Chag Ha’Shiburim: a holiday of breakings- Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach

Pesach has always been a both/and holiday– springy and hopeful, yet honest and vulnerable. And this Pesach is no exception. I know that many of us are thinking about the unique quality of Passover this year– about how so much sorrow is hiding just beneath the joy and the warmth. I know some of you looked forward to Seders as a sort of refuge from the brokenness of the world. How others leaned on Pesach as an opportunity to more fully embrace the complexities and questions of this moment. And how others yet, like me, found themselves floating somewhere in-between. Feeling pulled in both directions, wanting somehow to be both comfortable and honest. And so even in our own experiences of the Seders this year, we were all doing the dance that Pesach seems to require: to look forward while looking back. To sing Hallel and songs of praise to a loving, miracle-making G-d, while also validating G-d’s desire for vengeance and retribution. We dip a hopeful, fresh vegetable into the salty bitterness of our tears. We break the middle matzah, and we pour out some wine for each of the plagues and for the suffering of innocent egyptians. During Pesach we cycle between the beautiful and the ugly, the winter and the spring, between oppression and freedom. 

And despite the fact that Pesach is also called Chag Ha’Aviv, the holiday of spring, and Zman Cheiruteinu, the time of our liberation, the other central and inescapable motif of Pesach is brokenness. And in thinking about the act of the Exodus itself, Moshe had to split, had to break open the sea so we could pass through safely and on dry land. Perhaps we could give Pesach another name- Chag Ha’Shiburim, the holiday of breakings.

Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach is one of my favorite moments of the holiday, because it gives us a chance to reset. We’ve come down from the intensity of our Seders, we’ve hopefully all had a chance to rest. Today we are floating, suspended in time, between brokenness, and the promise of a perfected world that Shabbat reminds us of. Shabbat, we know, is called Me’ein Olam Habah, a taste of the World to Come. But this year, I am wondering how we hold it all. How can we believe in the promise of Shabbat, in the promise of a perfected world to come, when we just went through two critical days of lingering in the brokenness. How might we find ways to bridge the gap between the first days of Pesach and the last? Between doubt and faith? Between complexity and trust?

Our Torah reading for Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach comes to us from Parshat Ki Tissa, which is most well known for containing the story of the Chet Ha’Egel, the story of the Golden Calf. We know it well. In the early moments after the Revelation at Sinai, the people wonder why Moshe hasn’t returned from the mountaintop. Maybe he died, maybe he abandoned us. And in this moment of great fear, the people recruit Aharon to help them build an idol, a golden calf. A deity upon which they can place their hopes and their fears. Something that they can look to for guidance, but also something tangible that they can blame, hold accountable. And when Moshe finally comes down the mountain, and sees the people worshiping the Golden Calf, he smashes the Luchot, the freshly hewn tablets, to the ground– shattering not only the stones, but maybe even the covenant itself.

 And this is a turning point for G-d and for the people. Here, we encounter a people, so fresh behind the ears with freedom and agency; and a G-d who would prefer to wipe them all out and start over with Moshe. We meet a new G-d and a new people. Both of whom are learning, in real time, how to grapple with a new reality, with a new identity, to make sense of the uncertain path forward. The story of the sin of the Golden Calf is one of the most well known in the Tanach. 

But this part of the story is not in our Torah reading for today. Even though it would make good sense to read this story as a sort of reminder and rebuke: G-d just took us out of Egypt, and gave us the Torah, for those things we should be immeasurably grateful. Read the story of the Golden Calf on Shabbat Chol Hamoed Pesach as a cautionary tale. Be grateful that you were liberated, that you were carried through that broken sea, that you received the gift of Torah. As you recall and retell the story of Yetziat Mitzrayim, remember not to make the same mistake as the Israelites who stood at the base of the mountain. 

But our Torah reading for today doesn’t include this most familiar story from Parshat Ki Tissa. In fact, our reading begins just after the incident of the Golden Calf, in a moment of great theological doubt (which I believe goes both ways), and in a moment of miraculous rebuilding. 

Exodus chapter 34 opens:

G-d said to Moses: “Carve two tablets of stone like the first, and I will inscribe upon the tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which you shattered. Be ready by morning, and in the morning come up to Mount Sinai and present yourself there to Me, on the top of the mountain.

Moshe is conspicuously silent here. He doesn’t argue, doesn’t say thank you. And I have to imagine that his silence is born of utter shock. Maybe Moshe didn’t expect G-d to offer this holy second chance. Maybe Moshe didn’t think that G-d could bend so lovingly– not only in sparing some of the people, but in giving Moshe, and by extension all of us, reason to believe that there is no such thing as an irreparably damaged covenant. In fact, Rabbi Saadiah Gaon teaches that the second set of tablets are even holier, even more precious than the first, because they were given on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. 

Moshe carves the second set of Luchot, and prepares to present them to the people. We read:

So Moses carved two tablets of stone, like the first, and early in the morning he went up on Mount Sinai, as G-d had commanded him, taking the two stone tablets with him. G-d came down in a cloud—and stood with him there, proclaiming the name of G-d: G-d passed before him and proclaimed: 

“Adonai, Adonai a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in kindness and faithfulness, extending kindness to the thousandth generation, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin…

In this moment of great rupture and repair, we meet a self-described G-d of compassion. We encounter a G-d who is and strives to be all of those things. Not vengeful but sympathetic. Not spiteful or jealous, but loving and open. Not zealous, but understanding. G-d is changed by this moment, too. 

So why read this on Chol Hamoed Pesach? This to me is the ultimate both/and story in the Tanach because it is at once a story of terrible fear, uncertainty, and brokenness, AND a story of what is possible just beyond the brokenness, or even deep within it. And perhaps most importantly, it’s not only Moshe and the people who are changed in this moment, G-d too, is wholly transformed. The G-d who emerges from this crisis is a G-d of empathy and patience; a new G-d, a better G-d, a G-d who can hold it all, and show us how we can, too. 

Today, I am davening to this newly formed G-d of compassion. To this G-d who, like the second set of tablets contains the multitudes and complexities of our story, who is perhaps holier and more precious than the earlier version of G-d, who is changed in ways that make it possible for us to believe that there is something beyond the brokenness. I want this G-d to accompany me down the mountain, through the sea, and into that future perfected world that Shabbat promises us. 

Shabbat Shalom!

Parshat Metzorah/Shabbat Hagadol: order, ritual, and the courage to let go

There is a song from the King and I that my mom and I used to sing together. Whenever I feel afraid, I hold my head erect, and whistle a happy tune, so no one will suspect I’m afraid. 

We loved that song. I still do, and it seems to be playing in my mind a lot these days. I love it because it’s a song about courage, and what it sometimes takes for us to believe that we have it. And lately, I’ve been reaching for this song because in its sweet, nostalgic way, it helps me feel just a little bit more in control. That my fear or worry is temporary, that I may be as brave as I make believe I am. 

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about what it means to feel like we are in control of our lives. And what I have found is that maybe the only way we can exert any control, as counterintuitive as it seems, is to let go. To acknowledge that most things, and certainly the things that are most precious to us, live just beyond our grasp. And that is terrifying. But life gives us little, fleeting moments where the illusion of control is so thick, we can make believe it’s real. For me, when I start to feel overwhelmed or distracted, in a word, out of control, the thing that gives me the most comfort is structure. And this usually manifests in a compulsive leap into a new project or hobby– think cleaning out my closet or rearranging a bookshelf. I like tangible, measurable activities. Things that give me a sense of accomplishment and a sense of order. Checking off a cosmic to-do list, if you will. 

This shabbat is Shabbat Hagadol, the Great Shabbat, and the final one before Pesach. This Shabbat, we have one last chance to enjoy our challah, to revel in our non-kosher-for-pesach kitchens. To lean into the chaos of living in the world of chametz. But come Monday night, we will be transported into the unique and ordered world of Passover. To prepare for Pesach, we fastidiously organize, make lists, clean. And then, we begin the holiday with a ritual that in its essence is a ritual of structure. 

The Hebrew word Seder, the ritual landmark of Pesach, means order. Throughout the first two nights of Pesach, we move through a structured ritual that is intentionally and pedagogically designed to help us retell and reconnect to the story of our exodus from Egypt. With 14 stations along the way, bringing us from Kiddush at the very beginning of the evening, all the way to the joyful, often loopy, exhausted singing at the very end, the Seder is itself a ritualized landmark to help us find calm and rootedness in a broken, chaotic world. 

But the Seder isn’t necessarily unique in this sense. We could argue that the entirety of the Jewish calendar is structured in such a way as to help us find moments of rootedness and control throughout the year. In fact, Shabbat, our most frequent Jewish holiday, arrives at the end of every seven days as a refuge. A Palace in Time, to quote Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. A cosmic, teleological place in which we can pause, reset, make meaning and order from the chaos of the week.

And I don’t know about you, but by the time Friday rolls around, I am usually bleary-eyed, the edges of reality fraying just fast enough to make me feel that things are moving too fast. And then Shabbat begins, and whatever work is still unfinished remains so until Shabbat ends 25 hours later. No matter how busy or stressed I feel even late on Friday afternoon, the moment we begin to sing those first, familiar notes of Kabbalat Shabbat, everything else seems to melt away. On Shabbat there is peace, but the peace is possible because there is structure.

And the brilliance, the genius really of Shabbat, is its finitude. Shabbat asks us to give a mere 25 hours to ourselves, to our community, back to G-d. But 25 hours, just over one day, is manageable, it’s measurable, it’s an amount of time that we can fully embrace and dive into, leaving us energized, focused, and grounded to begin the week all over again. Shabbat gifts us a moment in time that is not interminable or intimidating, and in that kind of space there is so much possibility. 

Creation itself, which we recall on Shabbat, stems from this very desire to make meaning and order out of chaos:

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ׃ וְהָאָרֶץ הָיְתָה תֹהוּ וָבֹהוּ וְחֹשֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵי תְהוֹם וְרוּחַ אֱלֹהִים מְרַחֶפֶת עַל־פְּנֵי הַמָּיִם׃ וַיֹּאמֶר אֱלֹהִים יְהִי אוֹר וַיְהִי־אוֹר׃

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light.

The earth was unformed and void, Tohu Vavohu. Even G-d is driven by this need for structure. G-d, too, finds comfort in this radical act of ordering the mayhem. 

And our parsha this Shabbat, Metzorah, may be yet another one of our tradition’s responses to the often unpredictable, unexplainable, messy nature of our lives. We talked last week about how Tazria and Metzorah are often misunderstood. That many people believe that these texts are focused on disparaging the human body; that they are intended to make us feel ashamed of the very normal, natural things our bodies do; that the categories of ritual purity and impurity are unhelpful at best, harmful at worst. But I think there’s more to the story of these Parshiot, namely that the intensive rituals described in them are actually about making sense of our experience of our bodies. That the structure, the order of the rituals designed to bring a person back into a community after contracting tzaraat, a metaphysical skin ailment, are themselves a tether that can bring a person back to the normalcy of their lives. Maybe the rituals described in Tazria and Metzorah, and really throughout the whole of Vayikra, are intended to help us reorient ourselves in the midst of an experience that is messy and confusing, isolating, and that may make us feel helpless or powerless. I think ritual draws its power from its stability, its predictability. 

And so I’m looking forward to Pesach in a new way this year. This year, I am looking to Pesach as a place to land, a place to dwell for eight whole days in the order. Pesach looks and feels different this year. The world feels more unformed and confusing and painful than ever, and I am feeling mentally and emotionally pulled in every possible direction. I know we all are. So on Pesach, even if it’s just for a moment, let the solidity and the familiarity of the holiday rituals work their magic. We can’t possibly get rid of all the chametz in our lives, and we usually can’t change the world in the ways we wish we could. But we can linger in the rituals, in the beauty and comfort of sitting in community, of taking in those holy moments to reset and begin again. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Parshat Shemini: Vayidom Aharon— On Sacred Silence, Humility, and Moral Clarity

One of the things I struggled with most after I lost my mom, was the silence. I was so painfully aware of it when people didn’t say enough, but so desperate to welcome it back when I felt a person saying too much. The world had suddenly become so quiet after she died; but it became loud too. Every sound and question and conversation, an intrusion into my grief. Every patch of quiet a reminder that so few people understood the unique kind of pain I was in. 

And I remember the din of shiva– hearing pieces of conversations happening around me, apart from me– from my low and lonely perch on the couch in the middle of the living room. It was overwhelming, and something about the chatter felt wrong, misplaced, inappropriate. In fact, Rabbi Yochanan teaches that comforters are not permitted to say a word until the mourners open conversation. And Rav Pappa says that the merit of attending a house of mourning lies in maintaining silence. 

But I also remember when shiva ended, and just how much I missed the noise. How I missed those little distractions that pulled me away from my sadness, that drew me out of myself. Those conversations and stories that made me laugh and made me feel like myself again, even if just for a moment. But more often than not, especially in those early weeks and months of mourning, I needed everything and everyone to be quiet. Needed to linger in the silence to feel safe, to feel that healing was ever going to come. 

In this week’s Parsha, Parshat Shemini, we encounter tragic loss and subsequent silence. At the beginning of Leviticus chapter 10 we read:

Now Aharon’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, each took his fire pan, put fire in it, and laid incense on it; and they offered before G-d foreign fire, which G-d had not commanded them to bring. And fire came forth from G-d and consumed them; thus they died at the instance of G-d. The Moshe said to Aharon, “This is what G-d meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” And Aharon was silent. 

Here, Aharon’s sons appear to violate G-d’s specific instructions about how and when exactly to offer sacrifices. And the commentators are generally in agreement that this is the reason that Nadav and Avihu were killed. On the surface, this is a simple story about two people who broke the law, and contravened G-d’s word. But if we look more closely at the other two characters in this story, Aharon and Moshe, we learn something fundamental about these moments of catastrophic loss and how our tradition compels us to respond. 

This moment plays out with devastating speed. Aharon has just witnessed the death of his two sons. And he is seemingly reeling from shock. But before Aharon can even take a breath, let alone utter a faint cry, or ask why, Moshe steps in, to fill the void with an explanation, a rationalization for what is likely the most traumatic moment in Aharon’s life. Immediately following the killing of Nadav and Avihu Moshe says: “This is what G-d meant by saying: Through those near to Me I show Myself holy, and gain glory before all the people.” 

This is what G-d meant? As if an explanation or even clarity about the way G-d operates in the world could bring comfort. That this information might make Aharon’s pain disappear, that maybe even Aharon is foolish for feeling any pain at all. But in this response, Moshe fails his brother. Because in these moments, the reasons don’t matter. 

And while it’s true that many of the commentators see Moshe’s response as compassionate, an expression of genuine consolation for his bereaved brother, I think Moshe’s almost impulsive need to speak here is at odds with the scale of Aharon’s loss. 

But even so, I think we can all understand and even relate to Moshe here. Precisely because there are no words that can meet such a moment, such a tragic, terrible loss; because death and dying and illness are things that happen that we would prefer to reject, to ignore– our instinct when confronted with them, is to do our best to make them make sense. To contextualize, to explain, to help our minds grapple with the difficult reality of our very precious and precarious lives, and maybe even to try to trick ourselves into believing that it’s really not so bad, that we can move on. I think we’ve all been in these situations. I know, because I've been there, too– sitting at a Shiva, feeling so awkward, uncomfortable, not knowing what to say; so painfully aware of the fact that nothing I can say will change anything. Afraid of causing more pain. And somehow feeling like the right thing to do in moments like that is to keep talking. That if I manage to fill the void, I can take away some of the pain. 

But I realize, in reading Moshe now, that we do this to protect ourselves from the mourner’s pain. To put distance between us and their tragedy. Our minds prefer neat and tidy narratives, to disordered, unexplainable chaos. A story, with a reason, with a plot, is predictable, and easier to stomach. But we don’t live in a simple world, and thank G-d, we are so much more than simple emotions. 

And the encounter continues, and ends by describing Aharon’s condition: Vayidom Aharon, and Aharon was silent. 

The commentators offer a variety of explanations on Aharon’s silence. Abarbanel teaches that Aharon’s heart turned to lifeless stone, and he did not weep and mourn like a bereaved father. Nor did he accepts Moshes’s consolation, for his soul had left him and he was speechless. 

Sforno, on the other hand, teaches that Aharon actually consoled himself after having been told that the death of his sons represented a sanctification of G-d’s name. 

Nachmanides points to the verb vayidom, and he became silent, as referring to a silence that follows a period of wailing and audible grief. That Aharon isn’t uniquely pious in this moment, but perhaps moving through the initial stages of mourning, just as any of us would. Nachmanides, unlike many other classical commentators, suggests that Aharon’s silence is not in fact acceptance of or acquiescence to what feels like Divine injustice. But rather that Aharon’s silence is protest; more human, more humble protest. 

Internet culture has robbed us of sacred silence. For better or worse, each of us now has a platform, a place to vent, to relitigate, to advance our own personal agendas without vetting, and without responsibility. We can be and say anything on the internet. We can be unilateral in our positions, and we don’t have to do the hard work of engaging the other. 

On Tuesday, seven World Central Kitchen relief workers were killed in an Israeli airstrike while delivering aid to desperate Palestinians in Gaza. Their names were: Zomi Frankcom, James Kirby, John Chapman, James Henderson, Saifeddin Issam Ayad Abutaha, Damian Sobol, and Jacob Flickinger. This was a tragic and preventable accident. And it is important to acknowledge that the Israeli military took responsibility for this horrible disaster. 

Since the war began, people on both sides of the political spectrum have taken to the internet to try to publicly understand, rationalize, contextualize, and explain away the tragic and unimaginable loss of life. And this catastrophe was no exception. 

My attention was called to a tweet this week that suggested that Zomi, James, John, James, Saifeddin, Damian, and Jacob were complicit in their own deaths. This tweet implied that these seven relief workers were working with Hamas– a claim that has not been verified– and therefore deserved to die, even though each of them put themselves in harm’s way to help, to save lives. 

I was sick to my stomach reading this tweet. And the truth is, I can’t stop thinking about it. It was arrogant, hateful, and so deeply dismissive of the humanity of other people. Not only did it lack empathy, it reeked of the worst kind of myopic thinking– a greediness of pain– an admission that nobody’s pain, but my own, matters. A trivializing of death. And so I wonder, if this person had taken the extra minute to really think about what he was posting; if instead of feeling a need to react in the moment, that he just said nothing. Of course, there is a place for analysis and protest and noise. There are moments when we are actually commanded not to be silent. But in the face of such tremendous loss, maybe all we can say with any amount of moral clarity or credibility, is that there really are no words. 

We are six months into the war. And I hope that we can all agree, regardless of where you might land on the political spectrum, regardless of how you think about the legitimacy and necessity of this war, that the terrible loss of life is tragic. Full stop. 

I think about Moshe and Aharon and the way they are bound together not only by the loss of Nadav and Avihu, but by their respective responses to such trauma. And I can’t help but wonder what that encounter would have felt like for Aharon if Moshe had simply said nothing. If, instead of speaking empty words, he  took Aharon’s hand, and offered to meet him in the place of his very deep, very raw, and very real pain. 

We should be humbled in the presence of another person’s pain. Casual indifference for the loss of life, any life, is anathema to what it means to be a Jew, and perhaps more importantly what it means to be a human being. 

When we visit a shiva home, we are instructed to say the following to a mourner: Hamakom Yinachem Etchem B’toch Sha’ar Avlei Tzion v’Yerushalayim. May G-d comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem. G-d can give comfort that we can’t. G-d is comfortable with silence in a way that we are not. Because G-d is the place, is the Makom, where we don’t need any words. 

May the memories of Zomi, James, John, James, Saifeddin, Damian, and Jacob be for a blessing. 

Shabbat Shalom.

the magical thinking of yom kippur: yom kippur 5784

In her book, The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion writes her way through the sudden death of her husband, the writer, John Gregory Dunne, and the illness and prolonged hospitalization of their only child, a daughter, Quintana Roo. Didion, who died in 2021, was a prolific essayist and novelist; she writes in the opening pages of her book:

This is my attempt to make sense of the period that followed, weeks and then months that cut loose any fixed idea I had ever had about death, about illness, about probability and luck, about good fortune and bad, about marriage and children and memory, about grief, about the ways in which people do and do not deal with the fact that life ends, about the shallowness of sanity, about life itself. 

For Didion, writing is a passageway, not an escape or a way out, but a way through. Not a denial, but an honest confrontation with her pain. For Didion, the work, the labor of writing, of putting something so true and so vulnerable down on paper, of giving voice to the depth and complexity of her grief– that is where the healing lives. 

As Didion chronicles this tragically difficult year, she takes us on a journey through some of the most universal and complex human emotions– grief, anger, resentment, profound loneliness, ecstasy, transformation– all the things that make us human, that make us alike, that make life somehow so extraordinary, and at the same time so painful, so devastating. And so the name that she gives to this year, and this book– The Year of Magical Thinking– seems itself to be a testimony to the absurd challenge of living. In just five words she seems to say that in order to live our lives fully, to move upstream in a world that pushes its current back at us with such force and such violence, a world that resists the truth of who we are; in order to believe that there really is goodness in the world– even if it means getting down in the dirt and turning over every stone just to find it– that we have to be willing to let go of a lot. We have to be willing to suspend reality, release what we know to be true. We have to let ourselves be carried away by magical thinking. We have to believe, with an almost reckless abandon, that things will turn out ok, that we will heal, and not suffer, that we will be alright. 

I read The Year of Magical Thinking for the first time when I was in college. And as an English major who had not yet experienced a close loss; reading at a time in my life when that eventual loss seemed so far off, impossible even– I read Didion’s deeply personal writing mostly as an intellectual exercise. Trying my best to understand her experience, but so obviously and thankfully removed from it. I read in pursuit of literary themes, fabulous sentences, and with the casual arrogance of reading someone’s lived experience as cultural criticism more than what it really was– the truth. But I had no idea. Not then. And now, rereading and looking back on how I first encountered this text, I think I believed that magical thinking made grieving easier. That being able to put pen to paper and give grief a voice, to make grief a character in the story, made it easier. I believed that maybe you could think and write yourself out of the pit. That winning the National Book Award  and being a finalist for the Pulitzer had to count for something. Had to make it all easier, somehow. 

But then, I read The Year of Magical Thinking again. After so much in my life had changed, been ruptured, really. I was suddenly able to appreciate the truth of what Didion writes, because her story was now mine. I could see myself in those literary themes, and the fabulous sentences, and the cultural criticism of what it means to experience loss in this country– because I felt the same way. 

Reading this book all these years later, I became desperate to be carried away by the magical thinking that the title promises. But just as soon as I lost my mom, the truth about magical thinking revealed itself– healing from a loss, moving through the sadness, the loneliness, the anger, all of it, requires a tremendous amount of effort. It requires us to wake up each morning and promise ourselves that as hard as it is, we’ll get out of bed, brush our teeth. Remember to eat and shower. We’ll take help and support wherever we can get it. 

And what I learned during my own year of magical thinking–and the truth is, it’s still going– is that it’s not about luck, or some fantasy about our lives that we desperately want to believe. Living in a state of magical thinking is not passive or random. I learned that the magic of it is making the impossible choice to keep moving. Every step forward at once an embrace and a rejection of the pain. 

This kind of magical thinking is central to our experience on Yom Kippur. Because on Yom Kippur, we face the most harrowing possibilities of life. We stand, with our feet firmly planted, and we collectively acknowledge the suffering, the loss, the grief– we stand and confront the arbitrary nature of all the pain in the world. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer invites us into that place of difficult, heartbreaking truths: who by water, who by fire. 

And so much of the ritual that we reenact on Yom Kippur is about magic– about affirming even in the face of the harshest realities of the world, that we are so vitally alive. We fast in order to tap the depths of our spiritual well; we wear white to evoke renewal, innocence, our angelic qualities; and we stand and sit– up and down, up and down, every time the ark is opened and closed– as if these repetitive, physical motions somehow awaken something buried in the Divine. Our Kohanim and Leviim duchan, perform the priestly blessing– hidden beneath their tallitot, holding their fingers apart to allow blessing to pass through. We bring all sorts of magic ritual into our experience of Yom Kippur, because without it, how could we possibly make sense of, or process the immensely difficult thing we are being asked to do here today?

Our Torah reading for today highlights what is perhaps the most magical of the Yom Kippur rituals. In Leviticus chapter 16, we read about the goat of Azazel. Aaron is instructed to take two identical goats, cast lots upon them– one marked for G-d and the other marked for Azazel. The goat marked for G-d is is killed and offered as a purification sacrifice, a קורבן חטאת. While the goat marked for Azazel is left standing before G-d, alive. Aharon then lays his hands upon this goat, confesses over it all of the transgressions and iniquities of the community. The community’s sins rest on the head of this goat. The goat is then sent out to the wilderness.

This is the very first scapegoat. This goat quite literally carries the sins of the community away into some unknown, unreachable wasteland. The people’s sins walk away, and are never seen or heard from again. How joyous and how cathartic this moment must have been– to watch the worst parts of yourself disappear. To know that another creature has taken on the burden of your guilt. 

The ritual of Azazel is expanded in the Rabbinic literature. The Mishnah in tractate Yoma, the section dedicated to Yom Kippur teaches:

They made a ramp for the goat due to the Babylonian Jews who were in Jerusalem who would pluck at the goat’s hair and would say to the goat: take our sins and go. Take our sins and go, do not leave them with us. 

The Mishnah goes on to teach that there was one person who was designated to escort the goat to the cliff– which the Rabbis also introduce. 

When they arrived at the cliff’s edge, the escort divided a strip of crimson into two parts. He tied half of the strip to the rock, and the other half was tied between the two horns of the goat. Then, he pushed the goat backwards off the cliff. 

The Mishnah goes on:

And how did the people who were waiting back at the Temple know that the ritual had been completed? They would build platforms all along the way. People would stand on them and wave scarves to signal when the goat arrived. Rabbi Yishamel, however, teaches that there was a strip of crimson tied to the entrance of the sanctuary. And when the goat arrived and the mitzvah was fulfilled, the strip would turn white. 

I love what the Rabbis do with this ritual. They transformed this moment into something participatory and communal. They turned it into a moment in which the magic of the ritual is not only palpable, but created by each person in attendance. And again, how incredible. What a release to stand on a platform and watch your sins fall off the edge of the universe, leaving you open and ready for a new year. What I would give to witness this. To be just a stranger in the crowd, rejoicing in our collective pardon. 

But despite its power, there is an obvious limitation to this ritual. We know that this isn’t actually how forgiveness or change works. If only it were so simple. If only we really could place our sins elsewhere, and not only rid ourselves of them, but truly be forgiven. But that would make the work of our lives far too easy, and I think unsatisfying. Achieving forgiveness and change without having to put in the work, I believe, would undermine the very purpose, the very magic of our lives.  

The Yom Kippur Liturgy, as we’ve received it today, full of scripted choreography and moving melodies, can also draw us into the same kinds of incomplete magical thinking. It can become rote– the same thing every single year. 

But I do think it can also serve as an antidote, a solution to the challenges and limitations posed by the earliest chapters of our religious history. Our Yom Kippur liturgy provides us with an answer, a correction to the unrealistic expectation that the Azazel ritual creates. 

Yes, we acknowledge G-d’s majesty and sovereignty in the world and in our lives. We read about elaborate sacrificial ceremonies designed to expiate and expunge sin. 

But we also confess. Repeatedly, we give voice to our sins. We give our flaws and shortcomings a platform, we put them out into the world, speak them into existence, so we can ultimately be released of them. 

Over the course of Yom Kippur, we confess ten separate times. Whether in a silent Amidah or in a repetition, we speak and come face to face with those things that we are most desperate to change about ourselves. And as much as the literature or the High Holiday social media zeitgeist wants us to believe, I don’t know that confession is designed to be entirely about shame or self-flagellation. I think we confess to be drawn back into the reality of our lives. We spend so much time on Yom Kippur being carried away by magical thinking– the Torah reading and the ritual of Azazel lets us believe that this work is easy, maybe not even real work at all. And so we are called back by the liturgy, the Vidui, the confession calling out as if to say, this is the real world that we live in. It is imperfect. You, we, are imperfect. And while it might be nice and we might take great comfort in the notion that our sins can be so easily disappeared, that is simply not realistic. Not helpful. Doesn’t move us forward on the path of teshuvah in any meaningful way. 

Our Haftorah, calls out with a similar warning: Don’t allow the magic of the ritual to serve as a replacement for your teshuvah, for your personal responsibility, for the difficult work of living this life and moving through this world. In Isaiah 58 verse 5 we read:

הֲכָזֶ֗ה יִֽהְיֶה֙ צ֣וֹם אֶבְחָרֵ֔הוּ י֛וֹם עַנּ֥וֹת אָדָ֖ם נַפְשׁ֑וֹ הֲלָכֹ֨ף כְּאַגְמֹ֜ן רֹאשׁ֗וֹ וְשַׂ֤ק וָאֵ֙פֶר֙ יַצִּ֔יעַ הֲלָזֶה֙ תִּקְרָא־צ֔וֹם וְי֥וֹם רָצ֖וֹן לד׳

Is such the fast I desire, A day for people to starve their bodies? Is it bowing the head like a bulrush And lying in sackcloth and ashes? Do you call that a fast, A day when GOD is favorable?

The Haftorah continues:

No, this is the fast I desire: to unlock fetters of wickedness, and untie the cords of the yoke to let the oppressed go free; to break off every yoke. It is to share your bread with the hungry, and to take the wretched poor into your home; when you see the naked, to clothe them, and do not ignore your own flesh. 

What pleases G-d, and what ultimately transforms each of us, the Haftorah teaches, is the willingness to go out into the world, to act kindly and justly, to be in the weeds of all that is so broken, and to play even a small role in trying to repair it. 

Throughout Yom Kippur davening, throughout services, we dance between two poles: the pole of Divine intervention and fate, and the pole of our own making; our lives, our choices, our responsibility. We dance between magic and pragmatism; between fantasy and reason. 

In the final chapter of The Year of Magical Thinking, Didion writes:

I realize as I write this that I do not want to finish this account. Nor do I want to finish the year. The craziness is receding but no clarity is taking its place. I look for resolution and find none. I do not want to finish the year because I know that as the days pass, as January becomes february and february becomes summer, certain things will happen. 

As she closes her book, Didion is painfully honest about how difficult it is to go on once the spell of magical thinking has been lifted. Once the book project is completed, once winters turn into summers, and memory really does become the final frontier. 

And I think in her way, Didion reminds us of the beauty and the power, but also the limits of magical thinking. It helps for a time to suspend reality and believe in something wholly different from the truth. It helps for a time to believe that the goat of Azazel will fully atone for us, or that a fast will convince G-d of something that is not quite true about who we are. It helps for a time to let go of the things that weigh us down. But then reality comes calling us home, and we have to learn to venture out into that wilderness, perhaps alongside the goat of Azazel. We have to be willing to make a new kind of magic for ourselves. Each of us is dancing meaningfully and so wildly between magic and truth. Yom Kippur reminds us that that is the only way to keep on living. 

Gmar Chatimah Tovah.

Time in a bottle: Rosh Hashanah 5784 day 2

Two years before his death in 1973, Jim Croce wrote the haunting and so very real Time in a Bottle– a love song to his newborn son Adrian. 

If I could save time in a bottle 

The first thing that I’d like to do

Is to save every day ‘til eternity passes away

Just to spend them with you. 

If I could make days last forever

If words could make wishes come true 

I’d save every day like a treasure, and then, 

Again, I would spend them with you.

But there never seems to be enough time 

To do the things you want to do once you find them

If I had a box just for wishes and dreams 

That had never come true

The box would be empty 

Except for the memory of how they were answered by you

I’ve looked around enough to know

That you’re the one I want to go through time with.

This song has the magical power to propel me backwards and forwards. The words somehow send me back in time, back down into the cavern of my grief after losing my mom; make me feel all the usual feelings and ask all of those irrationally human questions we ask after a loss: what if we had more time? What if I had been better able to appreciate our relationship, and how deep her love for my brother and me really ran? If I had been kinder, more patient, more connected– would my grief feel different? Somehow easier, more manageable?

But I know that these impossible questions usually get us nowhere. At best, they make us wish things had been different. At worst, these questions have the potential to draw us down into a very dark and unforgiving place. But then I remember, that my mom knew the answers to all of these questions– because she knew, and so desperately felt that our relationship was ok, it was where it needed to be at that particular moment. That’s what I tell myself. And beneath all of the distance and illness, beneath the anger and worry and fear, she knew that there was love, really deep love, and wonder, and magic. 

And this song draws me into my current life, our current life. Time in a Bottle captures so much of what I feel watching Elisheva grow. It makes me feel held by those suspended-in-time moments– of sleepless night, uncertainty, the fear that comes with that frightening realization that we really have no idea what we’re doing, that we’re learning it all as we go; that in so many ways, we’re making it up on the spot. And amid all the challenges and blessings of parenthood, what has grounded me and helped me grow through this new and so very wild chapter of our lives, is the wonder, the joy, the pure magic of watching Elisheva encounter and experience everything in our ready-made and familiar world for the first time. 

I remember the first time she seemed to really notice me. Her newborn eyes a little more open than the day before. Lying on my chest looking up at me, as if to say, “you’re my person.” the first time she pointed to me and said, “mama,” or called Joseph “dada.” the first time she looked up at a tree, or seemed totally captivated by our beautiful windows here at OZS. The first time she discovered the magical possibilities of clanging on all the pots and pans, or taking things out of the pantry and rejoicing in her ability to return things to their place just so. 

Everything is so new for her. So unspoiled and rich. And watching her move through the world with this unbelievably open and excited posture has changed me, on an elemental level. She has taught me how to slow down, how to catch time in a bottle. How to revel in the beauty of the world. How to pause for just a moment before getting in the car in the morning to touch and talk about the green and brown leaves on the tree in our driveway. To wave goodbye to those very same leaves before dashing off to school. 

I think Elisheva has managed to teach me something about my own mother, that I didn’t appreciate or realize until now– that our children give us these sublime, fleeting, and immeasurable gifts. They teach us how to embody a kind of living that often feels absurd and impossible in the modern world. They teach us how to observe, how to see, and how to notice the many acts of creation and becoming that are unfolding around us all the time. My mom knew this, and I have to believe that it brought her immense comfort, even when we were struggling. 

Elisheva has drawn me out of a rut that I think I’d been stuck in for far too long than I care to admit– the rut of deadlines and commuter rail schedules. The rut of ambition and competition. The loneliness that is the result of everything happening way too fast. The pain of never slowing down. 

But now, we wave goodbye to leaves, and to the water spinning down the drain at the end of a bath. We make piles with toys and tupperware lids, read books a million different ways– forwards, backwards, sometimes even upside down. In watching this little person discover the universe, those rut-making things have fallen away, and have made room for spaciousness, magic, and awe. 

To be clear, this is not our constant state of being. For all its sweetness and power, we still have to remind ourselves to live by the Elisheva principle. We constantly have to draw ourselves out of the routine and monotony– dozens of times a day. Several times a day, we press this metaphorical reset button, and even if just for a few minutes, we’re able to be present to the world and the beautiful chaos of our lives. 

Rosh Hashanah goes by many names. Yom Hadin, the Day of Judgment; Yom Hazikaron, the Day of Remembrance; Yom Teruah, the day on which we blow the Shofar. Rosh Hashanah is also called Yom Harat Olam, the Day the World was Conceived into Being. 

During the Musaf service on Rosh Hashanah, we blow the Shofar three separate times- each unit consisting of nine blasts, with one grand Tekiah Gedolah to round them all out. After each set of blasts, we read: 

הַיּוֹם הֲרַת עוֹלָם. הַיּוֹם יַעֲמִיד בַּמִּשְׁפָּט כָּל יְצוּרֵי עוֹלָמִים. אִם כְּבָנִים. אִם כַּעֲבָדִים. אִם כְּבָנִים רַחֲמֵֽנוּ כְּרַחֵם אָב עַל בָּנִים. וְאִם כַּעֲבָדִים עֵינֵֽינוּ לְךָ תְלוּיוֹת. עַד שֶׁתְּחָנֵּֽנוּ וְתוֹצִיא כָאוֹר מִשְׁפָּטֵֽנוּ אָיּוֹם קָדוֹשׁ

Today, the world stands as at birth. Today, all creation is called to judgment, whether as your children or as your servants. If as your children, be compassionate with us as a parent is compassionate with children. If as your servants, we look to you expectantly, waiting for you to be gracious to us, and as day emerges from night, to bring forth a favorable judgment on our behalf, awe-inspiring and holy one. 

On this day, the world stands as at birth. The blasts of the shofar call us to attention, call us to embody this essential High Holiday stance. Today, everything is brand new. 

Our machzor includes the following teaching on Hayom Harat Olam:

The ancient rabbis debated whether Rosh Hashanah marks either the first day of the creation of the world, or the sixth day, when humanity was formed. The liturgical emphasis on the word ‘today’ suggests that this is no mere anniversary celebration; rather, all humanity– and all creation– are recreated anew today.

And later, at the very end of Musaf, we read:

Strengthen us– today! 

Bless us– today! 

Exalt us– today! 

Seek our well-being– today! 

Inscribe us for a good life– today! 

Lovingly accept our prayers– today! 

Hear our plea– today! 

Sustain us with the power of your righteousness– today! On a day like this, bring us joyfully to the fullness of redemption. 

Once again, our Rosh Hashanah liturgy reminds us of the centrality of today. This day is unique, charged with possibility, wide-open and vast before us. 

I find this singular focus particularly interesting, because during the month of Elul, in the lead up to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and even more so on these days, we are called to reckon with ourselves past, present, and future. We take on the enormously difficult task of mining the deepest, most cavernous parts of our soul; we pick apart our personalities and our flaws; think carefully about who we are, how we’re missing the mark, and who we want to be. And we know that this is constant work– maybe magnified at this time of year– but endlessly necessary, always. 

And so, when our Rosh Hashanah liturgy declares that today is the day! Today is a day uniquely infused with meaning and magic, it seems to run somewhat counter to what we maybe thought this time of year was all about.-- maybe even undermines all the work we’ve done to reach this point. 

But what if Hayom, what if today, is a reset? Not necessarily the culmination of a journey, but a chance to get back on track if we’ve fallen off mid-course. Because as difficult as it is to imagine, especially for those of us who are still trying to understand how to make it all work– even spiritual work, even teshuvah can become rote, stale, difficult, and dull because it is never-ending and all the same. 

The idea of Hayom, of today, appears elsewhere in the biblical and rabbinic imagination. The Midrash Sifrei on Deuteronomy teaches:

Take to heart these words that I charge you today, Hayom. Today. These words are not to be in your sight like some old ordinance, to which no one is paying attention any longer, but they are to be in your sight like a new ordinance, toward which everyone is running. 

And in a similar text from Deuteronomy, Rabbi Alan Lew points us to an important insight from Rashi:

When we read in the book of Deuteronomy, “I have put before you this day life and death, a blessing and a curse, therefore choose life,” the verse is talking about spiritual life and spiritual death. The blessing is refreshment– the renewal of the soul. The curse is boredom, staleness, frustration, failure. 

And philosopher Martin Buber gives a different voice to the same concept:

When we do not believe that G-d renews the work of creation everyday, then our religious practice becomes old and routine and boring. As it says in the Psalms, “Do not cast me off when I am old.” That is, do not let my world become old. 

And Roger Daltrey, who, while decidedly not a member of the rabbinic academy, ancient or modern, expresses a similar sentiment in the Who’s 1965 classic, My Generation, in which he proclaims, “I hope I die before I get old.” Meaning, I think, that if my world ceases to amaze me, ceases to be such an obvious miracle to me; if I lose my ability to notice and appreciate the beauty of the world and the blessing of living in it, then I’d rather not live. I cannot bear to live in a world where living itself becomes dull, boring, painfully monotonous day in and day out. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel expands on this warning:

As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines. Such decline is an alarming symptom of our state of mind. Mankind will not perish for want of information, but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe, but a will to wonder. 

What will we do if we lose our sense of wonder? If we throw away that most precious gift that tethers us to the whole circle of humanity? And to the Divine? 

Living in wonderment is a form of prayer. Making a note of something beautiful or wonderful that you observed is prayer. Wonder offers us one of the most sacred paths for connecting with G-d, because it’s through wonder, that we fully come to appreciate the beauty and the miracle of the created universe. Wonder is prayer, and wonder is gratitude. 

Jewish tradition teaches that we must recite a special prayer upon waking:

מוֹדֶה אֲנִי לְפָנֶיךָ מֶלֶךְ חַי וְקַיָּם שֶׁהֶחֱזַרְתָּ בִּי נִשְׁמָתִי בְּחֶמְלָה, רַבָּה אֱמוּנָתֶךָ

I give thanks to You living and everlasting King for You have restored my soul with mercy. Great is Your faithfulness.

The Modeh or Modah Ani prayer is about cultivating gratitude for our life. It is about learning to wake up with an orientation toward the world that invites curiosity, welcomes surprise, astonishment, and awe. It’s a prayer that asks us to acknowledge just how vast the universe is, that we are but mere visitors, and we have so much to learn. 

And the Modeh Ani prayer has become part of our morning ritual at home. As we parade into Elisheva’s room to get ready for the day, we sing this tefillah, this prayer. And as soon as we begin, she dances. I love watching her wake up because it’s always incredibly exciting for her. She’s not yet at the stage where she grumpily rolls over or throws a pillow at me. She is so excited to wake up to the world, so excited to be in it. So grateful for the day. 

In his essential work on the High Holidays, This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, Rabbi Alan Lew writes:

The present moment is the only place where we experience ourselves as being alive, the only place we experience our lives at all. If you want your life to come alive again- if you want it to bristle with wonder and intensity– then you have to inhabit it, that dead meaningless life that troubles you so. So inhabit your life. Be present in it, and watch the gray concrete turn a brilliant emerald green.

So on Rosh Hashanah, when the whole world stands as at birth, I think that includes us, too. It has to. Today, we find our way back to that childlike quality– to that place of our past that is buried deep within us, that place to which we spend our whole lives trying to return. On Rosh Hashanah we are called back to the truest parts of ourselves, and we are able to encounter the world with more questions, more openness, more awe. 

On Rosh Hashanah, Hayom, the world is renewed, and so are we. On Rosh Hashanah, we can see the world– we can see the leaves, the windows, the tupperware, the cyclone tumbling down the bathtub drain– for what it really is, a blessing none of us can fathom, but that we are so unmistakably lucky to receive. 

Shanah Tovah! 

Will the Circle Be Unbroken? Rosh Hashanah 5784 Day 1

When you step into the rotunda of the Country Music Hall of Fame, if you look up, you’ll notice five words that call out like a simultaneous indictment and invitation: Will the Circle be Unbroken? First written in 1907 by Ada R. Habershon, reworked by A.P Carter in 1935, and finally immortalized by the NItty Gritty Dirt Band in 1971, these words have lived many lives, have witnessed many different versions of themselves. 

In the most well known version of this song, the 1971 version, which features the vocal talents of Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff, Mother Maybelle Carter, Earl Scruggs, and other country greats, the narrator mourns the loss of his mother, and in a haunting and somehow uplifting way, carries us listeners through the deepest and most acute moments of this newfound grief. But more than a song about a funeral, or about the specific loss of a beloved parent, this is a song about continuity, about generations. It is a song about ensuring that a legacy persists, and memory carries us through. And this song is itself a question to the survivors, and the refrain reminds us as much. Will the circle be unbroken? Will this family, will this community endure this loss, this change?

And so when I noticed these words emblazoned across that rounded ceiling at the Country Music Hall of Fame, at the center of Nashville, I couldn’t help but feel held by their delicate urgency. And then, it occurred to me that this question is so deeply and fundamentally Jewish. Because it’s a question we have been asking ourselves for thousands of years– countless generations posing this essential question to children, grandchildren, friends, dear relatives– at the seder table, on the way to High Holidays services, at a Jewish wedding, at a shiva. What are we doing, what will each of us do to ensure that Judaism, that the enterprise of building, of living in, of growing Jewish community outlasts and outlives us all? How will our circle be unbroken?

Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik, also known as the Rav, teaches that teshuvah, the active art of repentance and self-reflection, is in essence a circular motion. He writes:

When one finds oneself on the circumference of a large circle, it sometimes seems that the starting point is becoming farther and farther removed, but actually, it is getting closer and closer. At the return of the year, on Rosh Hashanah, a new calendar year begins, and with every passing day, one gets farther and farther away from the starting point, the new year. But every passing day is also a return, a drawing near to the completion of the year’s cycle, the Rosh Hashanah of the next year.

Soloveitchik points to Samuel the Prophet, Samuel the Judge, as the biblical character who is paradigmatic of this kind of return. In I Samuel chapter 7 verses 15-17 we read:

וַיִּשְׁפֹּ֤ט שְׁמוּאֵל֙ אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל כֹּ֖ל יְמֵ֥י חַיָּֽיו׃ וְהָלַ֗ךְ מִדֵּ֤י שָׁנָה֙ בְּשָׁנָ֔ה וְסָבַב֙ בֵּֽית־אֵ֔ל וְהַגִּלְגָּ֖ל וְהַמִּצְפָּ֑ה וְשָׁפַט֙ אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֵ֥ת כל־הַמְּקוֹמ֖וֹת הָאֵֽלֶּה׃ וּתְשֻׁבָת֤וֹ הָרָמָ֙תָה֙ כִּֽי־שָׁ֣ם בֵּית֔וֹ וְשָׁ֖ם שָׁפָ֣ט אֶת־יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וַיִּבֶן־שָׁ֥ם מִזְבֵּ֖חַ לד׳.

Samuel judged Israel as long as he lived.

Each year he made the rounds of Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah, and acted as judge over Israel at all those places.

Then he would return to Ramah, for his home was there, and there too he would judge Israel. He built an altar there to the LORD.

Soloveitchik continues:

Samuel went in a circuit. The moment he left Ramah, with the goal of making a full circuit of Bethel, Gilgal, and Mizpah, he was already returning to Ramah, for it was there lived his that he made his home; there in Ramatayim Tzofim, lived his mother, Hannah; there he had spent his childhood; there were his roots. Everywhere Samuel went, he was heading for home. 

And isn’t that what teshuvah is? Isn’t that what this sacred and sometimes impossible talk of finding our way back to the truth of ourselves is? Isn’t it all about coming home?

Soloveitchik makes one more critical observation about Shmuel and his cycles of return. He writes:

Samuel was a leader and a judge for all Israel: he made a circuit of all of Israel’s scattered living places, but everywhere he went, he was heading for home. He belonged to all of Israel, for the land of Israel was his home, but his true home was only in one place, in Ramah, as it is written, “for there was his home.” Only there could he construct the altar of his life to G-d.

On the surface, Soloveitchik reminds us that Shmuel is always journeying to one particular home, despite being comfortable, recognized, and needed in so many other parts of the country. But I think Soloveithchik is actually making a deeper and much more radical claim about the power and necessity of community. Year after year, during the month of Elul, during Rosh Hashanah, the Aseret Yemei Teshuvah, and Yom Kippur, we are called to tread the same path, to visit all of those familiar, comfortable, and often painful places of our past. During the year, we are asked to make our spiritual homes in so many different places. But now, we come home. But making this perilous journey, Soloveitchik teaches us, cannot be done alone. Our journey around the circle, around the brambles and through the thicket of our lives, can be made easier, the sharp, cutting edges of this difficult work softened by the other people who are walking the same large circumference. By the very same people who are also making their way home. 

And the wonderful thing about a circle? A circle that we are all walking together? It binds us, draws us closer to one another. Makes us alike and nearer to each other. The circle makes us responsible for one another, because from any point on the circle’s path, I can see you, and you can see me. On this circle, we are perpetually held, continuously witnessed in our growth, in our progress, and in our healing. 

There is an incredible debate on the first mishnah of tractate Chagigah. The mishnah says:

הכל חייבין בראיה

All are obligated, on the three pilgrimage festivals– Pesach, Shavuot, and Sukkot– in the mitzvah of appearance. 

The Mishnah goes on to detail with more technical specificity anyone who may be excused from this appearance, and also gives instructions for how exactly to show up in these moments. But the use of the word ראיה is critical here, and so very interesting. 

So when the Mishnah says that all are obligated in the mitzvah of “appearance,” does it mean that everyone is obligated to appear, to simply arrive at the Temple, even if your arrival goes unnoticed in such a large crowd. Or, does it mean that everyone is obligated to literally be seen? In order to satisfy the requirements of the pilgrimage festivals, in order to have made the journey worthwhile, you must be fully seen, fully witnessed in your coming so far. Fully witnessed in having made this loving, possibly perilous, dedicated trek to Jerusalem, to G-d’s holy seat.

But being seen is not something we can do for ourselves, on our own. It requires someone else to see us. So when you arrive at the Mikdash, at the Temple, everyone in the community is required to look out for you, to see you, to make sure that you are accounted for. It is a reminder to all of us, that we are responsible to pay attention to who is here, who is in the room, and who is missing. We are responsible for making sure that when a member of our community steps through those doors, that they are seen, welcomed, held, and invited into the magical possibilities of what can happen in a shul. And perhaps more importantly, we are called to notice who doesn’t come through that sacred entrance. And to take note, and reach out. 

I think it’s both. Jewish religion was never intended to be practiced in a vacuum. Yes, we all have unique spiritual and religious inner lives that only we can fully understand, no one else. And we might have profound private experiences with Judaism– of prayer, of learning, of G-d. But Judaism is not a monastic culture or religion. And so to give Jewish ritual and Jewish culture and Jewish life their force, we must show up and we must be seen. We must participate, and we must help the people around us participate, too. There is a deep mutuality, reciprocity, and outwardness that Judaism, thank G-d, requires of us. 

The Talmud, in tractate Shevuot teaches: 

כל ישראל ערבים זה בזה

All of Israel is responsible for each other. 

We are all responsible for one another. This, I think, is the most important principle that we find in Jewish life and literature– because our communities cannot grow, our communities cannot survive, can’t evolve into the very thing we need them to be, without each one of us, if we only think about ourselves. If we put ourselves at the center of our commitment to Jewish community, that commitment runs the risk of growing stale, exhausting, and your own involvement here and in other Jewish communities may begin to feel burdensome and inauthentic. Because as much as we try, it’s not realistic to believe that every moment, that every time you step into this building will be transformative. But there is something perhaps more important, more profound about what can happen here in those moments between the sublime. 

And to be clear, each of us should aspire to have a deeply personal and individual relationship with Judaism, and you should participate in the things that make you feel most connected, that make you feel most enriched. And that is a big part of what we are trying to build here at OZS– a culture that empowers lots of different kinds of opportunities, lots of different points of entry, so each of you can really find yourself here. 

But how would our orientation to community change if instead of first asking, “What will I get out of this” or "what will this program or this class or this volunteer opportunity do for me?” The first question we asked was instead “How will my participation, how will my showing up enable someone else or help someone else in this beloved community to connect, to deepen their relationship to Judaism? How will my being here impact the community in the long-term and for the better?

Parshat Nitzavim takes this idea of communal obligation one step further. The first psukim of the Parsha reads: 

You stand this day, all of you, before your God —your tribal heads, your elders, and your officials, every householder in Israel, your children, your wives, even the stranger within your camp, from woodchopper to water drawer— to enter into the covenant of your God, which your God is concluding with you this day, with its sanctions; in order to establish you this day as God’s people and in order to be your God, as promised you and as sworn to your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I make this covenant, not with you alone, but both with those who are standing here with us this day before our God and with those who are not with us here this day.

This is perhaps The Torah’s attempt to answer our original question: will the circle be unbroken? And here, in the case of this renewed covenant in Parshat Nitzavim, as the Israelites are preparing finally to enter the land of Israel, we see a clear answer. Everyone is here, standing before G-d, nobody is excluded or outside of this moment. Everyone, past, present, and future. Every person in the community was present, and every person in the community made this covenantal moment possible. 

The Or Hachaim, Rabbi Chaim ibn Attar, the 17th/18th Century Biblical scholar, talmudist, and Kabbalist comments on these verses:

What Moshe wanted with this new covenant was to make the Israelites responsible for one another in their performance of Mitzvot. Each Jew has to see to it that their fellow does not stumble and sin. 

And our piece of Talmud from tractate Shevuot emphasizes this point by teaching that: 

The entire Jewish people are considered guarantors for one another. So much that any transgression makes the entire world liable to be punished. 

Both the Or Hachaim and the anonymous author of the Talmud teach that it is incumbent upon each of us to support others in their practice of Judaism. This might sound like a daunting and perhaps near-impossible task. How can I make sure that you are praying three times a day? How can I make sure that you are keeping the strictest levels of Kosher in your home? How can I possibly make sure that you don’t engage in Lashon Harah, gossip, or treat your parents, friends, or relatives with disrespect? SUrely, I cannot be held responsible for all of that.

But we are so fortunate to live in a time, and belong to a Jewish community that embraces and understands that living a Jewish life, observing Judaism, belonging to community,  is a far more expansive exercise than simply checking off the list of commandments. That is not to say that we each shouldn’t strive to improve and grow our performance of Jewish ritual, and root ourselves in the anchor of Jewish law. But we know that Jewish observance also means bringing chicken soup to a sick friend; learning something new about Judaism; it’s lovingly peeling the shells of over 100 hard boiled eggs for our community seder; it’s setting up chairs in the social hall; bringing your voice to services or song circles; it’s making sno-cones for our religious school students, even though that means being sticky, cold, and covered in tide-resistant food coloring. It’s also coming to services, volunteering to greet people as they come into the building. It’s teaching or participating in a class here at OZS or leading a book club. It’s ensuring that members of our community are cared for and buried with dignity. 

This is just a small list of all of the ways that each of you contribute to the life and longevity of our community. 

This Rosh Hashanah, we are kicking off our OZS Year of Joy. One of the sweetest and I think most important mitzvot that we have, is to serve G-d with joy, Ivdu et Hashem B’Simcha. I love this pasuk, this mitzvah, because it reminds me of all that’s possible in Jewish life, and Jewish community. And joy, we know, can be so difficult to locate, especially now. Which is why we need this guiding principle, this reminder more than ever. We all need the extra push toward joy right now. 

And how do we achieve, how do we lean into and embrace this radical call to action, in a world that would prefer that we didn’t seek joy, that we didn’t feel joy? How do we pursue joy with an unceasing focus, in a world that is so distracting? How do we make sure that our sacred communities are wellsprings, sources, foundations of joy and life?

We do it together. We do it by making the journey to our Mikdash, to our sweet little shul on Edgewater Court. We do it by stepping out of our comfort zone, even if just for an hour. We do it by inviting a friend to join us for a class, for a service, for a Shabbat or holiday meal. We do it by picking up the phone and checking in.

And if we truly internalize the teaching of the Or Hachaim, we know that we are obligated to make it so for others, too. To make sure that everyone in our community can feel joy, can access joy, can put joy at the center of their Jewish life and identity. We do it to make sure that joy can propel each of us forward in building a community that is growing, that is thriving, that will be here for generations to come. 

We do it all, and I invite you to be part of it, to ensure that our circle remains unbroken. 

When Expectation and Reality Collide: Parshat Ki Tissa and the Possibility of Israel

I was brought up to love Israel. The youth group I belonged to, Bnei Akiva, is affiliated with the national religious Zionist movement in Israel. The summer camp I grew up in, Moshava, part of that lineage, too– the themes of each summer, more often than not, centered around the values of building and protecting a Jewish homeland. I will never forget summer 2005, when the focus of our eight weeks up in Wild Rose, Wisconsin, was the disengagement from Gaza. We wore neon orange ribbons all summer long, to show our support for, stand in solidarity with, and mourn alongside the Jews who were being forced to leave their homes in Gaza. 

After high school, we were all expected to spend a gap year in Israel before heading off to college. Many of my closest childhood friends stayed in Israel, and went on to serve in the Israeli Defence Forces, the IDF. I knew families and friends who always had a bag packed, ready to run, ready to board an El Al flight to Israel, in case things became untenable for Jews in the diaspora. 

And so, I grew up with a feeling that while I lived here, I really belonged there. A feeling not unfamiliar to Jews generally, and reflective of the longing that Spanish poet, philosopher, and physician Judah HaLevi expressed when he wrote, my heart is in the east, and I am on the very edge of the west, in the 12th century. 

I grew up to believe that Israel was uncomplicated. Fundamentally a place of hope, democracy, connection, Jewish pride and sovereignty. I wasn’t aware of Palestinian culture, and didn’t fully appreciate the near-constant negotiation between identities, rights, and heritage that play out in almost every sphere of Israel society. I was encouraged not to ask so many questions about what was happening on the ground– but was told not to wander too far, when we visited my cousin’s in the West Bank city of Efrat. 

I was shielded from so much of the complexity, from so many of the things that make it possible to fully and honestly engage with all that Israel is. 

But as I got older, I began to encounter different stories about this place I loved so much. About this place that was central to who I was as a Jew. In college, I met religious Jews just like me who thought about Israel and Zionism differently. I met Palestinians, people who had grown up in an Israel that I didn’t know existed. Didn’t even know was possible. I started to meet people, to hear and really grapple with multiple truths about this place that for long, was so simple, so beautiful, and so essentially uncomplicated. I started to read more, engage more with the news coming out of Israel, and I learned that it was possible to be a Jew, to be a Zionist, and to be critical, to be concerned. That I could still hope in Israel, while also being serious and open-minded about some of its very real challenges. In college, I learned how to not be so afraid of my questions. And I learned how to fall in love with Israel all over again in a way that was much more honest. 

I have always identified as a Zionist. At first, because that's what my community expected. And now, because I believe that Zionism can be expansive and aspirational. That it can help us articulate a sense of hope and optimism and focus about the Israel that we want to see, an Israel that is worthy of the millenia of longing, and worthy of its own history. An Israel that prioritizes democracy, religious pluralism, the dignity and safety of Israelies and Palestinians. An Israel that values Jewish expression in all forms, that lovingly embraces its LGBTQ citizens. An Israel that is as politically, socially, and religiously diverse, as the Jewish people, and as the many other people who claim a connection to the land. 

For the last several years, I have worked hard to maintain my commitment to, or at the very least my hope that Zionism can be a force for good. But lately, I have struggled to reconcile that identity with the reality of what I see unfolding in Israel. 

The current Israeli government is the most conservative, right-wing, extreme government in the country’s history. We are seeing rising levels of violence, against Jews and Palestinians, a current campaign to overhaul the Israeli Judicial System, and essentially remove the last remaining check on Israeli Government power. 

For the past nine weeks, over 400,000 Israelis have taken to the streets in protest. Calling for change, calling for an end to violence, calling for the kinds of investment in democracy that all of Israel’s citizens and residents deserve. These have been the largest protests in Israeli history. And the most diverse. Former military officials, former soldiers, regular Israeli citizens who were not previously politically active are putting their values to work, wearing them proudly on their sleeves, and calling on the Israeli government to think carefully about its next steps. About this moment of potential existential rupture for Israel and consequently for Jewish people around the world. 

We are past the point of hyperbole. Israel is nearing its breaking point. And we have a responsibility to talk about it. 

In this week’s Torah portion, Parshat Ki Tissa, the Israelites commit the sin of the Golden Calf– the most essential betrayal of G-d’s relationship with the people. Moshe is nearing the end of his stay atop the mountain. The people at Sinai’s base are growing restless, fearful, reasonably and understandably anxious about their future. They wonder if Moshe will ever come back down the mountain. Will Moshe return and bring back the fruits of revelation? Where will we go from here?

Exodus chapter 32 begins:

When the people saw that Moses was so long in coming down from the mountain, the people gathered against Aaron and said to him, “Come, make us a god who shall go before us, for that fellow Moses—the man who brought us from the land of Egypt—we do not know what has happened to him.”

This is one of the most famous stories in the Torah– a text that so many of us are deeply familiar with– and yet, as is the case with so much of our biblical tradition, I noticed something new this time around, that I hadn’t before. 

Our Parsha opens on the top of the mountain. G-d continues to give Moses the instructions for the Mishkan, outlines the sacrificial service, even instructs Moshe to conduct a census. G-d tells Moshe that Betzalel and Ohaliav will help in the construction of the Mishkan, that he will have the help and support he needs to see this building project through to the end. 

We begin our Parsha in yet another moment of intimacy and learning between G-d and Moshe. Isolated and safe at the top of Mount Sinai, not necessarily aware of what is brewing among the people down below. 

And just before the text transitions into the incident of the Golden Calf, G-d says the following:

You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy for you. One who profanes it shall be put to death: whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off from among kin. Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, holy to יהוה; whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time: it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days יהוה made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day [God] ceased from work and was refreshed.

And:

Upon finishing speaking with him on Mount Sinai, [God] gave Moses the two tablets of the Pact, stone tablets inscribed with the finger of God.

What is Shabbat, if not a dream of the world perfected? A dream of closeness, connection, and trust between G-d and the people? Shabbat is the ultimate expression of belief in the world as it ought to be, it is מעין עולם הבא– a taste of the world to come. 

And so just before these 40 days and 40 nights come to an end, G-d says to Moshe, I want more of this, I want this exact feeling to last. I want to be close to you, to the people. Whether that closeness is made possible by the Mishkan or the observance of Shabbat– before this unique period of attachment between G-d and Moshe comes to an end, G-d gives Moshe a small window into what is possible, what can be. 

And then, Moshe hurries down the mountain, sees the people dancing around and worshiping the golden calf, and what does he do? He throws the tablets down to the ground, shatters the Luchot, shatters the covenant we had just received and created with G-d. 

So much of what is tragic about this story stems from the radical disconnect between expectation and reality. Yes, Moshe smashes the Luchot because he is overcome with rage and disappointment, and real grief. But I think that sense of all-consuming anger is deeper than simply witnessing the people behaving badly– I think Moshe’s anger grows out of the incompatibility of G-d’s vision for the people and the people’s actions. 

When the expectations above, in the Yeshiva shel Maalah, do not match the realities below, in the Yeshiva shel Matah, things go haywire, and the covenant is shattered, ruptured. 

The Jewish world is in a similar moment of rupture vis a vis our relationship to Israel and Zionism. For so long, the expectation, the hope, the dream of Zionism was something to cherish, to delight in. It was a dream that gave Jews around the world something to unify around; it motivated us to work hard, to build something new and our own, to make the desert bloom. 

But now, we are coming up against the same discord, the same incompatibility that Moshe did when he came down the mountain: the hope of an Israel perfected now directly at odds with the positions and direction of the current Israeli government. 

I am not ready to give up on Israel. But I am concerned. I am worried that the dream is fading fast, and that we are already in the midst of an existential crisis. So I offer these thoughts as an invitation: Please, let’s have this difficult conversation together as a community. Let’s process the fear, the anger, the worry, and the hope that I know we are all feeling on some level. We are nearing the point of no return, and we cannot be silent or afraid anymore. 

We need to talk. 

Luckily, the Israelites are given a second chance. Moshe pleads on their behalf, and G-d ensures that the covenant can endure. Moshe goes back up the mountain for another 40 days and 40 nights, and rewrites the story of the Jewish people. 

If we are lucky, we will be given a second chance, to take back that which has been lost, that which has been squandered. If we are lucky, we will be given a second chance to rewrite our story, to right these most basic wrongs, and go forward into a future for Israel that is morally guided, just, and worthy of G-d’s covenant. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei/Shabbat HaChodesh: Playing an active role in Redemption

The last several weeks have been very strange weather-wise. Many of us are struggling with our allergies; we can’t quite figure out what to wear; is it time to put the winter clothes away or not? It feels like we’ve been in a simultaneous and ongoing state of beginnings and endings. Winter, blending into spring, blending back into winter and so on. 

This Shabbat is also a Shabbat of endings and beginnings. In reading parshat Vayakhel-Pekudei, we officially conclude Sefer Shemot, the book of Exodus. And, this Shabbat is also Shabbat HaChodesh, the Shabbat that immediately precedes Rosh Chodesh Nissan- the month in which we celebrate Pesach. In just three and a half weeks, we will come together in community, and celebrate Passover. We will tell the story of our liberation from Egypt, sing wonderfully nostalgic songs, enjoy a delicious dinner and one another’s company. But perhaps most important of all, on Pesach, we are called to reflect on and express gratitude for our redemption– for the very possibility that redemption is even possible in this world. 

Sefer Shemot covers three primary stories: the Exodus from Egypt, Revelation, and the construction of the Mishkan. Three important stories that are at once distinct, and also deeply connected, at least thematically. 

There are many possible ways to link the stories of Shemot: We might say that these three moments are all about discovering G-d and building a relationship with the Divine. We might say that these stories are about discovering ourselves as a nation and as a community; we might even say that these moments underscore the most pivotal early moments in Jewish history– both culturally and religiously. 

But there is another understanding of the connective tissue that runs between these stories that I think is most appropriate for this time of year, for Shabbat HaChodesh. 

According to Nachmanides, the 12th Century Spanish Jewish physician, philosopher, Biblical commentator, and Jewish Legal Scholar, the central theme and purpose of the Book of Exodus is geulah, the idea of redemption. And redemption itself is an idea that contains within it complexity and nuance. According to Nachmanides, redemption can mean saving someone or something, it can mean being saved, and it can also mean reclaiming something that was once yours. 

Ramban explains that Sefer Shemot is distinct, and set apart from the other books of the Torah because it is about our very first experience in exile, and our redemption from it. And interestingly, he points out that the exile was not over when we stepped over the border and out of Egypt. Because we were not yet returned to the spiritual status of our ancestors. We hadn’t yet found our way back to our spiritual, covenantal relationship with G-d. We were wandering in the desert, trying desperately to make meaning in the wilderness. We were a people in progress, but we were still not whole. Still very much between beginnings and endings. 

But when we arrived at Mount Sinai to receive revelation, and when we committed to build the Mishkan and bring G-d home, G-d’s presence effectively returned us to that most important spiritual state of our ancestors. Bringing G-d’s presence down into our world– whether it be by observing Mitzvot, or building and traveling alongside G-d, G-d returned us to that place, that state of mind that was required for our redemption from Egypt to be complete and fully realized. 

While the Exodus from Egypt was a physical one, the Ramban teaches us that physical redemption isn’t always enough. I find this especially interesting because at the Seder we sing Dayenu– and we say that had G-d only taken us out of Egypt, that would have been enough. But Ramban takes Dayenu a step further, and puts the responsibility of redemption, at least partially, in our hands. He returns to us the power and the possibility to be redeemed. Yes, G-d brought us out of Egypt, G-d gave us the Torah at Sinai, and G-d commanded us to build the Mishkan– but we also took those first fearful steps, we trembled at the base of the mountain and called out Naaseh V'Nishma, and we built G-d’s house. 

Perhaps Ramban is urging us to take a more active role in our own redemption. Don’t just passively wait for G-d to intervene, don’t just sweep the small crumbs out of your kitchen before Passover. Challenge yourself to think about your own personal redemption: what do you need to be redeemed from? How are you going to get there? Or, how are you going to ask for the help and support it might take for that redemption to be realized?

This week, we will welcome in the month of Nissan– which means that we have our hopes on spring. Pesach also goes by the name Chag Ha’Aviv, the Holiday of the spring. I always think of spring as a new beginning, a redemption and revelation of its own. Because when springtime comes, the earth is returned to us. The trees bloom, the air is sweet, and we are, even if just for a moment, returned to a perfect state of things. 

As we reflect on the redemptive qualities of Sefer Shemot, and look ahead to the dreamed-about redemption of Pesach, let’s plant ourselves firmly in our own personal redemptions, and follow the Ramban’s advice: look for the possibility of redemption in all things, seeking return and wholeness in the spiritual as much as in the physical. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

The Possibility of darkness: Rabbi Abramowitz Senior Sermon, Parshat Vayeitzei 2020

So many of my favorite memories happened in the dark. Chasing fireflies in the summer, bounding out of the house to look for the three stars that would mark the end of Shabbat. Driving around aimlessly with friends in high school, wondering where the road and the night might take us. 

But my favorite memory of all, comes in the raucous midst of Bar-Mitzvah preparation. Vayetizei was my Abba’s Bar-Mitzvah parsha, and it was also my brother’s. Coby was 12 or so, and I was 17. And this was the first time I was hearing trope being studied out loud. Hearing the trope of Parshat Vayeitzei, made me feel that one day, I could learn to read Torah, too. 

So, in the evenings, Coby and my Abba would sit at the dining room table. Listening to tapes and reviewing the trope marks. While I sat on the stairs, just out of sight, singing along. Off in another room, I was also learning to leyn Vayeitzei. But, my singing, and my intruding in on Coby’s preparations were understandably irritating, and disruptive. So my Imma would emerge from another room, take my hand, and lead me outside, where we would sit in the rocking chairs until Coby finished his lesson. 

This was our time. Every night for nearly a year, my mom and I would leave through the front door, and sit, rock our way through those hours on the front porch. Sometimes we would argue, sometimes we would sit in silence. But most of the time, those hours passed quickly with laughter, jokes, and stories. The darkness gave us something we couldn’t replicate in any other place or time. Under the cover of the moon and the stars, we could just be. 

Jacob is the first of the Avot, the first of the patriarchs to contend with darkness. 

וַיֵּצֵ֥א יַעֲקֹ֖ב מִבְּאֵ֣ר שָׁ֑בַע וַיֵּ֖לֶךְ חָרָֽנָה׃ וַיִּפְגַּ֨ע בַּמָּק֜וֹם וַיָּ֤לֶן שָׁם֙ כִּי־בָ֣א הַשֶּׁ֔מֶשׁ וַיִּקַּח֙ מֵאַבְנֵ֣י הַמָּק֔וֹם וַיָּ֖שֶׂם מְרַֽאֲשֹׁתָ֑יו וַיִּשְׁכַּ֖ב בַּמָּק֥וֹם הַהֽוּא׃

Jacob left Beer-Sheba and set out for Haran. He came upon a certain place and stopped there for the night, for the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of that place, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep in that place. 

In the very opening verses of Parshat Vayeitzei, we see Jacob contending with two kinds of darkness. The first, the metaphoric darkness of leaving his parents’ home in Beer-Sheva, of separating from his family. And the second, the more literal darkness that comes in the nighttime. 

The word Makom, place, is used three times in our verses. Three times we are reminded that Jacob has come to this temporary place. This place of transition, and rest. The land on which Jacob sleeps has traditionally been identified with Mount Moriah-- the site of the Akeidah, where Jacob’s father Isaac was bound up and nearly sacrificed by his father Abraham. Mount Moriah is also the future site of the Temple. Avivah Zornberg describes this place as one of prayer and sacrifice, of the human attempt to come close to G-d. It is a place of purity and danger, of great longing and distancing.

The Midrash in Genesis Rabbah tells us that when Jacob arrived in this place, between Beer-Sheva and Haran, when the night fell that  “He tried to pass through, but the world became entirely like a wall in front of him.”  The darkness thick, palpable, unbreakable. 

But the word Makom is also a name for G-d. For G-d is the place of the universe. We are told three separate times that G-d is here in this moment with Jacob, even in this dark and momentary place. 

In the opening verses of Vayeitzei, not only are we introduced to the physical, geographic location where Jacob lays down to sleep for the night, we are reminded, perhaps even reassured, that G-d is there, too. 

The Midrash comments on our scene, explaining that G-d caused the sun to sink earlier than usual, in order to speak with Jacob privately. This, the Midrash tells us, can be likened to a king who has the lights extinguished, so that he may speak with his friend in private. 

There is something so intimate about this change in the natural order of things. G-d makes the sun go down earlier than usual, bringing the darkness perhaps a moment too soon, to be closer to Jacob, to communicate with Jacob. Under the cover of night, G-d can be fully present.

And in this darkness, we know that G-d does communicate with Jacob. After Jacob falls asleep, he dreams. In the foreground, that famous ladder, planted in the earth, its top, buried in the heavens, the ministering angels climbing up and down. And in this dream, G-d stands beside Jacob and makes a covenant. 

“I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac: the ground on which you are lying I will assign to you and to your offspring. Your descendants shall be as the dust of the earth; you shall spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you and your descendants. Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Remember, I am with you. In the darkness, G-d makes a promise to Jacob. A promise of comfort, progeny, power, and protection. 

But Jacob’s experience of this darkness, and his reaction to it, matter. What happens in this darkness is crucial: A covenant is made and a prayer is born. 

The creation of the evening service, of Tefilat Arvit, is attributed to Jacob. Just like his father and grandfather before him, Jacob uses prayer to mark time. There is a hint of this in the Midrashic translation of the verb va-yifgah, and he prayed or he pleaded. 

Through the darkness, G-d extends an invitation with a covenant. Jacob accepts that invitation with his prayer. 

The Midrash continues, at evening: a person should say, “May it be Thy will, O Lord my G-d, that You bring me out of darkness into light.” 

Jacob is the first person to pray in the dark. To make holy that which is otherwise terrifying, paralyzing, and unknown. To lean into the darkness, embrace it, and follow G-d’s lead in transforming it into something new. 

In his unique experience, Jacob serves as a model for dealing with the variations of darkness in our own lives. And right now, in this moment of fear and uncertainty, we are all feeling those same ebbs and flows. We are scared, but perhaps we are also hopeful. Things feel so unfamiliar right now, but maybe, just maybe, our eyes will adjust. 

When my mom Ellen died almost two years, Coby, my Abba, and I were suddenly dropped into the untouchable void of grief. At first, the sorrow and pain so acute, my grief actually felt like a well or pit with smooth walls. We were all trapped at the bottom, unable to climb or claw our way out. And there were days, countless days, that no matter how hard we looked, no matter how many stones we overturned, we were still stuck. Alone, bereft, in the bottom of that well. But for all the sweetness that the darkness had previously given to my life, this was different. I felt suspended, like an atom, between the emotional and tangible shades of grief. Unable to walk around the wall, unable to climb over it. 

But then there were days when even from the very bottom of that pit, if we dared to look up, we could see just the smallest sliver of light. 

My grief has shifted and changed a lot in the last two years. Often, it feels that my grief has a personality, a mind of its own. I have moved through the denial, the anger, the bargaining, the depression, and the acceptance. And most days, I feel like I am carrying it all. Grief is not linear, it is perhaps the most fundamental, messy, and chaotic of human experiences. It comes in waves, sometimes all at once, sometimes not at all. 

But my grief has also given me many gifts, of this I am certain. In my grief, I have connected with my Imma in new ways that were unavailable to us before. I have been able to access her in her fullness, in her totality, in everything that she was. The joy, the hope, the laughter, but also the sorrow, the sadness, and the loss. It feels that in its own, strange way, we can be fully present with one another. On this side, we can just be. 

I think a lot about those nights I spent with my Imma on the front porch. Coby and my Abba inside, studying Parshat Vayetzei. The gift and the blessing that it was to sit in the safety of the nighttime, seeing each other in ways not spoiled by the bright light of day. 

Grief has taught me what is possible in the darkness, what can be transformed because of the darkness. And as I have worked hard to move through my grief, I have found that the darkness feels safe again. Just like when we were kids, I feel that the darkness holds something creative, something intimate, something hidden. 

In that dingy and unlit pit of grief, it can be impossible to trust that G-d is there. It feels like no covenant and no prayer are possible. But Jacob’s experience in that liminal place between Beer-Sheva and Haran gives us a way forward. Jacob teaches us how to reveal G-d even in the darkest of moments. And, as he stands before that great Midrashic wall created by the night, Jacob makes a choice. He chooses to pray, he chooses to reach out. He chooses to trust that there is life and Godliness after the grief. 

Remember, I am with you. 

Understanding Avraham in Moments Big and Small

This week, I had the privilege to spend four days in St. Louis, learning, connecting, and visioning with my Conservative Movement friends and colleagues at the Rabbinical Assembly convention. We spent our time studying Jewish text, singing and davening together, dreaming about the future of our movement, brainstorming, listening, and mourning the losses that our movement suffered during two years of pandemic. 

These four days were so special because I was able to reconnect with some of my favorite teachers and mentors from Rabbinical school; I was able to study and be a student in a way I haven’t been able to in a long time; and perhaps most importantly, I was being taken care of on so many different levels– physically, spiritually, emotionally. All week long, I had the experience of being a beloved guest– welcomed in, cared for, invited to focus fully on what we were all there to do. And even though the convention schedule was packed, and I felt pretty tired, I left St. Louis feeling that my cup had been filled. That my spiritual well was once again overflowing with nourishing life-giving waters. In this context, to be a guest meant that I was able to put worry and busyness aside, and was instead able to be present in ways I have been deeply missing. To be away, but to be away in the company of dear friends and mentors, was energizing, and heartening. And I can’t  wait to share everything I learned there with you all, to bring it back home. 

And this experience of being a guest, of being so fully embraced and taken care of, reminded me of a crucial moment in this week’s parsha. At the very beginning of our portion, Avraham is greeted by three guests:

G-d appeared to him by the trees of Mamre; Avraham was sitting at the entrance of the tent as the day grew hot. Looking up, he saw three figures standing near him. Perceiving this, he ran from the entrance of the tent to greet them and, bowing to the ground, He said, “My lords!” If it pleases you, do not go on past your servant. Let a little water be brought; bathe your feet and recline under the tree. And let me fetch a morsel of bread that you may refresh yourselves; then go on—seeing that you have come your servant’s way.” They replied, “Do as you have said.” Abraham hastened into the tent to Sarah, and said, “Quick, three seahs of choice flour! Knead and make cakes!” Then Abraham ran to the herd, took a calf, tender and choice, and gave it to a servant-boy, who hastened to prepare it. He took curds and milk and the calf that had been prepared and set these before them; and he waited on them under the tree as they ate.

Here, Avraham is a model of hospitality. We can almost imagine him running as fast as he can around his tent to make sure everything is just so for these welcome strangers. We can almost feel the frenetic and joyous energy of this moment– the language itself full of chaotic, happy movement. 

The commentators disagree about whether or not Avraham knew that these guests were really angels, emissaries of the Divine sent to deliver the message that Sarah would conceive and give birth to a baby boy the following year. 

But whether or not Avraham knew that these strangers were sent from G-d, the commentators agree that our patriarch is indeed an exemplar of hospitality, of hachnasat orchim. The text makes clear that Avraham goes above and beyond for these strangers. He doesn’t seem to ask questions, but instead invites them in with radical openness and care. Avraham treats these men like family. 

Just a few verses later, Avraham is poised yet again, to honor and protect the dignity and humanity of complete strangers. 

Then G-d  said, “The outrage of Sodom and Gomorrah is so great, and their sin so grave! I will go down to see whether they have acted altogether according to the outcry that has reached Me; if not, I will take note.” Abraham came forward and said, “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will You then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?”

This exchange continues. Avraham continues to negotiate with G-d, begging that G-d not destroy the city on the merit of even fewer people. 

And he said, “Let not my lord be angry if I speak but this last time: What if ten should be found there?” “I will not destroy, for the sake of the ten.”

Avraham is ultimately unsuccessful, and the city of Sodom is destroyed, and that is traumatic for Avraham. The destruction of Sodom brings him a great deal of sorrow. 

These two moments in our parsha, Avraham’s hospitality, and his fierce advocacy for the protection of the people of Sodom, are often lifted up, celebrated as two important examples of his righteousness. And for good reason. These are extraordinary moments of human compassion. In these two moments, it becomes clear that Avraham is a person who sees goodness in everyone; it becomes clear that Avraham struggles to understand a G-d who is potentially capricious and vengeful. It becomes clear to us that Avraham does believe that humanity, even at its worst, is fundamentally redeemable. 

But there are three other critical moments in this week’s Torah portion that stand in stark contrast to Avraham’s generosity and concern for the dignity of others. 1. When Avraham instructs Sarah, a second time, to pretend to be his sister for fear that he may be killed by King Avimelech. 2. When Avraham banishes Hagar and Ishamel; and 3, and perhaps most notably, when Avraham rises to the challenge, accepts G-d’s instruction that he sacrifice his son, Isaac, with enthusiasm and zeal. 

Each of these three moments are pivotal, and each deserving of their own drash. But to dwell in a weekly Torah portion means to read the portion as a whole; to read its stories and characters and subtleties not independently of the other, but decidedly in dialogue with the whole. 

And so how do we make sense of this seeming contradiction, or even hypocrisy in Avraham’s behavior throughout Parshat Vayera? How is he on the one hand, so open, so generous, so trusting of complete strangers; and on the other, so sadly disconnected from and unconcerned with the human experience of those closest to him? 

When I started to think about this question, I remembered how difficult it must have been to be Avraham. Everything brand new. A relationship with a newly discovered deity unfolding and growing in real time. A community to lead. A land to wander toward. And if we read retrospectively, we know that Avraham carries the weight of our future on his shoulders. The stakes are so very high.

In this week’s Parsha, we learn that Avraham is really good at the big stuff. And he teaches us, in so many ways, how to build lives that are worthy of covenant. Avraham teaches us how to see others, how to advocate on behalf of the marginalized, how to make sense of a world that is full of violence and fear. Avraham teaches us to listen for G-d’s voice, to be enthusiastic in our practice, to dedicate one’s whole self to believing in all that a community can grow to become. 

But Avraham isn’t so good at the in-between moments. The small, but certainly no less important, interactions, reactions. The listening, the engaging, the connecting on a deeply human level. 

Perhaps, in pursuit of G-d and in pursuit of covenant, Avraham misses what’s right in front of him. And we all know that sometimes it’s easier to be gracious and altruistic to others, to strangers. That when there is a distance, an anonymity between myself and the other, I can take up their cause, I can advocate on principle. I can convince myself into believing that I can do more. But when we do that, we fail to see the people who are closest to us. We fail to give the kinds of acknowledgement and the kinds of care that the people near us are equally worthy of. It’s easy to take the people we love for granted. It’s easy to trick ourselves into thinking that we don’t have to do the same kinds of work to be in relationship with them. It’s easy to put those little moments of our lives on hold, to push them aside in the presence of bigger things. Don’t do it, is that cautionary tale of Parshat Vayera. 

There are many moments of tragedy in this week’s parsha. But I believe the cumulative tragedy of Parshat Vayera is that Avraham fails to do for those closest to him, what he so easily does for strangers. And how painful this must have been for Isaac, for Sarah, for Hagar and Ishmael, and also for Eliezer. 

So this week, take this lesson from our parsha to heart. Don’t give up on your work, don’t stop trying to make the world a better and more just place; but when you have minute, when you find yourself in-between, pick up the phone, send a text, write a short note, to a dear friend, to a dear family member, to someone who is right there, but also so far away. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Walking, Walking: how prayer keeps us moving in uncertain times: Lech Lecha/Election 2022

I went to vote yesterday. It was a gorgeous day, and I was heartened by the lines. By the number of people who were eager to cast their ballot early. People excited and committed to exercising their civic duty. Folks eager to help determine the political fate of our Commonwealth and the nation. But as pleasantly surprised as I was by the turnout and the beautiful weather, I was also on edge. Because it occurred to me that this election might very well be the most consequential in my lifetime. 

Voting is a sacred act. And every single time I have voted, it has always felt that way. Important, potentially life-changing, hopeful, something worth celebrating. A privilege, really, to cast a ballot. But this year feels different. To me, the stakes are higher. The outcomes more uncertain than ever before, and more troubling. Yesterday, as I stood in line to vote, I didn’t feel hopeful. I felt afraid, overwhelmed, and so very very sad. 

Inside the polling place, the energy was also so lovely. Smiles all around. Poll workers and election officials seemed to be so pleased with the turnout– “we’ve had a steady stream of voters since we opened yesterday,” the woman who printed our ballots shared with us. It felt that everyone there understood that this election was different. And perhaps this turnout was on track to exceed midterm election turnout in Kentucky in previous years. 

And so I sat down at my table, with my ballot, cozy behind the upright corrugated dividers, that shield you from the curious eyes of other voters. I made my selections, moved through the majority of the ballot with little hesitancy or consequence. And then I landed on the very last question: 

Are you in favor of amending the Constitution of Kentucky by creating a new Section of the Constitution to be numbered Section 26A to state as follows: To protect human life, nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to secure or protect a right to abortion or require the funding of abortion?

I have never before looked a proposition like this in the face. I have never before read, in clear black and white, easy-to-read-font, such an intense affront to my dignity as a woman. I have never before had to make a choice, to fully fill in a square on a long piece of paper, that would indefinitely dictate whether or not I have agency over my own body and my personal healthcare decisions. When I reached this final and most important question on my ballot, time stopped. I knew what I would choose. I know which answer my faith as a Jew guides me toward. But I was so caught off guard, so angry, by the jarring feeling of having to make the choice at all. Filling in that tiny little rectangle next to the word no, it felt like I was begging. Pleading for this right that I had the privilege to take for granted my whole life, to remain in place. And I know I’m not alone in the feeling of never really believing that this day, that this choice, would come. I know I’m not alone in wondering what it will mean to raise children in a country where reproductive rights and healthcare are not guaranteed. And I know that I’m not alone in hoping beyond hope that on this particular issue, things stay the same. 

There is so much uncertainty right now. And so much fear. 

Parshat Lech Lecha begins with a dramatic moment that hinders on uncertainty. In the opening of our parsha, G-d instructs Avram to pick up and go:

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃ וְאֶֽעֶשְׂךָ֙ לְג֣וֹי גָּד֔וֹל וַאֲבָ֣רֶכְךָ֔ וַאֲגַדְּלָ֖ה שְׁמֶ֑ךָ וֶהְיֵ֖ה בְּרָכָֽה׃

G-d said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, And I will bless you; I will make your name great, And you shall be a blessing.

This is the first of Avram’s Ten Tests of Faith. This vague instruction from a newly encountered G-d, to leave everything behind, and go to some unknown place, to the land that I will show you. Avram doesn’t know where he is headed, doesn’t ask any questions, but gathers up family and community, takes an enormous leap of faith, and simply goes. 

This moment has always puzzled me. I think because I can’t relate to the kind of zerizut, the kind of enthusiasm and zeal that Avram demonstrates in this moment. And sadly, I don’t think I can relate to this kind of faith, either. I don’t know if any of us can anymore. And so, I like to imagine all of the ways Avram might have coped with this unbelievable ask. And the mechanism that I continue to return to, is prayer. I like to imagine that after Avram accepted this challenge, this test, that he prayed, day in and day out, in the interim moments, in wakefulness and exhaustion. That Avram prayed not only to make the journey go faster, to bring about the revelation of this unknown place, but to fortify his own faith that the place to which they were headed, really could be something worth believing in. Something worth journeying for. 

And in this sense, Avram’s pilgrimage becomes one of prayer. 

Frederick Douglas said, “praying for freedom never did me any good ‘til I started praying with my feet.”

And upon marching with Dr. King and other Civil Rights leaders and activists, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel said, “I felt my legs were praying.”

And we know that in the face of so much uncertainty, so much fear and anger and disappointment. In the face of violence, and all the evidence to suggest that nothing would ever change, the leaders and activists of the Civil Rights Movement continued their fight, continued their march because they trusted that there would be blessing on the other side, even if it took years to see that blessing realized. 

I wonder if Avram felt this way, too. That in the face of the unknown, the only things to do were to pray and to continue walking. 

Georgia Senator, Reverend Raphael Warnock, wrote that “a vote is a kind of prayer about the world you want to live in.” 

If, like me, you are feeling overwhelmed, disappointed, angry, sad, afraid. Go pray. Go vote on or before Tuesday. If, like me, you are concerned about protecting basic human dignity, go pray. Go vote. If, like me, you are feeling totally buried by the sheer amount of work there is to do in this world, go pray. Go vote. And if, like me, you are doing your very best to muster up the kind of courage and faith that Avram did, if you are tapped out, and tired, go pray. Go vote. 

Yesterday, for the first time, I felt like I was casting my ballot into the great unknown. But I am reminded today, that voting is prayerful, voting is walking, voting is marching toward that idea of a nation that we can be proud of. And I am doing my best to believe in this promise that G-d makes to Avram: You don’t yet know where I am taking you, you don’t yet know how things will turn out. But I promise you, that I am with you, and one day, maybe not in your lifetime, but one day, it will be a blessing. 

Shabbat Shalom.

The possibility of the unknown: Parshat bereshit 5783

I love to write. Or more specifically, I love the process of writing– not so much the typing or putting words on paper, but the days-long task of thinking about what I want to say. I love the luxury, the slowness of imagining that piece of writing come to life. I love building up a mental cache of clever phrases, vivid images, arguments and pithy counterpoints. In short, I love to dream about writing. But the writing itself is difficult, daunting, and sometimes paralyzing. Sitting at my desk, keyboard-ready, the blank page staring wildly at me like an indictment– as if to say, you haven’t started writing yet? You don’t have anything to say. And that experience of standing before so much emptiness, looking at so much blank space, can be so overwhelming, and so frightening. 

This Shabbat, G-d stands before a similarly blank page. Although, the scale is much larger, and the stakes much higher. 

בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ׃ וְהָאָ֗רֶץ הָיְתָ֥ה תֹ֙הוּ֙ וָבֹ֔הוּ וְחֹ֖שֶׁךְ עַל־פְּנֵ֣י תְה֑וֹם וְר֣וּחַ אֱלֹהִ֔ים מְרַחֶ֖פֶת עַל־פְּנֵ֥י הַמָּֽיִם׃.

When God began to create heaven and earth— the earth being unformed and void, with darkness over the surface of the deep and a wind from God sweeping over the water—

Before G-d made order, the world was unformed. Empty and void. Nothing. Blank and chaotic. 

Rabbi Isaac Luria, the founder of contemporary Kabbalah, teaches that when G-d set out to create the universe, G-d constricted G-d’s self in an act of tzimtzum, which in Hebrew means a sort of stepping aside, or stepping back, to make room for something new, something other. 

In his book, Tree of Souls, author and poet Howard Schwartz expands on the teachings of Lurianic Kabbalah: 

At the beginning of time, God’s presence filled the universe. When God decided to bring this world into being, to make room for creation, G-d first drew in G-d’s breath, contracting G-d’s self. From that contraction darkness was created. And when God said, “Let there be light” (Gen. 1:3), the light that came into being filled the darkness, and ten holy vessels came forth, each filled with primordial light. In this way God sent forth those ten vessels, like a fleet of ships, each carrying its cargo of light. Had they all arrived intact, the world would have been perfect. But the vessels were too fragile to contain such a powerful, divine light. They broke open, split asunder, and all the holy sparks were scattered like sand, like seeds, like stars. Those sparks fell everywhere, but more fell on the Holy Land than anywhere else.

When I think about G-d stepping aside like this, in such a crucial moment, there is a part of me that feels extremely anxious. Step back at the moment of creation? Constrict or limit the Divine presence and power in a moment where boldness and omnipotence are surely required? How is it that G-d, while standing before the great big void of the uformed universe, can remove G-d’s self from the center of it all, and imagine, nonetheless, that a whole world is possible?

The Midrash in Genesis Rabbah teaches that the world was created in the merit of three things– challah, tithes, and first fruits. In short, the world was created in abundance. The world grew out of abundance, out of plenty, out of more than enough. 

This Midrash has given me a new perspective on G-d’s tzimtzum. It seems to me that G-d did something so very courageous when G-d stepped aside to create the universe: G-d stepped back, G-d constricted G-d’s self, because G-d was able to trust that there would always be enough. That the universe, and hopefully even humanity, would always be enough. 

And so, G-d seems to have created the world with an abundance mindset, rather than a scarcity mindset. 

When we operate from a place of scarcity, we start from no. We are led to believe that there are no good outcomes. That there are limited options. We consider the limitations rather than the opportunities. We feel powerless, frustrated, anxious, angry. We think small, and avoid taking risks that could pay off in the long-run. We might find it difficult to trust others. We become suspicious. We act as takers, not givers. 

But when we operate from a place of abundance, we start from yes. We are able to consider the opportunities in any given situation. We can take responsibility. We are empowered and engaged. Our positive attitude may inspire and energize others. We are collaborative. We can think big and embrace risk. We can act as givers, and contribute to the well-being of others. 

Sometimes, standing in the middle of everything is our way of coping with our fear. Of trying to make sense of the ways in which we are so often guided by scarcity, by the fear that there won’t ever be enough. But what if we followed G-d’s lead? What if we were able to trust that if we just took a step back, we could see the universe for what it really is: an unimaginable place full of so much potential, and an infinite number of holy sparks?

What if we operated from a place of yes, and from a place of hope, and optimism, and trust. What if we rejected the scarcity mindset that this world continues to hurl at ust? What if we lived our lives in radical rejection of the pessimism and mistrust that are sometimes so much easier to burrow down into?

This Shabbat, we begin all over again. We start from the very beginning, and are given the gift of reset. We start with a blank slate, and so we are invited to help create the universe alongside G-d, again and again. This Shabbat, as we launch ourselves fully back into the swing of the year, take a step back. Take a deep breath. Take it all in, and know that you, that this world, that all of the other people in this universe, are infinite, so full of potential. Built of deep wells of love and change and strength. We were created to help find those sacred sparks and return them to G-d. So how do we do that? We find the sparks by making room for all sorts of possibilities, by challenging ourselves to see the endless multitudes that each of us contain. 

It’s scary to think about what G-d would have done if G-d were afraid in those crucial moments  just before G-d spoke the world into being. In G-d’s tzimtzum we are shown that humility and creation, that faith and creativity, that hope and openness and vulnerability are all inextricably linked– and Thank G-d they are. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

Sukkot and Saying Goodbye: Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot 5783

I have always hated goodbyes, and I have always been terrible at them. When something in my life is coming to an end, I have a tendency to deny it, to reject the reality that things are changing. I’ve always considered myself a fairly flexible and open person, but maybe my difficulty with goodbyes really does mean that I don’t manage change very well. That I’m more afraid of change than I thought. And in my desire to stave off the inevitable, I actually make it harder. I linger just a little too long. I tell myself that things will stay the same, even though everything around me has changed. I struggled a lot with this when I graduated from Rabbinical school and we were getting ready to leave New York. Of course, we left during the pandemic, and so, many of the usual ways we would have said goodbye to our friends, to the city, to the life that we had built together and individually over the course of six years, were no longer available to us. So we improvised, and muddled our way through closing one chapter of our lives and beginning the next. 

Right now, on Shabbat Chol Hamoed Sukkot, we are similarly preparing to say goodbye. Soon, we will say goodbye to this precious High Holiday season, to that unique, once-a-year closeness we feel with the Divine. On Tuesday evening, we will close this chapter, and turn back to the dog-eared pages of the rest of our lives. So this time of year for me, has always been bittersweet. It’s Z'man Simchateinu, the time of our Joy! We are elated, Sukkot, Shemini Atzeret, and Simchat Torah bring out a kind of joy and celebration that we long for on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. On Monday evening we will dance and sing and rejoice with our community and our Torahs. We will do what we do best– celebrate the moment with unbridled joy. But then comes the inevitable, the goodbye, the change back to the way things were. 

So in its way, Sukkot is a long-goodbye. A week of preparing ourselves to reenter the rest of the year. To say goodbye to the Divine presence we feel so palpably during this season. And Shmini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, those final days of Sukkot, on those days, we express our desire to stay in this moment, to linger in this sacred and precious space, for just one more day. On these final days, we exclaim that we are not quite ready to say goodbye, not quite ready to go it alone. 

In our Torah reading for today, which actually takes us off course and back into the book of Exodus, to Parshat Ki Tissa, we see Moshe grappling with a similar sort of goodbye, or more precisely, he grapples with his own discomfort and fear of change. Just after the incident of the Golden Calf, as Moses pleads with G-d not to abandon or destroy the Israelites, we read:

Moses said to יהוה, “See, You say to me, ‘Lead this people forward,’ but You have not made known to me whom You will send with me. Further, You have said, ‘I have singled you out by name, and you have, indeed, gained My favor.’ Now, if I have truly gained Your favor, pray let me know Your ways, that I may know You and continue in Your favor. Consider, too, that this nation is Your people.” And [God] said, “I will go in the lead and I will lighten your burden.”

Here, Moshe expresses a fear that he may have to lead the people alone. That he won’t have a partner, that G-d will be forever distant, unavailable, and inaccessible. That G-d won’t help carry the weight. But G-d responds in a remarkable way: I will lead you, and I will lighten your burden. Even though things have fundamentally changed, the sin of the Golden, a near irreversible event for the people and G-d alike, G-d affirms G-d’s desire to be close, and to share Moshe’s burden. 

On this promise that G-d makes, Rashi points us to the Targum, the aramaic translation of the Bible– which here reads, My Shechinah will go — I will no more send an angel with you, but I Myself will go with you. G-d comes down to earth, perhaps in perpetuity, to guide Moshe, to walk alongside him. G-d doesn’t send an angel, or a proxy, because G-d also desires to be among G-d’s people.

Moshe continues:

Unless You go in the lead, do not make us leave this place.

Do not make me, do not make us, go it alone. 

Moshe and G-d have a beautiful and complicated relationship, which ebbs and flows, and reveals a great deal of vulnerability. In this particular moment, G-d is angry, hurt, disappointed and so let down by G-d’s people. And Moshe is afraid, insecure, as always, wondering if he is truly up to the job. And in this relationship, and through the very public way that it plays out through our texts, we learn so much about how to be in relationship with G-d. Here, Moshe models for us something essential, that I think we often forget: that maybe if we just asked G-d to stay a little longer, if we asked G-d to come down to earth, to meet us where we are, to walk alongside us, that maybe G-d would. 

I always feel close to G-d when I’m outside. Especially at this time of year. When it’s crisp, when the leaves are changing color, when there is sound and movement and music in the breeze. Everything seems to come alive in the fall. Yes, I feel whispers of Divine encounter here in the sanctuary, and I feel G-d’s presence when we are gathered in the social hall for Kiddush lunch. And I feel it too, on Zoom. But those feelings of closeness and connection are amplified when I am outside, and especially when I am  in the Sukkah. A sanctuary, a sacred space that is out in the world, unencumbered by plaster or cement or opaque ceilings. It’s as if we build our Sukkot so that we may dwell outside, in G-d’s house. So that we can be just a little bit closer, even if only for what sometimes feels like the shortest week of the year. 

While the High Holiday season spans nearly a full month, it always seems to come and go in an instant. We spend so much time preparing physically, spiritually, and communally for the chagim. We put in a tremendous amount of work to find and achieve the kind of experience we seek on these special days. But we are nearing the end.

This morning, we read the first chapter of the Megillat Kohelet, the Book of Ecclesiastes. A text that is all about the challenges and futility and quotidian nature of life. It’s a difficult text to read, simply because it seems to fly in the face of the very thing we are commanded to do right now– feel great, unrestrained joy! I like to think that we read Kohelet, because we know what comes next, that soon, we will come down from the spiritual high of the High Holidays, and we will shift back into real life. Maybe we read Kohelet to help us prepare, to gently bring us out of this safe, and protective reverie that we’ve inhabited for the better part of a month. Maybe we read Kohelet so that the blunt edges of goodbye and the sting of change is softened just a little. Kohelet forces us to accept the realities and challenges of everyday life, so that come Tuesday night, we are not so jarred when we make the final blessing at Havdalah. 

Throughout the week of Sukkot, we are reminded of the joy that comes from living. We celebrate the lives we have been gifted, after so viscerally contending with our mortality on Yom Kippur. We rejoice for this final week of holiday because we have earned it, we have earned the right to celebrate– we have earned the right to find and feel and embody joy despite the futility that Kohelet speaks of. 

Our task in these final days of Sukkot, is to linger in this special kind of joy so that we may bring as much of it as possible into the days and weeks ahead. To sit in the sukkah a little bit longer– maybe you stay outside in the sukkah even though it’s a little bit chilly. Maybe you dance with a Torah on Simchat Torah more wildly than you ever have before. Maybe you sit quietly in the sanctuary, and peacefully take it all in. The final verse of Kohelet reminds us what to do:

The sum of the matter, when all is said and done: Revere G-d and observe G-d’s commandments! 

All we can do, Kohelet reminds us, is to live a life of service and practice reverence for G-d and other human beings. In other words, just stay close. 

In this bittersweet time of year, as I struggle to let go, I like to imagine that G-d struggles too. That G-d is lingering, just like us, in these final precious moments of the season. That G-d isn’t ready to say goodbye, that G-d fears the distance and disconnect that might come next. G-d is sitting in G-d’s Sukkah, hoping we won’t ever go inside. 

Shabbat Shalom and Moadim L’Simcha! 

Those who sow in tears, reap in gladness: Joy on Yom Kippur- Yom Kippur 5783

Some of my earliest memories of Yom Kippur are of my father’s voice. Every year on Yom Kippur, I am transported back to Skokie, sitting on the women’s side, tucked in close next to my mom, hearing the sing-song notes of my dad’s voice guide me through the service. My dad has always been one of the gabbaim in our synagogue, and that meant that he often stepped in to lead on the High Holidays– singing various parts of the service, calling page numbers from the Birnbaum and Artscroll Machzorim, picking up a Torah reading. Quite remarkably, filling in in any capacity he could. And from my perch on the women’s side, myself not always able to see or fully participate in what was happening just on the other side, my father's voice arrived as if to say, “This is yours, too. I am here, just listen, just follow my voice, and you’ll be ok.” 

Every year, for as long as I can remember, my dad led Neilah, the final service of Yom Kippur. The fleeting moments just before the gates swing shut. And while he helped out in lots of unofficial ways throughout the year, Neilah belonged solely to my father. And each and every year, as he led, he would cry. He would weep his way through melody and text. In a voice that was at once shaky and miraculously strong, my father would carry the congregation through those final, most dramatic moments of the day. 

Growing up, I struggled with Yom Kippur. For me, the holiday always carried with it a deep sense of dread, fear, real existential worry. I worried about fasting, worried about saying the prayers exactly right. Worried that I had disappointed both my parents and G-d alike. That yet another year had gone by without any change, without any Teshuvah, that I was coasting, and people would notice. And perhaps that meant that my teachers and the liturgies of the day had succeeded. I had internalized the intensity of Yom Kippur in a way that left me terrified– I wondered what would happen if I was found guilty of sins I had committed unwittingly. I worried that I wouldn’t be forgiven, that my name would be written in the book of life– and then, as if by some stroke of doubt or spite, G-d would see my name, furrow G-d’s brow, and erase me from the list. That G-d would sweep away the eraser shavings, clap G-d’s hands together, and say, There, that’s better. Every year, I felt this mortal fear, because I really did believe in the purpose of the day–this great big איום ונורא day, so holy, and so powerful. 

And so the first time I heard my father cry during Neilah, that sense of dread bubbled up to the surface. It’s a scary and unsettling thing to hear a parent cry. To hear your parent, who is supposed to be a model of strength and composure, be so vulnerable. And because I couldn’t look directly at my father while he led, my only sightline of him peripheral, ephemeral, seeing him distorted through a piece of nearly opaque cloth– I couldn’t see the body language or the effect, but could only hear what I perceived to be deep sadness and fear, the same feelings that I carried deep in my bones. 

When I got older, I decided to ask my dad about his Yom Kippur tears. And his answer transformed my relationship with Yom Kippur forever. He said, “Shani, I cry for two reasons: I cry out in sadness because I worry I haven’t done enough. And I cry out in joy because I know there is more time, that I have another chance, another year to do better.” 

I cry out in joy. Before that moment, I had never associated Yom Kippur with joy, would have thought it impossible, totally inconceivable that those two could go together. But here I was, listening to my father explain his inner emotional experience, and that mattered a great deal. 

For most of my life, I believed in this common misconception about Yom Kippur, and was so viscerally weighed down by it– that Yom Kippur is a day to fear, a day that I always hoped would come and go with little drama. But it’s time we set the record straight, for our sake, and also for G-d’s. 

In the Mishnah, the Rabbis teach:

Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel said: there were no days as joyous for the Jewish people as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom kippur, as on them the daughters of Jerusalem would go out in white clothes, which each woman borrowed from another. Why were they borrowed? They did this so as not to embarrass one who did not have her own white garments. 

Here, the Mishanh points to Yom Kippur as a moment of collective renewal and communal joy. The women would go out to the fields in white clothing in search of a partner, in search of fertility. This ritual is quite stirring symbolically. Dressing in white, as we continue to do now on Yom Kippur. Going out to the fields with a sense of faith, optimism, and belief that a new kind of future is possible. That is what we are meant to feel on Yom Kippur– a radical sense of joy that something wonderful is waiting for us out in the field. And the joy and jubilation of this moment was not private or individual, but achieved collectively, in trusting partnership with other people. 

The women described in this Mishnah helped each other participate fully and without shame. 

The Talmud takes this idea further. In the Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Taanit– the tractate dedicated to the topic of fast days in Jewish tradition, we read:

There were no days as happy as the fifteenth of Av and as Yom Kippur. The Gemara asks: granted, Yom Kippur is a day of joy because it has the elements of pardon and forgiveness. And moreover, it is the day on which the last pair of luchot, of tablets, were given. 

This teaching calls our attention to two important facts about Yom Kippur. First, the day is joyous because it has elements of pardon and forgiveness. Here, the Rabbis are signaling to us that the very possibility of forgiveness and repair is itself something to celebrate. And second, the Rabbis remind us that the quintessential moment of repair in Jewish history took place on Yom Kippur– today! 

The Sin of the Golden Calf proved to be a moment of near-permanent rupture in our history. On his way down the mountain, the first set of tablets in hand, Moses sees the Israelites dancing around a Golden Calf– an idol reminiscent of Egyptian worship. And in his anger, his disbelief, his utter despair, Moses hurls the tablets down on the mountainside– effectively shattering the law, shattering the covenant, severing himself and G-d from these wicked and ungrateful people. But we know that Moses goes back up the mountain, remains there with G-d for another 40 days and night, etches the tablets all over again, and returns to the people with a renewed covenant– a renewed sense of trust, relationship, and hope. For the Rabbis, this moment signifies the most joyous day in our history. Because when Moshe came down the mountain with the second set of Luchot, we were given the greatest gift of all– the radical reminder from G-d that even after such disappointment, we were in fact worthy of that Divine relationship. That even though we fell short, failed so critically in a moment of temporary lapse, that we were not in fact unlovable or irreparably damaged. In bringing down the second set of Luchot, Moshe taught us that we are fundamentally capable of so much change– and that is miraculous. 

In Psalm 100, we read:

עִבְדוּ אֶת־יְהֹוָה בְּשִׂמְחָה בֹּאוּ לְפָנָיו בִּרְנָנָה׃

Serve G-d in gladness; come into G-d’s presence with shouts of joy.

We are commanded to live a life of joyous service– to G-d, to community, to the planet. Joy is encoded into our experience as Jews. It has to be. But joy can also be hard to find. And in this world, the joy that we are lucky enough to find is so fleeting, so hard to believe. 

But the service that is described here in this psalm is active. It’s chaotic, it has movement and texture and character. It is a service that wholly reflects our messy, imperfect lives. 

On Yom Kippur, we engage in confession in each one of our services. During Kol Nidrei, Shacharit, Musaf, Mincha, and Neilah– five distinct times– we publicly announce our shortcomings. Five times throughout this day of atonement, we do the work of acknowledging, and in turn beginning the process of rectifying, our failures both big and small. The work of confession, of saying out loud in the presence of our community, beating our chest for each individual sin, is difficult and painful work if we take it seriously. It takes a great deal of courage and moral fortitude to admit wrongdoing, to begin paving a way forward, building a future in which our very best selves may be realized. 

But when we confess, we are doing something else, too. We are affirming, over and over and over again, that each of us is a work in progress. And that is the work, that is how we authentically and joyously serve G-d– by being radically honest about who we are and who we are capable of becoming. 

Yes, we move through a great deal of liturgy that lists our shortcomings, that forces us to reckon with who we really are on an elemental level. But Yom Kippur insists that we are not fundamentally unlovable, not fundamentally flawed. Yom Kippur teaches us that we are always good enough for G-d. And if we are good enough for G-d, surely we are good enough for each other, and perhaps most importantly, for ourselves. 

The 10th Century Midrashic work, Tanna Debei Eliyahu, recounts the following teaching:

Yom Kippur is a day of great rejoicing for “The One who spoke and the world came into being,” a day which G-d gave to Israel out of G-d’ great love for them. Moreover, when G-d pardons the iniquities of Israel, G-d is not sad at heart, but rejoices exceedingly, saying to the mountains and the hills, to the springs and to the valleys, “Come and rejoice greatly with me, for I am forgiving the iniquities of Israel.” 

On Yom Kippur, the Yeshivah Shel Ma’aleh, the heavenly, Divine realm, and the Yeshiva Shel Matta, our realm, the human realm, meet. On Yom Kippur, G-d comes down from the mountain to meet us where we are, to delight in our imperfections, to witness our Teshuvah up close. On Yom Kippur, G-d celebrates, too. G-d rejoices with the whole of creation, in all that is made possible today. 

Soren Keirkegaard, the Danish Existentialist philosopher wrote that it takes religious courage to rejoice. 

Our quest on Yom Kippur, is to locate that courage– be it religious, spiritual, communal– so that we may wildly rejoice in all that we are, and all that we are becoming. That we may desperately hold onto the gift that Yom Kippur gives us: to confront who we are, to really reckon with who we want to become, and to begin making our way through the wilderness, to that promised place. 

On Yom Kippur, we are reminded not to give up. Not to abandon the hope that we can change. That other people can change. That the world can change.

I don’t know if tears will come this year during Neilah. But I do know that I will be standing, just like my father before me, rooted somewhere between past and future. Looking backward with regret, but looking so purposefully, so faithfully with hope, toward the future. And when that great big Tekiah Gedolah is sounded later tonight, when we are flung into Sukkot, into Z'man Simchateinu, the time of our great joy– I know that I will have found the courage to believe in myself and my own capacity to change, because of all of you. And that is miraculous. That is joyous. That is Teshuvah.

G’mar Chatimah Tovah! 

Achieving Teshuvah Through Partnership: Shabbat Shuva 5783

Today is Shabbat Shuva– the Shabbat quite literally of return, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Drawing its name from the first line of our Haftorah portion:

שׁוּבָה יִשְׂרָאֵל עַד יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי כָשַׁלְתָּ בַּעֲונֶךָ
Return, O Israel, to the LORD your God, For you have fallen because of your sin.

This special Shabbat is liminal, standing humbly between the two most significant and dramatic days on the Jewish calendar. And so, Shabbat Shuva gives us a special opportunity to do in miniature– quietly and humbly– what we are called to do throughout this season. On Shabbat Shuva, we are given yet another opportunity to start, for the very first time, doing our Teshuvah. 

Every year, as Elul approaches, I tell myself that this will be the year. The year that I really buckle down and do Teshuvah. Some years, that means setting a goal to journal more introspectively. Some years, it means trying to build a personal meditation practice, or do better  at keeping in touch with dear friends and family. Every year, I have high hopes for my Teshuvah practice, but by the time Rosh Hashanah rolls around, I usually feel that I’ve fallen short. And if I am being honest, the very concept of Teshuva has itself always felt so vast, and so vague. And my own lack of clarity around what Teshuvah actually is, often leads me to feeling overwhelmed. Totally daunted. How can I possibly achieve this great big, transformative, and existential project all on my own? The stakes are so high. 

I think we’ve reached a general consensus about what Teshuvah means, or at least what that word has come to represent: reflection, introspection, trying to grow into better versions of ourselves. But our tradition has amassed a myriad of definitions and understandings of this idea:

For Maimonides, Teshuvah is all about total and radical transformation. So that a person should say, “I am not the same person who committed those sins; Rather, I am a completely different and distinct person now.” For Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, Teshuvah is about returning to oneself. And Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik understands Teshuvah as the art and process of  recreating oneself. 

So how do we engage in Teshuvah that is personal, genuine, and leads us to satisfy these interpretations? And in pursuing genuine Teshuvah, how can we do so in ways that strike that most delicate balance between motivation and paralysis? How in the face of such an enormous, and endless task, can we be even mildly successful in our Teshuvah?

For me, the answer to this question lies in accountability. Holding each other and ourselves accountable to the goals we set; to the ways in which we want and need to grow.

I finished Rabbinical School online. I was working both toward Rabbinic ordination and my masters degree when everything came to a halt. And for all of my years as a student, I had developed a routine and a rhythm that helped me manage my time and my workload. Going to class in person, finding a library or coffee shop to work in. Going for walks, and most importantly, finding time to work quietly in the company of friends and classmates. I had systems in place to keep me accountable: to myself, to my work, to my community, to my program. And I felt helpless and unfocused, and anxious about how I was going to get it all done once those systems fell away. So I had to create new systems of accountability. Start from scratch, and re-learn what would work, how I could support all of these endeavors in a radically changed world. 

Thank G-d for Zoom. Soon after the pandemic started, my best friend and classmate suggested that we co-work together on Zoom. Join a Zoom room, and quietly work alongside one another for a few hours. Moving through our respective to-do lists, checking in periodically and bouncing ideas off one another. A chevrutah for the digital age. Having someone there to watch the work happen, to keep me focused, and productive. And it changed everything. I had discovered this new way to work, and this new method of accountability. 

Just after the sin of the Golden Calf, in Exodus chapter 32 we read:

וַיִּנָּחֶם יְהֹוָה עַל־הָרָעָה אֲשֶׁר דִּבֶּר לַעֲשׂוֹת לְעַמּוֹ׃

And G-d renounced the punishment planned for God’s people.

Just a few verses earlier, we see how G-d, consumed by anger, disappointment, and likely strong feelings of rejection, is prepared to destroy the entire community:

וְעַתָּה הַנִּיחָה לִּי וְיִחַר־אַפִּי בָהֶם וַאֲכַלֵּם וְאֶעֱשֶׂה אוֹתְךָ לְגוֹי גָּדוֹל׃

Now, let Me be, that My anger may blaze forth against them and that I may destroy them, and make of you a great nation.”

To which Moses responds: 

“Let not Your anger blaze forth against Your people, whom You delivered from the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.

Let not the Egyptians say, ‘It was with evil intent that he delivered them, only to kill them off in the mountains and annihilate them from the face of the earth.’ Turn from Your blazing anger, and renounce the plan to punish Your people.

Remember Your servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, how You swore to them by Yourself and said to them: I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven, and I will give to your offspring this whole land of which I spoke, to possess forever.”

Moses holds G-d accountable to G-d’s own vision for the Jewish people. Moses reminds G-d of the promises G-d made, and in turn, G-d does Teshuvah. G-d renounces G-d’s anger toward the whole of the Jewish people. And G-d can only do that because Moshe is there to reflect something essential back to G-d. 

In the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sanhedrin, the Rabbis actually translate our verse to mean: And God regretted the evil that G-d thought to do to his people. And regret, is an essential first step in doing Teshuva. 

Rabbi Kalynomous Kalman Shapira, the Piezetzner Rav, writes that it is a well known teaching of the Rabbis (that we see in the Talmud and Midrash) that G-d observes all of the commandments of the Torah. And we see that clearly illustrated in the moments after the sin of the golden calf. G-d, like us, does Teshuvah. Reflects on G-d’s own feeling and behavior, and changes course for the better. 

G-d, like us, must also do Teshuvah. G-d, like us, must be continuously engaged in a process of thoughtful and genuine introspection, reflection, and change. And we learn from Exodus 32, that the kinds of Teshuvah we seek alongside the divine, become possible when we have a friend, a trusted companion, to reflect back to us both our best and worst tendencies. 

When I think about G-d doing Teshuvah. When I think about G-d caught in the thicket of right and wrong, of regret and guilt and indecision, I suddenly imagine G-d as a partner, that best friend, that classmate who is knee-deep in the process, doing the work right alongside me. A partner to reflect with, to commiserate with, to share the ups and downs and growing pains of becoming our very best selves. The specifics of our to-do lists differ slightly, but our end goal one in the same. 

What would change for you if you imagined G-d as a supportive partner in your personal Teshuvah process? What might change if we believed that G-d was working as hard as we are to become a better version of G-d’s self? What would it mean to trust that G-d is also struggling to do this work?

It can be easy to lose ourselves and our motivation in the face of such a large and daunting, and limitless project. As we approach Yom Kippur, I encourage you to find that person who can hold you accountable to the goals you are setting for this year. And as we approach Yom Kippur, think about the ways you might hold G-d accountable. And how might you imagine G-d holding you accountable on this essential spiritual journey?

Shabbat Shalom!

Drawing distant and near: G-d as parent and the Divine-Human relationship- Rosh Hashanah 5783 day 2

Becoming a parent has been the most gratifying and the most terrifying experience of my life. In these short, fast and slow, five months since Elisheva was born, I have become capable of so much: I have been opened up to a new kind of deep, constant love and awe; exposed to a pulsing undercurrent of worry and fear; have felt sadness, overwhelming exhaustion, and anger, and frustration, but also incomprehensible joy, gratitude, courage, energy, and silliness, all in equal measure. As a child, there was so much that I didn’t understand about the choices my parents made; about who they were, about how they were raising my brother and me; and especially through my teenage years, I often thought, and sometimes quite unkindly said out loud, “well, I will never do that when I have kids.” In a radically different context, myself not yet a parent, I thought I had all of the answers, a kind of understanding, that I know now, was impossible, not yet earned–until now. I thought I would be a better parent: more compassionate, more lenient, less obsessed with punishment, more present, more cool, less angry. 

To be clear, I have incredible parents. Who I now know, really did live up to so many of the expectations I had for them– however unreasonable or irrational. I know now that they were in fact compassionate, kind, funny, and actually quite cool. That grounding me, as often as they did (and I got grounded a lot), was itself an important act of love and care. My parents both were excellent teachers–preparing me to live in the world as an adult. My mom taught me important lessons about boundaries, but also about closeness and intimacy with other people– to be openhearted and curious whenever I could be. But to also prioritize my own physical and mental health. My dad taught me how to study Jewish texts, how to be a close reader and practitioner of Jewish tradition, and how to build a life around chesed, service, and community. In short, my parents taught me everything I needed to know about growing into the person I was supposed to be, and taught me everything I needed to know about being a parent. 

I’ve shared this note of gratitude with my father. And it breaks my heart over and over and over again, that I can’t thank my mom for all that she taught me, in quite the same way. What I would give to be able to call her, and say, Imma, mom. I’m so sorry. You were right. Thank you. I am who I am because of you, and I am an Imma now to Elisheva because of you. I wish you were here, to continue helping me grow into the best mom, and the best person I can be. I have to believe that she knows all of this. That she always has.

Being a parent is hard. And being the child of parents is also hard. 

Since becoming a mother, since embarking on this wild, and most beautiful journey, I have learned so much about myself, my relationships with my own parents, and my relationship with G-d. I have been able to forgive in new ways, to accept permission and help in new ways, I have grown to appreciate so many things I didn’t pay close enough attention to before. 

In our Torah and Haftarah readings for Rosh Hashanah, we encounter several different parents– four, to be exact: Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, and Hannah. 

This morning, we read the story of Akeidat Yitzchak, the Binding of Isaac. Perhaps one of the most theologically challenging stories of Jewish tradition. The complex story of Abraham’s blinding faithfulness, of Isaac’s near-death, of G-d’s saving hand. This story has been interpreted and reinterpreted many times over, but the central questions remain: Was Abraham right to accept this test from G-d, to subject his child to the kinds of certain and lasting trauma a test like this would inflict? What kind of G-d would ask a parent to sacrifice their child? What were the emotional, the psychosocial consequences that lingered after the fact for both father and son?  

The story of the Akeidah is complex precisely because it touches on these fundamental questions of parenthood and relationship– the push-and-pull dynamic of closeness and distance. How do we understand Abraham, our progenitor, our patriarch, and one of our biblical heroes, in light of the Akeidah? How do we make sense of Abraham’s zealousness- his וישכם בבוקר moment– the Hebrew phrase used specifically to convey enthusiasm and eagerness? What does this whole episode teach us about G-d?

And trying to understand Yitzchak, Isaac, in all of this is nearly impossible. How much does he know? At what point, as he and his father ascend the mountain, does this child understand what is about to happen to him? Is Isaac a willing participant? A reticent son? A child who puts the commandment to honor father and mother above all else? 

There is an incredible moment in the middle of this story, in which Avraham and Yitzchak share what appears to be a passing, but genuine, moment of closeness and intimacy. After parting ways with Eliezer and Yishmael at the base of the mountain, Abraham and Isaac continue up the mountain together, וילכו שניהם יחדיו, and the two of them walked together. 

Rashi points to two possibilities of understanding: the first, perhaps Isaac knew what was happening all along, maybe he even joyously walked up the mountain with the knowledge and comfort that he was making the ultimate sacrifice in service of G-d, and doing right by his dad. And in this way, father and son are truly together in mindset and deed. 

The second understanding underscores the major disconnect between Abraham and Isaac in this moment: that the two of them walked together– two mindsets, two understandings. Walking alongside one another in silence, not quite hearing or seeing the other. 

For me, this has always been the most compelling part of the story, and the place where I wish the story would end. Because it is in this quiet moment of walking, that we are given some insight into the relationship these two share. There is closeness in the discord. Intimacy standing tall against a backdrop of trauma and potentially misguided awe. In the face of something so large, so overpowering, we still find this small moment of intimacy, of closeness, and that in itself is revelatory. 

And as much as I always wish the story would end here, it doesn’t. There is trauma and violence, and pain that follows this unexpected moment of familial peace. But I choose to dwell in this precious and passing moment. Maybe it’s apologetics. Maybe it's the impossibility of what G-d is asking Abraham to do. Maybe it's my own inability to relate to Abraham as a parent. 

But no matter how you choose to read or understand the story of the Akeidah, those morsels of trust and intimacy that appear, however infrequently, are important. For Abraham and Isaac, theirs is a relationship that is fraught with so much, crushed beneath the weight of dogmatic expectation and fervor. But they are also close, inextricably tied to one another. Bound for life. 

There is yet another important parenting paradigm that we see in the Rosh Hashanah reading. Yesterday, in our Haftorah portion, we read the story of Hannah– the wife of Elkanah who is devastated by her inability to get pregnant. Hannah, along with the majority of our Biblical matriarchs struggles with infertility, and calls out to G-d from the depths of her sorrow. In Hannah, we meet a woman who fundamentally changes the nature of prayer, and who is successful in beseeching G-d. Hannah is pious, and humble, but also demands something of G-d. 

Unlike Abraham who answers G-d’s call, G-d, answers Hannah. 

Hannah does finally conceive, and she gives birth to Shmuel. As she prays, incorrectly assumed to be drunk by Eli, the priest, Hannah makes the ultimate promise:

And she made this vow: “O LORD of Hosts, if You will look upon the suffering of Your maidservant and will remember me and not forget Your maidservant, and if You will grant Your maidservant a male child, I will dedicate him to the LORD for all the days of his life; and no razor shall ever touch his head.”

In exchange for fertility, in exchange for the gift of a child, Hannah promises to give that child back to G-d. And Shmuel we know, grows up in the Temple, under the tutelage of Eli, and eventually grows into his role as prophet. 

After Samuel’s birth we read:

She said to her husband, “When the child is weaned, I will bring him. For when he has appeared before the LORD, he must remain there for good.” Her husband Elkanah said to her, “Do as you think best. Stay home until you have weaned him. May the LORD fulfill So the woman stayed home and nursed her son until she weaned him. When she had weaned him, she took him up with her, along with one ephah of flour, and a jar of wine. And though the boy was still very young, she brought him to the House of the LORD at Shiloh. I, in turn, hereby lend him to the LORD. For as long as he lives he is lent to the LORD.” And they bowed low there before the LORD.

I have so many mixed up and complicated feelings about this story. As a mother, I struggle to relate to this promise that Hannah makes. As a woman, and partner, who struggled with infertility, I feel both a kinship with Hannah, and I think a sense of anger that she would give back what she prayed so hard for. This ultimate promise of religious faith, an expression of love for G-d, and also a rejection of the long-term commitment of motherhood, of parenting. And to be honest, I don’t know what to make of that. I feel heartbroken that Hannah ever had to make this calculation. And so moved by her desire to nurse Shmuel before letting him go. 

The parent-child relationship that Hannah and Shmuel share, is rooted in incredibly deep love and faith. And yet, theirs evolves into a relationship of distance. Hannah removes herself from Shmuel’s life. 

G-d as parent is one of the central metaphors of the High Holiday liturgy. On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, we cry out to a G-d who is supposed to represent the unconditional love, the support, the compassion, the anger, the frustration, the punishment, the joys– all of it, of parenthood. First and foremost, our liturgies remind us, G-d is complex and evolving.

In the Avinu Malkeinu, we pray to our father, our king, our mother, our queen. We call out in confession, and we ask to be forgiven, to be inscribed in the book of life.

But, the Avinu Malkeinu is a one-sided prayer. G-d listens, we hope, to our cries, to our requests, to our questions, and desires. We give our power over to the Divine, and hope that G-d will, as the ultimate authority in our lives, respond in kind. The Avinu Malkeinu is a text all about expressing our trust in this larger-than-life parent. All about affirming the protective qualities of that relationship. 

But, there is another prayer that reminds us that this relationship, of parent and child, is intended to be mutual, reciprocal. In the Anu Amecha piyyut, we read:

For we are Your people; and You are our God. We are Your children; and You are our Father. We are Your servants; and You are our Master. We are Your congregation; and You are our Portion. We are Your inheritance; and You are our Destiny. We are Your flock; and You are our Shepherd. We are Your vineyard; and You are our Keeper. We are Your work; and You are our Creator. We are Your dear ones and You are our Beloved. We are Your treasure; and You are our God. We are Your people; and You are our King. We are Your distinguished ones; and You are our Distinction.

The Anu Amecha prayer reminds us that the relationship with G-d, just as with parents, goes both ways. Parents support and teach and nurture their children. Children in turn revere, and teach, and nourish their parents. This piyyut underscores how each party in the relationship gives power to the other. Yes, we may be smaller than G-d, but without us, without G-d’s people, servants, children, G-d loses something essential. It is relationship, this text teaches us, that propels things forward, that gives meaning to our understanding of and connection with the divine. And this is fundamentally a relationship that will change with time. 

Throughout our High Holiday liturgy, and in the Torah and Haftarah readings, we are called to be in relationship with G-d, despite, or especially because of the challenging ways in which parent-child relationships and dynamics unfold. There is a reason that one of Jewish tradition’s central metaphors for G-d, is the parent. Our relationships with our parents are complex, sometimes fraught, sometimes traumatic, and sometimes distant. In G-d, we see Abraham’s and Hannah’s parenting styles reflected. We see both the desire to draw close, and the need to be distant. We see the highs the lows, the elation and the sorrow. All of that complexity is wrapped up in what it means to be a parent, and perhaps more difficult, what it means to love that parent. 

I think about the kind of parent I will be to Elisheva, the parent I already am. But I linger mostly on what she will think of me as her mom. How will she perceive the choices I make, how will she react when she disagrees? What is our relationship going to look like– today, tomorrow, in ten or 20 years? How will I weather periods of distance? How will I give her the space and the trust to let her grow into the person she is meant to become? 

And I like to believe that G-d has the same questions, the same worries. In her narrative poem, G-d is a Woman and She’s Growing Older, Rabbi Margie Wenig writes:

God is home, turning the pages of her book. “Come home,” she wants to say to us, “Come home.” But she won’t call. For she is afraid that we will say, “No.” She can anticipate the conversation: “We are so busy. We’d love to see you but we just can’t come. Too much to do.” God holds our face in her two hands and whispers, “Do not be afraid, I will be faithful to the promise I made to you when you were young. I will be with you. Even to your old age I will be with you. When you are gray headed still I will hold you. I gave birth to you, I carried you. I will hold you still. Grow old along with me….”

On this theme in the High Holiday liturgy, my teacher, Rabbi Miriam Simma Walfish, writes: G-d is our mother, and it is precisely that maternal role that demands that G-d not give up on us.”

Our parents fall short all the time. And often fail us in ways big and small. And that is true of G-d too, it has to be. And yet, we still reach out to our Divine parent, at least twice a year (hopefully more!)– and when we do, we affirm our trust in that relationship. We affirm that the relationship is strong enough to endure changes and pain and distance, anger, and joy. We affirm that G-d can teach us how to be in sacred relationship with the Divine, the same way we can teach G-d how to be in relationship with us. 

May this be a year of closeness– with family, friends, community, and the divine. Let the lessons from our Torah and Haftarah readings, and our liturgy, guide us into authentic, honest, and ever-changing relationship with G-d. 

The Still Small Voice: Longing, Waiting, and Living- Rosh Hashanah 5783 Day 1

I remember the first night we were home after Elisheva was born. I know Joseph and I both felt relieved and grateful that we were healthy; glad to be back in our own space; exhausted, overwhelmed, and totally terrified. All feelings that I knew were normal, and that I had expected to feel in those early days. But I remember that there were also twinges of sadness that caught me by surprise. Sitting in the rocking chair, holding this tiny creature in my arms at 1, 2, 3 o’clock in the morning. I remember looking at this brand-new person, and weeping. Just bursting wide open. Thinking to myself, and out-loud to Joseph and Elisheva, both, that one day, she was going to leave. That if we were lucky enough to see her grow up, she would do just that– grow up, and want to leave home. I felt so overcome with grief, and so shocked, so jolted by the sudden arrival of this great-big future sadness. 

Though, at some point, my sadness gave way to guilt. Why in these precious new moments of motherhood, was I already distracted by all the things that come next? Why couldn’t I be more present? Why wasn’t I able to just sit and let myself be totally consumed by the miracle of bringing our daughter home? It seemed to me, in those moments of mixed-up joy and grief, that I was longing for and simultaneously rejecting a future time, a series of milestones that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. And it felt in so many ways, that now that Elisheva was out in the world, that we had begun a terribly long process of saying goodbye to one another. And that, I was, and am still, not ready for. 

Waiting, looking ahead to the future, is an important part of our experience as Jews. We wait for so many things– the yearly, and steady cycle of the holidays; we wait for children to be born; for sickness to pass; for grief to transform into something more permanent and familiar. Each week we anticipate the arrival of Shabbat– of that temporary moment in time and space when we are shielded from the imperfection and violence of the wider world– sustained instead by the perfection of the wholeness of creation. The low points in our collective history as Jews have also helped us develop a sort of muscle memory that keeps us looking forward– a coping mechanism or some kind of armor, resiliency– as we ask ourselves: when will Jews be safe, when will we strike that balance between assimilation and difference? When will we emerge from the crucible of forging our paths and identities in new places and contexts, over and over and over again? At what future point will we not have to worry? 

In the Kedusha for the Shacharit Amidah on Shabbat and Holidays, we recite:

מִמְּקוֹמְךָ מַלְכֵּֽנוּ תוֹפִֽיעַ וְתִמְלוֹךְ עָלֵֽינוּ כִּי מְחַכִּים אֲנַחְנוּ לָךְ מָתַי תִּמְלוֹךְ בְּצִיּוֹן בְּקָרוֹב בְּיָמֵֽינוּ לְעוֹלָם וָעֶד תִּשְׁכּוֹן:

Our Sovereign, manifest Yourself from wherever You dwell, and rule over us, for we await you. When shall You rule in Zion? Let it be soon, in our day, and throughout all time.

For we await you. We ask, almost demand to know, when will the Divine dwell once more in Jerusalem, because we are eager, desperate even for that day to come. We beg to know when we will yet again experience closeness with the Divine– a time that perhaps at any given moment in our lives feels far away, impossibly distant, perhaps even implausible. 

I like to imagine the first time that these words were uttered, called out with frenetic and fervent urgency, when is this promise going to come true? How long must we wait? In the Kedusha, we express our longing for a more perfect future– and that waiting is active and lived; it’s busy and urgent. 

Maimonides expands on this idea in his Thirteen Principles of Faith, the twelfth of which reads:

אֲנִי מַאֲמִין בֶּאֱמוּנָה שְׁלֵמָה בְּבִיאַת הַמָּשִׁיחַ וְאַף עַל פִּי שֶׁיִּתְמַהְמֵהַּ עִם כָּל זֶה אֲחַכֶּה לּוֹ בְּכָל יוֹם שֶׁיָּבוֹא:

I believe with complete faith in the coming of the Messiah and even though he may tarry, nevertheless, I wait every day for his coming.

Here, Mainimodies captures the emotional experience of waiting for this future event– our longing. Our visceral, almost painful desire for our dreamed-about future to come as quickly as possible. The prophetic texts are replete with calls for the arrival of the messianic age, for the unfolding of perfection, of human progress– a longing for a time that brings wholeness, peace, and meaning to the whole world; a return from exile, clarity about the world and our true purpose in it. But inherent in all of this hope, all of this optimism for the future we long for, is an innate sense of grief. Grief that we are not yet there; mourning for the millions of lost opportunities to draw us closer to that time; a sadness that we have to wait at all.

There is so much desperate longing in the world right now. For over two years, we have grown weary with waiting, wishing for the pandemic to end, for a return to collective public health. We long for civility and quiet amidst endless discord. We yearn for peace, for an end to violence, manipulation, and corruption. We hope for a time, some indistinct and indeterminate time, when all people can feel safe, cared for, respected, and protected by their communities and governments. We are waiting for our climate to heal. There is so much that has to change. So much that we are waiting for. 

Our Torah and Haftarah readings for today are built on the notion of longing. Wishes and outcomes that would be impossible without hope, without anticipation. Sarah and Hannah both long for children– and as they do, they each radically transform the notion of prayer. These women yearn desperately for a future of fertility, of motherhood– for a time when they will be undeniably and permanently tethered to the covenant and lineage of the Jewish people. And throughout the months of Elul and Tishrei, through the ebb and flow of the High Holiday season, we too, long for a different future– a different future that only becomes possible when we engage in the limitless and lifelong process of doing Teshuvah– of reflecting, of interrogating our behaviors and values; of striving to grow into wholly new and changed postures of living in the world. We long to be forgiven, to achieve personal and communal wholeness. We long for a year better than the last. 

I feel drawn by the hopeful pull of progress, by the radical optimism, and near-irrationality, of trusting, with a Maimonidean faith, an emunah shelemah, a full and complete faith, that the world can change, that we can change. That things can in fact get better. That the future is worth waiting for. 

But this pull also makes me feel restless. Makes me feel compelled not only in a spiritual sense, but pulled physically and emotionally, too. I want that future right now. And almost, like a child who struggles to hear the word no, I feel a sense of injustice that we are meant, perhaps even expected, to wait even a moment more than is necessary for the vision of the prophets to be realized. I feel like I am constantly running toward something far away and unseen, and all the while, time stands still.

And this restlessness often leads me to distraction. To feeling drawn out of and away from the present moment. In all of the anticipation for this imagined future, I run the risk of turning so fully away from what is happening now, in this moment. I run the risk of forgetting to actually live my life.

Waiting can itself be a form of escapism. Escape from the bad news, the ongoing cycle of disappointment and frustration. When the world continues to batter us with tragedy, how can we possibly live fully in the moment? We are pulled in so many different directions; we have so much to worry about.  And so waiting then becomes a radical way for us to reject the untenable status quo, to assert with a full faith that the world can and must change. 

But in the face of so much waiting, so much hope for a distant and far-off future, our High Holiday liturgy reminds us that our time here on earth is temporary and so precious. That waiting may very well be an exercise in futility. Our desperate optimism for what’s next, tempered by the very real, humbling, and sometimes harsh reality that we may never actually see that future realized. The Unetaneh Tokef prayer, the centerpiece of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Musaf service, prompts us to consider our own mortality, to reckon with and accept the uncertainty, the unpredictability of our existence. In this text that appears just before the Kedusha, we read:

On Rosh Hashanah it is inscribed, and on Yom Kippur it is sealed - how many shall pass away and how many shall be born, who shall live and who shall die, who by fire and who by water, who by warfare and who by wild beasts, who by hunger and who by thirst, who by earthquake and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning. Who will rest and who will wander, who will be tranquil and who will be troubled. Who will be calm and who will be tormented, who will be exalted and who humbled, who will be rich and who will be poor?

This is the theological and liturgical climax of our service. And we wonder, with quite a lot of drama, who will live and who will die; who will suffer and who will live a life of relative ease and comfort. Who will we be; what will be taken from us, what will be given? In this text alone, we grapple with those essential questions of human life and nature. And in its intensity, the text of the Unetaneh Tokef may further paralyze us; may make it even more difficult for us to live in the present moment. How can I be expected to contemplate my own mortality and simultaneously be present to the unpredictabilities and the constants and the beauties of the here and now?

So how do we manage the overwhelming dualism of our lives? How do we live in the space between past and present? Between waiting and standing still? Between paralysis and hope? Between patience and restlessness?

The answer to this fundamental challenge of our lives is hinted at earlier in the Unetaneh Tokef:

וּבְשׁוֹפָר גָּדוֹל יִתָּקַע וְקוֹל דְּמָמָה דַקָּה יִשָׁמַע…

And with a great shofar it is sounded, and the still small voice is heard.

The great shofar that is sounded, this is the drama of our lives: our birth, our death, the jubilation and tragedy. The epic highs and cataclysmic lows. But then, the still small voice is heard– everything in our lives that comes between. The small moments, the tiny, almost imperceptible joys of living, are sounded in the open spaces, in the quiet, between the loudest blasts of the shofar. 

Our challenge, in this impossibly beautiful and broken world, is to pay attention. To be awake to the moments of high drama, and equally wide awake to those small, intimate, hidden moments that themselves are a source of great awe, and meaning, and blessing. To be spiritually awake is to live in a world in which goodness and change are possible. To be spiritually awake means to embody a posture of living that is rooted in chesed, acts of service and lovingkindness. To be spiritually awake is to embrace each and every part of living– and to pay extra close attention to the stillness of our extraordinary and miraculous lives. 

My teacher, and modern theologian, Rabbi Shai Held writes:

Everything that we have and are is a gift. None of us ever did anything– none of us could ever have done anything– to earn the gifts that are life and consciousness. This, I would suggest, is a key component of the spiritual awareness that Judaism seeks to instill…to be spiritually awake is to ask, why is there something rather than nothing? Because, Judaism teaches, of G-d’s grace. To take the world for granted, to see it as a mere brute fact, is to betray a kind of spiritual deadness…A theological claim– G-d created the world out of nothing– is inextricably woven with a spiritual perception and commitment– life is a wondrous gift for which we much be perpetually grateful. 

One of the best pieces of advice that we got after Elisheva was born, was to write down as much as we could. Not the kinds of documenting we were already doing– recording every feed and diaper change– but taking the time to pause, and reflect on all the magic we were witnessing, all the time. The kinds of things that might go unnoticed, or unremembered, but are so incredibly miraculous in their own way– The little noises, the discoveries of hands and feet; her reactions to music and our voices. The first smile, the first fit of laughter. Rolling over for the first time. I recently read a letter that my mom had written to me just after I was born. My dad had unearthed this humble document in my mom’s sock drawer when he was cleaning out the house after she passed away. He gave me the letter, and I put it away, in a drawer of my own. For years, I was afraid to read that letter. Afraid that it would be so intense, so emotional, and send me back into the spiral of my grief. I finally read that letter a few weeks ago. And I was relieved to find that this letter was a collection of small details, that started with bringing me home from the hospital– how it was to drive home; how it felt for my parents to hold me, to watch each other become parents– with those same relieved, grateful, and terrified feelings; who we met back at the house, how we celebrated that first week as a family together. The gifts, the new family rituals. It was a letter that was all about living. All about those small details that are so much larger, so much more important than we realize. 

The shofar serves a dual purpose on Rosh Hashanah– it serves as a reminder of the great spectacle of our lives, but also as our cosmic wake-up call, a spiritual alarm clock meant to draw us out of ourselves, out of our own worry and fatigue, out from beneath the heavy weight of living in this world. A reminder that the in-between, ordinary moments of our lives are not so ordinary after all. 

In his central work on Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides writes on the significance of the Shofar, saying that its blasts are meant to conjure up in us a feeling of wakefulness. Each time the shofar is blown, it calls out:

“Wake up, sleepers, from your sleep! And slumberers, arise from your slumber!” 

Throughout the Rosh Hashanah service, we hear the shofar sounded a total of 100 times. 100 times we are called to wake up, reminded of all the living we have to do. Reminded of what it takes to bring about the future that we long for. While we wait for that far-off time, it is living that is done in the meantime. And in all of the waiting that is required of us, we may very well forget to live. The Shofar, is the radical reminder that we mustn’t forget. 

In these last few years, each of us has battled with the world. We have overdrawn our spiritual reserves. We are rightfully tired; rightfully exhausted and overwhelmed. And I am right there with you. I am only now just emerging from my own spiritual rut that has lasted for two and a half very long years. I am standing right beside you, in the breech. The brokenness of the world has the potential to break our spirits, to slowly blunt our edges, to numb us, desensitize us. And in learning how to cope with the difficulties of these last few years, we have grown weary, unsurprised by bad news. Our project, the essential journey and challenge of our lives, is to live in such a way that rejects this sleepy status quo. To assert, even in the face of ongoing disconnect and hopelessness, that I am wide awake to the wonders of the world, however unusual or surprising or small.

First Fruits and the radical expression of Gratitude: OZS Installation Shabbat

I didn’t always know that I wanted to be a rabbi. Frankly, for most of my life, I didn’t know I could be a rabbi. But so much has changed, and I am so glad it has. 

My parents, Sandy and Ellen Abramowitz, taught me almost everything I know about what it means to be a rabbi. And perhaps that wasn’t their intent, but here we are. For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be like them, have wanted to follow in their footsteps, and live up to the kinds of leadership, both formal and informal, that they modeled for me. For as long as I can remember, I have hoped to be worthy of the examples they set. 

From a young age, I watched as my parents built the shul community in which my brother and I were raised. Hoping to create community that embraced young families and kids, passers-by, and those who struggled to find their place in any of the other synagogues in town, my parents, along with several equally dedicated friends and peers, created something that quickly came to feel like home. In the early years of this new community, we were without a building of our own. And so we rented space from a local elementary school. We lived directly across the street from this school, and so our home soon became an extension of our synagogue. The door always open, especially on Shabbat and holidays; the Torah scrolls lived on our dining room table during the week; anyone in need of a place to stay always welcome. The line between shul and home, blurred. The line between sacred and profane almost invisible to discern.

My mom, Ellen, was a geriatric nurse, and since this was an orthodox community, she rigged up a partition, a mechitza, from pilfered IV poles and bedding from work. I have to believe that G-d overlooked this minor act of thievery, this act of chutzpah, and could instead see it for what it was: an unbelievable act of love and dedication to a community that was quickly coming together, growing up out of the ground, burgeoning into a home for so many in the Skokie community. 

And I took all of this for granted. And I realize now, as an adult, just what a gift that was. The kind of leadership and commitment that my parents modeled for me was certainly remarkable, but it was remarkable precisely because it seemed so ordinary, so automatic, so easy. I watched my parents build their own lives around the growth of this sacred community, and I knew that I wanted to be just like them. I wanted to do what they did: build community, grow in learning and relationship with other people; be open to all the ways that community changes, shifts, and transforms over time.

And the fruits of those early labors endure. Young Israel of Skokie, is a thriving, warm, heimish, shul to this day. The community finally has a beautiful building of their own, and my parents’ generation has handed the reins of leadership over to the next generation. Young Israel of Skokie will always be my first home, and ironically, will always be the place where I first learned how to be a rabbi. 

This week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, opens with the commandment to bring the first fruits of the land as sacrifice, or dedication to the Temple:

וְהָיָה כִּי־תָבוֹא אֶל־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לְךָ נַחֲלָה וִירִשְׁתָּהּ וְיָשַׁבְתָּ בָּהּ׃ וְלָקַחְתָּ מֵרֵאשִׁית  כל־פְּרִי הָאֲדָמָה אֲשֶׁר תָּבִיא מֵאַרְצְךָ אֲשֶׁר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ וְשַׂמְתָּ בַטֶּנֶא וְהָלַכְתָּ אֶל־הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר יִבְחַר יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם׃

When you enter the land that your God is giving you as a heritage, and you possess it and settle in it, you shall take some of every first fruit of the soil, which you harvest from the land that your God is giving you, put it in a basket and go to the place where your God will choose to establish the divine name.

One of the first things the Israelites are commanded to do when they finally rest in the land, is to bring the first fruits of their harvest as a sacrifice, a radical acknowledgement of gratitude, and commitment to G-d. The commentaries are fairly consistent in defining precisely which fruits we are talking about– and the consensus is that these refer to the seven special species that are native to the Land of Israel. And while the scope of this mitzvah is potentially quite limited, the act itself requires not just a grand gesture of generosity, but an immense faith that more will grow, that your land will continue to give its life to you. 

This idea reminds me a lot of Shemitah, the sabbatical year, during which we are commanded to let the earth lay fallow. Loans are forgiven, indentured servants go free. The land itself reverts to its original owner. And still, in the face of so much unpredictability, we are commanded to give something away. To let those essential things go, and trust that we will make it through that seventh year. 

As so much of the book of Deuteronomy does, Parshat Ki Tavo reminds us of the magnitude of this major transition that the Israelites are preparing for. We are preparing to take these important first steps: across the Jordan, into the Land of Israel, into a new chapter of our collective and individual lives. And when we arrive, we gather up our first fruits, and give them back to G-d.

This has been a tremendous year of firsts. My first job out of rabbinical school. My first pulpit. My first pregnancy, our first child. Next week, we will celebrate our first High Holiday season back in person in over two (very long) years. So many firsts to celebrate. So much learning, and so much growth. OZS was the first synagogue I interviewed with during the search process, and in that short 45 minute conversation over Zoom in February 2021, I knew almost immediately that OZS was my first choice– the synagogue that I hoped most would hire me, that Joseph and I both hoped we would raise our family in, the shul that we wanted to make home. 

In hiring me, in giving me the privilege to serve as your spiritual leader, you have given me a tremendous gift. And I feel that I have been the beneficiary of so many of your first fruits. In me, you have taken an incredible leap of faith, and you’ve all put your trust in me. From day one, you have accepted all of the firsts that I bring to this role– my first fruits, my expressions of gratitude and commitment. And for that, I am so grateful. 

In a million wonderful ways, OZS is a lot like the shul I grew up in in Skokie. It’s small, warm, heimish. Each of you has embraced Joseph, and Elisheva and me in ways big and small, and every day we reflect on how lucky we are to have found our way to you. Skokie and Lexington are different places on different points on the map, but coming to OZS has always felt like coming home. 

For so many years, becoming a rabbi, let alone the leader of a community, felt beyond reach, out of the question, totally impossible. I first learned how to be a rabbi in a small orthodox community in Skokie. And I feel so incredibly blessed to have the opportunity to continue that learning here, in our new home. Thank you for giving me the chance to jump in, feet-first, like Nachshon; to dive into this holy work together. May we continue to be blessed with firsts– as this wonderful new beginning continues to unfold. 

Thank you for it all. 

Shabbat Shalom! 

A Mitzvah For The Birds: Shiluach Haken And Divine Compassion

In the lead-up to the High Holidays, my mom would always get ahead of herself and the calendar, and begin thinking about Sukkot first. Of course, there was always the brisket to think about for Rosh Hashanah, the blintz souffle for Yom Kippur break-fast. Also the Teshuvah. But she always spent the most time thinking about and preparing for Sukkot. Making her famous sukkos soup, making sure my dad and brother were on track to put the sukkah up– but always most important, was the task of decorating the sukkah– of making our temporary home for the week just that– a cozy, warm dwelling-place, full of all the usual decorations and creature comforts. We had the requisite paper-chains and classroom art, but there was also a more unusual decoration, that my mom took immense pride in. 

While my brother and I usually did the bulk of the decorating, somehow, my mom would always manage to sneak into the sukkah (probably when we were taking a well-deserved tv break), and put up 12 birds. She would fasten these very real-looking birds to the poles and corners of the sukkah with the thin wire threads that came attached to their feet. She would place as many as she could in the schach roof that covered the sukkah. And she put them up in such a way that the 12 weren’t immediately noticeable. And we would spend the rest of the holiday, looking for them. An avian sukkot scavenger hunt. And over the course of the holiday, over many warm bowls of sukkos soup, inevitably one of us would call out, would interrupt, would sometimes knock over a drink or a wine bottle, and announce, “I found bird number 8!” Or “There! I hadn’t seen that bird before.” And so the holiday continued, and our meals and conversations were so often wonderfully interrupted by this game. A game that only my mom, in her loving and unusual way, could have devised.

Interestingly enough, birds make an important appearance in this week’s Parsha, Ki Teitzei. In Deuteronomy chapter 22, verses 6-7 we read:

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs, and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life. 

This commandment is called Shiluach HaKen– the mitzvah to send away the mother bird before taking her eggs. This is an unusual mitzvah, and it has given rise to centuries of debate about the purpose of this law specifically, and law or halacha more broadly. Is this law compassionate or cruel? Why does this law exist in the first place? Is this mitzvah trying to teach us something about our relationship to and consumption of animals? 

The list of philosophical questions that surround this idea is long. But I’d like to focus on this mitzvah’s symbolic purpose, and its connection to the moment on the calendar in which we currently find ourselves. 

Chizkuni, the 13th century French commentator writes:

It would be an act of cruel insensitivity, comparable to cooking a kid in its mothers milk, something the Torah has repeatedly forbidden, as well as the prohibition to slaughter, even as a sacrifice, a mother cow together with its calf on the same day.

For Chizkuni, the mitzvah of Shiluach HaKen revolves around protecting the dignity of the mother bird. Acting compassionately toward her, preventing violence and cruelty at all costs. Here, Chizkuni points to our human capacity for compassion. Many other commentators take this idea one step further, and reflect on G-d’s capacity to act compassionately:

The Midrash explains:

There is an angel appointed over the birds . . . and when Israel performs this commandment, and the mother departs weeping and her children crying, he agonizes for his birds, and asks G-d: “Does it not say that ‘His compassion is on all of His works’ ? Why did You decree on that bird to be exiled from her nest?” And what does the Holy One do? He gathers all of His other angels and says to them: “This angel is concerned for the welfare of a bird and is complaining of its suffering; is there none amongst you who will seek merit on My children Israel, and for the Shechinah which is in exile, and whose nest in Jerusalem has been destroyed, and whose children are in exile under the hand of harsh masters? Is there no one who seeks compassion for them and will attribute merit to them?” Then the Holy One issues a command and says, “For My sake I shall act, and I shall act for My sake,” and compassion is thereby aroused upon the Shechinah and the children in exile.

This Midrash is a theological goldmine. In it, we see a G-d who interacts with the whole of the known world; we see a G-d who needs help; in this Midrash, we also meet a G-d who takes suffering seriously, who is unable to let the cries of humanity go unheard.

In our liturgy, we encounter the many facets of G-d’s personality and role. In one prayer, we might meet a gentle parent, and in the next, an angry master. In one instance, G-d is our patient shepherd; and the next, G-d is spiteful and struggles to let go of grudges. G-d, like each of us, is complex, striving, and fundamentally a work in progress. 

But we might come away from our liturgy, and our Biblical texts, especially in this lead-up to the High Holidays with an incomplete sense of who G-d actually is. There is this notion that we are supposed to arrive at the High Holidays feeling intimidated by G-d, Afraid, even. But there is a great difference between awe and fear. Between reverence and panic. And this Midrash reminds me that at the end of the day, G-d is a presence that we should be excited to encounter, grateful to encounter– because fundamentally, G-d is concerned with our dignity, with mitigating our suffering. 

We are exactly halfway through the month of Elul, through this month of special spiritual preparation for the High Holidays. We have two weeks left to ask for forgiveness, to grant forgiveness, to continue the work of searching high and low for the dignity in others. As we inch closer to Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I hope you’ll allow this Midrashic image of G-d to stick: This G-d who is desperate to help us, to protect us. This G-d who doesn’t always get it right, but wants so badly to stand with us in the breach. A G-d that cannot bear to hear our cries of anguish, and who strives to put compassion and dignity at the center of the human-divine relationship.

Sins, like birds, can fly away. We are reminded in this week’s Parsha of G-d’s desire to act compassionately toward us and the whole of creation. This year, I want to challenge all of us to follow G-d’s lead– giving ourselves and those around us, the kinds of compassion we all desperately need right now. 

Shabbat shalom!

The Journey to Perfection

The actor, Michael J. Fox once said, “I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business.” I don’t think I could have asked for a better theological framing of this week’s Torah portion, Shoftim. 

As with every other parsha in the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites have entered the final phase of their journey through the desert, on their way to the Promised Land. And this week’s portion continues the theme of instruction. In these weeks, Moses has not only guided the people in their physical journey through the wilderness, but has guided them practically, existentially, and communally. In the last few weeks, before the people enter the land and Moses takes his final breath, the people and their leader envision their future together. It is not a shared future per se, but a future that is at the very least imagined in partnership. Together, they dream big about how to build this next chapter– how to organize themselves socially, politically, legally, and spiritually. 

So this week’s parsha contains lots of practical rules and guidelines for establishing and growing into a functional, and successful community. In this week’s portion we read about the appointment of judges and magistrates, the establishment of courts, the various legal requirements pertaining to witnesses and testimony. We read about the prohibitions against idol worship, sorcery; as well as the special obligations of a king. We read again about the establishment of cities of refuge, our obligations to the land and the environment, and the rules of war.

Parshat Shoftim is replete with the practical, the scaffolding upon which community and society rest. 

But then, in the middle of the parsha, an interesting, and seemingly out of context verse appears:

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ׃

You must be wholehearted with your G-d Adonai

This pasuk, this verse, appears to be a sort of coda to a long list of rules, an added reminder of their purpose. Being diligent in their observance will allow you to be wholehearted with your G-d, Adonai. The motivation and the reward are one in the same. 

In our verse, the Hebrew word for wholehearted, is תמים– which is commonly translated as pure or perfect. 

The Jewish Publication Society translation of the Tanach explains in its commentary on this verse, that תמים means to be “undivided in your loyalty to G-d.” And according to Rabbi Bradley Shavit Artson, in that sense, temimut, the act of being תמים, implies a high degree of devotion to G-d alone. There is no room for competing desires or distracting temptations. What G-d wants is the heart–all of it. Be laser-focused in your observance and devotion to these laws, and in so doing, you will be laser-focused in your dedication to the Divine. 

Rashi, on the other hand, understands the word תמים, as a degree of trust, rather than just loyalty. Rashi writes: “Look ahead to G-d and don’t seek after the future. Rather, whatever will come to you accept with wholeheartedness. Then you will be with G-d and will be of G-d’s portion. 

On this interpretation, Rabbi Artson continues:

For Rashi, wholeheartedness is a matter of accepting both the good and the bad with equanimity. Accepting that being tamim implies something exclusive for G-d, Rashi argues that it is human nature to seek to force the future to conform to our desires, but that effort is both futile and desperate. Instead, he urges us to embrace whatever the future brings. Rashi recognizes the future as the portal to an encounter with the Eternal if we will only open our arms to the embrace. 

Here, Rashi and Rabbi Artson do something subtle, but significant. Here, the two remind us that the world is an uncertain and imperfect place. That our lives are mostly unpredictable, ultimately beyond our control; and that perhaps our spiritual project in life, the way that we serve G-d and build community, has its roots not only in learning to cope with that uncertainty, but in putting that uncertainty at the center of our relationship with G-d. 

And this understanding brings us back to the more common, more familiar translations of the word תמים– that is, perfection, blamelessness, complete. 

The word תמים is used countless times throughout Tanach– to describe Biblical characters like Noach and Abraham, and Jacob; G-d, too. In Deuteronomy chapter 32, G-d is described as:

הַצּוּר תָּמִים פָּעֳלוֹ כִּי כָל־דְּרָכָיו מִשְׁפָּט אֵל אֱמוּנָה וְאֵין עָוֶל צַדִּיק וְיָשָׁר הוּא׃

The Rock!—whose deeds are perfect

Yes, all God’s ways are just

A faithful God, never false

True and upright indeed

The word is also used to characterize the Torah as a whole. In Psalm 19 we read:

תורת ד׳ תמימה

G-d’s Torah, G-d’s teaching is perfect.

And perhaps the most essential requirement for an animal being brought as a sacrifice in the Mishkan or Temple, is that it is perfect, without blemish:

וּבְיוֹם הַשַּׁבָּת שְׁנֵי־כְבָשִׂים בְּנֵי־שָׁנָה תְּמִימִם

On the sabbath day: two yearling lambs without blemish. 

Or:

זֹאת חֻקַּת הַתּוֹרָה אֲשֶׁר־צִוָּה יְהוָה לֵאמֹר דַּבֵּר אֶל־בְּנֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל וְיִקְחוּ אֵלֶיךָ פָרָה אֲדֻמָּה תְּמִימָה אֲשֶׁר אֵין־בָּהּ מוּם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־עָלָה עָלֶיהָ עֹל׃

This is the ritual law that יהוה has commanded: Instruct the Israelite people to bring you a red cow without blemish, in which there is no defect and on which no yoke has been laid. 

This idea of perfection runs rampant throughout the Tanach. G-d is perfect, our sacrifices are perfect, the Torah is perfect. Where do we fit into this paradigm? When we know, with some amount of grief, but also healthy perspective, that we can never achieve the kinds of perfection laid out for us by G-d and by our tradition? So how do we find a balance? How do we stand confidently in that chasm between perfection and utter failure?

Enter another important verse from this week’s Torah portion:

צֶדֶק צֶדֶק תִּרְדֹּף לְמַעַן תִּחְיֶה וְיָרַשְׁתָּ אֶת־הָאָרֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ נֹתֵן לָךְ

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and occupy the land that your God יהוה is giving you.

This verse has taken on a life of its own, particularly in progressive Jewish communities. And there is good reason for that. But I want to point to two important things that this verse does, two things that may be an antidote to the impossibly high bar of perfection that our tradition seems to set for us:

The first, and perhaps most obvious feature of this verse, is that the word tzedek is repeated. Why? The commentaries differ in their reasoning, but all agree that the doubling here is intended to convey emphasis. In your life, you should be doubly motivated to pursue justice. You should work extra hard at it. I’d like to add my own gloss to this reading– I think each of these tzedeks represents a different truth our world: the first tzedek reminds us that the world is an unpredictable, uncertain place. The second tzedek reminds us that the world is imperfect and sometimes unjust. And so this doubling, this emphatic commandment, itself is a response to the realities of the human world. 

The second important feature worth noting, is this verse’s use of the word Pursue. The verse doesn’t read, Justice, Justice, you shall have perfected. Or even Justice, Justice, you shall understand or have codified. And that distinction is crucial. Pursuit is active, it’s fluid, it has movement that ebbs and flows, and responds to different things at different times. Pursuit is exactly that– a striving toward something greater. In this sense, we can understand the notion of perfection differently: perfection is not the end result, but rather the process of getting there. 

So when we think about,

תָּמִים תִּהְיֶה עִם יְהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ׃

You must be wholehearted with your G-d Adonai

What does that wholeheartedness actually look like? When I try to answer this question, I think about the idea that we are meant to walk with G-d, ללכת בדרכיו, to walk alongside G-d in G-d’s ways. We are perhaps only perfect twice in our lives: when we are born, and when we die. Our lives are bookended by two moments of perfection, and closeness to G-d. And walking with G-d in the interim years of our life, is the work. Moving forward always, never choosing idleness as a stopping point on the way.

With all of its rules and legalities, Parshat Shoftim offers us a crucial dose of reality as the Israelites prepare to enter the Land and begin this next chapter of their lives. Shoftim seems to be radically honest about the challenges of communal life, and gives us a path forward in the meantime: the world is imperfect and incomplete, but walking with G-d, taking those steps day in and day out, bring a new kind of perfection– one that is frank, authentic, and ultimately earned. 

Perfection is not the end result, but rather the radical, and unending process of getting there.

Shabbat Shalom!