Torah for the 21st Century by Rabbi Ariel Stone

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.

The Mashiakh Is Not Coming

“If you have a sapling in your hand, and someone should say to you that the Messiah has come, stay and complete the planting, and then go to greet the Messiah.”

–Rabbi Yohanan ben Zakkai (Avot de Rabbi Nathan, 31b)

With all due respect to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, their most famous creation, Superman, is a con job. A great big con job. So is Wonder Woman, by the way. And, by logical extension, so is the Messiah.

Why? Because by the very fact of their existence, as they invite us to imagine it, we see ourselves as less than. They can save the world. And we, who are not inhuman, super powered creatures, cannot.

Somebody Save Me!

Let’s look at this Superman guy, in his cape and tights. The character was created by two young Jews from immigrant families who had fled persecution. Most of their relatives were back there, trapped, threatened by the evil of rising fascism in Europe on one side and just as much by the immigration quotas enacted by the United States Congress on the other.

It’s the plot device of so much Hollywood: “only one person can save them.” What is Superman if not a projected wish to save one’s relatives from evil? In Michael Chabon’s book about it, a character wonders: ”Superman, you don’t think he’s Jewish? Coming over from the old country, changing his name like that. Clark Kent, only a Jew would pick a name like that for himself.’’

Why was Superman so instantly popular as a comic book character in the 1930s and 1940s for Jews – and others – if not precisely because of the escapist relief he provided from an all too grim and inescapable reality? There is nothing remotely realistic about a Superman who is seen as “a symbol of American patriotism in his blue-and-red uniform, [fighting] tyrants and dictators and even apprehend[ing] both Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin in a special comic prepared in 1940 for Look magazine.”

Ah but this is wonderful! If only it could have happened! And it is an escapist fantasy that belongs in the comics because no individual can overcome great evil. Not a human individual. None of us have the power to save a loved one, or a city, from tragedy. Superman was, after all, the only survivor of his entire doomed planet. That world is gone. So is Bialystok; so is Cordoba; so is Bari, for the Jews. There are no Jews there anymore, and no one Jew alive at the time could stop it.

The same is true of tragedy that does not spring from human evil. Every parent of a teenager knows that there are fatal accidents; anyone ever caught in a power outage during a heat dome knows that there are life-threatening weather events; all of us who are alive live every day of our lives knowing that there are mortal diseases.

For the Jewish orientation to ethics, it’s dangerous to indulge in Superman and Wonder Woman fantasies, because it contorts our understanding of what it means for us to activate our real human potential to care, and to act, in the world. To put it another way, we each have a yetzer hara’, an “evil impulse” which is at the root of all our desires to turn away from what we are obligated to do in life, by life. And sometimes the yetzer is cloaked, insidiously, in the language of goodness: “I should do that mitzvah, and I would, but it won’t make a difference, really. It doesn’t matter what I do.”

How often when you look at the news do you feel terrible because you feel helpless to do something – whether it be human suffering in a faraway town or in a tent on a nearby street. And how often does that sense of helplessness cause you to turn away and do nothing at all, because it would only be “a drop in the bucket.” Since we cannot save the world, we might conclude, it is hopeless to do anything. At that point what is most in danger is our ability to believe in the meaning and purpose of our little, individual, human, not super-powered, normal lives.

That’s your yetzer hara’ talking, and on this Rosh HaShanah eve of the Days of Awe, we have ten days to consider how to outsmart it.

II. We are not the Messiah, we are just human

Damn you, Superman and Wonder Woman and all the rest of Hollywood, you’ve become idols. We measure our existence in these unreal terms of men of steel and women with magic lassos who can always find out the truth. And we always come up short, and we look at our human hands and consider our human potential and know that we are not super. Little me. If only I had the money I could effect meaningful change. If only I had the political power I could make a difference. If only I had the audience of a celebrity I could move the hearts and minds of millions.

And so instead of believing in the teaching of our Jewish tradition, which urges us to cherish the mitzvah as the highest form of human behavior, we are tempted to go along with Western society, and put our faith in money, in political power, and in celebrity.

The age old problem with idolatry is not that anyone is actually worshipping wood and stone, as the ancient prophets told the story. They were deliberately dismissing a much more problematic idea. Ancient human beings as well as modern ones want more than anything else to define and therefore understand the forces of our lives, and so learn where to put our trust. Which horse to bet on, in more colloquial terms.

Idolatry in every age is the same: it’s the act of defining the power that you feel certain will save you in human terms. Yes, it’s true, we have no other terms, but it’s also true that, as one Rabbi put it, “any G*d I could define, I couldn’t believe in.”

Let’s consider this problem by recalling our ancient Jewish concept of the messiah. The term Mashiakh means the anointed one. A quick flip through the pages of our Tanakh will show you that more than one human is anointed to indicate special status: the prophet Shmu’el anoints the young soon-to-be-king David right in his father’s backyard, and the High Priest Aaron gets anointed, along with the altar itself, on the day that the Mishkan is dedicated and the sacrificial cult described in the book of Leviticus is initiated.

The mashiakh, the anointed one, is a person who is a divinely appointed and socially recognized leader. During the long struggle of Jewish life under Roman oppression, the idea of a messiah who would lead us in rebellion against the Roman Empire arose: the true messiah would be none other than a descendent of the long ago anointed King David. This person would be destined for the kingship, but also a charismatic warrior who could rally the people and restore us to freedom. The third revolt against Rome was led by such a person, or so our ancestors believed: Shimon Bar Kosiva, under whose leadership a new Jewish republic was founded in the year 132 C.E. It lasted three years, and he was killed by the Romans at the final battle, in Betar.

Not unlike any other concept of the final salvation, the death of this messiah did not stop our people hoping for some kind of final rescue and return to home and country. In Exile now, our concept of the messiah necessarily became more fantastic: by the medieval period, our midrash speaks of the messiah hanging out with HaShem in heaven, just waiting for the right day to descend to earth and bring about the End of Days, and the happy ever after for us Jews.

And so in our desire to believe in instant one-fell-swoop salvation, our religious tradition made the messiah into a divine figure. Never mind what other religious traditions have done! The desire to believe in something or someone that has the power to fix it for us is so strong. That’s why we root for Greta Thunberg, a youth who has been striking from schoolwork every Friday for years now, to demand that we pay attention to climate change. That’s why we celebrate individual heroes like her; they are making a difference, we say. But are they? A UN report following up on the 2015 Paris Accords published on September 8 found that

“Governments are failing to cut greenhouse gas emissions fast enough to meet the goals of the Paris agreement and to stave off climate disaster, a major report by the UN has found.….There is a “rapidly narrowing window” for governments to move faster, according to the report, as global greenhouse gas emissions must peak by 2025 at the latest, and be rapidly reduced from there, to limit temperature rises to 1.5 Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Emissions are still rising, however.”

Greta has done a lot by making the problem more visible. But she cannot do it by herself. She can only do what a human being can do. She’s not the messiah. She can’t rescue us; she spoke at Davos and nothing, nothing changed.

The messianic hope devalues our ability to believe in the necessity of what you and I can do and should do every day. And the problem is that while we are struggling with our inability to save the world, we are distracted from what we actually can do.

Have you seen the the meme … wait, first I should ask if you know what a meme is? A meme is created when you take a photo or picture and use it to illustrate an idea, by way of comparison to the content of the photo or picture.

There is a meme that always comes to mind for me when I think about the challenge of believing in individual actions against the backdrop of great evil. The photo is of three boats surrounding a fire on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. The three boats are fire-boats, and they are each pouring water onto the raging fire. That photo has been shared on social media as a meme: the raging fire is labeled as Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and Richard Brandon, three billionaires all competing to shoot the best rocket into space. The idea here is that their competition is adding tremendously to the human-caused emissions that trap heat in the earth’s atmosphere and add to global warming. And the fire-boats, directing their small arcs of water onto the fire to what seems to be no effect at all? That’s you and me, conscientiously not using plastic straws.

The yetzer hara’ really scores with that one. Because when we feel incompetent we let ourselves off the hook for what we are capable of doing. We don’t even start, because what can the small efforts of you and I even accomplish? If we can’t save the world, why even try? What good is one drop in a bucket anyway?

When we cease to believe in what we are capable of doing, according to Jewish ethical tradition, this is the final victory of the yetzer hara’. What difference will one mitzvah make? And slowly, the bucket gets lighter as the water evaporates, and slowly, we become aware of a great and profound thirst.

III. Be Kind

On Rosh HaShanah we add this verse from Psalms to our prayers:

תִּקְע֣וּ בַחֹ֣דֶשׁ שׁוֹפָ֑ר בַּ֝כֵּ֗סֶה לְי֣וֹם חַגֵּֽנוּ׃

Blow the horn on the new moon, when the moon is covered, for the festival.

This is different from all our other festivals, which take place at the full moon, when the light is brightest all day and all night for celebrating. Rosh HaShanah is observed bakeseh l’yom hageynu, when the moon is covered, or hidden by darkness. On this day we are to seek out and lift up what we can barely see: this is the new moon of that which is not yet, that which is possible.

Did you know that in 1993 the comic book writers killed off Superman? And in ancient Jewish theology, it turns out that the Messiah dies too (that’s why a second, supernatural Messiah appears). Wonder Woman seems to be okay for now (just don’t get me started on the suppression of female divinity in the world).

On this Rosh HaShanah of 5784 I urge you to consider with me what it will take for you to put aside the siren call of the yetzer hara’ that undervalues your acts. Our people has faced the kind of challenge we cannot overcome before, and it has not enervated us. We as a people have not given in to the temptation of helplessness and the luxury of feeling sorry for ourselves and our suffering. Rabbi Kalonymos Kalman Shapira and his congregation kept studying Torah in the Warsaw Ghetto. Jews didn’t stop following the Jewish life path because of the Inquisition. And after Bar Kosiva died, our ancestors kept on believing that life is still beautiful and worth living.

In one of the most powerful prayers of the High Holy Days, the unetaneh tokef, we contemplate the many ways we live, and in which we will die. We are not assured of justice or “fairness” in that poem. It ends with the assurance that teshuvah, tefilah and tzedakah are the three practices that create and support a meaningful life, short and anxious as it may be.

Teshuvah, turning away from what you know is not your best and highest potential.

Tefilah, the time and, by extension, patience that it takes to be with your community and by yourself to contemplate and internalize, and settle, and ground yourself in your highest potential.

And Tzedakah, which we know as justice, as practiced in daily acts. This is the most important task we undertake as human beings – and we have an effective tool, you might say almost a superpower, to make the difference we can make. And we’re not talking here about systemic justice – that’s another distraction. Jewish tradition insists that you must do justice in all your every day acts – and that this is the highest human bar.

The small superpower that we have at our disposal is called hesed. Kindness. Kindness is the best resistance we have to the yetzer hara’ that tells us that nothing we do makes a difference. As one poet has urged us:

Why not

inundate the world with minute small

Kindnesses?

Dust is certainly all our fate, so why not

Make it the happiest possible dust,

A detritus of kindnesses?

The practice of kindness may not seem to be a superpower, but before you dismiss it, consider the power of kindness as you know it in your own life, and think about how hard it is to remember to be kind when you feel upset or hurt. Being able to be kind under all circumstances is the obverse of letting oneself feel anger, and if the rabbis call anger the most destructive emotion, then where are we with kindness if not looking at the key to our most creative potential?

Where are we going, you and I? Where are we headed, on this pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan called it? As he put it, there is no indication that any power is here to save us but ourselves. In a world full of messages that bigger is better, we have to learn that small is the most precious of all.

We have a group in our community of people who know this to be true: it’s our Hesed Committee. They do small kindnesses, like bring you groceries if you’re unable to get out, or give you a ride to shul or a doctor’s appointment when you need it. Each of these small acts saves us. It saves us from our own despair, our private cynicism, our doubts. If you’re not on that committee, you should join it. Ideally those who care and are willing to do acts of kindness for others should be all of us, no?

It’s dark out there, and there’s only a hint of possibility on a night like this. On this Rosh HaShanah I tell you that it is not too dark in your life to believe in the power of the small acts of kindness you do and can do. They are needed. They are a drop, yes, each one is only a drop. And in this room alone we might this evening find that one act of kindness by each of us is already enough to keep the voice of the yetzer hara’ just far enough away to function – on a human level. Not a Superman level. No messiahs here.

I conclude with a poem I’ve always loved ever since I found it twenty years ago. The author is unknown. That seems fitting, since so much is unknown to us on this evening. But the poem speaks an eternal truth.

Because What Do I Know about Love

Except that we are at sea in it

– and parched for its lack?

Let down your buckets, my dears.

Haul up the sweet, swaying spill.

Tilt your face to the stream.

Be washed.

Be drenched.

Turn loose

the dripping dogs to shake themselves among you.

Flood the decks; fill the cisterns.

Then drink, and find it fresh.

You have sailed all unknowing

into your home river.

Yom Kippur 5784: Ethics of the Apocalypse

Introduction: something’s burning

The time is urgent. As our ancestors put it in that ancient compendium of ethical sound bites called Pirke Avot,

רַבִּי טַרְפוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַיּוֹם קָצָר וְהַמְּלָאכָה מְרֻבָּה, וְהַפּוֹעֲלִים עֲצֵלִים, וְהַשָּׂכָר הַרְבֵּה, וּבַעַל הַבַּיִת דּוֹחֵק

Rabbi Tarfon said: The day is short and the work is much, and the workers are lazy, and the reward is great, and the Master of the house is pressing.

The day is short: we’re all going to die. The only question is how you we meet our death, and whether we’ll be able to say “this is what the work of my life meant” and feel good about it, at some point before that.

The secular world would bid me goodbye after my death with a eulogy, which is Greek for “speaking well [of a person]”. But Jewish culture requires that you see me off with a hesped, which literally refers to striking, as we do I the stylized gesture we use during the Ashamnu. So a hesped must be a message that goes straight to the heart. No niceties. Just the facts, ma’am.

The facts as we know them at this moment are somewhat grim. As the sign said in 2019: (see sign above)

The recent Portland and Salem school walkout to demand action on the climate emergency reminds me of a similar walkout in 2019, on Sept 20, exactly four years ago. That’s where I took the photograph of the sign above. It seems that a lifetime has passed since then, as we passed through COVID lockdown, catastrophic fires and more – and many people’s lifetimes have ended. But some things remain the same: the climate emergency is still with us.

Children are marching.

Children are taking fossil fuel companies to court.

Children are insisting that we do not look away from the Emperor without clothes.

אָמַר רַבִּי יוֹחָנָן: מִיּוֹם שֶׁחָרַב בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ, נִיטְּלָה נְבוּאָה מִן הַנְּבִיאִים וְנִיתְּנָה לַשּׁוֹטִים וְלַתִּינוֹקוֹת.

Rabbi Yoḥanan said: From the day that the Temple was destroyed, prophecy was taken from the prophets and given to shutim and children.

“Shutim” from the Hebrew word pashut, or p’shat, the simple, obvious meaning of something. Tonight I invite you to join me in attempting not to look away from the simple and the obvious.

I. A Time for Prophecy

Following the lead of our prophetic children about our existential situation, let’s look further to our ancient prophets for guidance.

Amos’ plumb line 7.7-8

כֹּ֣ה הִרְאַ֔נִי וְהִנֵּ֧ה ה’ נִצָּ֖ב עַל־חוֹמַ֣ת אֲנָ֑ךְ וּבְיָד֖וֹ אֲנָֽךְ

This is what I was shown: HaShem was standing on a wall checked with a plumb line while holding a plumb line.

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר ה’ אֵלַ֗י מָֽה־אַתָּ֤ה רֹאֶה֙ עָמ֔וֹס וָאֹמַ֖ר אֲנָ֑ךְ וַיֹּ֣אמֶר אֲדֹנָ֗י הִנְנִ֨י שָׂ֤ם אֲנָךְ֙…לֹא־אוֹסִ֥יף ע֖וֹד עֲב֥וֹר לֽוֹ

And HaShem asked me, “What do you see, Amos?” “A plumb line,” I replied. And my Sovereign declared, “I am going to apply a plumb line; I will not continue to overlook [the sin].

Jeremiah’s almond tree 1.10-12

עַל־הַגּוֹיִם֙ וְעַל־הַמַּמְלָכ֔וֹת לִנְת֥וֹשׁ וְלִנְת֖וֹץ וּלְהַאֲבִ֣יד וְלַהֲר֑וֹס לִבְנ֖וֹת וְלִנְטֽוֹעַ

For all nations and kingdoms

[there is a time]

Of uproot and downturn,

Of destruction and overthrowing,

Even as there is a time to build and to plant.

וַיְהִ֤י דְבַר־יה’ אֵלַ֣י לֵאמֹ֔ר מָה־אַתָּ֥ה רֹאֶ֖ה יִרְמְיָ֑הוּ וָאֹמַ֕ר מַקֵּ֥ל שָׁקֵ֖ד אֲנִ֥י רֹאֶֽה׃

The word of HaShem came to me: What do you see, Jeremiah?

I replied: I see a branch of an almond tree.

וַיֹּ֧אמֶר ה’ אֵלַ֖י הֵיטַ֣בְתָּ לִרְא֑וֹת כִּֽי־שֹׁקֵ֥ד אֲנִ֛י עַל־דְּבָרִ֖י לַעֲשֹׂתֽוֹ׃

HaShem said to me:

You have seen right,

For I am [shoked] watchful to bring My word to pass.

Malakhi’s day burning like a kiln 3.19

כִּֽי־הִנֵּ֤ה הַיּוֹם֙ בָּ֔א בֹּעֵ֖ר כַּתַּנּ֑וּר וְהָי֨וּ כׇל־זֵדִ֜ים וְכׇל־עֹשֵׂ֤ה רִשְׁעָה֙ קַ֔שׁ וְלִהַ֨ט אֹתָ֜ם הַיּ֣וֹם הַבָּ֗א אָמַר֙ ה’ אֲשֶׁ֛ר לֹא־יַעֲזֹ֥ב לָהֶ֖ם שֹׁ֥רֶשׁ וְעָנָֽף׃

For lo! That day is at hand, burning like an oven. All the arrogant and all the doers of evil shall be straw, and the day that is coming—says HaShem —shall burn them to ashes, and there will be left of them neither stock nor boughs.

II. What can we learn from our children?

Rule #1: Be Here Now. Children are experts in living in the moment. No time travel; stop being goal-oriented i.e. “all those years for what.” Not living in the moment is actually one of the more dire curses listed in the book of Deuteronomy:

בַּבֹּ֤קֶר תֹּאמַר֙ מִֽי־יִתֵּ֣ן עֶ֔רֶב וּבָעֶ֥רֶב תֹּאמַ֖ר מִֽי־יִתֵּ֣ן בֹּ֑קֶר מִפַּ֤חַד לְבָֽבְךָ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּפְחָ֔ד וּמִמַּרְאֵ֥ה עֵינֶ֖יךָ אֲשֶׁ֥ר תִּרְאֶֽה׃

During the night you will wish it was morning, and in the morning you will say if only this day was over—because of what your heart shall dread and your eyes shall see.

Planning ahead is a trap: “I’ll do that tomorrow” or as our tradition teaches, “one who says ‘I’ll find time to study tomorrow’ will never have time to study.” What would your life today look like, ethically, if you knew you didn’t have tomorrow? Repent one day before your death.

Be absorbed in the moment. Make the moment your world.

2. Rule #2: Make a Wish: stop using battle language in which you either have to win or be a loser, because we’re all going to lose. Instead, be kind.

I think it was Anne Roiphe who, in the New York Times years ago, called attention to the way we use the language of war to talk about illness, which to the sufferer and their loved ones is clearly a moment of impending catastrophe. The language is irresponsible, she suggested: does that mean that those who die aren’t fighting hard enough? That they are “losers”?

There is another way of facing a challenge, a way that does not require “keeping your powder dry”, “taking no prisoners”, or wielding some kind of “secret weapon.”

Instead, perhaps we can find meaning and purpose in gently but stubbornly insisting on wielding kindness. Many years ago I was fortunate enough to know a man, a Holocaust survivor, who became a hotel owner in Central Florida. He created an organization called Give Kids the World solelyto support the huge number of dying children whose last wish was to go to Disney World. This came about because one day he had agreed to fund the hotel stay of a family whose child, Amy, was dying of leukemia; he later discovered that she had died without ever making the trip, due to the backlog in hotel room reservations. He vowed that he would see that this never happened again if he could help it.

He was a person who had experienced Auschwitz as a child, and who may very well have learned from that personal horror that a child’s life can be unfair and even tragic, but he saw no reason for that experience to be the only way to understand life. His name was Henri Landwirth ז“ל and his story is, to me, an example of a person who succeeded in rising above the hegemonic narrative of his life.

The “hegemonic narrative” is the context out of which we understand the story of our lives. Most of us go through life never even being aware of it, but all our understanding of “how things should be” and “what matters” depends upon it. The way we grow up and the experiences we undergo, the things we are taught and the role modeling we are shown, all create it.

Yet the hegemonic narrative of our lives, the basic assumptions we make about how things are, can change. My understanding of what our prophetic children is telling us is that it must change.

If your basic belief is that you have to win some experiential battle, you’re wrong. If you assume you must set a goal in the future and meet it, you’re mistaken. And if you think you can take care of yourself all by yourself, you may indeed end up in the same place as the rest of us, but you’ll be lonely – and more, you’ll be unable to help someone else.

3. Rule #3: Go Find Mommy

אָמַר רַבִּי חֲנִינָא בַּר פָּפָּא: כׇּל הַנֶּהֱנֶה מִן הָעוֹלָם הַזֶּה בְּלֹא בְּרָכָה כְּאִילּוּ גּוֹזֵל לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא וּכְנֶסֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״גּוֹזֵל אָבִיו וְאִמּוֹ וְאוֹמֵר אֵין פָּשַׁע חָבֵר הוּא לְאִישׁ מַשְׁחִית״. וְאֵין ״אָבִיו״ אֶלָּא הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״הֲלֹא הוּא אָבִיךְ קָּנֶךָ״, וְאֵין ״אִמּוֹ״ אֶלָּא כְּנֶסֶת יִשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״אַל תִּטּוֹשׁ תּוֹרַת אִמֶּךָ״.

Rabbi Ḥanina bar Pappa said: Anyone who derives benefit from this world without a blessing, it is as if he stole from God and the community of Israel, as it is stated: “Whoever robs his father and his mother and says: It is no transgression, he is the companion of a destroyer” (Proverbs 28:24). The phrase, his father, refers to none other than HaShem, as it is stated: “Is HaShem not your father Who created you.” (Deuteronomy 32:6). The phrase his mother refers to none other than the community of Israel, as it is stated: “do not forsake the Torah of your mother” (Proverbs 1:8). The mention of the Torah as emanating from the mouth of the mother, apparently means that your mother is the community of Israel.

This powerful rabbinical comment asserts that we have parents and it is destructive to attempt to ignore or deny our connection to all the people that nurtures, or parents, us. We didn’t appear here all by ourselves; we were nurtured into being and kept alive. And we all need our mommy – we all need community to hold us when the narrative of our lives is uncertain and scary.

We don’t know if it’s going to be all right. Our community exists so that we don’t have to consider that possibility alone.

Conclusion: Only Love

When I meet with a brit mitzvah family to talk about the process of preparing to be called to the Torah for the first time, I try to explain Jewish prayer in community by using the metaphor of driving a bus. Every Shabbat morning the Shir Tikvah community gathers to daven (an undefinable Yiddish word which means so much more than prayer).

Because prayer is supposed to move you, you can think about joining for prayer as getting on a bus together. Every Shabbat morning different people serves as shatz, the person who leads the prayers. It’s like driving the bus. Anyone can do it who has learned how. On a morning when one of our young people is called to the Torah for the first time in the ritual of brit mitzvah, we give them a turn at it.

Our human destiny is usefully regarded through the lens of this metaphor. We are all together on a bus. We’re not able to control the driver; we’re not able to be double check the safety judgements of the bus company; we are not guaranteed that some accident won’t happen along the way.

There are signposts that we’re passing along the way on our shared journey. Some of them are warning signs. There are plumb lines clearly showing where the driver is going astray, and more. It doesn’t look good. The children among us are asking what is going on, and the children are less willing – and less able – to be distracted.

As a spiritual community that is dedicated to caring for each other as we share the space inside our bus, we have to do our best to hold hands and find mommy, by which we mean the community of Israel, as Rav Hanina bar Pappa said. We have to be here for each other now, which means to find the courage not to look away, and the willingness to open our hearts to each other and to our children, who seek what we don’t want to see.

It may be that all we can do now is perfect our understanding of the ethics of the apocalypse. We may very well be going off a cliff, and it matters, it matters, it matters how we do it. Hold hands, and hold on.

If nothing can save us from death,

At least let love save us from life.

– Pablo Neruda

Shabbat Ki Tavo: You Need Ritual

וְהָיָה֙ כִּֽי־תָב֣וֹא אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר֙ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ נַחֲלָ֑ה וִֽירִשְׁתָּ֖הּ וְיָשַׁ֥בְתָּ בָּֽהּ

When you come into the land that your God ‘ה is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it (Deut. 26.1)

The start of this week’s parashah records a very early (as far as our evidence goes) example of ancient Israelite ritual with formal wording. Most of our earliest official ritual, in the form of the sacrificial cult, is silent. As my teacher Professor Israel Knohl showed in his The Sanctuary Of Silence, the theology of the priesthood imagined HaShem to be beyond communication in words.

The Deuteronomist, as scholars refer to the final hand that shaped the Book of Deuteronomy, expressed a very different understanding of our relationship with HaShem, one that required of us words. After all, as the great medieval sage Maharal put it, we are hai medabbeyr, the life form that talks.

The ritual with words that we are to enact is described at the start of parashat Ki Tavo as a personal recognition of one’s harvest. We are to take the first fruits – not literally fruit but any “fruit” of one’s labors – “and go to the place where your God יהוה will choose to establish the divine name. You shall go to the priest in charge at that time” (Deut. 26.2-3).

We are at that point to recite a prescribed formula of gratitude, which is interesting in and of itself, but I’d like to focus upon the act of gratitude. This is key to the value of religion, or spirituality if you prefer: not only a form of mindfulness, but a way to express it that is understood and shared by others in your community.

We all need moments of ritual. A good ritual doesn’t make us feel better, necessarily, but it does help us feel the moments of our lives that are significant. How lacking is the situation of a family with a newborn who have no way to formally mark the birth; all they do is go home and start changing diapers and losing sleep. Jews and others with a significant inherited culture have a ritual to welcome a new offspring which has been practiced for many generations as a celebration that also helps the new parent/s feel part of something, supported and held.

Death ritual in our day is even more necessary. A culture like ours that not only desperately tries everything not to look old and insults the memory of many dead by characterizing them as having lost a battle with some illness is not well suited to support healthy grieving. Funeral home directors tell stories of people asking for the cheapest possible way to dispose of a loved one, and then not even returning to pick up the ashes of the cremation. This is for Jews a hilul HaShem, the worst kind of desecration. We Jews are lucky to carry within our culture a dense framework of supportive death and dying ritual.

The more meaningful, living ritual, the more meaningful the living of our lives. Often, we find that an ancient ritual is actually more profound than something we might invent on our own. Is it the sense that we belong to something more and bigger than ourselves? Secular parents seek out traditional brit mitzvah; queer couples opt to walk down the aisle to get married. And we all love a birthday party.

Every year we Jews prepare for Sukkot, the harvest festival that takes place five days after Yom Kippur. It was once the greatest of Israelites holidays, lasting for a week of all-out celebration. We in our day need to bring it back out of the shadow of Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur. In Sukkot we are mindful of the harvests we celebrate in our lives: of the work of our hands, of the projects we’ve dedicated ourselves to, and of the abundance that exists all around us. No matter the privations of our situation, we can choose to see and celebrate abundance and our luck to be part of it.

When you come into the land of Sukkot this year, and you find your sense of home and you realize all that you possess, take time for a ritual of gratitude: join your community and its ritual, and/or practice your own version of Jewish mindfulness and thanksgiving. Don’t let anxiety or busyness distract you from your soul’s need to know that you are home, and to name the blessings of abundance that you know.

Shabbat Ki Tetze: It’s Uncertain Out There

וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזֻז֥וֹת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ {ס}

inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates. (Deut. 6.9)

Our parashat hashavua this week is ki tetze, “if you go out”. We go out of many realities: from sleep to waking, from a safe space to the uncertainty of the Outside, and from our own sense of self to connect to others. The act of going out is fraught with danger, according to our ancestors, because to transition from place to place is to be, for one brief moment, in neither place.

This liminal space is the moment between. The humble mezuzah, meant to be a response to the command to “write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates” (in our shema which we recite daily), has become symbolic of this sense we have of the uncertainty of transition and our need for protection and guidance to successfully cross the threshold that we confront – whether real or abstract.

The mezuzah reminds us of who we are in the moment of transition from one space to another. The Hasidism say that it tells us to be the same outside as in, inside as out – that whoever you truly are must be guarded in moments of uncertainty. Remember who you are and what you live for; remember all that you’ve learned and bring it to bear when confronted with the stresses of change.

“If you go out” of certainty you will be traveling in the land of all that is unknown, and that can be frightening. But if you do not go out it may be that you are not truly fulfilling your human potential, to be HaShem’s partner in creating and recreating and tending and tilling the beautiful garden our world often is, and always can be.

Nothing out there is certain. If you go out, remember to touch your mezuzah on the way. Let it remind you that you are precious and necessary. And let it remind you that you are not alone.

…it could all go in a minute. It WILL all go in a minute.

This life is a brief stop, whether I die tomorrow or in fifty years.

I would love not to know this, to have the innocent certainty that,

when loved ones set out on a journey, they will return unharmed,

that I can go out to sea in my boat,

play in the waves and not be swallowed up.

But I am more grateful now than I ever was in my innocence.

In the end it is all a gift, is it not?

The brief entwinement of body and soul,

the breath of G*d that gives and sustains human life,

creates such a colorful, sparkling trail as it arcs through time.

It is so ephemeral, and yet it affects everything.

As we say when we open our eyes every morning:

“modeh ani l’fanekha – I give thanks to you,

G*d of Life which is eternal,

for returning my soul to me today.

Great is your faithfulness.”

– Margaret Holub , “A Cosmology of Mourning”, Lifecycles, Vol. 1.

In the first week of Elul the Jewish community begins to contemplate the meaning of the month, including its name. אלול can be understood as the acronym for אני לדודן ודודי לי – ani l’dodi v’dodi li, “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.” This famous verse from the love poem in our Tanakh Shir haShirim, the Song of Songs, is understood to hint at the most sought after sense of relationship with HaShem: that of lover and beloved. Four words, four weeks: this week’s word is l’dodi, to my beloved. On this Shabbat of preparation for the most intense of our holy days, the Days of Awe, may you rest in the sure knowledge that if you go out there, beyond your comfort zone and your certainties, you are loved and lovable, and you are one of us.

Shabbat Shoftim: If Not Now, When?

וְיִגַּ֥ל כַּמַּ֖יִם מִשְׁפָּ֑ט וּצְדָקָ֖ה כְּנַ֥חַל אֵיתָֽן׃

But let justice well up like water,

Righteousness like a torrential river. (Amos 5.24)

We are appropriately proud of our prophetic tradition and its insistence upon “just balances, just weights, a just efah, and a just hin” (Lev. 19.36) in our business dealings, as well as the social imperative to “hear out your neighbor, [to] decide justly between one party and the other—be it a fellow Israelite or a stranger.” (Deut. 1.16)

As we enter the Third Era* of Judaism, a time of waning rabbinic authority and dropping membership in many Jewish institutions, it is the prophetic tradition that continues to hold us strongly, and hold us together. Young Jews who can’t imagine setting foot in a shul are active members of If Not Now and Never Again; the first phrase comes directly from the ancient Jewish religious tradition that insists on righteousness in judgement:

הוּא הָיָה אוֹמֵר, אִם אֵין אֲנִי לִי, מִי לִי. וּכְשֶׁאֲנִי לְעַצְמִי, מָה אֲנִי. וְאִם לֹא עַכְשָׁיו, אֵימָתָי:

Hillel used to say: If I am not for myself, who is for me? But if I am for my own self [only], what am I? And if not now, when?

Today If Not Now is also a Jewish organization that rallies Jewish opposition to the Occupation of the Palestinian people by the State of Israel. The young people who support it have clearly absorbed the ethical teaching of their religious culture: “you shall not stand idle while your neighbor bleeds.” (Lev. 19.16)

The second phrase, coined after the Holocaust by our people, is not only a healthy and necessary Jewish imperative around self-defense, but also, in the hands of both survivors and the members of the national Jewish organization founded in 2019 to protest ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) persecution of immigrants, a universal imperative also founded on Torah values:

כְּאֶזְרָ֣ח מִכֶּם֩ יִהְיֶ֨ה לָכֶ֜ם הַגֵּ֣ר ׀ הַגָּ֣ר אִתְּכֶ֗ם וְאָהַבְתָּ֥ לוֹ֙ כָּמ֔וֹךָ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם

The stranger that dwells with you shall be to you as one born among you, and thou shalt love them as yourself; for you were strangers in the land of Miżrayim. (Lev. 19.34)

Both of these organizations have been criticized as radical and “bad for the Jews” by Jewish institutional leadership. But the irony is immense: all they are doing is putting Jewish values into practice, in a way that I believe our ancient prophets would have liked. They called for justice to sweep away unjust structures the way that flood waters sweep away everything in their path.

Because justice is a divine imperative; we are told that we must judge justly, that our laws must be just, at the cost of our lives. That is the heart of this week’s parashah: “justice, justice you shall pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that your God יהוה is giving you.” (Deut. 16.20)

There is a millennial belief, stemming from this Torah verse, that the land of Israel will vomit us out if we do not follow the mitzvot we are obligated to fulfill as a condition of living there – most of all, if we do not establish justice in the land for all its inhabitants. One traditional saying incorporated into our prayers reflects it: “because of our sins we were exiled from our land.”

As we struggle to find the path of consolation we are to walk in these weeks before the High Holy Days, as we consider the many ways in which injustice seems to flourish, may we find some hope in the newest generation of our people. They are committed to the insistence upon absolute justice as their Jewish birthright; and while they may be young and innocent of the social compromise necessary to live in society, may they insist to us on the truth that social compromise should be founded in compassion and justice, not in equivocation and the acceptance of human pain as collateral damage.

“Justice, justice you shall pursue.” The repetition indicated to our ancestors that we must have just means and just ends, no less. May we be among those, regardless of age or circumstance, who cling to justice in the face of social peer pressure, and to compassion in the face of psychological overwhelm. Our ethical world depends upon it.

רַבָּן שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן גַּמְלִיאֵל אוֹמֵר, עַל שְׁלשָׁה דְבָרִים הָעוֹלָם עוֹמֵד, עַל הַדִּין וְעַל הָאֱמֶת וְעַל הַשָּׁלוֹם, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (זכריה ח) אֱמֶת וּמִשְׁפַּט שָׁלוֹם שִׁפְטוּ בְּשַׁעֲרֵיכֶם:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamaliel used to say: on three things does the world stand: On justice, on truth and on peace, as it is said: “execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zekhariah 8:16). (Pirke Avot 1.18)

Shabbat Re’eh: Blessings and Curses – what can you see from here?

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse (Deuteronomy 11.26)

Our parashat hashavua is the last before the month of Elul, in which we prepare spiritually for the High Holy Days. It starts as plainly and starkly as possible: Look. The word ראה re’eh in Hebrew means more than to physically see. It means pay attention, watch, and understand – and here it is in the imperative: look!

Our ancestors seem to see the blessings and curses of their lives and imaginations as a binary: one is unalloyed good, and one is just plain bad for you. But we know that the Torah’s ancient Hebrew uses opposites not as a binary, but rather a merism, a grammatical construct in which two opposites are invoked to indicate a totality. “Night and day” means all the time, as Frank Sinatra sang (and wrote) in 1962.

This invites us to consider what might usefully be seen, not only in something that is partially a blessing – the silver lining, as we say – but, more painfully, something that is nearly completely a curse.

A bit more than a month from now we will be confronted with an incredibly difficult text, in which we are challenged to find the meaning in the Akedah, in which Abraham nearly murders his son Isaac in an intended ritual sacrifice aborted at the last moment. We are usually so distracted by the amorality of the story that we don’t notice the use of the word which is central to our parashah this week: ראה – see, look, behold:

וַיִּקְרָ֧א אַבְרָהָ֛ם שֵֽׁם־הַמָּק֥וֹם הַה֖וּא ה’ יִרְאֶ֑ה אֲשֶׁר֙ יֵאָמֵ֣ר הַיּ֔וֹם בְּהַ֥ר ה’ יֵרָאֶֽה

And Abraham named that site ‘ה-yireh, whence the present saying, “On the mount of ‘ה there is vision.” (Genesis 22.14)

Here is the idea that through the moments of our lives that are traumatizing – the moments we might call cursed – something can be seen that otherwise remains hidden from us.

It is much more comfortable to turn away from painful moments and painful memories in our lives – to shut away that which is cursed behind a door that we promise ourselves we’ll never open. But what might we deprive ourselves of seeing, and of understanding, when we do so?

Pay attention – study more Torah, with others similarly seeking spiritual growth from our ancient sources. Watch – don’t judge, just take it all in, even the hard parts. And then, perhaps, with the help of the community’s support and some sense of holiness that we can just barely begin to see – understand.

Shabbat Ekev: Limping Toward Wholeness

“Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

וְהָיָ֣ה ׀ עֵ֣קֶב תִּשְׁמְע֗וּן אֵ֤ת הַמִּשְׁפָּטִים֙ הָאֵ֔לֶּה וּשְׁמַרְתֶּ֥ם וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָ֑ם וְשָׁמַר֩ ה’ אֱלֹהֶ֜יךָ לְךָ֗ אֶֽת־הַבְּרִית֙ וְאֶת־הַחֶ֔סֶד אֲשֶׁ֥ר נִשְׁבַּ֖ע לַאֲבֹתֶֽיךָ

And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully, your G*d ‘ה will maintain faithfully for you the covenant made on oath with your ancestors (Deuteronomy 7.12)

In our parashat hashavua we find the people of Israel inhabiting a liminal space, neither here nor there – much like any of us when we are preparing to step forward, across a threshold. It may happen multiple times in a lifetime, but each time is unique: once you take this step, you will be different. Life will be different.

And then there are the steps that you did not realize were fateful until you looked behind you. Parashat Ekev presents us an opportunity to sensitize ourselves to what these moments mean.

The people of Israel waits on the far side of the Jordan River, just as, forty years earlier, their parents and grandparents had waited at the Sea of Reeds. Mythologically, even earlier, our eponymous ancestor was waiting at the Yavok River. Jacob-turned-Israel received his name as a result of that night of struggle – the name of the river, “struggle” in Hebrew, carries the memory of it.

Each of these crossings through water is a hint of the birth of something new. But each also offers a challenge and, eventually, the scars of real human experience, that lessen us physically as they open us up past a childish certainty of self-sufficiency, toward what it means to live and grow.

Every year the book Devarim, Deuteronomy, bids us to slow down and listen. Not plot-driven but contemplative, this book reviews, considers and derives meaning. Note the promise made at our parashah’s beginning: if you observe, you will always find the covenant there for you.

Notice that this is not a promise that “everything will be all right.” Only that you will always be steadied by this framework of purpose and meaning if you consistently do it. The commitment to regular action leads to a certain wholeness even, and especially, in the face of brokenness – in oneself and in the world.

Hear, O Israel: life is a struggle. You will not emerge unscathed. But you will experience moments when you are standing at the shore of something new – no more certain than our ancestors were when they argued, according to the midrash, about who would go into the Sea of Reeds first, or when Jacob emerged from the River Yavok, limping into his life as Israel.

We as a people stand at the other side of the Jordan as we look toward the High Holy Days. In our brokenness and sadness – because that is what life brings – we need the seven weeks of consolation that we move through now, toward Rosh HaShanah and our yearly chance to appear before HaShem and account for our lives. Paradoxically, as Judaism has long taught, it is only through brokenness that we can begin to become whole.

Jacob limps because he is a mortal who has striven with God and one cannot emerge unscarred from such intense intimacy. He limps because mortals lack perfection and have their points of weakness (Achilles and Oedipus are two other well known examples.) He limps because scars are a language and this is the mark of chosenness [commemorated by Israel’s taboo against eating the sinew of the thigh of permitted animals.] He limps because of the cost of dreams, the cost of growing up….He limps while crossing, because even after prevailing in the struggle with the unfathomable he is still not exempt from fear on approaching the border of the Promised Land. He limps because this homecoming is temporary; another exile awaits him and his offspring in the future. – Ilana Pardes, The Biography of Ancient Israel

Life repeats its patterns generationally within a people, within families, within individual lives. “Once again, dear friends, into the breach!” We are invited by life itself to hold hands and prepare for the crossing, limping toward wholeness as we go.