Shmot

Tetzaveh for TAA

(Delivered February 28, 2026)

“Excuse me. Excuse me. Excuse me!”

I turn around. It’s a warm spring day, and the Trader Joe’s parking lot is bustling. What does this stranger want from me?

“Do you always wear … [gesturing at my kippah]?” Aged perhaps in his mid to late 60s, friendly but not smiling, he speaks with an Israeli accent. 

“I do. I mean, not while I’m sleeping, but yeah. I wear it regularly.”

“Can you tell me why?”

[…]

Although I didn’t grow up wearing a kippah or even knowing any women who did, early in rabbinical school I started experimenting with כִּסוּי רֹאשׁ—covering the head. At first, I wore a kippah only in synagogue, to remind myself of this teaching from the Talmud: שְׁכִינָה לְמַעְלָה מֵרֹאשִׁי—the Divine Presence is above my head. As I got deeper and deeper into my studies, I came to see that the same holiness that felt so near to me in shul was present in other places as well. When I was learning with my havruta or preparing a dvar Torah, that, too, was holy work. Like an ink spot that soaks into the paper beneath it, the sense of holiness gradually seeped into more and more aspects of my daily life.

As I came to find out, the man in the Trader Joe’s parking lot had grown up in an Orthodox family in Israel but had fallen away from that intensive mode of observance. His head was bare, and for him, seeing a woman in a kippah was a shock, if not a provocation. As our conversation unfurled, he told me how when his mother visited from Israel, he took her to the Conservative synagogue he occasionally attended, wanting her to see what his life was like now. After seeing men and women seated together, and everybody wearing kippah and tallit, she didn’t talk to him for a week. 

But his misgivings about my choice went deeper than the unfamiliar: For him, what I was doing was potentially dangerous. He imagined me being harassed by antisemites or, for that matter, by ultra-Orthodox Jews.

We spoke for some time, interrogating what it means to be “Jewish enough,” and who actually owns our sacred symbols. Which Jews belong in kippot? Who gets to be a rabbi? 

Who’s in and who’s out?

The memory of this incident returned to me as I reflected on this week’s Torah portion, Tetzaveh, with its painstaking description of the elaborate ritual clothing that the Israelites create for Aaron and his sons. Each detail of the priestly garments—from material to color to pattern—is carefully articulated. How much detail is embedded in these passages: the hem of the robe decorated with golden bells and embroidered pomegranates, the tunic engraved with the names of the tribes, the apron decorated with gold and twelve types of gemstone!

These divinely commanded garments were powerful symbols of the singularity of the role of כֹּהֵן גַדֹל—High Priest—and of the priesthood in general. Only Aaron, his sons, and their eventual descendants wore these clothes, and only when serving in their ritual capacity. The מְעִיל (tunic) and the  אֵפוֹד (apron) the מִצְנֶפֶת (headpiece) and the אַבְנֵט (sash) served to delineate a particular mode of being, a sense of access to the divine that was exclusive. And yet, when Aaron was fully uniformed to enter the Holy of Holies, he carried his entire people with him. The חֹשֶׁן מִשְׁפָּט, untranslatable but often called the breastplate of judgment, was adorned with twelve stones representing Jacob’s twelve sons, or more broadly, the Twelve Tribes of Israel. 

Thinking about this apparent paradox this week has shaken me to my core. The reason for my upset is that legislation was put forth in Israel this week to grant full control over the Kotel—also known as the Wailing Wall—to the Rabbanut, the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate. If successful, this move would criminalize religious services at the Kotel that are not ultra-Orthodox. This would effectively dismantle the Egalitarian Kotel. Conservative and Reform, Reconstructionist and Renewal expressions of Judaism would no longer be welcome, indeed would no longer be permitted. Should this legislation pass, millions of Diaspora and Israeli Jews would lose meaningful access to worship at Judaism’s holiest site. 

If you’ve ever paid a visit and tucked a note of prayer between those sacred bricks or rested your forehead against the cool stone to sense the presence of your ancestors, you know what a loss this would be. 

Just a few weeks before I started my position here, I visited Israel, for the first time in decades. Without question, the most meaningful moment for me was finally being in the presence of the Kotel. As I approached, I felt the weight of the history of that holy space, the longings of generations and generations of Jews.  

Who owns that pile of golden stones, the last surviving wall of our people’s ancient place? Who gets to say who prays there?

It’s heartbreaking to think that the flowering of Jewish tradition, a flowering which has given us so much richness and meaning, may soon be cut off, not from outside our community but from within it. The maftir aliyah we read for Shabbat Zachor—the Shabbat of Remembrance—reminds us never to forget the damage caused by Amalek’s sneak attack on the Israelites as they were leaving Egypt. And yet here, the Amalek is no Amalek but our own kin; the sneak attack is one of spiritual violence, designed to humiliate, control, and exclude.

Thinking back on that long-ago conversation in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, I wonder what that Israeli, formerly Orthodox man—someone curious and open-minded enough to engage a stranger from a totally different world in respectful conversation—would say about this. I would hope he, and many others, would join me in speaking out about this potentially devastating decision, a decision that stands to move Israel further in the direction of religious extremism. I would hope that he has signed the petitions and contacted government officials, perhaps recalling what he learned that spring day.

The traditional priestly garments we read about at length in today’s parsha are made of varied threads of many colors, of a mix of fibers; the חֹשֶׁן מִשְׁפָּט itself is bedecked with precious stones representing all twelve of the tribes, without differentiation or favoritism. What lay over Aaron’s very heart in the presence of the divine should teach us: that each of us is a part of that holy fabric and must enjoy freedom of religious expression everywhere, including at our most sacred place.

Vaera for TAA

(Delivered January 17, 2026)

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

Let me explain. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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