A Letter to G-d: Rosh Hashanah 5786 Day 2

Dear G-d, 

They say that you are in the field right now, closer to us than ever. So I’m sending you a letter.  And maybe I’ll fold it up like a paper airplane, cast it on the wind, and hope, somehow, that it will get to you. And maybe you’ll find it in some way-up-there tree branch, or nestled between the lush blades of grass at your feet. You’ll delight in my messy handwriting and all that I’ll catch you up on. Maybe you’ll read my letter and get started on your reply right away– finding clever ways to tell me the secrets of the universe. And maybe you won’t read it at all. Maybe I’ll never hear from you, and maybe next year, I’ll try again. 

But I know that that’s all part of the deal. That we long to be close to you, and you don’t always meet us in that place. But today, of all days, I feel like maybe we can reset. Push a big red button in the sky and start all over again. You, more present in my life, me not feeling so nervous or afraid of what it all means. 

Every year on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, I feel that the boundaries, the many opaque and impenetrable layers between our worlds fade. That you’re here with us in our sanctuary, singing along, cheering us on. So proud of who we are and what we’ve built. 

Do you see how far we’ve come? Do you see that there are synagogues and communities all over the world who are still doing the sacred work, walking that same wandering path as Avraham when you said Lech Lecha, when you commanded him to leave it all behind in search of something better? Do you see how much Judaism has evolved? How we’ve become even more learned, even more resilient, even more diverse, than you could have ever imagined when you sat with Moshe on the mountaintop?

And yes it's all momentary, a fever dream of closeness, really. But every year it feels so promising and so real. That’s something I want to revel in today, just be here in this rare, intimate place with you. Because once the gates clang shut after Neilah at the end of Yom Kippur, it’s back to the usual struggle of trying so desperately to find you. 

I love our sanctuary. Sometimes I come in here during the week just to find some quiet, some peace from the noise and the clatter of the world. I especially love when the light is just right, and the colors from the stained glass windows splash across our Mikdash Me’at, our miniature temple, our most sacred space. And it’s even better still when the kids are playing in the back, or yes, wreaking havoc on the bimah. And when I see people chatting and catching up– yes during services! But today, there’s a different quality in the air. This place feels like a refuge, a place where we can come truly as we are and say to our hearts and our minds, to each other, “sshh, you can rest now.” Because the world out there isn’t just loud, it’s cruel, and broken, and all too much. Do you know that? Do you see that? 

People ask me if I believe in G-d, if I believe in you, all the time. And it’s such an important but puzzling question, because you’ve always just sort of been there. Not loudly or in an outsized, grandiose, larger-than-life faith kind of way. But always sitting just out of sight. Perched on a chair that doesn’t ever creak. Sometimes I can see you just out of the corner of my eye. Sometimes I can’t see you at all. And so I don’t know exactly how to answer the question. Do I believe in G-d? Sure. I believe that there is a higher power, that we are all part of something larger than ourselves, that we are all created holy and in the divine image. And I feel grateful to belong to a people and a tradition that doesn’t require us to be dogmatic about our faith. That it can ebb and flow, and we can fall in and out of touch with each other. No amount of distance or doubt a referendum on our Jewishness. 

But I struggle to articulate precisely what my faith means. Because I don’t think I have a precise faith. It’s always changing, susceptible to so many outside forces and factors. And I’ll admit, I sometimes feel a pang of envy for the people who are so certain. So positive that you exist. The people who see G-d or their deity in a piece of toast. Who feel constantly enamored with the possibility of heaven. Those people who believe that everything that happens is for the best, that you have a plan for each of us– however tragic or blissful– that we can’t possibly understand, but should delight in nonetheless. I wonder how they do it. 

It may not have been what you intended, but I feel that so much of what it means to be a Jew, is to carry our doubt around with us everywhere we go. To wrestle with you, like Jacob did, before his name and his fate were changed forever. It means finding G-d and godliness in other people, and in music. It means raging at you when we experience tragedy, or when we see so much suffering in almost every corner of the world. It means calling you to account like Hannah does in her restless and desperate prayer that we read in yesterday’s Haftorah portion. Calling out the absurdity of a G-d who is omnipotent, and omniscient, and yet often, still refuses to grant our most sought-after wishes, who often still refuses to bring peace, or to feed the hungry. The absurdity of a G-d who has the power to, but almost never just snaps those divine fingers to make everything ok.  

It means having codified into our High Holiday liturgy, texts about the arbitrary nature of suffering. It’s how we acknowledge and embrace the fact that belief in God, actually doesn’t provide all the answers. But maybe believing in you, and really just being Jewish, creates in us a posture and orientation toward life that allows us to simultaneously feel grounded, but also deeply uncertain. 

I remember noticing this duality in a very visceral way after my mom died. Feeling betrayed by G-d, angry, devastated. Feeling confused and unmoored, that even as a rabbinical student I couldn’t make sense of any of it spiritually. How can we ever do that? I wondered, briefly, if I really wanted to be a rabbi. Asking myself how I could possibly guide people through these unbearable moments in life that are ultimately inevitable but theologically inexplicable. I didn’t think I had the strength or the heart to do it. 

But I also remember the relief, and the joy, and the release that finally came when I found the right place to say Kaddish. It wasn’t with my friends in Rabbinical school, who, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t be normal around me. The sudden death of my 58-year-old mother, too bizarre, too tragic. They couldn’t cope with it, much less me. And as much as they loved me, and rallied around me, I felt like a freak. Angry when someone would say the wrong thing, crushed when they didn’t say anything at all. 

And by some miracle, I found myself at Anshe Chesed’s morning minyan. Every morning, I made my way to 100th and Broadway, to daven Shacharit with 15-20 retirees, older, wiser men and women who embraced me from the very first moment I walked through the door. To them, I was another person who had gone through the inevitable, as so many of them had. They had experience with death, they knew how to talk to a mourner, had this instinct to make me feel normal and welcome without downplaying my grief. They became my family. 

Most days, as soon as minyan ended, I would practically run the 22 blocks north to school, maybe stopping for a bagel on the way if I had time, or even catching the bus if I was lucky. But on Fridays, I joined the minyan group for a leisurely breakfast at the diner just down the street from the shul. There was so much laughter and so much genuine connection in that group. Many of them had been davening together for years. And they made me feel like I had known them forever. That they had known me and cared about me forever. 

Those eleven months, and the people in that Minyan: Marty, Mayer, Suzanne, Steve, Rabbi David Kraemer, Rabbi Burt Vizotsky, Magda, Rabbi Jeremy Kalmanofsky– they changed my life, and transformed my grief. And they made it possible for me to re-enter the world, to go forward into a totally unimaginable wilderness without my mom. 

They gave me a box of rain, and showed me that I could drill holes in the bottom, so I could water the ground all around me. That it was possible in the face of such a torrent of sadness and anger to plant new seeds, and watch new wildflowers bloom. 

But there was another thing I learned that year. I learned that hope requires discipline. That healing requires discipline. Once I returned to New York, back to our fast-paced city life, after having been in Chicago for two weeks for Shiva and some family time, it took everything I had physically and mentally to will myself out of bed each morning so I could make it to minyan and jump back into school. I wanted things to go back to normal as quickly as possible, and my body was telling me that wasn’t going to happen. And I couldn’t do it every single day, but having the structure that morning minyan and Kaddish gave to my life, that our tradition gave to my life, made it possible, just a little bit easier, to get back to myself. 

That, to me, is the essence of Judaism. The work. The persistence. The discipline and structure and people that it requires. I would have been completely lost without it. And I know that it’s one thread that has held our people together for thousands of years. Our Judaism doesn’t demand perfection. It demands effort. And it also acknowledges that sometimes even our effort might be difficult to muster. But every single day, we are presented with a million little choices, a million little moments to keep walking. But we can’t do it alone. 

And so I’m telling you all this G-d, because we’re doing ok. But it would be nice to have some reassurance from you every once in a while. That we’re moving in the right direction, that we’re healing and hoping toward something that is worthy of this relationship. 

After all, that’s what these sacred days are all about– teshuvah, about showing up not despite the fact, but because we are imperfect. We work so hard, all year, but especially during this season, to hold ourselves accountable. To reckon with our mistakes and shortcomings, to admit, and confess, and take seriously that our actions, our words, and even our thoughts have consequences. 

But the way we do that on Rosh Hashanah? We do it with the loving and gentle guidance of liturgy, poetry, and music. On Rosh Hashanah, we are invited into a deeply supportive conversation with you and with ourselves. We can ease into the work each of us knows we have to do. 

And I always feel this profound sense of reverence and love when I look around our sanctuary on Rosh Hashanah. Everyone engaged in personal prayer, yet, doing so in the company of two hundred other people. Each of us witnessing and holding one another through it all. And there’s a beautiful silence to it. We don’t have to say anything to each other– a knowing look, and a quiet meditation, more than enough. 

I hope you have that, too. 

Last week, we were in the car and I saw a woman lying on her side beneath a bridge. She had her things with her, and seemed to be living there. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but I noticed a walker. She looked so resigned. Not angry. Just totally and completely abandoned to the sad reality that it is still possible, in 2025, in the wealthiest country in the world, for someone to slip through the cracks. Her entire life on display for all the cars driving past on North Broadway to see. 

And I couldn’t get that idea out of my head. How many people (myself included) have driven past this woman? How many hundreds of cars pass this makeshift home, and do nothing, don’t even think twice about it? I wondered who her parents were and the future they must have envisioned for her. I thought about her as a baby, helpless and hopeful. I thought about any children she might have. 

And I found myself feeling so ashamed and so horrified. I wanted to leap out of the car and help, but I also wanted to run away as fast as I could. My heartstrings all tangled up in a terrible mess of moral obligation and self-preservation.

I think we tend to think about suffering in the extremes. Natural disasters, war, terrible accidents, shootings– the things broadcast in the headlines. But what about this woman? The news isn’t covering her story. No one has taken up her case. She has been all but forgotten by everyone with the power to do anything. And I wonder where you are in those cases? 

And I think as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that suffering is so much more pervasive, so much more present, and small than we like to think. It’s often invisible– most of us oblivious to the vast majority of suffering happening all around us all the time. 

And so when people ask me if I believe in you, it’s hard to honestly and fully answer in the affirmative. Because how can anyone see another human being on the brink of just vanishing, and have any faith? 

I have so many questions. All of them urgent and heavy. I know we all do. So I guess I’m looking for an explanation. For some help understanding the how and the why and the when of You. 

And yet, despite my anger, despite my sadness, and my doubt, and my heartache, I feel like we will be ok, you and I. 

I like to imagine what this time of year looks like for you, wherever you might be. Are you doing teshuvah, asking forgiveness, holding yourself accountable? Are you praying for a better world, asking for someone or something to give you the strength and the power to tip the scales. Do you beg to be written into the book of life? What do you feel when you hear the Shofar? Do you hear all of our cries and all of our joys balled up into a beautiful and honest cacophony of everything happening down here? Does the shofar move you to take action? Do you hear its urgent call the way we do?

Are you wearing white? Are you crying?

The Rabbis have always asked if you pray. In the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Brachot we read:

The Gemara asks: What does God pray? it was taught in a baraita that Rabbi Yishmael ben Elisha, the High Priest, said: Once, on Yom Kippur, I entered the innermost sanctum, the Holy of Holies, to offer incense, and in a vision I saw Akatriel Ya, the Lord of Hosts, one of the names of God expressing G-d’s ultimate authority, seated upon a high and exalted throne. And G-d said to me: Yishmael, My son, bless Me.

I said to G-d: “May it be Your will that Your mercy overcome Your anger, and may Your mercy prevail over Your other attributes, and may You act toward Your children with the attribute of mercy, and may You enter before them beyond the letter of the law.” The Holy One, Blessed be G-d, nodded His head and accepted the blessing. This event teaches us that you should not take the blessing of an ordinary person lightly.

Here I am, just an ordinary person, offering my plaintive, if not scattered, prayer to you. And I’m hoping, that just as you accepted Yishmael’s prayer so many moons ago, that maybe you’ll accept mine today. 

With humility and urgency. You know where to find me. 

Shanah Tovah.

What Rupture Can Bring: Rosh Hashanah 5786 Day 1

Last year, I stood here and talked about how it had been one of the hardest, most disorienting years of my life, of our community’s life– reckoning with the aftermath of October 7th and the ongoing war in Gaza. Trying to wrap my head around so much of the disconnection, anger, and grievance that seems to fuel our government and our culture. Trying, as best as I could, to keep my head above water, and protect my heart. And I had hoped, perhaps naively, that by the time this Rosh Hashanah arrived, by the time I took my perch here on the bimah to talk with you all, that things would be different. Marginally better, at least. That we could enter this new year feeling triumphant– like we had emerged from the many crucibles of our moment, transformed, changed forever, and hopefully for the better. That we would feel safe and hopeful. But things haven’t changed. And the many dangerous status quos persist. 

Recently, we have seen a sharp rise in extremist rhetoric and political violence. In 2025 alone, there have been 302 mass shootings– schools, places of worship, neighborhoods and birthday parties, all targets (According to the Gun Violence Archive. Since the first day of Rosh Hashanah, this number has risen to 317). The continued and unchecked access to assault weapons, to guns created for the sole purpose of causing injury or death, a deep stain on the moral center of our country. We’re seeing the most vulnerable in our communities targeted by punitive attempts to scale back a budget- leaving those who rely on medicaid, on food and housing assistance with nowhere to go, priced out of markets, healthcare, the American dream. Increasing barriers to vaccination, the rolling back of decades-long public health policy. There is so much to worry about. And I fear that our spiritual reserves are dangerously close to running dry. If our hearts were broken last year, this year, they seem to be crushed, buried beneath a rubble of our own making. 

And I can’t tell you how desperately I wanted to talk about something else. How desperately I wanted to share a different truth, paint a different picture of who we are as a nation. And I know that regardless of where you sit on the political map, few of us would say that this level of suffering, of uncertainty, or fear is acceptable. 

I try my very best to find comfort in Psalm 121:

שִׁיר לַמַּעֲלוֹת אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי אֶל־הֶהָרִים מֵאַיִן יָבֹא עֶזְרִי׃

עֶזְרִי מֵעִם ד עֹשֵׂה שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ׃

I turn my eyes to the mountains; from where will my help come? My help comes from G-d,

maker of heaven and earth.

Or in Psalm 130: 

שִׁיר הַמַּעֲלוֹת מִמַּעֲמַקִּים קְרָאתִיךָ ד׃

אֲדֹנָי שִׁמְעָה בְקוֹלִי תִּהְיֶינָה אׇזְנֶיךָ קַשֻּׁבוֹת לְקוֹל תַּחֲנוּנָי׃

Out of the depths I call You, G-d. O G-d, please listen to my cry; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.

But I admit to you that I can’t always do that. Can’t always find the comfort or the strength or the faith or the trust that each of us need to weather this world and all it has thrown at us. How could G-d let all this happen? To be sure, Judaism is my anchor. Our tradition and our texts, a grounding and constant presence in my life. But, in this moment, the Psalms feel too simple, too easy. 

And as if all this weren’t enough, there is an added layer of Jewish pain– that is thick, opaque, and increasingly hard to move through. And it’s what has made this year particularly challenging. The war in Gaza continues to rage, and Jewish communities around the world continue to tear themselves apart over questions around the legitimacy of the war and the future of Zionism. 48 hostages still remain captive by Hamas in Gaza. The death toll in Gaza nearing 65,000 since October 2023. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians repeatedly displaced from their homes in the Gaza strip. Israelis traumatized, begging their government for this war to end, for the hostages to come home. For peace. 

We have become skeptical, suspicious of one another, having set standards and created baseline definitions for political commitments that maybe don’t meet the reality anymore. We have made clear and painful distinctions about who is welcome in the Jewish tent and who isn’t. Who is a good Jew, and who is a bad, traitorous Jew. 

We’re seeing a rise in antisemitism and white-nationalist rhetoric at the very highest levels of our government– so much of which has permeated our society and culture, and has left many of us feeling frightened, raw, and vulnerable. Many of you have shared with me that you don’t disclose to students or co-workers that you are Jewish– the risk just too high. Fear, real, palpable fear is holding us back from so much. From talking more openly, from more freely embracing our culture, religion, and identity as Jews. 

We’re reading about the rift between mainstream Jewish institutions and their non-Zionist members. We’re seeing data on the growing disaffection of young Jews from synagogue life. Almost every day, I get close to a dozen emails about the state of Jewish life in North America. One that even includes siren emojis that flank both sides of the subject line– signaling urgency and alarm! That the Jewish people are in a state of emergency. On the surface, the data and the demographic shifts are troubling, to be sure. There is a lot to be worried about. And many legitimate questions about our future– and the inevitable grief that comes with acknowledging and accepting that it’s a future we may not recognize. 

But we have been here before. In fact, our story as Jews is one that is built on building and rebuilding time after time. We are masters of redefining who we are in moments of crisis and tragedy, and we are preternaturally built not only to meet the moment, but to redefine our Jewishness specifically so we can preserve Judaism and ensure that it not only survives, but can thrive and flourish in new and unprecedented times. 

And so I struggle to understand the insistence on reminding us that we should be afraid, that we should be existentially concerned for the future of Judaism. Judaism is changing, yes. But it can’t break. It’s stronger than that, more resilient than that. 

Perhaps with the exception of the Exodus from Egypt, the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE was the most pivotal, existentially threatening moment of transformative opportunity for the Jewish people. And it’s this beautiful, modern, Judaism that we all know and practice and experience today, that emerges from that moment of rupture. 

Rabbi Benay Lappe, a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and founder, President, and Rosh Yeshiva of Svara: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva based in Chicago, talks about this moment in 69-70 CE as the crash, the inevitable breakdown of one master story, that surprisingly gives rise to a new story, and a radical, new Jewish story that has stood the test of time for all these years. 

Before the Temple was destroyed, the Jewish community of Israel saw the writing on the wall, and they responded in ways that we may actually see playing out today, and perhaps all throughout our history in various cycles. Here, Rabbi Lappe identifies three options for confronting and responding to a crash:

Option #1: Deny the crash, and return to your master story, take refuge in it. In this case, you’ll build a wall around your master story. You’ll shore it up and reinforce it so no threatening information can get it. Nothing can taint it. You’ll keep the things that are most important to you, but you’ll pay a steep price. The priests, the Kohanim, go option one. They are employed by the master story, they earn their living by it. And they can’t imagine theirs or any other Jew’s life differently. They do everything they can to protect the master story to preserve their way of being Jewish. 

Option #2: You can accept the crash. Reject your master story, and jump off into a new story. But crashes are inevitable, so you will have to jump from one story to the next, to the next, and to the next, and on and on and on. Never quite finding your place, never settling in a master story that has you at the center, or that can withstand the vicissitudes of history. Historical records from the Temple period show that 90% of the Jewish people went option two after the Temple was destroyed. They left Judaism, and completely melted into the Roman Empire.

I understand the instinct to choose option two. When your world has been destroyed, your places of worship sacked and desecrated. When you can’t see a viable or safe future for your or your family, you run. You take shelter in the systems that have power, and you begin to rebuild your life all over again, in the shadow of what once stood. 

But there is yet another option. Option #3: Enter the Rabbis. In Rabbi Lappe’s words, “these fringe, hippie, weirdo guys,” transformed the Jewish world forever. Because what they did was radical, unprecedented, and completely unfathomable to the vast majority of Jews living at the time. The Rabbis accept the crash, they embrace it! They don’t reject or bury their heads in the sand. Somehow, miraculously, they are not afraid of what it might mean. And what they did next is the most important piece of this story. After they had accepted what was happening– that Judaism as they knew it would cease to exist– they went back to the tradition, took with them what still worked, mixed the old with the new, and created a beautiful, viable, radical new tradition, a new Judaism, that would have been unrecognizable to a Temple Jew. 

Every single one of us who is here, every single Jewish person who has lived a Jewish life since 70 CE, could do so only because these fringey, brilliant outcasts rejected the inertia and the defeat that the Romans expected. In the face of unimaginable suffering, catastrophe, and uncertainty, this group that would later come to be known as the “rabbis,” refused to accept the certain death of our people. The rabbis knew that Judaism was going to change forever. Those were the choices: embrace change, or watch it all wither away. And so they did what they could in their lifetimes to ensure that Judaism would be pliable enough, and would have enough depth, to weather all sorts of change– so that even a series of major crises wouldn’t be enough to break it forever. And this choice gave us the diaspora, the Talmud, the vast and still expanding Halachic canon. It gave us modern Judaism, and synagogues like OZS, and Jewish diversity, and rabbinical schools and appreciation for the minority opinion. Everything that we know about Judaism, the Judaism that we practice today, was born of that moment and that choice nearly 2000 years ago. 

I’m reminded of the midrash that describes Moshe sitting on Mount Sinai, watching G-d affix crowns to the letters of the Torah. Moshe asks why G-d insists on adding these flourishes? G-d says, there is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name; he is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crowns mounds and mounds of halakhot, laws. It is for his sake that the crowns must be added to the letters of the Torah. 

Even G-d knows, from the very beginning of our covenantal relationship, that it will change.

Moshe asks to see Rabbi Akiva. And in a perfect storm of spirituality and magical realism, G-d flings Moshe nearly 1500 years into the future, right into Rabbi Akiva’s Beit Midrash, his study hall, his classroom. The midrash teaches that Moshe sat at the very end of the eighth row. Rabbi Akiva is teaching his students, and it dawns on Moshe that he has no idea what’s going on. He doesn’t understand the Halacha, the law, that Rabbi Akiva is teaching, and he begins to worry that his own Torah study and knowledge is deficient. Even Moshe, our wise leader who cemented our story as a people, cannot understand or recognize this future iteration of Judaism that he helped to create! 

And just as soon as Moshe begins to worry, another student asks:

My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive.

The changes, the expansion, the rupture even, it was all built into our tradition and our DNA from the very beginning. G-d gave us an unbelievable gift, did an unbound act of Chesed for us, in this way. Being Jewish, being part of this still unfolding story, has always meant adapting. Not only because it’s often required, but because that is precisely what gives Judaism its power, its strength, and its depth. 

In Avot D’Rabbi Natan, the Rabbis share yet another midrash about the covenantal moment at Sinai:

This is one of the things which Moshe did of his own accord… He broke the Tablets of the Commandments, and his judgment coincided with G-d’s… He took the Tablets of the Commandments and descended and was exceedingly glad. When he saw the people worshipping the Golden Calf, he said to himself: “How can I give them the Tablets of the Commandments, for if I do do I will be obligating them major commandments and condemning them to death at the hands of Heaven; for it is written in the Commandments: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” Moshe then started back up the mountain, but the seventy Elders saw him and ran after him. He held fast to one end of the Tablets, and they held fast to the other, but Moshe’s strength prevailed over theirs…As he was ascending the mountain, he looked at the Tablets and saw that the words had flown away and ascended from them. How can I give Israel tablets with nothing on them, he thought; better I take hold of them and break them. 

I love this Midrash because it’s subversive, and is a total departure from the way we traditionally read this moment. But I also love it because we see the same three options that Rabbi Lappe points to playing out here. The שבעים זקנים, the seventy elders, are later reflected in the priests, who choose option #1. Holding tight and fast to the status quo, to the way they believed things had always been and always should be. The people, those dancing around the Golden Calf choose option #2. In a moment of fear, unsure that Moshe would ever come back down the mountain, they choose a new story and a new path. And Moshe here, becomes the bearer of option #3, the proto-rabbi. Choosing to do something radical and rupture-making, for the sake of preserving that which is most sacred, Jewish peoplehood. In breaking the Luchot, Moshe saves us from certain death, from having to start our story over from the very beginning. According to this Midrash, it is precisely because Moshe shatters the tablets, that the Jewish story, that our wanderings through the desert, that our covenantal and ever-changing relationship to who we are becomes uniquely possible. 

In his 2023 book, Who Are the Jews and Who Can We Become?, Rabbi Donniel Hartman observes that:

Rabbinic tradition notices that while G-d commanded Moshe to descend the mountain, G-d nevertheless leaves the Commandments in Moshe’s hands. Moshe decides to shatter them- and to the Rabbis, this story is not about anger, but about love. Moshe wants to return the Torah to G-d because he realizes that if he gives it to the people in their current idolatrous state, he will be condemning them to death given the Torah’s prohibition against idolatry. So where does Moshe’s primary loyalty lie? With the word of G-d or with G-d’s people? Moshe chooses the latter, with shocking ramifications: his obligation to the people’s well-being takes primacy even over G-d’s Torah. 

To me, the thread that our people and our leaders weave through each of these distinct moments in our history is the miraculous and beautiful alchemy of equal love for the Jewish people and the Jewish tradition. And I sometimes wonder if what makes our current moment so difficult to understand and even more difficult to live through, is that we often prioritize one over the other, sometimes pitting one against the other. When we prioritize the people over the tradition, we run the risk of diluting the richness and the depth of Jewish culture and religion. The things that, however you practice or observe, or don’t, bind us to one another. And when we prioritize tradition over our own people, we forget that the Jewish tent has always been wide– like Abraham and Sarah’s tent, open on all sides. That there has always been plenty of room for everyone. 

We forget that our tradition is not only resilient enough, but specifically designed to contain disagreement, departure, and conflict. And this is the hard part. This includes anti-Zionist and Zionist Jews alike. Queer Jews. Politically conservative and progressive Jews. Jews in interfaith families. Reform, Conservative, Ultra-Orthodox Jews. Every single Jewish person, past present, and future, regardless of identity, affiliation, or political commitment. It’s why the Torah was given to everyone, and why we so eagerly accepted. Because we understood our acceptance in that moment to mean that we were becoming responsible for a tradition and a people that would change and evolve over time. What a weighty and exciting commitment! 

I don’t think we’re headed for another crash, but I know it feels like we are. I know it feels like we’ve lost our center, that we’ve become unmoored and disconnected from the most precious things that have kept our people grounded for thousands of years. I know it sometimes feels like Judaism is slipping right through our fingers. 

Through the muck of all this heartbreak, we have forgotten that our Judaism can hold it all. And maybe some part of our compassion and our expansiveness has been gobbled up by the cruelty all around. But if we allow our Judaism to be subsumed by perceived crises; if we let ourselves as Jews be defined by the most excruciating parts of our story, we’ve given up, and we’ve written the final chapter of the story the Rabbis started writing for us 2000 years ago.

So this year at OZS, we will embark on a collective journey to reclaim our Judaism, and all that it contains. To learn about Judaism’s most essential teachings– Shabbat, Kashrut, the Jewish Holidays, Prayer, and lifecycles. To rededicate ourselves to the sacred work of choosing option #3 over and over and over again. Please, find your place here. Bring your questions here. Add your voice and your heart and your mind to the learning that keeps our people going.