“So what are you going to talk about, Rabbi, with the world as it is?”

We all know the world is on fire. Climate catastrophes continue. Our democracy feels fragile in ways I don’t need to describe – you’re living them too. In many parts of this country, rights are under attack: my right to decide whether or not to carry a pregnancy, or the rights of people like my friend Rabbi Daniel Bogard in Missouri to pursue appropriate medical care for his trans son. 

This is our world, and the road to repair will be long. The climate crisis isn’t going anywhere, and I don’t think a quick fix will do it for democracy or human rights, either. The emotional and spiritual impact of living with all of this can be heavy. 

Over the winter, I picked up a new coping mechanism: learning Arabic on Duolingo with a rabbi friend. Any time I caught myself doomscrolling, I’d open Duo and practice Arabic instead. His resolve to learn had come from a recent trip to Israel and the West Bank. My resolve to learn was because I hoped to travel there.

Learning a new language is an adult is humbling. After about nine months, I can say, or slowly read, things like قهوة سيث طيب/ kahwa Seth tayyib, “Seth’s coffee is good!” or هذا مطبخ واسع الحمد لله / hadhe matbakh wesia alhamdulillah, "this is a spacious kitchen, thanks be to God!" Basically I’m a pre-schooler. 

I have a long way to go before I can engage in meaningful dialogue. Still, learning Arabic connects me outward, instead of stewing inside about all the things I can’t fix. And every word I learn brings me one step closer to being able to connect across what can sometimes feel like a vast chasm.

In early summer a few of us from this community went to Israel with members of two New York city shuls. At the end of our first full day, our dinner was in the home of Doris Hiffawi in an Arab neighborhood of Yafo. She introduced herself as Christian Arab Palestinian Israeli. 

Doris is Israeli: she’s a citizen of the state of Israel. She's Arab and Palestinian: her lineage is Arab, her first language is Palestinian Arabic, her family has lived in Jaffa for over 100 years. And she's Christian, which is the majority religious tradition here, but very much a minority one there.

Doris welcomed us into her elegant home with music and dancing. She and her mother had cooked us a spectacular meal of maqluba and shakshuka. She told us about being a minority within a minority several times over – an Arab citizen of Israel, and a Christian in a majority-Jewish state and in a majority-Muslim Arab world. She talked about choosing empowerment as a woman in what we might think of as a fairly patriarchal culture. She runs a small business welcoming strangers – Jewish Israelis and tourists like us –  into her home for coffee or a meal and conversations.

And as we were departing, I managed to haltingly tell her, in Arabic, that الاكل جيد جدا شكرا جزيلا el-ekil jayyid jiden shukran jazilan -  the food was very good, thank you very much. 

Doris Haifawi speaks excellent English. Her Hebrew is gorgeous and fluent, unlike mine. I'll never forget the way she beamed and clasped both of my hands and called me habibti when I thanked her in my slow and clunky Arabic. She had extended herself to us by opening her home and her story. When I made an effort to speak her language, I was extending myself to her, and I could feel the change between us. 

*

This morning's Torah reading is – to use a rabbinic term of art – a doozy. Sarah conceives a son whom she names Yitzhak, "Laughter." Maybe you remember that Sarah had been barren, so she gave Avraham her handmaiden Hagar, "The Stranger," and with Hagar he fathered Yishma'el, "God Listens." 

Now Sarah sees Yishma'el מצחק / m'tzahek, playing with Yitzhak. It's not clear what that means. Rashi says he was doing something inappropriate, maybe engaging in idol worship. Ibn Ezra says he was just playing around, like kids do. The word m'tzahek shares a root with the name Yitzhak: was Ishmael pretending to be his brother? Part of Torah's richness is that it can support all of these interpretations and more.

But there's not much ambiguity in Sarah's response. She says,“Send away that slave-woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share the inheritance of my son.” Even the language feels dehumanizing. 

It’s possible that Sarah lashed out at Hagar because of her own trauma. Twice, when she and Abraham were traveling, he lied about her identity and pretended she was his sister. He was afraid that if people knew she was his wife, they would kill him and claim her.  Sarah even wound up in Pharaoh's harem at one point, though Torah is silent about how that impacted her. 

I can say this: we know now that when we don't work through trauma, we often unconsciously perpetrate it on others. Maybe those who wrote down the ancient stories in Torah knew that on some level too, even if they couldn’t yet articulate how putting a woman at risk of sexual assault could be traumatic. 

In Islamic tradition, the expulsion of Hagar is seen as a necessary beginning to the story of Islam, foreordained by all-knowing God. In Jewish tradition, many commentators have wrestled with what appears to be Sarah’s deeply unethical act. 

Torah is a powerful mirror for the self. Maybe we resist this piece of Sarah's story because we know how easy it is to "other" someone, to see them as unworthy of our time or care. "I don't want to share what I have with somebody like that. Let them fend for themselves somewhere else.” 

And maybe that's why Torah tells us, over and over, וַאֲהַבְתֶּ֖ם אֶת־הַגֵּ֑ר כִּֽי־גֵרִ֥ים הֱיִיתֶ֖ם בְּאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃, "You must love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt." (Deut. 10:19) Torah is saying: our history must spur our empathy.  

According to Talmud (Bava Metzia 59b), Torah gives us this mitzvah 36 times. Love the stranger. Do not wrong or oppress the stranger. Care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. In R. Danya Ruttenberg’s words:

“Everyone who has resources must ensure that those who are most marginalized are able to access some of those resources… [These] aren’t Divine Suggestions, they’re commandments.” 

And they are so core that for at least two thousand years, they have been first among the critical mitzvot that we enjoin upon someone who joins the Jewish people. (Yevamot 47a)  

Reading again about how Sarah othered Hagar – literally pushed her out of the tent and into the wilderness – I am here to say: we can be better than that. We can commit ourselves to not treating the stranger that way, to not othering anyone. 

And I also need to acknowledge that power matters, and that our various identities impact how safe we are (or aren’t) with people unlike ourselves. 

A thought exercise: imagine you’re a white man walking down a street at night. Notice what anxiety you do or don’t feel. Now imagine you’re a white woman. Maybe in your imagination you feel a bit less safe. When I was a teenager my mom taught me how to hold my car keys like a spiky weapon in my fist in case a man came after me. 

Now imagine you’re a woman of color. Probably feeling even less safe, because in addition to sexual violence, you’re also worrying about racial violence. Now imagine  you’re a queer woman of color: all of the above, plus homophobia. Imagine that you’re transgender or gender non-conforming, and the danger rises even more. We can see how risk increases as identity becomes more marginalized.  This too is an exercise in empathy: remembering that when I feel safe, someone else might not. 

Torah obligates us to love the stranger / the “other” and to help those in need. And sometimes the people who see us as “other” are actually dangerous to us. Our job is to discern when to reach out beyond our comfort zone, and when to withdraw in self-protection. For instance, I would not feel safe extending care toward someone who thinks Hitler had the right idea. Granted, I’m not sure how someone with those views changes, if not through genuinely meeting people like us. But our safety matters. 

Working to end bigotry and othering is collective work. We’re in it together, and that togetherness is key. It’s ok to say, “this one is too personal, I need an ally to step up for me.” I don’t feel safe extending myself toward a neo-Nazi, but someone who’s not Jewish could do that work. Meanwhile, I’m a cisgender white woman, so I can stand up for my trans beloveds and for people of color. 

Connection across difference, allyship, the pursuit of justice, empathy: these are lifelong practices. 

*

 A few weeks ago, the following question came my way: 

"Where do we find hope and renewal when everything looks awful? You probably don't have an answer, but I would really like for a spiritual leader to talk about how to deal with the world right now without falling into despair."

We find hope in taking action. We find hope in connecting beyond ourselves. We find hope in helping the stranger, and in standing up for each other. We find hope in resisting doomscrolling and doing something. 

This doesn’t feel like “enough” when the world is as broken as it is. But compared with doing nothing, it’s everything. 

In the words of Vanessa Zoltan, a Jewish atheist chaplain whose parents survived the Shoah:

[T]]his is the lived truth of probably half the globe, right? That at any moment you might have to leave. And so you keep your eye out for who could help you... But also at any moment, someone else might be the person who needs to leave or needs help. So keep your eye out as to who you can help.

Here's one way to connect: my family is part of the Haiti Host Team, working to resettle a Haitian refugee family locally. Yousemane and Josnel came here in July via the Welcome U.S. project. Our work is coordinated by Bridget Spann at First Congregational Church in Williamstown, and I’d love for members of our community to take part. “Welcoming the stranger” doesn’t get more literal than that.

Or: reach out to be trained on the security protocols here so you can be a door greeter at services, helping our community stay safe even as we literally welcome people in.  Or maybe in the new year you’ll feel called to join up with our friends in the New Hope United Methodist community to re-start our participation in Take and Eat, the weekend Meals-on-Wheels program that Ed Oshinsky brought to us years ago, which we didn’t have the volunteer power to continue once the pandemic began.

When we help others we galvanize our sense of agency, which matters because feeling powerless leads directly to despair. And: doing this actually makes us feel better. So says Dr. Carolyn Schwartz, a professor at UMass Medical School. She arranged regular peer-support phone calls for people with multiple sclerosis... and found that those who offered support were helped more than those who received the support. 

It turns out that the best way to be spiritually nourished and to feel hope is to extend oneself to someone else. Helping others is a way of helping ourselves; we're not actually as separate as we think. 

So much is broken: the climate, public trust, the national body politic, our capacity as a nation to even agree on a shared set of facts.  Pretending it’s not broken doesn’t serve us. But we can reach into our tradition for the spiritual tools that do serve us, and I think this is one of them. 

The Hebrew word mitzvah is related to the Aramaic tzavta, to connect or join. A mitzvah is literally something that connects us: to each other, to our traditions, to our Source.

The imperative to love the stranger and to lift up those who are marginalized are among our most core mitzvot. They’re central to who we are as Jews. They’re also at the literal heart of Torah. Torah has a chiastic structure: what’s most important is in the middle. And this verse is in the middle of the middle book, Torah’s deep heart.

On Yom Kippur afternoon we’ll hear instructions to provide for those in need and to act justly, leading up to the verse at Torah’s heart: “Love your neighbor / your other as yourself.” (Lev. 19:18) And how do we show that love? By feeding the hungry and acting justly. It all comes down to loving the stranger and helping those in need and doing what’s right.

This is the life-giving spring in the desert of our wandering. And it’s up to us whether we let it become choked with sand, or whether we help “justice well up like water, righteousness like an unfailing stream.” (Amos 5:24)

These are the words I offered at First Day Rosh Hashanah services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the congregational From the Rabbi blog.)

The Torah table's in place. The chairs are arranged, and the music stands, like one-footed angels. The microphones, angled just so. The Torahs are wearing white holiday clothes. Prayerbooks wait in tidy stacks. Rolls of stick-on nametags sit beside baskets of printed holiday bracelets. The piano is tuned. The slide decks are ready. The sermons are ready. The blog posts are ready. My white binder of sheet music sports a rainbow of marginal tabs, colorful stepping stones through each service. As for my soul? Just now a spoonful of honeycake batter called her back from distraction, saying: ready or not here we go.

Dear Mom: All last week I kept thinking of the time you were here for Selihot. You must have visited early without Dad that year. I remember the high-heeled sandals I wore that night. They were covered in linen, striped in red and orange and coral. Not my usual style, but I knew you would like them.

What did you think of our earnest tradition of writing down our mis-steps from the old year in order to begin to let them go? I can't remember any conversation about it at all. You were never one for regrets. The life of the party, absolutely. But introspective? That's not the word I would've gone with. 

Still, you loved the music of this season. I know you loved both of the melodies we use for Avinu Malkeinu, which you used to play on the piano at this time of year. I can still hear you playing that, and Yerushalayim Shel Zahav -- to this day I can't hear that without coming close to tears. 

Your grandson will be playing the double bass at high holiday services this year. You would kvell, if you were here. Meanwhile 8th grade school picture day was yesterday. If it were going to be cold, he told me, he would want to wear one of Papa's sweater vests and one of Papa's ties in his photo this year. 

You have two great-grandsons now. I imagine you saying, what amazing adventures they will have! You had such a fundamental optimism about the world -- rooted maybe in your own experience of growing up safe as a Jew here after the Shoah. You always seemed confident that good things lay ahead.

It's hard to feel that kind of full-throated optimism now, after COVID, after January 6, as climate crisis intensifies. How would you have responded to all of those? I can't imagine. It's too far from the you I knew. The world felt different to me when you were alive, and not just because you were alive in it.

But I can imagine you dropping in on our Selihot services from Olam Ha-Ba -- maybe with your parents in tow, because I knew and loved them, and they knew and loved me -- and singing along. I wore your necklace of big amber beads as though it were a talisman that could summon you. Maybe it did. 

I read an article yesterday (it scarcely matters about what.) Afterwards I spent a long while working on a terrible poem. Righteous indignation is not a good motivator for poetry. But the news so often fills me with grief and fury. Everyone I know is living close to the emotional boiling point, these days.

We haven't wholly grieved global pandemic, and meanwhile climate disasters intensify (and climate deniers pretend), and democracy is under attack, and the state where I was born is making it illegal to drive on state roads if one's purpose is to escape to a safe state for reproductive health care --

-- and how many of us live with all of this simmering in our hearts and minds most of the time? It's no wonder that even when we're doing all right, it feels like we're barely keeping our heads above water. Still, that's no excuse for terrible poetry, so the poem in question will remain locked away.

I've drafted my sermons for the Days of Awe. I surf the usual waves of worry. Does this speak enough to the challenges of right now? Does it ask too much? Does it ask too little? Is this the right message for someone who maybe only comes to shul twice a year? How about someone who's there weekly?

"You've drafted your sermons already, so what are you doing with all that extra time?" a friend asked. Not enough, was my answer. I should be spending this extra time on my own inner preparation for this holy marathon, but I'm not. I feel guilty. "What if you made your guilt your spiritual practice, then?" 

The question was flip, but also real. If the core question of spiritual direction as I practice it is "where is God for you in this," then I need to find God even (or especially) in the relentless worry and self- critique to which I am prone. Every time I think, "am I doing enough?" I need to respond with grace.

And when the news leaves me grieving or revved-up, the same is true. That I care about the world is a good thing. I just need to use Judaism's tools, because tying myself in knots that can't be untangled helps no one. "Maybe we've had a little bit of a week..." Right on time, here comes Shabbat.

In early spring it's wild ramps,
dark blades of onion-scented grass.

Then come the fairytale eggplants.
On the cusp of fall, tiny plums.

In winter I splurge on clementines
though citrus won't grow here, at least

not yet. Sometimes I treat myself
to marzipan at Christmastime, though

almond trees are struggling.
We're running out of groundwater.

How long until the memory of coffee beans
will be implausible as the days

when silvery cod were so plentiful
we walked across their backs to shore? 

America Is Using Up Its Groundwater Like There's No Tomorrow, New York Times

Can New England's Cod Fishing Industry Survive?, The Guardian

A Future Without Coffee?, Inter-American Development Bank

I had actually forgotten that I'd written this poem until someone shared this image on the site formerly known as Twitter. As soon as I read it, I remembered what was on my mind and heart when I wrote it. I had to search on my hard drive to date it, though -- I wrote it in spring of 2015, earlier than I thought. Looks like it was originally written in couplets, though I also like the shape that someone gave it in this image. (There's a slight transcription error in line 8, but I'm honored that someone liked the poem well enough to share it this way, even without the original punctuation and italics.) It's not exactly a sonnet, in terms of rhyme or meter, though it's inspired by the movement of a Petrarchan sonnet -- eight lines, a turn, then six lines. My favorite line is still, "God isn't / a diner waitress saying: what can I get you, hon?" That's not how I understand prayer to work, even petitionary prayer. Sometimes I can't help wishing it worked that way, though. I would order so much wholeness and healing and sweetness and fulfillment of hope. 

The cat can tell the moment I'm awake.
He purrs because he knows breakfast will come.
It's dark: I'm not so thrilled to be alert
this rainy Tuesday dawn, brain sputtering
on far too little sleep, running on fumes.
Next time the former president is indicted
for racketeering I shouldn't stay awake
refreshing headlines, waiting for the news.
Of all the things that don't belong in poems --
though justice does, blindfold and sword and scales.
This week our Torah portion is called Judges.
(I cannot make this up.) Too on the nose?
"Justice, justice" -- Moses said it twice.
I live in hope. What else is there to do?

This week's Torah portion: Shoftim.

Lady Justice. You go, girl.

Rain taps on the roof like quiet hands.
So much softer than clods thudding
on a plain pine box.

Once everyone is gone
they take away the green tent
open on all sides, the worst chuppah.

The words wash away, but
I'll never forget
who rolled up his sleeves to finish shoveling.

In Jewish tradition, everyone present at an interment shovels some earth onto the casket. It is considered one of the last acts of lovingkindness we can do for the person who has died. 

I do remember, very clearly, who picked the shovel back up and helped us truly finish burying my parents after everyone else had taken a ceremonial turn. I wonder whether every funeral I conduct from now on will always bring those memories to mind.

 

 

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ אֶֽת־הַבְּרָכָ֑ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּשְׁמְע֗וּ אֶל־מִצְות֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּֽוֹם׃ וְהַקְּלָלָ֗ה אִם־לֹ֤א תִשְׁמְעוּ֙ אֶל־מִצְות֙ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹֽהֵיכֶ֔ם וְסַרְתֶּ֣ם מִן־הַדֶּ֔רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֧ר אָנֹכִ֛י מְצַוֶּ֥ה אֶתְכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם לָלֶ֗כֶת אַחֲרֵ֛י אֱלֹהִ֥ים אֲחֵרִ֖ים אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹֽא־יְדַעְתֶּֽם׃ 

 

See, this day I set before y'all blessing and curse: blessing, if y'all obey the mitzvot of your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if y'all do not obey the mitzvot of your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon y'all this day and follow other gods whom y'all have not experienced. (Deut. 11:26-28)

That's the beginning of this week's Torah portion, Re'eh. The Italian rabbi and physician Ovadia ben Jacob Sforno, born in 1475, writes:

ראה, pay good attention so that you will not be like the nations of the world who relate to everything half-heartedly, always trying to find middle ground. Remember that אנכי נותן לפניכם היום ברכה וקללה, I present you this day with the choice of two extremes, opposites. The ברכה / brakha is an extreme in that it provides you with more than you need, whereas the קללה / klalah is another extreme making sure that you have less than your basic needs. You have the choice of both before you; all you have to do is make a choice.

I'm fascinated by the Sforno's admonition. I usually think of middle ground as a positive thing. Compromise, moderation, finding the balance between the two poles -- that's good, right? Living in community requires compromise. The capacity to make peace and find middle ground seems like a good thing. But what I hear the Sforno to be saying is: sometimes seeking middle ground isn't right.

I hear the Sforno to be saying: don't be wishy-washy. We shouldn't "both-sides" everything. There's actually a difference between brakha and klalah, blessing and curse, right and wrong. When it comes to making an ethical choice between what's right and what's wrong, it's our job to know the difference. When it comes to right and wrong, defaulting to some imagined middle ground helps no one.

Looking at the world around us, this feels resonant. We're faced with ethical choices all the time. We can uphold the truth, or we can shrug off lies. We can learn from our nation's flawed and messy history, or we can pretend slavery wasn't so bad. We can ensure that every American can exercise their right to vote, or we can ignore when a state party leadership simply refuses to redraw gerrymandered maps.

We can protect human rights and dignity, or we can let lgbtq rights be eroded as in many states (now also at risk federally). We can uplift diverse voices, or we can ignore the banning of books relating to race, gender, sexual orientation, and history, including books about the Holocaust. We can seek climate resiliency, or we can ignore the hottest month on record and the hundred-degree oceans.

On a smaller scale we can give each other the benefit of the doubt, or we can assume the worst of each other. We can speak with each other, or we can speak about each other. We can be curious and open about what's going on with each other, or we can make assumptions. And this too ties back to the "blessing or curse" paradigm that Torah gives us, because our relationships can feel like either one.

"The power to choose doesn't mean that every choice is equally wise... We can choose to let the elderly homeless remain on the streets.  We have that power," notes R. Bradley Shavit Artson. He doesn't need to add that if we can make that lousy choice, we also could choose to house the homeless and to feed the hungry. We can choose to take care of each other, or to say that others' needs aren't our problem.

Every year, including this one, we read these verses just before the Days of Awe. The new year begins five weeks from tonight, so new beginnings and existential choices may already be on our minds. But I think the choice between brakha and klalah is always in front of us. And this year, the Sforno's words remind me that equivocating, or opting not to choose, is also a choice... it's just not a very good one. 

There's a grammatical oddity in the first verse of the parsha. "See, this day I set before y'all blessing and curse" -- the instruction "See" is written in the singular, while "before y'all" and the rest of the verse is written in the plural. The opening word is spoken to each of us individually, a reminder that Torah speaks to each of us where we are. But the blessings and curses arise out of our communal choices.

The blessings and curses are aggregate. They impact the community as a whole. And they ask something of the community as a whole. If we want the coming year to be one of justice, we need to enact it together, because one person acting justly alone can't create justice. If we want the coming year to be one of concern for the needs of others, we need to live out that concern and act on it together.

What are the values we want to animate us in the CBI community in the coming year? In our towns? Across our state and the neighboring ones? In our nation? The choices we make together can bring blessing or curse, a welcome or a closed door, hope or despair, abundance or lack. I think we all know which is the world we want to live in. Now we just have to make that world real for everyone.

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

This new prayer-poem is in the same vein as Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda Press), my volume of love poems to a beloved or The Beloved (depending on how you want to read them). This is my contribution to the latest collaborative offering from Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. Eight of us worked together on this one. It's part of a series of offerings arising out of the blessings of the Amidah.

I'll enclose the poem below as plain text for those for whom the above image doesn't work. If you know the blessing we're working with, you may be able to see how each phrase links back to something in the original Hebrew. Or maybe not, and that's okay, too. I hope that the prayer-poem can "work" either way.

These offerings are like fractals, or a kaleidoscope, or a collective word cloud, or a many-faceted gem. The same tiny piece of prayer inspires different things for each of us. Sometimes we root our offerings in the etymology of a particular Hebrew word or phrase. Sometimes the same word takes each of us in a different direction. (Hebrew is rich like that.) We take a prayer and we talk through it. We turn it over and over, and we refract the light of our creativity and our understanding through it. Or we refract ourselves through the lens of the prayer. Or the prayer through the lens of each of us. (Or all of the above.) We share our work, we critique and comment, we make suggestions. We turn things around, change stanzas, turn one poem into two or vice versa. Artists riff off of words. Writers riff off of images. And when all is said and done, we've created something that's more than the sum of its parts. 

I often feel these days that my own creativity is lying fallow. I'm not working on a big poetry project, and that's been true for a while. My last two books were Texts to the Holy (which came out from Ben Yehuda in 2018) and Crossing the Sea (from Phoenicia, 2020). It's going on four years since Crossing the Sea came out, and I don't know what's next. Maybe the pandemic and the loss of my second parent and my heart attack are percolating in me. Maybe the pastoral needs of this moment are so great that I just don't have space for holding a book in mind. Anyway: even in a time of limited personal creativity, this collaborative work at Bayit nourishes me, and it keeps me writing, a little bit. I'm grateful for that.

Read the whole thing here: Amidah Offering: All This Power / Gevurot.

And here's my small offering to the whole: 

Gevurot: Be There

Be there for me forever.

Wake up the parts of me
that have fallen asleep.

When I'm sitting in ashes
you lift me up
with gentle hands.

With you I feel alive.
All I want
is for your beauty
to bloom.

You're the dew that keeps me going
on the aching, thirsty days
when life wrings me dry,
the rain that refills
the emptied cup of my heart.

R. Rachel Barenblat

After the deep dive into communal grief that is Tisha b'Av, our tradition gives us seven Shabbatot of comfort. On Wednesday night we faced the age-old hatred of antisemitism and the brokenness of the world. Maybe in the aftermath we feel anew that when we let ourselves be real, the grief doesn't annihilate us after all. And with that awareness we begin tradition's seven weeks of consolation. 

Enter this week's Torah portion. Parashat Va'etchanan is a kind of Jewish Greatest Hits. Moses recaps the Sh'ma and v'ahavta, reminding us to listen and to love with all that we are. Moses recaps the Ten Commandments and reminds us of receiving Torah in the first place. And we also have this verse, which maybe we recognize from the Aleinu prayer, because the Aleinu borrows these words from Torah:

וְיָדַעְתָּ֣ הַיּ֗וֹם וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ֮ אֶל־לְבָבֶ֒ךָ֒ כִּ֤י יְהֹוָ''ה֙ ה֣וּא הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים בַּשָּׁמַ֣יִם מִמַּ֔עַל וְעַל־הָאָ֖רֶץ מִתָּ֑חַת אֵ֖ין עֽוֹד׃

Know therefore this day and keep in mind that יהו''ה alone is God in heaven above and on earth below; there is no other. (Deut. 4:39)

That's not a bad translation; it captures the simple meaning of the text. The Sforno says, "establish it firmly in your heart." I like that better, because he's attuned to the use of the word lev, heart. But I want to look more deeply at this phrase וַהֲשֵׁבֹתָ֮ אֶל־לְבָבֶ֒ךָ֒ / v'hasheivota el-levavekha, because I think it's no coincidence that this verse appears for us now. It's a reminder, a foretaste of what's coming. 

The Hebrew root שׁוּב mean to return or turn around -- as in teshuvah: repentance, return, turning our lives around, re-aligning ourselves with our highest values and with our Source. Returning to something we've maybe left behind or strayed from or forgotten. Literally re / turning -- turning again. In modern Hebrew, a teshuvah can also be an answer, as in a halakhic answer to a deep Jewish question. 

So another way to translate this verse might be: Deeply know, today, as you return to your heart: God is God. Torah is instructing us: to go into our hearts and make teshuvah. Do the inner work of re-aligning ourselves with our highest values. Answer the deep question that our heart is asking about who we mean to be. Return to our hearts and return to our Source, because God is God.

יְהֹוָ''ה֙ ה֣וּא הָֽאֱלֹהִ֔ים / Adonai hu ha-Elohim: God far away is also God deep within. There's a unity that encompasses all of our differences. And as always if the "G-word" doesn't work for us, try: we do our inner work because Justice. Because Love. Because Truth. Because we just reminded ourselves at Tisha b'Av how much brokenness there is for us to repair in this world, and we've got work to do.

Tisha b'Av set us on the runway toward the Days of Awe. Exactly seven weeks from tonight we'll be here in this sanctuary welcoming not only Shabbat but also a new year. Torah is here to remind us: the time for teshuvah is beginning. Return to our hearts, because that's the first step toward the great turning of the year, the great turning from who we've been toward who the world most needs us to be.

In the spring we count the seven weeks of the Omer from Pesach to Shavuot, from liberation to revelation. We focus on seven inner qualities as we prepare ourselves to receive Torah anew. Now we move through those same seven qualities in reverse as we prepare ourselves for the new year that is coming. We begin this journey where we ended the last one: with malkhut, presence.

We begin this journey by simply being present to what is. Present to what's real, in us and around us. What does it take to really be present -- really in the moment, not in the stories we tell ourselves about what was or what might be? How can we be present for and with each other? Because though each of us has our own inner work, Judaism is a communal tradition; none of us walks this path alone.

Our mystics teach that Shekhinah (the immanent, indwelling divine Presence) goes with us in exile. Originally this was a teaching about being kicked out of Jerusalem. When Babylon destroyed the first Temple and sent us into exile, Shekhinah came with us. The place that we understood as God's home address was destroyed, but our mystics said: the Presence of holiness goes with us wherever we go.

And that teaching continued to be relevant. When Rome destroyed the second Temple and sent us into exile, Shekhinah came with us. In every expulsion: Jews kicked out of England, or Spain, or Portugal, or eastern Europe -- Shekhinah came with us. It can also mean: in whatever ways we feel exiled from wholeness, Shekhinah is with us. No matter how isolated or alienated we may feel, we are not alone.

It's a radical idea. God isn't just "out there" or far from us. We find God here with us in the messiness of our human lives. And -- this feels important -- not only in the easy places. On the contrary, tradition holds that Shekhinah hovers over every sickbed. When we say God's presence is with us in exile, we mean in our fear, or suffering, or doubt. אֵ֖ין עֽוֹד / Ein od -- there is no place without the Presence.

Ein od milvado calligraphy by soferet Julie Seltzer.

Our journey toward the new year begins where we are. With presence, Shekhinah, malkhut, really inhabiting all that we are. Step one is to return to our hearts. Be present to who we are, how we need to re-align. Make teshuvah and begin to return. Because justice, and love, and truth matter. Because we are about to start over, and we can make choices about who and how we want to be.

Shabbat shalom.

This is the d'varling that I offered at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

It's almost Tisha b'Av. This is the new piece I wrote this year for that somber day. If it speaks to you, feel free to use it and share it.

I wrote it after traveling in Israel this spring. (And no, I'm not writing today about what's happening there. This is not that post.) I was profoundly struck by the reminder of how many peoples have hated us and tried to wipe us out. It's history I've always known, of course. But it lands differently now. Once I had the luxury of imagining that antisemitism was outdated and fading away. With the ugly rise of white nationalism and "Christian nationalism" both here and elsewhere -- with the reality that my synagogue now keeps its doors locked -- with praise for Hitler coming from public figures -- every Jew I know lives with the sickening awareness that there are people who want to exterminate us. Most of the time I keep the fear and grief at bay. But Tisha b'Av is in part about letting ourselves feel the things we keep at arm's length. We let our walls come down and face what feels annihilating. From the other side of that brokenness we begin the ascent to the Days of Awe.

And -- this feels really important to say -- if you are a trauma survivor, do what you need for your own safety. If letting your emotional or spiritual walls fall would harm you, don't do it. I can't say this strongly enough. The spiritual practice of opening ourselves to what's broken is a different thing altogether for someone who already suffers trauma's shrapnel. If that is you, maybe it's not safe for you to break open, or maybe you don't need the reminder of brokenness. Stay safe and whole. 

If you're looking for other resources for Tisha b'Av, here are two at Bayit that I find deeply powerful:

• Hymn for the Hurting, R. David Evan Markus' setting of an Amanda Gorman poem in Eikha trope
• For the Sake of Ascent, last year's offering for Tisha b'Av from Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group

Every summer the Bayit board gathers for a retreat. There are board meetings, of course. There are big-picture conversations about what we're building, how we're building it, whom we serve. There are late-night conversations and early morning confabs. As we learn, and pray, and play, and dream, we strengthen the foundations of the building work we aim to do (and to empower others to do.)

We talk Torah over breakfast. This week we're in Devarim. Why is Moses speaking to the next generation as though their parents' adventures were theirs? Is he showing that there is no before and after in Torah? Is he connecting the people with their ancestors? Is he coming unhooked in time and uncertain with whom he's speaking? What are the pastoral and spiritual implications of each of these?

We dip in the ocean. We marvel at the ocean, because most of us on the board don't live here. (The one who does live here laughs and affectionately calls us tourists.) Pelicans glide right overhead, and sandpipers run on wet sand. We hum bits of liturgy on the beach. A seashell with a hole in it sparks a sermon idea. Among rabbis, with the Days of Awe on the horizon, everything is a sermon idea.

We brainstorm about build projects, governance and innovation, what we want to co-create in the year to come. We talk about collaborative play, about middot (character-qualities), about book projects and game mechanics and how to reach people where they are. We play Hebrew bananagrams, examine what makes good games work, talk about what might differentiate liturgy from poetry.

We fall into accidental build-planning and vision conversations even when it's not board meeting time, because that's what happens when we're together. We cook good food. We make endless pots of iced coffee. One morning we wake early and paddle kayaks among dolphins in the intercoastal waterway and I quietly sing R. Bella's Modah Ani to the ospreys and the dolphins and the little sea turtles.

We daven beside (and in) the pool and the ocean. We sing the psalms of Hallel at new moon. We talk about the spiritual implications of the shehakol blessing, usually rendered as blessing God Who made all things by God's word, though the grammar points toward the future, not the past. What does it mean to bless God for speaking-into-being not what is, but what everything will become?

We unpack the possible gematria of our rental car's license plate. We unpack our various responses to R. Alan Lew's writings on responsibility for recurring patterns, and the fine line between agency and blame. We talk about spiritual direction and flow and dishwashers, how to use StoryCubes in Torah study, favorite melodies for regular prayers, the ideal number of builders on any build team.

We talk about Tisha b'Av, about different understandings of the fundamental rupture that that day represents, about what we talk about when we talk about God. While floating in the salt waves, we talk about what it means halakhically and spiritually for a hat on the waves to be hefker (ownerless). We write ideas down on post-it notes and move them around like a live-action Trello board.

We dream an entirely new build: talking about tools we can create and curate, the communities we think it could serve, the needs we hope it would meet. The whole room gets excited, tossing ideas out in turn, each suggestion building on the last. One night we are joined by one of our builders, and we brainstorm about tools, partners, Torah interpretations, what the world needs that we could make.

At the end of the week we are scholars-in-residence at the Jacksonville Jewish Center. We share some Torah, some spiritual tools and technologies -- some of what we do. There are services, a Friday night d'var, Torah study, lunch table discussions. We return home nourished by dreaming, collaborating, playing, praying, remixing: ready to take up our tools again, and to continue to build. 

Shared with deepest gratitude to the Bayit Board of Directors; cross-posted to Builders Blog. 

This is the d'varling I offered at Bayit's Scholar-In-Residence weekend at the Jacksonville Jewish Center.

It’s Shabbat Hazon, the “Shabbat of Vision.” This Shabbat gets its name from tomorrow morning’s Haftarah, in which Isaiah describes a vision of calamities that will befall Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Sure enough, we’re approaching the end of the Three Weeks leading to Tisha b’Av. If this is the Shabbat of Vision, it’s easy to see what’s coming: the fall of the Temple. 

Not all Jews deeply feel Tisha b'Av, or mourn the destruction of the Temple, but the fall of the Temple remains  the quintessential Jewish tragedy of loss and exile. And yet that hurban – that destruction – enabled the birth of rabbinic Judaism. Our forebears wrote the Mishnah precisely to preserve memory of what had been and to start rethinking what had been.They took the foundations of the Judaism that had come before, and began to build something new. 

Later, in the conversations that became Gemara, the scaffolding of construction rose higher and stretched more broadly. And then others built on those foundations. Today we inhabit a Judaism of so deliciously many rooms! Jewish life and practice now take some forms that our ancestors couldn’t have imagined. But all are built on the foundations we inherited from our forebears. They built the Judaism that their moment needed, and so too do we. 

The destruction of the Temple is foundational for the Jewish people not only because it sent us into Diaspora all over the world. It’s foundational because it laid down the principle on which Judaism as we know it continues to unfold: we all need to be builders. The Jewish future is always under construction. That’s the founding principle of Bayit. 

In Talmud we read:

Wise students increase shalom in the world, as it is said: “And all your children shall be taught of God, and great shall be the shalom of your children” (Isaiah 54:13). Don’t read it as “your children,” [banayikh], but “your builders” [bonayikh]. (Brakhot 64a)

It’s our job to increase shalom in the world: not just “peace,” but shleimut – wholeness, completeness. No one is a spectator to this holy calling. All of us are called to take up our tools and keep building Judaism. That’s one of our core values at Bayit, and as we say in Texas where I grew up, “Y’all means all.” All ages, all gender expressions and sexual orientations, all races and ethnicities, all branches of Judaism, clergy and laypeople, rationalists and mystics.

At Bayit we create and curate meaningful tools for building the Jewish future. Like our forebears, we remix tradition with innovation, what’s been with what’s next. Some of our “builds” are new books, or new prayers, or new practices. Some are games – you’ll get a taste of that tomorrow at Shabbat lunch.  All of our “builds” seek to engage in new ways or deeper ways, with a first-hand sense of participation and investment in the experience.

How we build is as important as what we build. Building the Jewish future is an iterative process. We try something new. Measure whether it worked. (What does it mean for a prayer or a ritual or a game to “work,” anyway?) We get feedback. We tweak and improve. And then we try again. You could call this design thinking, or research and development. I call it fun.

Does it feel weird to be thinking about fun on the cusp of Tisha b’Av? Maybe a better word is nourishing. Even when what we’re building is new liturgy or updated ritual for Tisha b’Av – like collaboratively writing the text we called Megillat Covid during the early months of the pandemic, or setting an Amanda Gorman poem to Eikha trope – there’s shleimut in doing it.

There’s shleimut in part because we’re building together. In our Liturgical Arts Working Group (a creative collaborative of writers, artists, and liturgists) we’ve got Reform Jews and Orthodox Jews, clergy and laypeople, spanning the continent. Together we’re more than the sum of our parts, and together we can build in ways that none of us could’ve done alone. 

The Judaism of the future needs all of us, in all that we are and all that we can become. That’s one of my favorite ways to understand the teaching from Torah that we’re made in God’s image (Gen. 1:26). Each of our souls is a facet of that ineffable Whole we name as God, which means the only way for the image of God to be complete is for all of us to build together.

And a Judaism of shleimut asks us to be authentic. In spiritual life and ethical life, the things we do and the way we do them, we need to bring our whole selves to the table. The work of building Judaism requires us to be real with each other, with our traditions, and with our Source. Otherwise what we’re building would rest on flimsy foundations.

The Judaism of the future won’t look exactly like the Judaism of today, any more than what we do looks exactly like the Judaism of 800 or 2,000 years ago. With all due respect to the great Rabbi Moses Shreiber of Pressburg, the Hatam Sofer (d. 1839) who claimed in a streak of preservationism that anything new in Judaism is automatically forbidden, change has always been built into Judaism. When the Temple fell, we took broken pieces of tradition as we’d known it and we built something beautiful and new. Even the Temples were a re-framing of what had come before, a traveling Mishkan in the desert, which replaced the stone altars of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. 

Rabbi Isaac Luria (d.1572) taught that when God began to create, God’s infinite light streamed into creation. The “vessels” that were meant to hold that light were too fragile, and they shattered. The world as we know it is full of the broken shards of those original vessels, concealing sparks of creation’s original light. Our job as Jews – and I would say, our job as human beings – is to repair the world’s broken pieces and uplift those holy sparks. That was the original meaning of tikkun olam: literally, taking up our tools and repairing our broken world.

It’s Shabbat Hazon. When we look around, we can see plenty of brokenness. 

But brokenness isn’t the end of the story. The very fact of Judaism itself proves that, to the contrary, it’s only the beginning.  It’s an invitation to create something new, and a spiritual mandate to do so together. On our spiritual calendar, Tisha b’Av next week begins the seven-week runway to Rosh Hashanah and the infinite potential inherent in every new year. The Judaism of tomorrow will be what we make it, and especially on this Shabbat of Vision, I can’t wait to see what we’ll build together next. 

To remix Theodore Herzl (the “father” of modern political Zionism) with the 1989 Kevin Costner classic Field of Dreams, if we build it, it is no dream.

Cross-posted to Builders Blog. 

This week’s Torah portion, Matot-Masei, begins, “These are the journeys of the children of Israel…” (Num. 33:1) Torah spends many verses listing the 42 places where we went or stopped or camped over forty years. (Num. 33:1-37) In a 12th-century collection of midrash on the book of Numbers, our sages compare Torah's recounting of our journeys to the parable of a king whose child fell ill:

[The king] brought him to a certain place to heal him. When they returned, his father began recounting the stages, “Here we slept. Here we cooled off. Here you had a headache....”  (Bamidbar Rabbah 23:3) I like the image of God as the parent who remembers every moment, and the chronicle of our journey as a reminder that the One we name as God is with us everywhere along the way.

As a speculative fiction fan of a certain age the number 42 makes me think of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which the number 42 connotes, "life, the universe, and everything." Another interpretation: as R. Laura Duhan Kaplan notes, there are 42 words in the v'ahavta, the prayer that instructs us "to love God when we come and when we go and when we rest." 

To the mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov, Torah's list of stops along our journey is a metaphor for the journey of an individual soul. The forty-two stops evoke the twists and turns of every human life: leaving Mitzrayim / places of constriction, seeking sustenance and purpose and our hopes fulfilled. And for us as for our ancient ancestors, the trajectory of the journey probably won't be linear.

For us as for our spiritual ancestors, the journey might feel tangled. A journey that we might imagine should be brief or simple can take a lifetime. If you’ve ever thought, “Haven’t I been here before? Didn’t I already face this issue, didn’t I already do this work?” – you’re not alone. Any therapists in the room are nodding right about now. The work of becoming is never done.

The work of living up to our best selves, refining our best qualities (from lovingkindness to ethical strength to presence), acting with integrity, learning from our mis-steps is never done. It's almost as though the journey itself is the point, and the Land of Promise is our ethical north star that guides us.toward building a world in which every human being enjoys full human rights and dignity.

R. Alan Lew writes about how we bring ourselves to the same unresolved issues over and over again. I see the same kind of patterns in our national political life. (Today's wave of anti-trans legislation in many states mirrors the "gay panic" of the 1980s.) Are we just going in circles? I prefer to hope that we can make our trajectory go up even as cycles repeat, like the ramp inside the Guggenheim. 

The Hasidic master R. Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev teaches that all of our journeys come from God for the sake of lifting up sparks. Our mystics imagined that when God first set out to create, God's infinite light streamed into a world that was too fragile to hold it, so creation's "vessels" shattered. There's a primordial brokenness -- and also primordial sparks of supernal light for us to find and uplift.

Our job is to cultivate the inner qualities that the fallen sparks need in order to be uplifted. We need empathy, we need care for the other, so we can take care of the broken places in the way that they need. Ultimately, the purpose of our journeying is to effect yetziah -- going-forth, Exodus from tight straits -- not just for us, but for the holy sparks in the broken places. For the whole broken world.

Okay, these are sparklers, not holy sparks. But for me the image evokes the sparks in everything.

If our journeying is only for the sake of our own needs and our own growth, we're doing it wrong. Don't get me wrong: our own growth does matter. Becoming our best selves does matter. But not for the sake of our own greatness. We strive toward becoming the best "us" we can be so that we can help others. Feed the hungry. End poverty. Uplift human rights and dignity. Lift all the sparks.  

And that includes the sparks we find beneath the shards in life's broken places. Enter the Jewish calendar. We’re in the Three Weeks between 17 Tammuz when we remember the first cracks in Jerusalem’s city walls, and Tisha b’Av when we remember destruction and face what's broken. On Tisha b’Av we’ll begin a seven-week journey of preparing ourselves to begin the new Jewish year.

The Jewish calendar is saying: what feels broken or precarious? The calendar is saying: we need to see what’s broken in order to mend it; we need to feel our losses in order to move through them.  As R. David Markus writes, We need to see where we've been in order to know where we're going. And what better time to look back on the twists and turns of our path than now, approaching a new year?

The journey of a lifetime isn’t linear. The journey of spiritual growth: not linear. The journey of a community or a nation toward living up to its highest ideals: not linear. Progress toward justice and human dignity for people of every race, religion, origin, sexual orientation, gender expression: not linear. The human journey is rarely linear: not for our ancestors in Torah, nor for us now.

We may feel lost or stuck; our ancestors did too. We may be unsure how to get from here to the land of promise; our ancestors were too. Maybe we're frustrated to be fighting to regain rights and safety we used to be able to take for granted; nu, spiritually we're right on time to face life's broken places. And wherever our journeys take us, we uplift every spark... until we've lifted up the world.

Shared with deep gratitude to the Bayit board of directors for learning together each week. 

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)