,
Do not rush for tissues.
We will not melt.
Life is not meant to be dry.

You must step into the waters
Before the sea parts and the way clears.

Insisting on staying on dry land
Will keep you safe
From the miracle.

Courage rewards those who are willing
To feel,
Tenderly,
Together.

Welcomed into the arms of loving presence,
Sadness, this sadness in my being,
Can finally come home.

Shanah tovah!

Erev Rosh Hashanah Sermon for TAA

(Delivered October 2, 2024)

Shanah Tovah! It is so good to be here with you, to be your rabbi, and to begin this new year together as a community.

A few years back, before I ever could have imagined moving to Gloucester, my family and I spent a week in North Carolina by the beach, visiting with relatives. As everybody in this room knows, ocean has a rhythm all its own and while I’m not the biggest fan of sand, the roll and swell of the ever-changing sea is a source of constant wonder and inspiration.

So during that week in North Carolina, the four of us—me, my husband Bill, and our two sons Akiva & Gideon—spent a day at the beach. We had a great time, jumping the waves, goofing around. The afternoon went by in a golden haze as we just played in the ocean. At a certain point we looked up, and we realized we had drifted a couple of house-widths down the beach. It wasn’t a huge distance—maybe a hundred fifty feet—but none of us had noticed our orientation shifting as it was happening.

This is the point of teshuvah. Most of us, most of the time, are not slipping that far off course. But we do drift, despite our best intentions, and the reflective nature of Rosh Hashanah invites us to notice and return home to ourselves.

So we come together here, to retune our instruments, remember who we were and who we can be, to reconnect with ourselves and each other. And so here we are, not a minute too soon, facing a moment rich with meaning and possibility, and also with sorrow and worry.

With war grinding on in Gaza and now boiling over on Israel’s northern border, and Lebanon taking center stage while Gaza remains unresolved; with the missile attack from Iran just two days ago; with a contentious election season unfolding; with hostages still in captivity—not to mention the several losses and illnesses this community has sustained in recent weeks and months—I doubt anyone in this room feels uncomplicatedly upbeat about the world right now. Our Machzor has a one-liner, a kind of floating zinger, that could not possibly be more apt:

תִּכְלֶה שָׁנָה וְקִלְלוֹתֶיהָ תָּחֵל שָׁנָה וּבִרְכוֹתֶיהָ

May the old year and its curses end,
and may the new year and its blessings begin.

I enter this space, and this new year, with deep ambivalence. It is wonderful—really, really, truly wonderful—to be your rabbi and to be embarking on this relationship together. And you have no idea how much I wish we were beginning this new stage of our relationship in a less complicated world, in a world that felt as shiny and optimistic as the words הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם—Today the world was born!—seem to promise. In a world in which that line from the Machzor about the old year and its curses didn’t feel so immediately recognizable.

Many in the Jewish community are experiencing this time with a sense of near-existential dread. Disaster is not upon us, but it feels more plausible than ever before in my lifetime. Even as reasonable people may—and do—disagree about how we got here or what “the solution” is—any way we look at it, there is more than enough reason to locate ourselves somewhere along the continuum between unsettled and despairing.

If you came to synagogue tonight hoping that your new rabbi would make sense of the events of the past year and either tell you what to think about the historical swirl unfolding around us or reinforce your already-strong opinion about the historical swirl, I’m afraid I have some disappointing news. I live in a state of near-perpetual uncertainty about המצב—the situation. I have a whole range of contradictory beliefs and opinions. I am devastated and furious at the murderous rampage of October 7th and the ongoing captivity of our hostages. I’m heartbroken at the loss of innocent life in Gaza. I’m ashamed of the settler violence that plagues the West Bank. I’m terrified at this week’s escalation with Lebanon and Iran. What I feel truly certain about is that the whole thing is awful, it’s complex, and it has a history that’s at least several centuries long. A simple answer has never felt further off.

We live in a world often governed by the false assumption that things are all one way: that there is, in any given situation, a good guy and a bad guy, a victim and an oppressor, and that it’s easy to recognize who is playing which part. But, most of the time, that’s not real life. So much depends on where you stand and which way you’re looking. And within this room, there are bound to be folks on the right and on the left and in between. Our tradition doesn’t have a central arbiter of opinions, thank God. Rather, we make it a spiritual practice to listen across difference, and to remain in community regardless. Looking at our sacred rabbinic texts, we see multiple viewpoints represented, disagreements preserved, minority opinions articulated and commented on. We don’t mind the messiness of multivocality, in fact we embrace it.

What I really want to say to you tonight is that our purpose as a community is not uniformity, but solidarity. Regardless of the ways in which we may differ, our task is to be there for one another, a source of support in times of joy and sorrow and change. The war in Israel and Gaza and now Lebanon is far away but it implicates us all, in the ways that some in the non-Jewish world are perceiving us, and perhaps even in the ways we are seeing ourselves. In some sense, the Jewish people as a whole is at war, and as such, we need one another more than ever. We can’t afford to be fractious. We need gathering places like TAA, where we can be unapologetically Jewish, where we are not tempted to downplay our identities or tuck our Magen David necklaces into our shirts to draw as little attention as possible. We need places where, in the words of Rabbi Menachem Creditor, we don’t have to live in translation.

We find in Bamidbar chapter 23, verse 9 a phrase that has become a kind of watchword for the experience of being a tiny minority that often feels misunderstood and unwelcome in the wider world.

הֶן־עָם לְבָדָד יִשְׁכֹּן וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב

Indeed this is a people that dwells apart,
and is not counted among the nations.

This poignant phrase is spoken by Bil’am, who is hired to curse the Israelites but instead winds up blessing us. Something in this outsider’s perception rings true; from his vantage point high above the Israelite camp, he can perceive the individuality that is inherent in our people, as well as the isolation that often comes with that individuality. Bil’am’s words feel so real to me these days. In the months since October 7, and after the fresh wound of the murder of the six hostages, I have been pained by the “split-screen” effect of my social media. While my Jewish friends have been mourning and grieving—albeit in different keys according to their political leanings—my non-Jewish friends have been deeply engaged in living a normal life. Stories of cute kids and hilarious puppies, vacation photos, the occasional gripe about an obnoxious in-law. This is the experience of being a people that dwells apart, uncounted amongst the nations. At times like this, I regard the mainstream regular world with wariness and a sensibility that says we’re here but not totally.

So where can we feel truly at home? Where do we turn in times of alienation and distress? Synagogue is the easy and expected answer—what else would your rabbi say?— but there’s something to it. I think there’s a way to look at this question through the lens of teshuvah—of return. That is, there’s a way in which we have to labor to create that sense of home. Making a space for teshuvah—for finding our way home—is something we do for one another. Think of Shmot chapter 25, verse 8, where God says:

וְעָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם

Let them make me a sanctuary, and I will dwell amidst them.

Both verses play on the root letters—shin chaf nun—to dwell. The Bamidbar verse teaches about how we Jews dwell apart from other peoples; the Shmot verse shows the other side of the coin, about how building something together can awaken the divine presence. In a very real way, when the going gets tough, the Jews get … together.

Situated in a passage describing God’s instructions for forming the Israelites’ gifts into the mishkan, the traveling structure that will hold the divine presence, the Shmot verse implicates each and every community member in the mission of drawing God’s holy presence into the world. What connects it to teshuvah is that the Hebrew in the second half of the verse is ambiguous. You could translate it as I will dwell amidst them or, I will dwell within them. The spiritual task of returning to our truest selves brings us home to God; the spiritual task of gathering in community brings us home to one another.

At our best, in community—in this community—these threads are intertwined, braided together like the challot we enjoy at our Shabbat and holiday tables. By investing in one another and the work of sustaining our community, we can bring more kedushah—more holiness—into a world that badly needs it. This is the teshuvah that is calling to me the loudest this year—addressing the ways in which we are feeling alienated and alone through jointly creating a home in which to share our lives together, accessing the divine through deepening our commitments to one another.

Parshat Nitzavim-Vayelech for Temple Ahavat Achim

(Delivered September 28, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

It’s possible you might have noticed this already, but I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I like to look good, not in the sense of physical beauty but rather in the sense of seeming to know what I’m doing. I don’t have an easy time letting people see my flaws. Not to say I’m a control freak, but maybe I am just a bissl. There is, in fact, a member of this community, a fellow perfectionist, (you know who you are) who has been giving me a hard time, encouraging me to write a mediocre dvar Torah, just to get the congregation used to the occasional dog. Well, my friend. This is your moment!

It wasn’t entirely clear to me that I’d even write a dvar Torah this week. With Rosh Hashanah breathing down our necks and several deaths in the community, plus two presentations to make at rabbinical school, I thought, Nah. Let someone else do it. Although a volunteer darshan didn’t miraculously appear, I figured, as my sweet, 91-year-old dad often says, God will provide. I wasn’t quite sure what that would look like—God providing—but guess what. Dad was right!

This week’s Torah verses seem tailor designed for perfectionist control freaks like me. So many passages spoke directly to my heart as I was learning the portion this week, all the more so as responsibilities kept piling up and it became clear that I was going to fall over if I didn’t ask for and accept help.

Look, for example, at chapter 29 verse 28, which says, in part,

הַנִּסְתָּרֹת לַיי אֱלֹהֵינוּ וְהַנִּגְלֹת לָנוּ וּלְבָנֵינוּ

Hidden matters are for Adonai our God,
but revealed matters are for us, and for our children.

Rashi points out this verse is referring to sins, those that are known in public and those that are only known to the sinner. Yet in these words, in the realm of metaphor, we perfectionists can find a sense of relief, as we imagine the hidden things that only God knows: our struggles and our good intentions, our ambitions and our utterly unrealistic standards. Perhaps, knowing that God can see the best in us can help us both to allow our own imperfections to be revealed, and to be at peace with being known and seen in all our messiness and humanity. Not to mention: to allow for our children to see us that way too.

And yet when all is said and done, and our faults land us in moral dilemmas, with our virtues scattered to the winds. Then we do the work of repair, and return to God בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשֶׁךָ—with commitment of heart and soul—and God meets us halfway. At such time, chapter 30 verse three, says:

וְשָׁב יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ וְרִחֲמֶךָ
וְשָׁב וְקִבֶּצְךָ מִכׇּל־הָעַמִּים אֲשֶׁר הֱפִיצְךָ יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ שָׁמָּה

And Adonai your God will restore your fortunes and take you back in love;
and will return your estranged from all the peoples amongst whom God scattered them.

The notion that God could and would gather us back in love, even when we have lost our own center, gives us a sense of hope and possibility when we need it the most.

Likewise, the repetition of the covenant that opens Parshat Nitzavim offers deep relief for those of us with too-high standards. When Moses says,

וְלֹא אִתְּכֶם לְבַדְּכֶם אָנֹכִי כֹּרֵת אֶת־הַבְּרִית הַזֹּאת וְאֶת־הָאָלָה הַזֹּאת׃

כִּי אֶת־אֲשֶׁר יֶשְׁנוֹ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ עֹמֵד הַיּוֹם לִפְנֵי יי אֱלֹהֵינוּ
וְאֵת אֲשֶׁר אֵינֶנּוּ פֹּה עִמָּנוּ הַיּוֹם׃

Not only with you do I make this covenant and this oath, but with those who are here with us today before Adonai our God
and those who are not here with us today.

This covenant between God and the Israelites applies to all of us: whether we are doing everything perfectly or barely holding on, whether we write brilliant divrei Torah or just dig out a few gems worth sharing. In this season of teshuvah as we gather up our errors and missteps, it’s worth remembering the God who takes us back in love, the God who counts us even when we cannot count ourselves.

At the end of Vayelech, God demands that Moses write a poem that will somehow magically keep the Israelites in line after Moses is gone and Joshua has taken over leadership. (Talk about unrealistic standards!) My friend, Rabbi Joey Glick offers a radical reading of this passage. The last section of the parsha repeats the phrase הַשִּׁירָה הַזֹּאת—this song—almost as if the phrase is itself a melody that keeps coming back. Citing the Ibn Ezra comment that picks up on a grammatical quirk, Joey writes, in part: Ibn Ezra deduces from this plural that the task is not given to Moses alone but rather, in the words of the commentator, to anyone—מבין לכתוב—who understands how to write. As Moses penned and then sang out the empty words “this song,” he might have been calling out … not only to the Israelites in the desert with him, but up through the generations to us today. He might have been inviting all of us to write a song, for Moshe, for God, and for our own hearts, that could provide love and strength to all.

In short, in Joey’s interpretation, Moses writes what he can and then steps aside. He asks for and accepts help, much as I have had to do this week. Thankfully, members of this wonderful community have shown their care for me: with hugs, practical suggestions—like don’t forget to eat, words of support, and offers to host me for meals. What I’m saying is, our Torah teaches us, and we teach one another, to take care of each other, and this lightens our burdens, always.

In thinking about perfectionism, I started to muse that back in Breishit, when God created the world, it doesn’t say, “God saw that it was perfect.” Rather, God said וְהִנֵּה־טוֹב מְאֹד—look, this is very good.

I have always loved the passage in our parsha today that says לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא—the Torah is not too abstruse or mysterious that it resides only in heaven or across a mighty sea. Rather it is very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart. Ultimately, Torah is in our best thoughts and our kindest actions. It’s in the ways in which we support one another in good times and in hard times, the ways in which we allow for one anothers’ imperfections to be incidental, normal, and even… טוֹב מְאֹד

Shabbat shalom!

Parshat Ki Tetzei for Temple Ahavat Achim

(delivered September 14, 2024)

You’ve probably noticed that my sense of time is not my greatest asset. I sometimes forget to eat lunch, I daven on the slowish side and don’t really like to skip things, and I am occasionally late for appointments, despite my best efforts. We have this whole joke about Jewish Time, but I actually think there’s something to it. Jewish tradition doesn’t tell time by the clock—or doesn’t ONLY tell time by the clock. We tell time through what tunes we sing, so that weekday services sound different from Shabbat services, which in turn sound different from Festival services. We tell time by looking at the sky to see how much of the moon is visible. We tell time through what, how, and when we eat—or don’t. And we tell time through the words we say.

One obvious example is the siddur and the weekly Torah reading. Just as we don’t say Kabbalat Shabbat on Tuesday; it would feel weird to read, say, Parashat Breishit at Pesach or Parashat Ki Tavo in January. But in addition to the regular texts for regular, non-holiday time, we fold other texts into the mix for different seasons.

For instance: As you probably noticed, we said Psalm 27 this morning as part of Psukei de Zimrah, the opening section of the service. Psalm 27 is associated with the Season of Teshuvah—return—and so it’s traditional in many Jewish spaces to read it every day from Rosh Hodesh Elul through Simchat Torah.

The overlap of different readings at various times, like different-sized orbits that occasionally synch up, can open up new layers of meaning and raise ideas that take us deep into life’s most essential questions. When this happens, the Torah seems ancient and vast, and simultaneously near enough to put in our pockets.

It happened to me this week, as a verse from Psalm 27 and a verse from our weekly portion, Ki Tetzei, started a conversation with each other.

In Psalm 27, verse 10 we read:

כִּי־אָבִי וְאִמִּי עֲזָבוּנִי וַיי יַאַסְפֵנִי׃

Though my father and my mother abandon me, Adonai will gather me in.

And in Dvarim, chapter 24, verse 16 we read:

לֹא־יוּמְתוּ אָבוֹת עַל־בָּנִים וּבָנִים לֹא־יוּמְתוּ עַל־אָבוֹת אִישׁ בְּחֶטְאוֹ יוּמָתוּ׃

Parents shall not be put to death on account of their children,
nor shall children be put to death on account of their parents:
each shall be put to death only for their own crime.

These two different—and, honestly, fairly bleak—visions of parents and children got me thinking about the ways we are responsible for one another across generations.

Sometimes the answer is easy. When my children were too little to have the capacity to make good decisions—of course I was responsible for them. I tried to teach them as we went, but when it came to things that could be consequential, I knew it was my job to make the right decision because they weren’t yet ready to do so.

There’s a tradition for a parent to say at their child’s Bar or Bat Mitzvah:

בָּרוּךְ שֶׁפְּטָרַנִי מֵעָנְשׁוֹ שֶל זֶה

Blessed are you for relieving me of this child’s punishment.

In other words, now that my child has attained the age of mitzvot, it’s no longer my role to discipline them. Presumably by taking on the mitzvot, this brand new Jewish adult is capable of disciplining themselves.

This tracks, then, with the verse from our parashah: once a person reaches halachic maturity, they are accountable for their own crimes. No problem. But given what we know about brain science, it’s probably a rare teenager who actually has this capacity. And sadly, current-day news reports bear this out, as some details of the shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia begin to emerge. Much of the story is unknown, and may remain so, outside the people who were directly involved. But we do know that authorities decided the shooter’s father was responsible enough for the murders—of two students and two teachers—to be charged with the crime alongside his son. Looking at the photos from the courtroom is heartbreaking. Politics aside, the shooter looks tiny, dwarfed by the judge’s bench and the adult-sized institutional furniture. No doubt he has done something with adult consequences and will have to face up to that, but, in some essential ways, he is a child. And in some essential ways, his parents bear some responsibility. The pasuk from our parashah that says each person is the sole owner of their own crimes is applicable here but incomplete.

By keeping unsecured guns in the home, by buying the boy a gun as a present and not requiring it to be stored appropriately as a condition of ownership, the parents’ behavior falls under a different category in Jewish thought: לִפְנֵי עִוֵּר לֹא תִתֵּן מִכְשֹׁל—do not place a stumbling block before the blind. A teenager who has been struggling socially and who is already known to police as having talked about school shootings on social media simply should not have unlimited access to firearms. This is a person who needed supervision and didn’t get it. This is a person who needed guidance and didn’t get it. This is a person who, quite possibly, needed mental health care and didn’t get it. Through the lens of Psalm 27, his father and his mother abandoned him, and tragically he snapped before God could gather him in.

We often read about the limits of God’s compassion: in the י״ג מידות—the Thirteen Attributes of God—we have an image of God as compassionate and full of grace, endlessly patient and kind. Yet if we read those words in their original context in chapter 34 of Shmot—the Book of Exodus—it goes on to say that God extends the iniquity of parents onto the third and fourth generations.

So while ultimately we may all be responsible only for ourselves, our lives are lived entangled with others, always. If we are unlucky, this can result in multi-generational threads of inherited trauma and chaos. And if we are lucky, this can result in happy, healthy lives with wholesome family relationships. Witnessing the suffering that can explode in those unlucky families makes me ever more appreciative of my own luck, and ever more committed to a universalized theory of responsibility, a concept that comes up in Jewish texts, from halacha to Hasidut:

כָּל יִשְרָאֵל עָרֵבִים זֶה בַּזֶה

All of Israel is responsible, one for another.

We are each other’s guarantors, in ease and hardship, until such time as God gathers us in.

Shabbat shalom!

Parshat Re’eh for Temple Ahavat Achim

(delivered August 31, 2024)

Shabbat shalom! It’s so good to be back.

While I was away I went to visit my parents in Michigan for a few days. Because I took a very early flight, I didn’t ask anyone to pick me up at the airport, figuring it would be easier to take a cab or an Uber. After getting off the plane and collecting my stuff, I made my way to ground transportation, to the rideshare waiting area. I opened the app and requested an Uber and waited semi-patiently for my driver to pull up.

The next part of the story doesn’t look good on me, but I think it’s important to talk about. My randomly assigned driver had a clearly Arabic-sounding name, and as I waited for his arrival, I formed all kinds of stereotypes in my mind about what the ride would be like. I imagined he would be brusque. I imagined he would give me a hard time about being Jewish. I imagined he would drive recklessly. Standing there on the sidewalk I started to consider, maybe I should cancel this Uber and try my luck again. Maybe I should call my sister to pick me up.

Maybe I should take off my kippah.

But inertia—or maybe stubbornness—won out, and I did none of those things. In any event, the driver was not like I imagined. He was polite, friendly, and an excellent driver. (Better than me, frankly.) He greeted me warmly, put my bag in the trunk and we settled in for the ride, with the car radio playing the equivalent of elevator music. At first we didn’t converse at all, but eventually, right toward the end of the ride, as we were stopped at a traffic light, he turned to me and apologized. Ma’am, I am sorry. I didn’t ask what kind of music you like. What do you like to listen to?

Still living inside my black-and-white world of stereotypes, I stumbled. Well, I listen to a lot of classical music. (Barely true.) And, I’m studying to become a rabbi, so I listen to a lot of Jewish music.

A peaceful smile came over his face. He said quietly: I love the Jewish people. I am Iranian and we love the Jewish people.

Now I’ve been paying attention to the news and something about this statement felt impossible to me. There was a pause. Then he murmured, The Iranian government and the Iranian people are two different things. Everyday Iranians can remember what it was like before the Revolution, and we have deep respect and love for the Jewish people.

In the remaining few minutes of the ride, he opened up about the struggles his family had experienced due to the extremist takeover, and the ways in which that persecution and the need to flee had awakened his sympathy and empathy for the Jewish story. And I sat there in the backseat thinking, how silly I was for thinking that I knew anything about this person, just based on his name and my assumptions about his national origin. And how much I might have missed, how much I did miss, for having this foolish reaction.

I bring it up today because we are learning Parashat Re’eh this week, and there’s a passage in Re’eh that has been troubling me all week. In describing the importance of not falling into idolatry after conquering the land and dispossessing all the peoples currently there, Moses warns:

הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן־תִּנָּקֵשׁ אַחֲרֵיהֶם
Be careful that you not be ensnared after them.

He goes on: watch out not to fall into their ways. For their rituals are anathema to God, everything they do is hateful in God’s eyes.

They even sacrifice their children.

Historical evidence suggests that this may be a true statement, but I want to invite you into the realm of metaphor to consider the relevance of these psukim in our modern world. This statement

כִּי גַם אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶם וְאֶת־בְּנֹתֵיהֶם יִשְׂרְפוּ בָאֵשׁ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם
For they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire

sounds like something you might hear blaring on a particularly partisan news network, or whispered conspiratorially amongst People With Strong Opinions. To be honest, it’s a more extreme version of what you might have heard if you had been listening to my thoughts as I awaited my Uber driver. The toxic combination of a difficult and polarized political climate, social isolation and technology dependence, overheated media coverage, and our own unfortunate impulse to fear the unknown adds up to an ever increasing diet of dehumanization. And this practice of dehumanization has brought us to a place, as a society, where we can all too easily imagine the most scurrilous things about other people.

Of course, it didn’t start with us. Rashi, our great Torah commentator from the 11th century, interpreted that phrase from verse 31

כִּי גַם אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶם וְאֶת־בְּנֹתֵיהֶם יִשְׂרְפוּ בָאֵשׁ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם

by focusing in on the word גַם (also). In Rashi’s reading, the גַם means not only did they burn their children in fire but ALSO their parents, an idea for which Rashi cites a still-older precedent, from the Rabbinic period.

אָמַר רַבִּי עֲקִיבָא אֲנִי רָאִיתִי גוֹי שֶׁכְּפָתוֹ לְאָבִיו לִפְנֵי כַלְבּוֹ וַאֲכָלוֹ
Rabbi Akiva said, I saw a non-Israelite who bound his father in the presence of his dog,
which devoured him.

And Isaac Samuel Reggio, the nineteenth century Italian scholar tightens the screws on the dehumanization by saying of this foreign practice of child sacrifice

וְהוּא נֶגֶד טֶבַע הָרַחֲמִים הַנְּטוּעָה בְּכָל אָדָם
This is against the merciful nature implanted in every human

Obviously if an entire people—conveniently the Israelites’ enemies—lacks even the natural mercy implanted in every human, they must themselves not be fully human.

But here’s what I want to say to you. Dehumanization has two victims: the one whose very being is belittled by being considered as less than human, and the one who does the belittling. When we permit ourselves to believe the worst about others, because of their identity rather than because of their actions, we end up diminishing our own humanity, too. We deny ourselves the dignity of having empathy and mercy for all of God’s creations. When we begin to see all Democrats, or all Republicans, or all Palestinians, or all Israelis, or all [fill-in-the-blank] as a caricature of evil, not because of anything they’ve done but because they seem to fit into a category, we give up some of our own humanity in dehumanizing them.

It is, of course, part of the mechanics of dehumanization that the cycle continues, and that it’s always the most vulnerable who suffer in the most grievous ways: the poor, the historically marginalized, children. In this way, the notion that there could be people who sacrifice their children turns out to be self-fulfilling. For speaking and thinking and hearing such things drives us humans to imagine that we are separate from those people, that we could never be like that. And from that vantage, we teach our children the same hateful values that we decry. Another generation is sacrificed at the altar of degradation and objectification.

In the here and now, there are large forces of dehumanization in play, and I don’t pretend that one well-intentioned dvar Torah will change that. What can any one of us do as individuals against the swirling currents of hatred and extremism? The task is more than we can imagine, yet the consequences of doing nothing are more than we can bear.

Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum of Kehillat Tzion in Jerusalem has said that people—and American Jews in particular—need to let go of the habit of trying to fix everything. The problems of the world started long before all of us and will continue long into the future. Our role is simply to make a little more peace and good will where we can: as my Uber driver did last week, in his sweet unguardedness and willingness to stay in the conversation. Clearly, painfully, we cannot fix everything. For now, not breaking it any further will have to be good enough.

Shabbat shalom!

Parshat Dvarim for Temple Ahavat Achim

(Delivered August 10, 2024)

Shabbat shalom!

My mother often says, If three people tell you you’re drunk, you better go lie down. Now I’m not much for drinking alcohol, but I take her point. If you keep getting the same message from a variety of sources, there’s probably something to it. Sometimes we need to get clobbered over the head with it, but I guess Mom’s point is it’s better if we don’t.

This week, we study Dvarim, the first parsha in the Book of Deuteronomy. As I said before, there is basically no new narrative material in this fifth of the Five Books of Moses. At this point, Moshe Rabeinu is in the mode of life review: going back over the story, sifting and filtering and trying to make sense of it all. And so are we.

And indeed Parshat Dvarim has a couple of themes that keep re-sounding, frequently enough that I want us to take a close look at them and take in their message. Although these repeating themes mostly don’t come in the part of the scroll that we chant this year, they spoke to me deeply as I studied this week. Over and over, this summative parsha—the beginning of this summative book—is whispering, or maybe even shouting, Keep going! Don’t be afraid!

Keep going! Don’t be afraid!

So let’s look into it. Twice in the parsha we are told רַב־לָכֶם, enough. רַב־לָכֶם שֶׁבֶת בָּהָר הַזֶּֽה in chapter 1, verse 6 and רַב־לָכֶם סֹב אֶת־הָהָר הַזֶּה פְּנוּ לָכֶם צָפֹֽנָה in chapter 2, verse 3. Rav lachem: it’s a lot, it’s enough, it’s maybe even too much. You’ve stayed too long by this mountain. You’ve circled too long around this mountain. You’ve been here quite long enough—or perhaps too long—pick yourselves up and turn toward the north. The divine voice is speaking through Moses saying, Nu? It’s time for something different. This is a relatable stance: we stay in one place too long and it starts to feel like the world is moving away from us. And then we realize there’s more life out there and we want it.

But it’s not always easy to break out of the perseveration of staying settled where we are, not so simple to move onto the next thing, even when we know that’s what’s called for.

That’s where the Don’t be afraid part of this repeated message comes in.

In chapter 1, verse 17, as Moses is reiterating the principles to keep in mind when judging legal cases, he says:

לֹא־תַכִּירוּ פָנִים בַּמִּשְׁפָּט כַּקָּטֹן כַּגָּדֹל תִּשְׁמָעוּן

לֹא תָגוּרוּ מִפְּנֵי־אִישׁ כִּי הַמִּשְׁפָּט לֵאלֹהִים הוּא

Do not differentiate individuals in judgment, hear the humble as you hear the great
Do not be afraid before any person, for judgment belongs to God alone

Chizkuni elaborates: don’t be afraid that the person you rule against will hate you, because it’s ultimately divine judgment that matters. The human judge is merely a representative, called upon to do God’s will.

The next instance of Don’t be afraid! comes just a few verses later, in chapter 1, verse 21, which reads:

רְאֵה נָתַן יי אֱלֹהֶיךָ לְפָנֶיךָ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ

עֲלֵה רֵשׁ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר יי אֱלֹהֵי אֲבֹתֶיךָ לָךְ אַל־תִּירָא וְאַל־תֵּחָת׃

See, Adonai your God has given you the land before you,
Go up! Inherit it, as Adonai, God of your ancestors, said to you!
Do not fear and do not be dismayed.

The second part of the phrase אַל־תֵּחָת, is an unusual word choice, the root letters for תֵּחָת appear only twice in the Torah itself, though it does come up about 50 more times in the other parts of the Tanakh. It can mean dismayed or even shattered, and the 19th century Russian rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, known familiarly as the Netziv, explains that it specifically means שלא תהיו נִשְבָּרִים בַּלֵב—that they not become broken-hearted. The Netziv connects it to a pasuk from Jeremiah, which also deals with hesitation before conflict: אַל־תֵּחַת מִפְּנֵיהֶם פֶּן־אֲחִתְּךָ לִפְנֵיהֶם—do not break down before them, lest I break you down before them. In Jeremiah, God is, I think, pointing to a familiar human habit, that of allowing fear of the unknown to make us think we can’t do something—essentially, volunteering for failure rather than taking the risk of trying. In its own way, though, even Jeremiah’s tough love speaks of faith, challenging the Israelites—that is to say, us—to hold our courage in our hands, to overcome our own self-destructive impulses and choose instead to be unafraid.

Our final example comes toward the end of chapter one, when Moses, in recounting the incident with the scouts, recalls encouraging the Israelites by saying:

לֹא־תַעַרְצוּן וְלֹא־תִירְאוּן מֵהֶם

Do not tremble, and do not fear them.

Yet again, the message is Don’t be afraid, and both Ibn Ezra and the Netziv again associate this trembling and fear with broken-heartedness. There is something about experiencing fear that breaks us, that deflates our self-respect and sense of our own value. By facing and overcoming our fears, we become whole. Our hearts heal.

Of course, it’s easy to say don’t be afraid, but much harder to actually do it. It is a human thing to panic in the face of new or unpleasant or challenging experiences. So when, in this third instance, Moses tells the Israelites not to be afraid, he then follows it with one of the most gorgeous images in the Torah: After urging the Israelites to be courageous, Moses reassures them that God will fight for them, just as they have already seen in the land of Egypt, and that God will carry them through the wilderness as a father carries his son.

And this really is the point, the message that the parsha clobbers us over the head with, much like the three people telling you you’re drunk: that the antidote to fear is not braggadocio, it’s not posturing, it’s certainly not pretending to more bravery than we possess. Rather the antidote to fear is courage, and courage comes from faith, from the sense of God’s presence. These texts in Dvarim are locating courage in the practice of the nearness of God. It’s interesting to me that one of the synonyms for courage listed on thesaurus.com is… spirit. There is some essential overlap between being with the divine and being able to be truly fearless.

And in a time when there is ample reason to fear—when our beloved Holy Land, the land the Israelites have been wandering toward these past four books of the Torah and which they are poised to enter imminently—is in the present day under constant threat and coping with massive undigested trauma, there is still this. With all that we face that is uncertain, we know that we have endured harsh trials before and gone on to recover. What keeps us going is this faith, this feeling that somehow our people will prevail, and with God’s help, move from strength to strength. As the words of the last stanza of Adon Olam teach us, each and every Shabbat: יי לִי וְלא אִירָא. When God is with me, I have no fear.

Shabbat shalom!