I want to start the new year by naming the elephant in the room.

This year some of us have been deeply worried about Israel and Israelis. We can’t stop thinking about October 7 and Israeli hostages in Gaza. Maybe we’ve lived in Israel. Maybe we have family or friends in Israel and they know someone who was killed or taken prisoner. Compounding all of that, maybe we feel like the world has turned on Israel, maybe on all Jews. We’re worried about Jews worldwide at increased risk. Every anti-Zionist slogan, or boycott of a Jewish or Israeli business, or campus protest, leaves us feeling like the world doesn’t want us to bring our whole Jewish self to the table. 

And some of us have been a wreck because of Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon. Maybe we have a familial connection there, or maybe our families are Arab or Muslim. We yearn for a ceasefire; maybe we’ve been standing out for one in the Williamstown roundabout every Friday. Compounding all of that, we feel alienated from the sector of the Jewish community that seems not to feel what we feel. Maybe we aren’t comfortable with Zionism, or maybe with any kind of nationalism, and we wonder how to find home in a Jewish community that doesn’t see this the way we do.

The news out of the Middle East is not good. (Understatement.) It looks like the wider regional war -- the one everyone's been saying all year that we need Israel and Iran to avoid -- is beginning. Which might mean that, as horrendous as the last 360 days have been, we may be headed for worse.

It's a good thing I spent part of this year learning how to recognize and work with trauma reactions, including my own. The panicked feeling in my stomach, the shortness of breath, the tears banging at the back of my eyelids, the paralysis and fear -- hello, trauma. I don't want to welcome you back in.

But I've learned that trying to pretend trauma away doesn't work. And neither does squeezing my eyes shut and begging God to make the world different. The only path forward is to soften, thank the trauma for trying to take care of me, and use my meditation tools to help the grief and fear drain.

You know what I can't fix? The Middle East. Anything happening in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, or anywhere else. (While we're at it: I can't fix American xenophobia, one political party's plans to deport tens of thousands, or the likelihood of post-election violence, either.)

I can't fix climate crisis denialism, or the impacts of Hurricane Helene, or rising antisemitism and Islamophobia and transphobia, or any of the things that are ratcheting up anxiety until I feel -- so many of us feel! -- like an over-tightened guitar string that's about to break. I cannot fix any of it.

So I make challah dough, listening to psalms, softly singing the Thirteen Attributes. "Adonai, adonai, el-rahum v'hanun -- Yud heh vav heh, compassion and tenderness..." I run the dishwasher and put away clean warm plates. I set the table for the new year 5785, literally and metaphorically.

I think of everyone whose holiday table will be incomplete. I think of everyone who won't have a table or a place to celebrate at all. I think of scenes of devastation, from the Middle East to Appalachia, and I pray for safety and tranquility and kindness. I pray for all of us to be able to take care of each other.

Most of us don't have the power to fix the big things that are broken. It's simply not in our hands. But we can fix what we can reach. We can find the next good thing to do. "We must love one another or die," Auden wrote. It's and, really. The second part of that line is inevitable. The first part is up to us. 

Dear Mom --

Today is my shul's annual cemetery service. As always, I will think of you and of your grave two thousand miles away. I will remember your mother who used to talk about how in Prague they visited  relatives in the cemetery on Sundays. She thought Americans don't do that enough. I think of you often at this time of year as the trees put on their fall colors. You loved this season when you were lucky enough to be in a place that has it. The leaves changing, the light changing. Autumn in south Texas doesn't look anything like this. More than thirty years after moving north I still marvel at it too.

I thought of you the other night when I took my son to the symphony. The local symphony plays in an imposing building with huge columns. During the first pandemic year, when my son was ten and we were sheltering-in-place, we took lots of walks on the college campus, and he built a replica of that building in Minecraft! But he'd never been inside. He was appropriately wowed. But mostly he was wowed by the experience of seeing a symphony orchestra up close and personal. It's entirely unlike the experience of watching one on YouTube, or even on the big screens on the lawn at Tanglewood.

The first thing on the program was Beethoven's 7th, which might be my favorite of his symphonies. As we listened, I found myself remembering shiva for you. Your longtime friend, who had been my rabbi when I was a teen, spoke about your love of European culture. How you always took your children to the symphony and to the opera. You wanted us to appreciate the beauty of great art in that grand old tradition. In retrospect I wonder whether you got that from your mother, who grew up cosmopolitan in urban Prague. What must it have been like for her to move to the rural American south after that?

It's strange for me to realize that my son wasn't yet playing the double bass when you died. He got the opportunity to try playing the bass in his fourth grade year, which in the spring became the first Covid year. But your headstone's unveiling happened right before Covid, which means you died a year before the pandemic, long before he took up this instrument. The double bass has pride of place in our living room, next to the hand-me-down upright piano that once was yours. He'll be playing part of the Max Bruch Kol Nidre at services soon: another piece of music that I remember you used to love...

Anyway, my teen was set alight by watching the orchestra from just a few rows away, and seeing three of his music mentors performing live. His favorite was the Stravinski: such bombast! On our way out I told him that I remembered going with you to see (what was then called) the San Antonio Symphony. He knows you were deeply musical, and he thinks that's why you loved the symphony so much. He may be right. Dad enjoyed it too, but I think Dad was there because you wanted to be. You wanted us to appreciate this kind of music. I wanted you to know that your youngest grandson does, too.

Happy new year, Mom, wherever you are.

My eyes harvest color.
Paper-thin slivers
of purple cabbage
gleam, speckled
with Aleppo pepper.

Slabs of ruby beet
make labneh blush.
The burning bush
outside my window
blazes scarlet.

My crispers teem
with ombre leeks,
with wax peppers
in yellows and oranges
bright as tree-tips.

If I hold my breath
will time stop
on this hinge
between seasons?
But then

I wouldn’t get
to embrace you
again, or to hope
for what yet
might grow.

Earlier this week I was studying the writings of the Mei Hashiloach, also known as the Ishbitzer rebbe (d. 1854), on this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo. His musing on a seemingly unimportant half of a verse caught my eye and my heart.

The verse is הַשְׁקִ֩יפָה֩ מִמְּע֨וֹן קדְשְׁךָ֜ מִן־הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם / “Look down from Your holy abode, from the heavens[.]” (Deut. 26:15) The Ishbitzer riffs on this verse, noticing that God here is viewing us as a group. And then he writes: 

“It’s only when we are seen as a group that we can be at ease. For when God observes the community as a whole, one person clarifies the acts of the other, and each makes his neighbor look good, for each soul has some pristine facet.”

At first my study partners and I thought: is this a back-handed compliment? “Hey, next to you I look great!” But we decided instead to understand that “one person clarifies the acts of another” can mean that we make each other better. We bring out the best in each other. 

We are better together than we are apart. This is part of Judaism’s fundamental communitarianism. Judaism is not a solo activity. Think of how many mitzvot require a minyan, ten adults doing something together. Even Torah study traditionally happens in pairs.

Earlier this week I saw my Jewish Journeys students come together to do a mitzvah they wouldn’t have done alone. They were making “blessing bags” – each containing socks and gloves, hygiene supplies, protein bars – to give away to folks who are unhoused and in need.

Could any one of these kids have assembled the items and made the bags themselves? Arguably, sure; any of us could. But most of us don’t. Each kid provided one batch of items – the toothbrushes, the soaps, the jerky – and together they made short work of that mitzvah.

We are better together than we are apart. It’s a poignant and powerful message to receive from Torah now, with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur less than two weeks away. The moon of Elul is waning. Soon we’ll come together in community to start a new year together.

A lot of us learned, as kids, that the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the ideal time for teshuvah – repentance, return, turning our lives around, apologizing to those whom we’ve harmed so we’re not carrying karmic schmutz on our souls at Yom Kippur.

That’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s also not the whole story. I’d say that these weeks that we’re in now are actually the most ideal time. So that when we come together to celebrate a new year, our hearts can feel clear and light, not weighed down by the old year’s misdeeds and missteps.

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg reminds us (following Rambam), teshuvah has five steps. 1) Name and own the harm / acknowledge where we messed up. 2. Begin doing the inner work to become a better person. 3. Make restitution / amends. 4. Apologize. 5. Make better choices.

Teshuvah is a process: not just the apology, but all of the work that has to come before it – and after it. And we do the work because the work matters and it’s the right thing, not because we expect any particular outcome. Teshuvah matters, whether or not forgiveness comes.

The most important outcome, ideally, is that we ourselves are transformed. We become better people who, faced with the same opportunity to mess up, wouldn’t make the same mistake again because we’ve changed. In the eyes of Jewish tradition, that’s what really matters. 

We are better, together, than we are apart. I love the Ishbitzer’s the idea that we “clarify” each others’ actions. He’s using that word in the sense of the way an artist might mix a paint color to be clear and lovely, or how a silversmith removes anything extraneous so silver can shine. 

At our best, as human beings and as Jews, we help each other shine. What work do we each need to do over the next two weeks so that when we come together as a whole community for the holidays our hearts are clear and we can help each other really shine?

I invite each of us to find one instance where we need to make teshuvah. Maybe we hurt someone’s feelings, or didn’t take their needs into account, or shared gossip without thinking, or – you’ll know where you need to make repair. Find one thing to do to make amends.

Try to make someone in our community shaleim, try to make them more whole. This is our tradition’s language for repairing what we’ve broken. We’re not just gluing the pieces back together, “sorry I broke your coffee cup,” but trying to make the injured party more whole. 

And I invite each of us to seek out ways to help each other shine. To encourage each other, and notice good things about each other. To praise and uplift each other: maybe someone cooked a great dish, or ran a great meeting, or did something admirable. Tell them so. Make a habit of uplifting each other.

Imagine if we all did that. Imagine how we might feel different when we stand before God* (whatever that word means to us: God far above or God deep within, Truth, Meaning, Justice, Love) at Rosh Hashanah. Imagine the new year that could flow from that new beginning.

Shabbat shalom.

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.)

Shared with extra gratitude to the Bayit Board for our weekly study time.

It’s Elul, the month that leads us up to the Days of Awe. The busiest time of the year for pulpit clergy. Also the most spiritually intense time of year, when we’re supposed to be engaging in an accounting of our souls and making teshuvah. We are eating, sleeping, and breathing high holiday prep. Those of us with "halftime" pulpit positions are working fulltime-plus. (These things are true every year.)

All of us have just had the hardest Jewish year we can remember. Usually when we reach Simchat Torah, we get an emotional and spiritual break. In 5784, we went into crisis mode before the holidays ended. The calamities haven't stopped, so we never downshifted out of crisis mode. Even those of us with extensive pastoral care experience may have never provided it at these levels for this long.

I can't begin to describe the depth of grief and trauma across our communities this year. Some of us are ministering to Jews who are strongly Zionist-identified, to progressive Jews who are struggling with what's unfolding, and to non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews in deep solidarity with Palestinians. Many of us are trying to hold together communities, families, and friendships that are fracturing. 

Please be kind to your clergy. Many of us are worn thin, feeling (in Tolkien's words) "like butter scraped over too much bread." We have spent this year trying to bring presence while mourning, ourselves. Preparing for the High Holidays is an awesome responsibility, and we’re grateful to be able to do it! And this year, we may be running on empty before the marathon of the holidays even begins.

It is always humbling to read my words translated into another language -- especially into this language that I so deeply love. And I'm moved to know that this particular poem, a cry from my heart, reached one of my Israeli friends and colleagues deeply too. Thank you for this translation, R. Simcha Daniel Burstyn.

(You can read my poem in English plaintext here in an earlier blog post. And/or, the Hebrew and English are both posted as comments on this Facebook post where I also shared this translation.)

I want to look at three verses from tonight’s Torah portion. One of them is big and systemic, while the other two are more intimate and personal. Each one suggests a spiritual practice to me – something we can actively make a practice of doing as we approach Rosh Hashanah.

צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָ֥''ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃    

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and inherit the land that your God יהו;;ה is giving you. (Deut. 16:20)

This verse is one of Torah’s profoundest messages. The repetition of the word tzedek, justice, might come to teach us to chase after justice both internally and externally, inside and out. Or maybe it means that we need to seek justice for others, and also for ourselves.

Ibn Ezra says the repetition means that we must pursue justice whether we ourselves win or lose. We must pursue justice because justice is what’s right – even if it doesnt benefit us personally. Justice matters, justice is precious and holy, even when we don’t ourselves win.

The American justice system is not perfect. There are wrongful convictions (which is why The Innocence Project exists). But I believe that justice, as an ideal, is one of the ways we live up to what’s best in us. And my time serving on a jury left me feeling humbled and moved. 

“Jury service,” I wrote then, “asks us to do our best to root out any preconceptions or prejudice, and to approach everything we hear with an open mind. That's a pretty good spiritual practice for anytime, honestly. So is holding deep empathy while also upholding accountability.”

I invite us to try to live in the world, between now and the holidays, as though we were serving on a jury and someone’s future is at stake. Notice our biases, and work to mitigate them. Approach everything with an open mind. Seek accountability from a place of deep empathy. 

שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧''ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק׃

You shall appoint magistrates and officials in your gates, in all the settlements that your God יהו’’ה is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 16:18)

Appoint judges for your sh’arekha – your gates. For our mystics, this means not only the literal gates of our towns, but the “gates” into us. Our eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth are seven gates that we need to guard in order to ensure the justice that this week’s parsha tells us to pursue.

What do we let in through these gates: what words do we read, what media do we consume? Whose stories do we seek out, and whose stories do we ignore? Where are we getting our news? Whose voices do we center? Whose voices do we ignore, or just… not want to hear? 

And what do we let out through these gates? Are we careful with the words we speak? Do we repeat hearsay or gossip, or speak about others outside of their presence? Have our words caused harm this year? (The answer is yes, whether or not we can call instances to mind.)

I invite us to guard our gates as a spiritual practice this month. “The mind is like tofu: it takes on the flavor of whatever we soak it in,” said Reb Zalman z”l: whatever we let in these gates becomes our marinade. And whatever we let out of these gates shapes our impact on the world.  

תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה עִ֖ם יְהֹוָ֥''ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

You must be wholehearted with your God יהו’’ה. (Deut. 18:13)

During Elul, our mystics teach, “the King is in the Field.” Though sometimes tradition imagines God as a King, transcendent, unapproachable, this month we imagine God “descending” into creation and walking with us in the fields, a friend Who wants to hear what’s on our hearts.

This verse invites us to bring our whole hearts to God. Here’s my invitation: suspend whatever disbelief might be getting in the way. Take some quiet time this month – whether we’re out for a walk, or driving alone in the car – and speak aloud to God, as to a friend, what’s on our heart. 

What are we worried about? What do we regret? What do we hope for? We might be surprised by what we hear ourselves say, or how it feels to hear ourselves say it. If we make a practice of this, between now and Rosh Hashanah, how might that deepen the holidays for us this year?

Three invitations: 

Pursue justice by approaching the world with the integrity of a juror. 

Guard our gates, mindful of what we’re taking in and what we’re putting into the world.

And pour out our hearts – not to the vast indifferent universe, but to an imagined beloved Friend. 

Shabbat shalom.

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.)

From Texts to the Holy, Ben Yehuda Press. 

Here's the poem in plaintext for those who need it that way.

Pray

Sometimes I manage
formal conversation,
a love letter evening
and morning and afternoon

but most of the time
I rely on the chat window
open between us all day.
I want to tell you everything.

This month you are near.
Walk with me in the fields.
I want to take your hand
and not let go.

 Rachel Barenblat

How can we approach a new year
when time stopped on Shemini Atzeret

-- "the pause of the 8th day," when
God beseeches, "linger with Me

a little longer," and we relish
the sukkah's peaceful fragility

for just one more day before
jubilant circle dances with Torah

in our arms like a toddler --
last year we woke on that awful day

to the news of Hamas attacks
and now it's Elul again, when

"The King is in the Field," but
this year God walks with us

in endless mourning, paying
shiva call after shiva call, and

there are still hostages, though
six fewer living ones than last week

not to mention whole neighborhoods
razed to rubble, resurgence of polio,

forty thousand Palestinian souls
dead, an endless abyss of grief?

I can't write an Elul poem this year
when my heart stopped beating properly

on Shemini Atzeret and may never
feel entirely unbroken again.

The pause of the 8th day. See Silence after the chant, 2014.

The King is in the Field. See Walking in the fields, 2017.

Previous years' Elul poems.

In last week’s parsha we found the verses we now recite as the Sh’ma and V’ahavta. In this week’s parsha, Ekev, we read the verses that make up the next paragraph of the Sh’ma, the one that begins v’haya im shamoa, “If you listen, really listen–”  (Deut. 11:13-21) Torah says: if we really listen and do these mitzvot, God will grant us rain in its season, and good harvests.

And if we don’t, then God will close up the heavens to us and the earth will not yield what we need to survive. The rabbis of the early Reform and Reconstructionist movements removed this paragraph from the prayerbook because it felt either too supernatural or too transactional. We all know that sometimes bad things happen to good people. A life of mitzvot is no guarantee. 

Today many of us have returned this paragraph to our prayers. This evening we encountered one creative translation, from R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l. There are others, like my poem “Listen Up, Y’all.” For me, the message of this passage is deeply apt in this era of climate crisis. It may evoke different things for us at different times; that’s part of what Torah and prayer do.

Much of Torah’s richness lies in her capacity to speak to us in ways beyond the literal. Torah often functions like poetry: it has things to teach us on levels that have nothing to do with argument. Of course, as a poet, I would say that! But our whole interpretive tradition is based on the understanding that Torah speaks on multiple levels. We take Torah seriously, not literally. 

Torah calls us to teach the mitzvot to our children, inscribe them in our mezuzot, and live by them so that our generations will “endure in the land that God swore to our ancestors to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth.” (Deut. 11:21) A few verses later Torah says our inheritance will stretch from the Euphrates to the sea – a truly enormous piece of land. 

Some Jews do take passages like this as evidence for who should hold the keys to which real estate. West Bank settlers, and the government officials who support them, may read Torah as an eternal land grant. But that’s not how I read it, any more than I read the verses about scarcity and harvest as a literal prediction of what happens if we do or don’t observe mitzvot. 

Deuteronomy is the newest part of Torah, written down around 700 BCE. We’ve had a spiritual connection with that beloved land for a really long time, and that moves me deeply. But that doesn’t mean we’re the only people who do! Clearly the Palestinian people do too. And whatever the future of that land looks like, it has to include both of the peoples who call it home. 

I pray for a ceasefire in Gaza. I pray for the hostages to be returned safely, speedily and soon. I pray for an end to this terrible, tragic chapter that has shattered all of our hearts. I pray for Israelis and Palestinians both to receive the gifts that Torah this week promises: good rains in their season; new grain and wine and oil; everything human beings need in order to thrive.

Torah tells us this week to “walk in God’s ways.” (Deut. 11:22) Rashi says this means: God acts with loving-kindness, and so should we. Torah also tells us to “cut away the covering over our hearts.” (Deut. 10:16) Torah urges us to remove our protective calluses, a scant six weeks before the new year – all the better to do the work of teshuvah to which this season calls us. 

I mentioned earlier that in the 20th century this second paragraph of the Sh’ma was cut from our liturgy in two branches of Judaism because it seemed to offer an if/then promise that wasn’t borne out by the world as we know it. This isn’t the first time “The Rabbis” have made this kind of call. In Jewish tradition we don’t pray for rain during Israel’s dry season. 

At Pesach we stop asking for rain and start asking for dew. On the fall festival of Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah we begin asking for rain… and that’s a festival and a transition that is going to be tough this year, because last fall that was Oct. 7. I suspect we will be calling forth rain with our tears this year, and probably for many years to come.

Why don’t we pray for rain during Israel’s summer? Because our tradition teaches us not to pray for the impossible. Our sages long ago posited that to pray for an impossibility, like rain in the dry season of a desert climate, would shatter our faith. If we ask for something impossible, and it doesn’t come (because it’s impossible), we might conclude that prayer is worthless. 

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.” Prayer isn’t a vending machine, where we put in a dollar and God gives us a treat. Prayer works on / in us.

And you know what we do pray for every day, in the rainy and the dry season alike? Peace. Our sages ensconced that prayer in our daily liturgy all year long, which means it must be possible. Maybe God can’t make rain out of dry skies, but with God’s help we can always seek peace. May our prayers together tonight balm our broken places and strengthen us in seeking peace. 

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

In this week’s Torah portion, Va’ethanan, Moses continues his long swansong, his final speech to the children of Israel at the edge of the Jordan river. In just a few weeks’ time (sooner than we think!) our reading of Torah will end with his death there. Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures) continues with the book of Joshua and stories of conquest and Israelite kingdom, but we don’t read that week by week every year. After Simchat Torah we’ll begin Torah over again. 

In the frame of Torah, Moshe is speaking to the children of Israel, now mostly the descendants of those whom he originally led out of Egypt. After the incident with the scouts, when ten of the twelve returned to say, “the inhabitants of the Land look like giants, we felt like grasshoppers, we can’t do this,” God decided that the generation that had known slavery would not enter the Land of Promise. Their spirits were so accustomed to constriction they weren’t capable of hope.

There’s a midrash that says that every year on the ninth day of the month of Av, the anniversary of the scouts bringing their negative report, the children of Israel would dig their own graves in the wilderness and climb into them. And the next morning some of them would be dead, and they’d be buried, and the rest of the people would climb out and go on living… until one year no one from that early generation was left to die. Everyone who had known slavery was gone.

Anyway, those who remain: that’s who Moses is speaking to. He tells them the stories of everything that happened on their parents’ wilderness journey, including the revelation of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-19) – or maybe the whole Torah, or maybe all Jewish wisdom that ever was or will be – at Sinai. And then he says: okay, this is the instruction, the thing you’re supposed to really follow and obey: and he offers the Sh’ma and V’ahavta. (Deut. 6:4-9)

In the frame of Torah, he’s talking to the children and maybe grandchildren of those who knew slavery. In our own frame, these verses are speaking directly to us. Here we are, “encamped” along a boundary between what was and what will be. Between the old year that is soon to end, and the new year we haven’t yet begun. Tisha b’Av began our seven-week journey toward Rosh Hashanah. Whether we feel ready for this or not, we’re on the runway to the Days of Awe.

In a sense, Moses – or Torah – or God – is speaking these words directly to us. Listen, O Israel. That’s us: we are the children of Israel, the people Israel, that name we inherit from our ancestor Jacob who wrestled with an angel and earned the new name One-Who-Wrestles-With-God. Torah says, I’m talking to YOU. And the instruction? To love God* with all our hearts, all our souls, all our might. To teach this to our generations. To bind it to our hands and hearts.

I said God* with an asterisk after it. By now this refrain is probably familiar to many of you: if the G-word doesn’t work for you, find one that does. We are commanded to love Justice. To love Mercy. To love Truth and Meaning and Hope. Torah says: find something that matters to you and cleave to it. And let your attachment to God* or Justice or Mercy or Truth guide your actions: what you do, what you build, what you work toward, how you are in the world.

This mitzvah is self-sustaining: it says, “teach me to your generations.” It says, “write this on the doorposts of your house.” Imagine a world where every doorframe was adorned with big banners that read, “Do the right thing.” Or “Remember what really matters.” Or “Feed the hungry, care for the vulnerable, be ethical in every way.” Would we really remember, if those words were everywhere? Or would we learn to look past them and not really see? 

I think it’s probably human nature to look past our reminders. How often do we stop at a door where there’s a mezuzah and touch it and kiss our fingers, reaffirming our commitment to the ethical covenant of mitzvot that is our inheritance? I’ll admit: I forget most of the time. And I forget mitzvot. And I forget the work of teshuvah. Which is why when we hit Tisha b’Av and start this seven-week runway to the high holidays, I start to feel a deep sense of urgency.

Uh boy: there’s a lot of inner work we maybe didn’t do this year. There are places where we missed the mark and ignored it, or let ourselves believe that a half-hearted something was good enough, or let ourselves off the hook. We did not always act like a community guided by mitzvot. And the time for heshbon ha-nefesh, “an accounting of the soul,” is coming due. Torah this week comes to tell us: return to basic principles. Return to Sh’ma and V’ahavta. Start there.

What do we need to hear, this year, as we reach this point in our journey?

To what do we need to attune, both individually and communally as the people Israel?

Whose are the voices we’ve been ignoring, and what would it take for us to open to them now?

And what do we need to love, this year, as we reach this point in our journey?

What face of God or Justice or Mercy do we need to love and uplift with all our hearts? 

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.)

Walls burned or broken
Peacemakers kidnapped and slaughtered
Children terrorized

Buildings bombed to rubble
Hospitals destroyed
Cisterns emptied

Everywhere pictures of the hostages
Everywhere reminders of the martyrs
Everywhere parents burying children

Our grief and fury could wash away creation.
Will anyone survive, clinging to this battered ark?
Is there an olive tree left anywhere?

R. Rachel Barenblat

I wrote this as part of the Liturgical Arts Working Group at Bayit, and recently shared it there as part of our Tisha b'Av collection this year. Our offering of contemporary kinnot / laments for Tisha b'Av is available both as a downloadable PDF and as google slides suitable for screenshare, and it's called How?! I hope something in the collection speaks to you.

Last night as I was driving my teenager to a rehearsal, we listened to some of an audiobook of Markus Zusak's The Book Thief, his summer reading assignment. The writing is stunning. Every time I heard the narrator offer a "Heil Hitler!" -- entirely reasonable for a book set in Germany during the Third Reich -- I had to make a conscious effort not to shudder. I bit back several comments that wanted to spill out. I don't want to transmit to him my anxiety about Hitlerian echoes in our present day. 

This morning I am in a meeting about coming together to mourn and remember October 7. I have thoughts about the ritual components of such a gathering, but first we have to talk about safety. The national threat landscape. Risk assessment. Would we be safe holding a commemoration outdoors? (Would we be safe holding a commemoration in a synagogue?) Early October is one of the most beautiful times of year here, but we all know we can't protect against a gunman if we're outdoors.

And if we were outdoors, would protestors disrupt our mourning with signs and accusations of genocide as we sing El Maleh for the dead and pray for the return of the remaining hostages? (People shouted Heil Hitler at an Israel-Paraguay soccer match at the Olympics.) Today, on day 300 of the hostages' captivity, Hamas has broken off negotiations with Israel again. Also today: is the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania too pro-Israel to be a VP pick? Trump insulting Jews again is now old news.

This week I keep writing and re-writing a line in what might become my Rosh Hashanah sermon, about how "braced-against" is not a healthy spiritual posture. (It's really not.) Do I have a stomachache from drinking too much coffee, or from the way my insides are tied in knots about the experience of being a Jew in the world today? I know many of you are in this emotional-spiritual place, too. I still wear a kippah in public, but now I wonder who is silently blaming me for Gaza when they see me in it. 

And here's the poem in plaintext for those who prefer it that way:

Chord

Grief hums constantly
like cicadas.
It's silt clogging
the storm drains.
It's a bad penny
landing same side up.

Grief says
the poem ends here.

And still
there are cornflowers
amidst the froth
of Queen Anne's Lace,
the moon peeking
through cotton candy clouds,
your voice in my ear.

Give the penny away.
Dredge the streambed clear.
Take up your instrument
and turn the doleful hum
into a chord.