Shabbat Tetzaveh 5784

A year of Adar I and Purim Katan

וְהַיָּמִ֣ים הָ֠אֵ֠לֶּה נִזְכָּרִ֨ים וְנַעֲשִׂ֜ים בְּכׇל־דּ֣וֹר וָד֗וֹר מִשְׁפָּחָה֙ וּמִשְׁפָּחָ֔ה מְדִינָ֥ה וּמְדִינָ֖ה וְעִ֣יר וָעִ֑יר וִימֵ֞י הַפּוּרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה לֹ֤א יַֽעַבְרוּ֙ מִתּ֣וֹךְ הַיְּהוּדִ֔ים וְזִכְרָ֖ם לֹא־יָס֥וּף מִזַּרְעָֽם        

Consequently, these days are recalled and observed in every generation: by every family, every province, and every city. And these days of Purim shall never cease among the Jews, and the memory of them shall never perish among their descendants – Megillat Ester 9.28

Once upon a time in the pre-modern world, a custom was widely practiced that had to do with the precarious existence of Jewish communities that lived as small minorities within non-Jewish societies. It was called Purim sheni, “second Purim.” In places where Jews had survived a near disaster brought about by antisemitism, they commemorated the date yearly just as Esther and Mordecai created the first such commemoration in ancient Persia.

There’s a special Purim that was celebrated by the community for generations in Ancona, in Cairo, in Florence and in Fuoco; there’s one known to the Jews of Narbonne, Rhodes, Saragossa and Shiraz. There’s even one that was observed by the Jews of Tiberias.

In each case – and more than this – our people recognized their contemporary experience as resonant with our ancestors’ and found shared meaning in what was otherwise simply brute suffering and trauma. A close call became an opportunity for yearly rehearsal and celebration, rather than simply stocking up jangled nerves and the development of maladaptations to future dangers.

How? by insisting on hope as an essential Jewish ethic. Lurianic mystical teachings from 15th century Sefat offer the image of little sparks hidden in larger “shells” that obscure them, shells of evil and suffering within which there always can be found a spark of hope, of holiness, of meaning. One such spark appears in our Jewish calendar today.

Today, 14 Adar I 5784, is Purim Katan, “little Purim,” a small intimation of what we celebrate one month from now. Every time the Jewish calendar adds the leap month of Adar II, seven times in a 19 year cycle, Purim is put off until the second month of Adar, and Adar I becomes a time of anticipation, and the deferred gratification of all that spring promises. We have to wait another month to celebrate the beginning of spring hopes, but on the date that would have been Purim in a non-leap year, we hint at it: add a bit of festivity to the day, the meal, the otherwise perhaps cloudy, dark and wet final days of winter.

Purim Katan, with its anticipation of the possibility of joy, is not the same as Purim Sheni, with its overwhelming relief at escape from certain catastrophe. Yet for all of us, it is what life these days is about; the bittersweet knowledge that with every joy comes certain fears (we’ll have security outside for our Purim celebration) and, at the same time, the longing in the midst of our anxieties for the release of a moment of happiness. Both of these states of being exist and they both cry out for expression.

And in the end, one of them is not meant to define us; it’s the dance that embraces them both. A close escape is not just something to seek sympathy for. It’s cause for celebration. Let Purim Katan be the beginning of a practice of seeing daily moments of joy, not sorrow, so that when Purim itself comes along in another month, we’ll be able to fulfill the sunlit words of the end of the Megillah we’ll hear together, G*d willing:

לַיְּהוּדִ֕ים הָֽיְתָ֥ה אוֹרָ֖ה וְשִׂמְחָ֑ה וְשָׂשֹׂ֖ן וִיקָֽר׃ 

The Jews enjoyed light and gladness, happiness and honor. (Megillat Ester 8.16)

Shabbat Mishpatim: From Egypt to…Purim?

מִמִּצְרָ֑יִם וְלֹא־יֵרָא֥וּ פָנַ֖י רֵיקָֽם

From Egypt none shall appear before Me empty-handed (Ex 23.15) 

The initial letters of Mimitzrayim Velo Yera’u Panai Rekam, “from Egypt none shall appear before Me empty-handed” spell פורים – Purim. 

Today is Rosh Hodesh Adar I, the first day of Adar I, so called because this is a leap year, in which the calendar which our ancestors devised adds an extra month (yes!) to our lunar- counted year. In this way we have always kept our harvest holy days, which of course are responsive to sun, in sync with actual Levantine harvest times.

Of all the months of the year that we could add, the Jews added a second month of Adar, the month of late winter in which we are taught that משנכנס אדר מרבים שמחה, mishenikhnas Adar marbim simkha, “from the beginning of Adar, joy increases.” In a regular year, Purim occurs at mid month; in a year with two Adars, we celebrate Purim in Adar II – which gives you a bit more time to work on your Purim costume.

The Rabbis of the Talmud speculated that when all the other holy days will fall into abeyance at the end of days, Purim will still be celebrated. Clearly there’s more to the day than what it seems on the surface: it is, after all, related to all those ancient rituals that seek the evoking of spring through human effort to connect to its energy, the energy of rebirth, which seems dead and buried all winter.

Who has the energy to be joyful? How in the name of all that’s holy are we to conjure up joy, on the 126th day of the holding of Israeli hostages by Hamas, and nearly three months of the bombardment of Gaza? Not to mention all that stresses us closer to home…

And yet! “True salvation,” teaches Rabbi Nahman of Bratislav, “actually begins with Purim.” Before we can come together as a community and harvest our resources together, something else has to happen first – something, perhaps, that can lead us toward the simkha that is meant to appear at this time in our Jewish year. 

Rebbe Nahman sees the answer in this verse from our parashah for this week, parashat Shoftim. This parashah is full of halakhot of a particular kind, adding up to the regulation of society. What kind of rules epitomize ancient Israelite – and modern Jewish – society? Beyond the expected take care of each other sort of law, such as don’t steal, don’t murder, don’t lie, we have laws that push our sense of who is included in this society:

וְגֵ֥ר לֹא־תוֹנֶ֖ה וְלֹ֣א תִלְחָצֶ֑נּוּ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃ 

Now a sojourner you are not to maltreat, you are not to oppress him, for sojourners were you in the land of Egypt.  (Ex. 22.20)

כִּ֣י תִפְגַּ֞ע שׁ֧וֹר אֹֽיִבְךָ֛ א֥וֹ חֲמֹר֖וֹ תֹּעֶ֑ה הָשֵׁ֥ב תְּשִׁיבֶ֖נּוּ לֽוֹ׃          

When you encounter your enemy’s ox or his donkey straying, return it, return it to him. (Ex. 23.4)

Our society includes not only those who are our friends and family, but also those who are visitors, and even those who we would name enemy. The word in Hebrew is אויב, oyev. The term is classically used to indicate a foe, but can also refer in mystical terms to the yetzer hara’, that which is our personal inner enemy as we struggle to become more whole, more our best selves.

Purim is about the overcoming of Amalek, not only an external Enemy of the Jews (which certainly does exist) but also the internal obstacles to our ability to fulfill mitzvot, such as the obligation to experience joy. Joy is as real as pain, and it too exists if we look for it and give it space.

When we appear before HaShem we are not to show up empty-handed. Where leaving Egypt may seem to be leaving everything behind in order to become, we do not have to arrive at a harvest in order to be able to fill our hands with the offering most needed at this time. Joy is not some disconnected state apart from our day to day; perhaps: perhaps, it is more like the step by step, mitzvah by mitzvah awareness that something worthwhile is happening in every moment of our lives, and that we can rise to meet it.

On this Shabbat, consider your Amalek, whether it be another person, or a situation, or a feeling that is entirely your inner reality. Can you discover another approach to that obstacle? And can that movement help you start to feel the way your hands, and heart, can begin to fill with joy, yes, even you, yes – even now?

Shabbat Yitro: Who’s There?

וַיּוֹצֵ֨א מֹשֶׁ֧ה אֶת־הָעָ֛ם לִקְרַ֥את הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים מִן־הַֽמַּחֲנֶ֑ה וַיִּֽתְיַצְּב֖וּ בְּתַחְתִּ֥ית הָהָֽר׃ 

Moshe brought the people out toward God, from the camp, and they stationed themselves beneath the mountain. (Exodus 19.17)

Shabbat Yitro records our ancestors’ story of the ultimate moment of revelation between the Jewish people and HaShem. This moment is so overwhelmingly interesting to theologians that most of the commentaries focus on the experience of the “numinous”as Rudolf Otto defines it. 

[Otto] calls this experience “numinous,” and says it has three components. These are often designated with a Latin phrase: mysterium tremendum et fascinans. As mysterium, the numinous is “wholly other”– entirely different from anything we experience in ordinary life. It evokes a reaction of silence. But the numinous is also a mysterium tremendum. It provokes terror because it presents itself as overwhelming power. Finally, the numinous presents itself as fascinans, as merciful and gracious.

But, as Emanuel Levinas, another philosopher of religion, reminds us, Jewish spiritual experience is based upon the moment of communication – of meeting, and that Jewish ethics can be defined as our response to that moment. This means that the moment at Sinai is not only about HaShem being revealed in some mysterious and fascinating way; Sinai is also about who is doing the meeting, and how? 

Who is that, at the foot of the mountain? In the Torah, this group is referred to as they come out of Egypt as an erev rav, a motley and diverse group: some descendants of Jacob, some not. Ancient Egyptians slaves were Nubians, Canaanites, Libyans, and of course surviving losers on  any Egyptian battlefield – all those were possibly along with us for the ride – even Egyptians.

Yet after this moment, whatever its content, we are one people. The word in Hebrew used to define the group that stood at the mountain is עם am, which has a wide range of uses in Hebrew:

Nation, people, folk, community, tribe.

Populace, inhabitants, natives.

Crowd, multitude, mob.

Common, ignorant, boorish people.

Common uses of this term in Jewish culture include HaShem calling us by the frustrated label am kashe oref, a “stiff-necked people,” and the intimate term amkha, which literally means “your people”.

Who are these people, this am sharing in this holy moment of meeting? And since we are bidden to consider this moment of revelation as constantly a present moment of our own experience, who, it must be asked, are we?

The Jewish people is learning over the past few months that we are a community that needs each other, and where we seek safety to ask our questions and feel big feelings. An unscientific poll reveals many different shades of meaning for that belonging. On this Shabbat, I invite you to consider these different definitions and to imagine yourself, a Jew, among this diverse, yet one, am. One people whose experience of life’s meaning stems from one moment, standing together in the face of something beyond us, something that offers us belonging, in all our diversity, in an endless mystery of becoming.

The difference between unity and harmony

Being there; showing up

Friendship

Something beyond choice

“Who you’re stuck with” 

Bonding through blood and reciprocity

Family; chosen family

Trust that allows you to come as you are

Closeness and camaraderie

Similar values and rituals

People you want to be with

Lifeline: who I do life with

Helping me get out of my own way

Belonging

Where I don’t have to code switch

Reciprocity

Something more than just a group

An improbable existence

Trust; safety; reliability

Born into; placed into; chosen

Takes work

You are standing here, with us, all together. Where do you stand?

Shabbat BeShalakh: the Shabbat of Song

וַיְהִ֗י בְּשַׁלַּ֣ח פַּרְעֹה֮ אֶת־הָעָם֒ וְלֹא־נָחָ֣ם אֱלֹהִ֗ים דֶּ֚רֶךְ אֶ֣רֶץ פְּלִשְׁתִּ֔ים כִּ֥י קָר֖וֹב ה֑וּא כִּ֣י ׀ אָמַ֣ר אֱלֹהִ֗ים פֶּֽן־יִנָּחֵ֥ם  הָעָ֛ם בִּרְאֹתָ֥ם מִלְחָמָ֖ה וְשָׁ֥בוּ מִצְרָֽיְמָה׃ וַיַּסֵּ֨ב אֱלֹהִ֧ים ׀ אֶת־הָעָ֛ם דֶּ֥רֶךְ הַמִּדְבָּ֖ר יַם־ס֑וּף

Now it was, when Pharaoh had sent the people free, that HaShem did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, though it is nearer, for HaShem said, Lest the people regret it, when they see war, and return to Egypt! So HaShem had the people go round about by way of the wilderness at the Sea of Reeds. (Ex 13.17-18)

On this Shabbat we encounter the learning – that waits for us to uncover it – in the event of our ancestors walking out of Egypt and into the unknown future. We will review some of this again when we commemorate the story in our Pesakh Seder on the evening of 14 Nisan (April 22 2024), but in our yearly study of Torah, the story is before our eyes now.

Considering an actual moment of truth at a time of so much uncertainty is to conjure up a full blown spring while the trees are still, to our eyes, fast asleep. Yet yesterday our tradition bid us observe Tu B’Shevat, a conjuring of spring in the midst of so much winter, so that we might remind ourselves that even in the midst of what seems to be complete despair, there is always a spark of hope. 

This Shabbat is dedicated to small hopes, in the form of birds. During terrible winter weather it seems that they must all succumb – they’re so small and so delicate. Yet in the worst of the ice and snow, their little feathered bodies flit about from feeder to suet. They manage to hold on, hold on, and in the morning our hearts lift to see them, still here.

Shabbat BeShalakh is dedicated to the birds because it is the Shabbat of Song, Shabbat Shirah, so called for two great songs of our people: Shirat HaYam and Shirat Devorah. Each of these songs was voiced at a moment of relief after great fear and stress (what we in our human ignorance too often define as “victory”), and each of them encourages us to do something much more like birds than like humans: live in the moment, and sing it.

We are in the middle of a difficult time. We’re not at the beginning wondering what’s ahead, and we’re not at the end giving thanks for surviving. What is behind us. We’re in the difficult middle. Shabbat comes again as it does every week, and it reminds us that there are no ends, only stopping points, until the last day of our lives arrives. The holiness of Shabbat is in our hands to fulfill, by pausing, by noticing the messages that come to us in the form of those who love us, that which bothers us and from which we need to learn, and that which flies past at random moments of song.

Just like our ancestors as they left Egypt, our path right now is not easy, nor is it clear, or straightforward. 

On this Shabbat dedicated to the birds, may we learn from their strength and their song.,May we take a moment to stop and give thanks for the gift of the resilience they teach us, and for their simple presence in our lives. After Shabbat we will once again engage with the confusions and frustrations that make our way so roundabout; on Shabbat may we take this opportunity to come together in song. 

Shabbat VaYigash: Against Chaos

וַחֲכָמִים אוֹמְרִים: כׇּל וְאֵינוֹ מִתְאַבֵּל עַל יְרוּשָׁלַיִם — אֵינוֹ רוֹאֶה בְּשִׂמְחָתָהּ

the Sages say: Whoever does not mourn for Jerusalem will not see her future joy – BT Ta’anit 30b

Shalom beloved learning companions,

Today is Asarah b’Tevet, the 10th day of the month of Tevet. This day is observed as a “minor” fast day (meaning only sunrise to sunset, not 24 hours like Yom Kippur or Tisha B’Av) because it marks the day in our ancient history when the destruction of Jerusalem began – that is, the day when the Babylonian Empire’s army first attacked. Thus HaShem instructs the prophet:

בֶּן־אָדָ֗ם (כתוב) [כְּתׇב־]לְךָ֙ אֶת־שֵׁ֣ם הַיּ֔וֹם אֶת־עֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֣וֹם הַזֶּ֑ה סָמַ֤ךְ מֶֽלֶךְ־בָּבֶל֙ אֶל־יְר֣וּשָׁלַ֔͏ִם בְּעֶ֖צֶם הַיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה 

O mortal, record this date, this exact day; for this very day the king of Babylon has laid siege to Jerusalem.  (Ezekiel 24.2)

Because of the association of this date with mass destruction, and the chaos of so much death that individual souls were lost to memory, this date, Asarah – the tenth [day] – b’Tevet -of the month of Tevet – was in modern times declared to be the official day of remembering all those who died without the dignity and attention we seek for every human being. It is the day of Kaddish Klali, the “general Kaddish”, a time to recite the mourners’ Kaddish for all for whom there is no one left to recite, and for those whose names are lost as well. 

This minor fast day has a major significance for us in our own day, sadly; the reality of the human tragedy happening among our people and our cousins, Israelis and Palestinians, includes the fact that the deaths are too great to count and to number as individual human beings. This is a dismembering – the opposite of remembering – that tears at the heart of communities such as ours, Jewish and Arab (whether Muslim or Christian). 

Last night our houseless community (those suffering and service providers alike) came together for the annual Longest Night vigil to mark the losses suffered this year: we read aloud the names of one hundred and forty of the more than three hundred souls who died in suffering and abandonment on our cold and inhospitable streets in the past year. 

While there is not much, if anything, that we can do to act against this flood tide of destruction and pain, there is – there always is – a spiritual response available to us, because our Jewish ethical tradition teaches us that it always comes down to not what happens, but how we respond. We can choose to act to mark and hold even the souls we cannot count in our hearts on this Asarah b’Tevet – if you would find it meaningful to join in the Kaddish Klali as the Jewish community is observing it this year, follow the instructions in the details below this letter.*

In this week’s parashat hashavua we can learn a lot about the challenge of facing hurt and fear, and acting to hold on to what will otherwise unravel in our community. In parashat VaYigash we read that Jacob has just been told that his favorite son Joseph, for whom he has mourned for many years, is not dead. What does it even mean to have one’s sense of truth unmoored in this way? So many years of carrying the weight of grief!

For all the problematic ethics of Jacob’s life, in this moment he teaches well (perhaps the text is signaling this by referring to him by his more exalted name of Israel):

וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל רַ֛ב עוֹד־יוֹסֵ֥ף בְּנִ֖י חָ֑י אֵֽלְכָ֥ה וְאֶרְאֶ֖נּוּ בְּטֶ֥רֶם אָמֽוּת׃ 

“Enough!” said Israel. “My son Joseph is still alive! I must go and see him before I die.” (Gen. 45.28)

In other words, move toward life as best you can, despite being surrounded and beaten down by so much death. Focus on life and human connection. Keep that tiny flame of meaning alive in your heart, and join it with others similarly determined. 

There is ample evidence that our ancestors observed this fast with great intent – yet not, as we might assume, as a gesture of sadness for all that was lost. Rather, in Jewish tradition, fasting is an act of demonstrating one’s sincerity in repentance in the light of all that is lost, despite the grief. 

Let the true meaning of this fast day be for us a day of reflection upon how we may have let death and despair overcome us, and repent of it, and recommit to making room for life and joy where the small flame still burns. Keep lighting those candles in your heart – and everywhere else.

 שנשמע בסורות טובות

نرجو أن تأتي إلينا أخبار سارة

May we hear good tidings, 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Ariel

אַחֵינוּכָּלבֵּיתיִשְׂרָאֵלהַנְּתוּנִיםבַּצָּרָהוּבַשִּׁבְיָההָעוֹמְדִיםבֵּיןבַּיָּםוּבֵיןבַּיַּבָּשָׁההַמָּקוֹםיְרַחֵםעֲלֵיהֶםוְיוֹצִיאֵםמִצָּרָהלִרְוָחָהוּמֵאֲפֵלָהלְאוֹרָהוּמִשִּׁעְבּוּדלִגְאֻלָּה  הָשָׁתָאבַּעֲגָלָאוּבִזְמַןקָרִיב

וְאִמְרוּאָמֵן

Our siblings of the house of Israel who are given over to suffering and captivity

Whether at sea or on land HaMakom be compassion upon them and bring them out from darkness to light from bondage to redemption now, quickly and soon in our day and let us say

Amen

_____________________________________

*This little-known post-Holocaust observance was initiated by the first Israeli Chief Rabbinate in 1949 on behalf all those whose remains could not be recovered, and/or who had no survivors to mourn them personally. 

This year, the Day of General Kaddish offers an opportunity to honor and mourn the thousands of innocent civilians whose bodies remain unidentified / unrecovered through the attacks of October 7th and the subsequent weeks of war. Whether the dead are Jewish or not, accompanying them — the named and the unnamed, Israelis and Palestinians and Asian migrant workers and African agricultural students and asylum seekers and beyond — is an ethical imperative that reflects millennia of Jewish teachings.*

To sign up for a single hour of vigil / sh’mirah on the Day of General Kaddish (between 5pm this Thursday and 4pm this Friday), please write to ShareTheVigil@gmail.com (copied above) ASAP for the list of still-available hours. ** 

Shabbat Miketz: the courage to continue to dream

Dreams, and their interpretation, are a major subject of ancient Jewish inquiry, as anyone who has ever studied Talmud and other rabbinic texts has seen. The mysterious state in which we spend so much of our lives seems that it must somehow be connected to our reality. Thus, theories abound: 

One who sees a fig tree in a dream, it is a sign that his Torah is preserved within him, as it is stated: “One who keeps the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof” (Proverbs 27:18). One who sees pomegranates in a dream, if they were small, his business will flourish like the seeds of the pomegranate, which are numerous; and if they were large, his business will increase like a pomegranate.  (BT Berakhot 57a)

The Joseph cycle of stories which we study on this Shabbat is set in motion by a dream, and our displaced migrant ancestor’s big break, and subsequent rise to power, comes from his ability to interpret Pharaoh’s dream – that is, to know how to turn it into a reality.

The poetry of the Psalms offers the picture of Israelites returning from Babylonian captivity as “like dreamers,” so overjoyed that they could hardly believe their homecoming was reality. We still sing the song every Shabbat after dinner in the birkat hamazon, the Blessing after Meals:

שִׁ֗יר הַֽמַּ֫עֲל֥וֹת בְּשׁ֣וּב יְ֭הֹוָה אֶת־שִׁיבַ֣ת צִיּ֑וֹן הָ֝יִ֗ינוּ כְּחֹלְמִֽים׃ 

אָ֤ז יִמָּלֵ֪א שְׂח֡וֹק פִּינוּ֮ וּלְשׁוֹנֵ֢נוּ רִ֫נָּ֥ה אָ֭ז יֹאמְר֣וּ בַגּוֹיִ֑ם הִגְדִּ֥יל יְ֝הֹוָ֗ה לַעֲשׂ֥וֹת עִם־אֵֽלֶּה׃ 

הַזֹּרְעִ֥ים בְּדִמְעָ֗ה בְּרִנָּ֥ה יִקְצֹֽרוּ׃ 

A song of going up:

When HaShem restores the fortunes of Zion

—we see it as in a dream-

our mouths shall be filled with laughter,

our tongues, with songs of joy.

Then shall they say among the nations,

“HaShem has done great things for them!” 

…

They who sow in tears

shall reap with songs of joy. 

(Psalms 126.1-2, 5)

For many of us, the hope either of personal prosperity or peace for our people in our ancestral homeland seem as dreams with no foundation in reality, and the sadness and struggle of our lives in these days the only possible waking state.

During these terribly dark days, how are some managing to feed the holy flame of kavanah, of intentionality, and keep it alive and bright on the altars of their hearts? Who are these people who insist on holding on to dreams of peace, of co-existence and of hope? And how can you and I share the power of their hope and belief to support our own attempts to stay focused, to stay hopeful, to dream?

In times of fear and trauma, it may seem that we are alone, and that no one can help us, or perhaps even understand us. But although it is true that we each dream alone, inside our own psyche, yet it is also true that our dreams can only come true when they are shared.

The darkness of these days obscures much that we may have thought was true, or familiar, or even safe. May the darkness bless you with a greater ability to discern the light of others with whom you can still dream, and believe that those dreams will some day bring you to shared joy with others who see you and share that light.

On this erev Shabbat in honor of the last day of the Holiday of Light, I offer you a few Hanukkah gifts, meant to help you stoke the fire of your heart and feed your hope that our brightest dreams for might yet be realized.

1. A recorded webinar by Combatants for Peace

Watch here: Courage in the Unknown Hear from Magen Inon, who lost his parents in the Hamas attack on October 7th. In the midst of tremendous pain, Magen continues to call for an end to the bloodshed and for peace rather than revenge. Combatants for Peace activist Ahmed Helou has currently lost over 50 loved ones as a result of the Israeli bombardment on Gaza. With great courage, Ahmed spoke of the value of every human life and called for nonviolence and an end to the occupation. 

2. A live zoom gathering on Sunday, December 17th (10am Pacific time / 8pm Jerusalem), where you’ll meet Palestinian and Israeli members of Standing Together to hear about the work they are doing on the ground to build an alternative of peace, equality, and justice from within Israeli society. Register here: Standing Together 

3. Some personal coaching on how to build Brave Space, where we stick with each other with love and compassion even when we’d rather take refuge in our own hurt feelings, by following the rules for Maḥloket L’shem Shamayim (Respectful Disagreeing) –aspiring to honor points of disagreement, maximize humility, and engage in open-minded listening:

Seek to understand rather than convince. You need not agree in order to empathically grasp the humanity of the one you are talking to. Courageously find compassion and even affection for Jews with differing views. Listen first and allow yourself to be moved. Remember that at bottom we all want safety for our people and are too often stuck in ethical and strategic “choiceless choices.” Ask “what’s your worst fear?” Identify, invite, and tolerate the anger of the other, their resentment, fear, and blame. Attend to bonding and ethical concepts, such as trust, care, isolation, shame, and safety. With kindness, explore your own unconscious self-blame. Bravely cultivate a genuine sense of pride in yourself, in your political sub-group, and in your people as a whole.These are challenging but learnable skills; cultivating them takes practice. (Dr Richard Stern, “Blaming Ourselves Is Tearing Us Apart” Tikkun magazine Dec 13 2023)

Shabbat VaYeshev: To Dwell In Safety

Anti-Zionism: The Language of the Oppressor

In this week’s parashah a woman must discern how best to move within the patriarchal tribal system in which she has found herself. Our Torah narrative depicts her as smart and courageous, and, finally, victorious as well – and she manages not only to survive but to prevail by her wits, as she has no physical or political strength to wield.

The story of Tamar, who we are told is the ancestor of King David, is not only significant as story of female power wielded adroitly if indirectly; it sheds light on Diaspora Jews as well. It has been observed that Jews in Diaspora are like women: powerless in conventional terms, our ancestors survived by learning, and learning to work around, the language, culture, and power of the dominant society.  

Learning the language and expectations of dominant culture can help us stay safe; but at what cost? Those involved in liberation movements – those that are self-aware – struggle not to fall into the same patterns that oppressed them. The wholesale condemnation of white cis men is one such failure; to judge a man by his essential nature and not his acts is to commit the same sin as any white supremacist. To internalize the standards of the oppressor is to continue to be oppressed!

For a Jew, to call oneself an anti-Zionist is similarly to permit the oppressor to define one’s principles and thus one’s identity. Consider the context of the anti-Zionism of the Western left: Jews in Israel are condemned as white European colonialists oppressing the brown Palestinian indigenous population. Such a simplistic picture is not only incorrect, it commits the sins the left decries, by erasing the reality of both ancient Jewish presence in the land and also the fact that most of the world’s Jews are not white, nor, since the Holocaust, European.

So what essentially is Zionism? The term is first used in the late 1800s:

Zionism is a variety of Jewish nationalism. It claims that Jews constitute a nation whose survival, both physical and cultural, requires its return to the Jews’ ancestral home in the Land of Israel. Pre-1948 Zionism was more than a nationalist movement: it was a revolutionary project to remake the Jewish people. Zionism’s origins lay in a confluence of factors: physical persecution of East European Jewry, Jewish assimilation in the West, and a Hebrew cultural revival that rejected or transformed traditional Jewish religiosity. 

Zionism is not an idle, armchair philosophy; it grew out of the fact that Jews were being massacred in Eastern Europe, and second class citizens throughout much of the rest of the world – and no one cared. To be a Zionist was to come to the realization that Jews had no future in Europe, and in that way only it is a movement associated with white European Jews. Colonialism is a charge that is rightly laid at the feet of the British and the French – and, just like a woman might do to gain her objective, powerless Jews were attempting to achieve safety while dodging globally powerful political interests.

If you use the term anti-Zionist to describe yourself, is it because you oppose the current government of Israel’s actions? Or because you oppose the idea that Jews have a basic human right to go home – a “right of return” to the ancient home?

These are two very different things. If the former, then you need a different term, or you are letting the antisemitic left define your identity for you – unlike those Arabs and Jews dedicated to co-existence, the two-state solution, and the absolute worth of each human individual. Yes, there is a lot that is wrong with the state of Israel; but that is also true of every state. As a Jew you own the history, culture, land and people of Israel, and the honorable course is to dedicate yourself to making it better – in the same way that as a citizen of your own city you should support and work for righteousness within it.

Or do you call yourself an anti-Zionist because you are trying to signal to your friends on the left that you are not one of “those Jews”? In the end it will not help you; those “friends” on the left will abandon you. The way of condemnation only feeds the hatred in the world. Being anti-anything does not support the stronger way of love which we must learn.

For me and for many progressive Jews who do not live in Israel, our Zionism consists of dedicating ourselves to support of the organizations on the ground in Israel and Palestine that are not antisemitic, nor thoughtless, nor hypocritical. We support organizations like the Palestinian House of Hope Vision School that teach non-violence and offer children positive role models for a good life amidst trauma. 

On this Hanukkah when we need more light, not more heat, so badly, consider how well you know what you are saying, and what it means to the community that will always be there for you – unlike the American left. As you light one more candle or oil lamp each night, may the increasing light bring greater illumination, so that we can see what hurts and repair it together. 

Shabbat shalom and hag orot sameakh,

Shabbat VaYetze: She’arit Yisrael

There are two concepts in Jewish law that help to frame it all: להתחילה l’hat’khilah and בדיעבד b’di’avad. 

L’hat’khilah captures the Jewish mindset of the Ideal – we might express it using a phrase like “all things being equal” or just “ideally”. In halakhah, the Jewish path of life, it expresses the sense of how you feel when you are just starting out.

B’di’avad means “after it happened.” The concept stands exactly opposite to l’hat’khilah: while ideally HaShem meant for us to live in a garden, now we are dealing with life outside and beyond that (divine?) dream of perfection.

Parashat VaYetze is a moment of coming to terms with the chasm between how we envisioned it and what we’re actually dealing with in just this way. The term יצא yetze means “go out.” In so many aspects of the story we are walking with human beings who must face the contrast between what they hoped and what is in their hands, between the mindset they had cherished for their existence and its ruins, which they now go out from toward whatever will be now, in real life:

Jacob, freshly blessed by his father as the favored child, nonetheless running for his life from his cheated brother; and Rachel and Leah, sisters both married to Jacob, one realizing that she is not loved and the other that she is not able to get pregnant. Life goes in and one must walk its path, choosing at every moment how to step among the rubble of perfect dreams and plans that will not be realized.

My teacher, Dr Byron Sherwin ז“ל used to say that the difference between the two states of being is that the former is a state of “messianic ethics,” while we live in a world of “messy ethics.” Life is often disappointing, people are usually hurting, and nothing really works out the way you thought it would, or hoped.

For our teachers who seek illumination from mystical teachings, the pain and disappointment of our lives is traceable to a brokenness in the world, or what we would call the universe, but what we might more mystically call the All, the place in which we all dwell within HaShem in a unity that connects each of us to each other in ways both profoundly necessary and consciously unbearable.

Our siblings in Israel are going out from the bedrock belief they had in the institutions of their society to protect and defend them. The very ground of their lives, and in a real way, ours as well, has shifted forever – whether or not you felt the shifting already years ago in warnings that this State was not upholding its own stated ideals for how it would treat all peoples within its borders, or whether you were able to rest confidently in the idea that all would be well one day soon and that in the meantime all the human rights abuses were in service to security.

Members of our own community struggle in different ways to find our path as we are forced into a similar kind of going out from what we thought was our world. The antisemitism so many experience, as we see that what pains us does not bring empathy from those we thought were our friends and trusted comrades, leaves us isolated and grieving.

The American Jewish community is now experiencing something that many of our people never thought possible: that this country, too, is only a stop along the way in our long Jewish Exile. This is a time for deep and courageous Torah study; we need to be able to let the veils fall from our eyes and ask our ancestors for the wisdom of their bidi’avad lives and learning. 

Our ancestors did not – at least not all of them – fall apart under the emotional stress of having to pick their way through the rubble of their dreams. Some of them managed to discern a messily ethical way forward, and they are the ones we follow. Not those who diminish themselves into complaints and attacks on others, but those whose hearts grow stronger, and whose vision does not falter despite the proximate collapse.

Jacob went forth as his tarnished, damaged self into a void of the unknown, and it did not empty his life of meaning. Rachel and Leah both built enduring houses of descendants both biological and adopted, demonstrating new ways of creating family and relationships. 

In our own day, as our resilience is tested, may we find the strength and courage to act in ways that transcend our disappointment and fear, and so be counted among those whom our tradition praises as she’arit Yisrael, the “saving remnant of Israel.” It’s a term we’ve used for a long time as a way to look for the path forward as some few who manage to hold it together show us, ever since the first days of the first Exile:

“Because you have all become dross, therefore behold, I gather you together.” (Ezekiel 22.19) Therefore He gathered them to send them into exile, because through this the good among them will be sorted out and will be a remnant and a remainder in their exile, as it says “The Lord showed me two pots of figs…” (Jeremiah 24:1) It explains there that the exile of Yochanya was like good figs, because He sent them to Babylon for the good as a saved remnant separating them from the bad figs which remained there and were a curse.  (Malbim on Ezekiel 22:19:1)

We don’t know what’s next; we only know that we are profoundly fortunate to be part of a people that is familiar with the broken heart, so that on the day when we ourselves face hard times, we are not alone. Even better, we have teachings to guide us while we stumble about, not entirely in the darkness, and stressed out. The Kotzker Rebbe, who knew a little something about what it means to live a hard life, once taught:

Why is it written in the Shema “put these words upon your heart” rather than in your heart? Because a person who is whole and happy cannot let anything into their heart. So we lay the words on our hearts until the day when the heart breaks. Only on that day will the words find their way in.

Hazak hazak v’nit’hazek, let us find our strength together,

Shabbat VaYera:

Summoning Light from Darkness

The human eye has a white surface surrounding a black pupil. Contrary to what you might expect, we do not see with the white of the eye but with the black part. Rabbenu Bahya, BaMidbar 8.2.3

Judaism is an ancient tradition, and to belong to it is to know that no matter what is happening to you and to us, we have a precedent for it; “there is nothing new under the sun” said the author of Kohelet, Ecclesiastes (Eccl. 1.9). Our Jewish response (not reaction – that’s emotional) to terror and to joy is the same: “this too is Torah and I must learn it.” (BT Berakhot 62a) And so here we are again, bearing our sorrow and our fear, our anger and our love, bringing it all to our shared holy space: Torah Study.

This is the second year of the Triennial Cycle for Torah reading, and so in parashat VaYera we begin with a story that most of us would rather not engage; the wholesale destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It’s easy uplifting to focus upon our ancestor Abraham’s noble argument with HaShem not to destroy the cities, lest the innocent be destroyed with the guilty – yet we know that the cities are in fact destroyed, including any good people who may have lived there, along with the evil. 

It’s as clear as any child’s intuitively wise question about the Flood: what did the animals do? Destruction is never “clean.”

Immediately our thoughts may turn to the Israeli bombing of Gaza and the innocent people dying there, along with their “elected” government, the Hamas terrorists. Our broken hearts for our murdered people in southern Israel are further agonized knowing that they were innocent of (and activist against!) their own government’s evil acts.

The sages of our Talmud explore the terrible truth: that good is more often than not swept away with evil. They begin with Abraham’s plea: “shall not the Judge of all the earth do Justice?” (Gen. 18.25), and they find in HaShem’s answer a light we might also use against all this encroaching darkness, even though many will die who are innocent, and much that is true will be falsified.

וַיֹּ֣אמֶר ה’ אִם־אֶמְצָ֥א בִסְדֹ֛ם חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים צַדִּיקִ֖ם בְּת֣וֹךְ הָעִ֑יר וְנָשָׂ֥אתִי לְכׇל־הַמָּק֖וֹם בַּעֲבוּרָֽם׃ 

And ‘ה answered, “If I find within the city of Sodom fifty innocent ones, I will forgive the whole place for their sake.” (Gen. 18.26)

The close reading Andalusian Torah commentator Abraham Ibn Ezra draws out a subtle implication:

“The reason for the words “within the city” indicates that they act with righteousness in public.” He compares the words of Jeremiah, speaking for HaShem:

שׁוֹטְט֞וּ בְּחוּצ֣וֹת יְרוּשָׁלַ֗͏ִם וּרְאוּ־נָ֤א וּדְעוּ֙ וּבַקְשׁ֣וּ בִרְחוֹבוֹתֶ֔יהָ אִם־תִּמְצְא֣וּ אִ֔ישׁ אִם־יֵ֛שׁ עֹשֶׂ֥ה מִשְׁפָּ֖ט מְבַקֵּ֣שׁ אֱמוּנָ֑ה וְאֶסְלַ֖ח לָֽהּ׃ 

Roam the streets of Jerusalem, search its squares, look about and take note:

You will not find anyone engaged; there is no one who acts justly, who seeks integrity— that I should pardon her. (Jeremiah 5.1)


Thus we conclude: our tradition has no time for those who would be righteous only within circles where they know they are safe. 

Jeremiah, that poor doomed prophet, did not want to say this: when there is no good person who will stand up “in the streets”, publicly, against groupthink and group actions that are evil, then we are all doomed. Good people will not be fairly treated, nor miraculously rescued, and separating themselves from the evil will not avail. To believe that their good intentions will save those who have not acted upon them is childish. As it has been said: life is not fair: it is, simply, life.


Our Torah reminds us that “it is not far away across the sea” or up in heaven, but in our mouths and our hands, to do it (Deut. 30.13).

We have seen repeatedly in our learning that it is the individual withdrawal from community, aka the public, that brings about wholesale destruction of what Deuteronomy calls “moist and dry alike” (Deut. 29.18). The withdrawal can take many forms: Not acting because I’m not directly affected
Withdrawing from a greater force to protect myself alone
Separating myself because I feel unappreciated 
Shutting off from the outside due to feeling overwhelmed 
Taking care only of my own loved ones

You can probably add more versions of this from your own observation – and maybe even your own actions. “Devil take the hindmost” which we call in Jewish Amalek, preys on weakness, fear, and especially anger. Anger is the most destructive of emotions because it does not build community but contributes to its destruction. It separates us from each other when we need each other the most.

This has been our learning since Yom Kippur: we have no guarantee that our story turns out to be happy in the end. The wisdom of Jewish tradition urges us to focus on each day as its own end. “Justice, justice you must pursue” (Deut. 16.20) indicates that means as well as ends must be just. Meeting anger with anger is wrong; meeting injustice with injustice is wrong; meeting death with death is wrong.

Justice, starting with the refusal to withdraw from community, is simple. It requires only remembering not to react, but respond. We can’t help the emotion of reaction, but we can rise above giving ourselves permission to act upon it, toward the empathy that sheds light upon us all. That is the true righteousness we need in our day, to illuminate our streets.


As HaShem asked Abram to do, according to our Sages, in the original lekh l’kha call he heard: בא והאר לפני bo, v’ha’eyr l’fanai: come and light the way for Me. Let your light of kindness and empathy, of graciousness and compassion, shine, even as you yourself need it; there is much darkness ahead, and you, yourself, are needed.

Shabbat shalom,

 שנשמע בסורות טובות

نرجو أن تأتي إلينا أخبار سارة

May we hear good tidings, 

Rabbi Ariel

_______________________________________________

אַחֵינוּ כָּל בֵּית יִשְׂרָאֵלהַנְּתוּנִים בַּצָּרָה וּבַשִּׁבְיָההָעוֹמְדִים בֵּין בַּיָּם וּבֵין בַּיַּבָּשָׁההַמָּקוֹםיְרַחֵם עֲלֵיהֶםוְיוֹצִיאֵםמִצָּרָה לִרְוָחָהוּמֵאֲפֵלָה לְאוֹרָה וּמִשִּׁעְבּוּד לִגְאֻלָּההָשָׁתָא בַּעֲגָלָא וּבִזְמַן קָרִיב וְאִמְרוּ אָמֵן


Our siblings of the house of Israel

Who are given over to suffering and captivity

Whether at sea or on land

HaMakom 

Be compassion upon them

And bring them out from darkness to light

From bondage to redemption

Now, quickly and soon in our day

And let us say

Amen

From Whence Our Help

The established leadership of the American Jewish community is freaking out. Why is the response to the horrific events of October 7 2023 in some ways more extreme here than in Israel?

For some time now I’ve been convinced that we are in transition to a new Third Era of Jewish life; that as a result of their experience of modernity, the Jewish people is not dying or disappearing, but we are profoundly in a process of transforming. Statistics that show that in the United States, one of the largest Diaspora communities of Jewish life, many Jews do not attend shul nor have a rabbi, nor keep kosher nor keep Shabbat. For about two thousand years this these were the markers of Jewish identity.

Those same statistics show that millions of U.S. families include at least one self-identifying Jew who acts out of that sense of Jewish identity in strong cultural, social and artistic ways. I know many older Jews who feel completely distanced from religious  community – they are more likely to have found a spiritual home in Buddhism – and whose major act of Jewish identification is sometimes to assert that they would never hide their Jewishness.

What is their Jewishness? In the 20th century it seems to have become more and more dependent upon the State of Israel. The early Zionists were secularist, and they created a secular religion. Many U.S. Jews who don’t see the point of belonging to a shul habitually speak of Israel using religious terms they would never use elsewhere in Judaism: the miracle of Israel. 

There was a rabbi who lived at the time of the Jewish wars against Rome who said that if these were what the birth pangs of the Messiah were like, well, let the Messiah come when HaShem wills, but he would rather not be around for it. The suffering is terrible.

And we are undergoing some taste of that suffering now, in all directions. Because of antisemitism, our young people who find their deepest connection with Judaism to be through their social justice work find themselves turned away from so many leftist spaces unless they are willing to leave their Jewish identity at the door. And very many of them do, because they have nowhere to go to find strength to resist – or they end up in anti-Zionist spaces, effectively cutting themselves off from the established Jewish community. They are lost to any of us who require their allegiance to the State of Israel in its current form.

And O for that beloved and tortured state of our people. Our ancestral homeland. The place where, my Israeli cousin born and raised there of immigrant parents who survived the Holocaust, said, “it vomited us out twice before, it could happen again.” He said that during the second Intifada in 2001. This man who has helped to build the miracle of Israel, raising a moshav from sand and a prosperous business from chicken sheds, would have bought a farm in New Zealand if his grown children had been willing to move with him. 

Why do the secular Jews of the U.S. continue to support the occupation, excusing it and engaging in victim-blaming to an absurd degree that they would never tolerate in language anywhere else? 

Why do so many secular  U.S. Jews seem willing to ignore the ongoing suffering of Palestinians, when they are first in line to help any other suffering people? 

Why are so many so willing to do what Jewish youth call “leave your Jewish ethics at the door when it comes to Israel”?

The horrors that unfolded on October 7 began on a Shabbat morning which was also Shemini Atzeret on the Jewish holy day calendar. When I was informed by text by my Gabbai that morning, I looked on line and noted that several secular Jewish organizations had already put out emergency emails speaking of the need to unite – and donate. My message to my congregation that morning was not to do anything until after Shabbat, to let Shabbat be a time for grief and anger and the consolations of Torah-centered community. Our Simkhat Torah observance that evening began with lamentations sitting on the floor, and slowly we rose toward the Torah scroll with which we danced, recognizing that this was the greatest form of Jewish resistance.

There is a huge symbolic difference between the U.S. Jews who chose to ignore Shabbat in order to begin rallying the community, and those who respected Shabbat. It has to do with what each group is actually worshipping.

Ever since, I’ve been thinking about the profound difference between Jews who seek out a shul when they are in pain, and Jews who do not. And I’ve been musing on the severity of the feelings aroused in many secular Jews with a close link to Israel. They are using words like “pogrom” and “Babiy Yar” to express their sense of what happened.

But there is one big difference. The State of Israel was founded at least partially because pogroms happen to Jews who are defenseless in Diaspora. As my Israeli cousins and their friends already know, this was a failure of the state. As such for them it is a time very like the 9/11 experience in the U.S. Failures of intelligence and political negligence are a part of both events, and too many innocent people have died horrible deaths as a result of both.

In 1934 my great aunt Rina traveled with her family from Germany to Palestine, and Rina became part of the faithful Zionist fabric of the new state of Israel. She and her growing family went to war, participated joyfully in rationing and cooperated in a kind of social compact that truly seemed miraculous the first time I experienced it as a U.S. Jewish teenager. Shortly before her death we recalled an avocado tree she had planted, which now towers over several houses in her moshav. I asked her how she felt about the state she’d help to build for so many years. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she replied. The second Lebanon war was then in progress.

For any U.S. secular Jew for whom the State of Israel has been a very satisfying religion for 75 years, it’s getting harder to bat away the dismay. As of today, that which secular Jews have placed on top of the Holy Ark instead of HaShem has shown something worse than the “growing pains” or invoking “a harsh neighborhood” we offer as excuse when explaining the political corruption or stalled peace process, or the continuing misery of an occupation of other human beings which Israeli generals already warned in 1967 was going to be a powder keg.

On October 12, less than a week into the horror, an emergency room physician who saw too many devastated bodies on Shabbat said the following:

“I do not separate between Jews and Palestinians; I separate between those who do violence and those who not. I have friends and colleagues who have been killed and kidnapped, and when I hear that we should destroy Gaza it only breaks my heart more.” 

She went on: “here in Beer Sheva we have always known that the government does not care about us. We always are last for infrastructure, for health care, for resources, even less access to shelters. But now something is different; something is broken in Israeli society.”

“I blame the Israeli government as much as I blame Hamas. They left us alone. It is our own civil society that is taking care of us now.”

Unthinkable as it may be, the State of Israel failed its citizens. It is not acting as a Jewish state, not upholding Jewish values, not a haven for Jews. Every Israeli young adult who does their army service in the Occupied Territories is victimized; every Diaspora Jew who wants to support Israel with all their heart is devastated. 

While we do not know what will come next, and I for one pray for peace with all my broken heart, the secular god of so many Jews will never again be what it was for so many of us: a safe Jewish place, where we could trust that the welfare of all Jews came first and foremost for its elected leaders, no matter what else was there to cause dismay.

And when a god dies, we know from ancient Middle Eastern theology, a people disappears. The grounding of the identity of secular Jews has been attacked in a way no enemy could manage. Their response leaves no room for nuance, no room for kindness, and no room for Torah.

This Shabbat we read Bereshit. The haftarah for this Shabbat is, to me, terrifying.

נָסֹ֤גוּ אָחוֹר֙ יֵבֹ֣שׁוּ בֹ֔שֶׁת הַבֹּטְחִ֖ים בַּפָּ֑סֶל הָאֹמְרִ֥ים לְמַסֵּכָ֖ה אַתֶּ֥ם אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ׃ 

Driven back and utterly shamed shall be those who trust in an image,

those who say to idols, ‘You are our gods!’”  (Isaiah 42.17)

If Israel is an idol, we are told from antiquity that HaShem will tear it down. We should and must stand with the people of Israel, for they are our family, but if we worship the state of Israel and, has v’halilah, insist that it inform our spirituality, we have fallen into deepest idolatry. It will not hold us up.