Silverware, soaking.

It's the week before Rosh Hashanah. I have a million things to do, there's never been a High Holiday season quite like this pandemic one, and I'm... polishing silverware. Somewhere in the afterlife my mother is cheering, "Attagirl!" 

A few days ago I was looking for a photograph of apples and honey to put on my synagogues's Facebook page. I found one. And I also found photos from seven years ago, when mom was well enough to travel and my parents were here for the holidays.

There are photos of my mom (of blessed memory) cooking in the kitchen of my old house. She managed somehow to look elegant even in a borrowed apron wielding a knife over a head of cabbage! And there is a photo of my dad polishing the silver.

Because my mother was not pleased with the amount of tarnish on my silver, so she asked Dad to polish it while she cooked. I remember being half-amused and half-embarrassed. I remember thinking: well, I guess it gives him something to do.

Mom is gone now. This will be my second High Holiday season without her in this world. I'm endlessly thankful that through the alchemy of mourning, my once-sharp grief has transmuted into gratitude and fond remembrance, at least most of the time.

She'll still be at my table. I have her monogrammed white napkins, which I used at our little family seder, and which I will use again on Friday night. I have her silver napkin rings, each one different from the others. And I have her wedding silver.

It's my everyday silverware now. When I moved out, I took Mom's silver with me, and I decided to use it for everyday. I didn't want to spend money on another set of flatware, and besides, what's the point of having beautiful things if not to use them?

But my silverware is once again tarnished. Mom would not be pleased. So in between testing my high holiday slide decks on different devices, I'm lining my roasting pan with tinfoil and filling it with silver and boiling water and baking soda.

And then I'm rinsing away the slippery baking soda-water and patting the pieces dry with torn pieces from a soft old t-shirt. Rubbing their tarnish away and returning them to their places in the silverware drawer, ready once again to shine. 

It feels like a metaphor for the work of the season. (Early-autumn cleaning always does.) Finding our tarnished places and cleaning away the grime left by the old year's misdeeds so that our souls can be ready once again to shine. 

Before Tisha b'Av, I gathered a group of liturgists to collaborate on a project that became Megillat Covid, Lamentations for this time of covid-19.

In recent weeks we've gathered again -- in slightly different configuration -- to build something new for this pandemic season: a set of prayer-poems for Sukkot and Simchat Torah, which we've titled Ushpizin. That's the Aramaic word for guests, usually used to refer to the practice of inviting ancestral / supernal guests like Abraham and Sarah into our Sukkah... though this year, what does it mean to invite Biblical guests when many of us don't feel safe inviting in-person guests? That's the question that gave rise to the project.

The prayers / poems that we wrote arose out of that question and more. What does it mean to find safety in a sketch of a dwelling in this pandemic year? With what, or whom, are we "sitting" when we sit in our sukkot this year? What about those of us who can't build this year at all? And what can our Simchat Torah be if we are sheltering-in-place, or if our shul buildings are closed, or if we are not gathering in person with others? 

For Megillat Covid, we each wrote a piece and then I collected them. This time our creative process was different. Four of us collectively wrote nine pieces, and then we met to workshop them and revise them together, in hopes of creating not just nine individual prayers but a whole that would be more than the sum of its parts. And then we wrote the tenth prayer-poem together as a collaboration... and Steve Silbert offered a couple of sketchnotes, too.

You can click through to Builders Blog to read excerpts from our ten poems and to download the whole collection as a PDF, and I hope you will -- I'm really proud of this collection, and humbled and honored to have convened the group that brought it to life.

Every year I write an extra high holiday sermon. Not on purpose! It just happens. Every year, it seems, I write my three sermons... and then realize that one of them is predictable, or trite, or doesn't say anything new, or doesn't speak to the unique needs of this moment. I could publish a book of the sermons I never gave. (I won't. But I'm amused that I could.)

In that sense, preparing for the Days of Awe this year has been just like every other year. I make an outline for every service, trying to balance Hebrew with English, song with spoken-word, familiar with new. I thrill to cherished ancient melodies. I practice singing, and I jot musical motifs on Post-it notes so I don't lose track of which melodic mode we're in. Just like always.

And who am I kidding: preparing for the holidays this year has been unlike any other, ever. I translated my machzor into a slide deck, adding images and artwork and embedded video, adding new readings and prayers for this pandemic moment. I made it much longer! and then I cut, ruthlessly, because services need to be a manageable length for Zoom, and they need to flow. 

I'm trying to help my kid get ready for school. He's growing like mint, like a sunflower. There is a stack of new notebooks and pencils on his desk. There's also a school-issued Chromebook. The year will begin with two weeks of remote learning before we enter a "hybrid model" phase. The juxtaposition of normal and unprecedented is itself becoming our new normal.

My kitchen counter is heaped with beautiful lush heirloom tomatoes from the CSA where I've been a member since 1995. I eat them sliced, on toast with cream cheese; cubed, with peaches, topped with burratini and a splash of balsamic vinegar; plain, like impossibly juicy apples. Any minute now their season will end, and I will miss this late-summer abundance fiercely.

There's a gentle melancholy to this season for me, every year. The changing light; the first branches turning red and gold; the knowledge that the season will turn and there's nothing I can do to stop it... I sit on my mirpesset, arms and legs bared to the warm breeze, listening to late-summer cricketsong. I know their song isn't forever. That, at least, really is just like always.

Last week my son and I were watching the fifth Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix. There's a moment where two teenagers are kissing on a bench, and with a flick of her wand, Dolores Umbridge separates them by several feet.

We've seen this film several times before. But this time, six months in to the pandemic, my son joked, "Look, Mom, social distancing!" And we both laughed.

The laughter feels complicated for me as a parent. I know he's layering this pandemic experience over what he sees in movies or on tv because it helps him process needing to stay apart. It breaks my heart that he has to do that. And I'm also glad that he can find a way to make sense of what's happening, and even to joke about it, as we stay apart from loved ones in order to keep each other safe.

In this week's Torah portion, Ki Tavo, Moses says: I want these six tribes to stand on this mountain for a blessing, and those six tribes to stand on that mountain for a curse. Reading that verse this year, my mind made the move my son keeps making: "look, it's social distancing!" Okay, obviously not. But then I thought: actually, this matter of blessing and curse does feel relevant.

Torah teaches, "Cursed be he who moves his fellow countryman’s landmark." Literally, moving someone's landmark means causing them to be lost. Spiritually, this verse resonates for me as a teaching about gaslighting. One who claims that the pandemic is hype, denying the reality of more than six million cases in the United States alone, is denying reality's landmarks.

Torah teaches, "Cursed be he who misdirects a blind person on his way." In a literal sense, this teaching seems obvious. Spiritually, I think of the claims about quack remedies for covid-19, from hydroxychloroquine to drinking bleach. Remember when emergency rooms started reporting an uptick in people who poisoned themselves by blindly following that bad advice?

Torah teaches, "Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow." In Torah's paradigm, this is a way of saying "the powerless." Torah here condemns the one who disenfranchises or harms those who are vulnerable. I don't think that one requires any translation. Literally and spiritually, it's a clear instruction for this pandemic moment. 

And then Torah says: the curses aren't our only option. If we observe the mitzvot and act in accordance with God's commandments, we will experience the opposite outcome. We'll be blessed in our homes and in our fields, our flocks and our herds, in city and country, in our comings and in our goings... if only we observe the mitzvot and do not deviate from them.

In years past I've struggled with the blessings and curses articulated in Torah. The curses seem so punitive. I don't believe in a God Who sits on high and throws punishments at us like lightning bolts from Mount Olympus! Many of you have told me over the years that that's not your theology either, and that encountering it each year in Deuteronomy is challenging. For me, too.

But this year I'm reading these verses through the lens of global pandemic. This year I don't see these as teachings about divine punishment at all. I'm reading them as teachings about our power to shape the world in which we live. I think Torah is reminding us that we bring about the blessings or the curses by dint of our choices. (And suddenly it feels like Yom Kippur.)

If we gaslight each other, if we misdirect each other, if we subvert each others' rights -- those actions themselves are curses, and they carry their own consequences with them. They harm the fabric of community. They damage trust. And in this pandemic moment, they contribute to the spread of the virus that continues to ravage our interconnected human family across the globe.

And if we do what's right -- if we persist in the discomfort of our masks and strict social distancing in order to protect each other and especially to protect the vulnerable -- those actions themselves are blessings, and they carry their own consequences with them, too. When we choose to act in those ways, we bless each other with our mutual concern and care.

May we continue to bless each other with our mutual concern and care, through this pandemic and beyond.

This is the d'varling I offered at Shabbat morning services this morning (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

Most years in Elul we say
"the King is in the Field" --

God walks with us in the tall grass
to hear our yearnings.

This year, Shechinah
shelters-in-place with us.

With her, we don't need to mask
our fears or our despair.

When we stay up too late
reading the news again

or binge-watch The Good Place
desperate for redemption

she does too. As we practice
social distancing, we're not alone:

she summons angels to encourage
the scallions we re-grow

just as they cheer on the maples
releasing their helicopter seeds,

compressed packages of hope
for the eventual coming of spring.

“The King is in the Field” - R’ Shneur Zalman of Liadi wrote that during the month leading up to the Days of Awe, “The King is in the Field.” God, whom he imagined as a transcendent King distant from us, is close to us during this special month -- walking with us to hear our inmost prayers, like a beloved friend offering a listening ear.

“Shechinah / shelters-in-place” - Shechinah is the Jewish mystics’ name for the immanent, indwelling Presence of God. The name is related to the Hebrew word for neighborhood; this is God dwelling with and within us. In this pandemic year, sheltering-in-place requires no explanation...

“Angels to encourage” - Midrash holds that there is an angel assigned to every blade of grass, constantly and lovingly encouraging the grass to grow. Many of us started regrowing scallions during the pandemic. May we be blessed with encouragement for our own growth during this holiday season.

(This is the Elul / New Year's poem that I wrote to send to family and friends this year. You can read the last seventeen years' worth of such poems here.)

Five and a half months in, we're adjusting in our own ways to moving through the world (or sequestering from the world) with the constant reality of global pandemic. The masks, and the tape arrows on the grocery store floor, have become normal. The place where I live and serve has low infection rates right now, for which I am thankful. And we all know it just takes one traveler from a viral hotspot... This is where a lot of my pastoral conversations begin. 

I've written here over the years about my experience as a multiple stroke survivor. I chronicled some of the spiritual challenges of coming to terms with my mortality in my early thirties. Now in my mid-forties, I'm doing that work again. But there's something different about it now. Now we're all coming to terms with our mortality. (Or we're not. But either way, it's the elephant in the room. Or the Lion in the school classroom, as a recent essay quipped.)

One big thing that makes covid-19 different from my experience of having strokes is the contagion factor. We've all seen how the numbers spread: a few virus cases become dozens become hundreds become thousands. And because it is possible to be asymptomatic and still spread the virus to others, the contagion factor feels different. It's not just a matter of avoiding people who seem sick. That adds an existential uncertainty to the spiritual mix.

When I was hospitalized for my second stroke, my spiritual director and I started doing intensive work on coming to terms with my mortality. This year I'm learning that it's one thing to come to terms with my own eventual death. It's another thing to come to terms with the possibility that I might unwittingly cause other deaths. Any of us might. And the more we learn about "long-haul covid," the more we realize that some who 'recover' ... may not really recover. 

And that's part of what's so hard. It seems likely that pre-existing conditions (like being a stroke survivor, or asthma, or hypertension) may exacerbate the likelihood that covid will be serious. In recent months we've learned that contagion via surfaces (e.g. touching a UPS delivery before wiping it down with Lysol wipes) may be less dangerous than we thought, but aerosol transmission is more dangerous than we thought. But we're still learning. 

Recently I went to a restaurant and ate a meal outdoors. We wore masks when we weren't eating. Picnic tables were set far apart. I still felt my heart rate spike when we got there. Many of those to whom I tend are having that experience, too. I keep teaching grounding techniques I learned from friends with PTSD: grab a pebble and feel it, touch a rosemary sprig and breathe it. Be here and now, not in fear from before or fear of what might come.

Everyone has a different tolerance for risk. I know some people who are doing things more or less "like before." I know others who have yet to let their children see anyone else in person, even outdoors and masked. No one knows what path will actually keep us safe. And no one knows whether our own choices will inadvertently spread the virus to others who are more vulnerable than we ourselves might be. For me that's the hardest part.

I want to know that I won't be a vector. But there's no way to know that. (Or to know that I won't myself fall ill. Did I mention that most "long-haulers" are women my age?) So we live with the not-knowing. We live with the not-feeling-safe. Emotionally, spiritually, that low background buzz of un-safety takes its toll. Five months into the pandemic, that's the spiritual work at hand: being here and now, in the un-safety but not consumed by it.

I don't know how to end this post. I can't wrap it up and tie a neat bow on it. Living in the not-knowing: in some way that's all we've ever been able to do. But the not-knowing feels heightened, this year. It's Elul: the month that leads us to the Days of Awe. Time to look long and hard at our actions and our choices. Our liturgy's litany of "Who will live and who will die" takes on a heart-clenching resonance in this pandemic year. 

I made it three verses into this week's Torah portion, Eikev, before being brought up short:

"And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully... God will ward off from you all sickness..." (Deut. 7:12, 15)

My first thought was: wow, that verse has not aged well in this coronavirus moment. As we watch illness ravage the nation like a wildfire, the promise of health and safety feels off-key. Or at least, the connection between doing mitzvot and being healthy feels off-key, because it suggests that someone who falls ill is somehow wicked, or is not following Torah's instructions for spiritual and ethical living.

And then I thought: there's another way to read these verses.

This isn't about whether or not a single individual does what's right. We all know that it's possible to lead a spiritual and ethical life, rich with mitzvot, and still fall ill. And we all know that it's possible to do all the right things in this pandemic -- washing our hands, wearing our masks, socially-distancing and staying home -- and yet still be at risk of falling ill if someone carrying the virus coughs on us.

But what if Torah is trying this week to teach us that what matters is for the collective to do what's right? For the community to pull together and together commit to following the best practices that science and authentic spiritual life can offer us... not (only) for our own sakes but also for the sake of others who may be older, or medically vulnerable, or living with preexisting conditions that put us at greater risk?

"When we obey these mitzvot and observe them carefully," that's how God protects us from sickness, acting through us in the ways we care for each other. It's not a guarantee that no one will get sick -- nothing can offer that guarantee -- but it's what's in our hands to do. As we sometimes sing on Friday nights, "Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices." Ours are God's hands, and this moment calls us to turn our hands toward keeping each other safe. 

"And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully..." The classical tradition links this back to Exodus 15, where God similarly tells us that if we follow the mitzvot and do all the right things, then God won't plague us with the unnatural illnesses that the tradition sees as divine punishment. "Ki ani YHVH rofecha," says Torah (Ex. 15:26) -- "For I am YHVH your Healer."

One way to understand that is as a lesson about the interconnectedness of all things, and how our choices have collective impact. If we don't take care of the planet's fragile environment, then the conditions will be right for newer and more terrible illnesses to arise and spread. But if we do what's right by our planet, then we protect ourselves and each other from that terrible outcome.

This too feels to me like a teaching about our responsibility to each other and to the whole of which we are a part. When we act in ways that take care of our planet, when we act in ways that take care of each other and protect each others' health, we are embodying the aspect of God that we call Healer.

It's poignant to read these verses on the runway to the Days of Awe. Usually at this season we're preparing for our community's biggest in-person gatherings of the year. This year's Days of Awe will be different. Our challenge this year is to make our homes into sacred space, and to find community connections in each others' presence over Zoom, as we protect each other by staying physically apart. 

I know that for some of us, the prospect of Zoom-based High Holidays feels like a loss. Maybe we can't imagine how it will work. Or we're tired of Zoom and wish life could go back to normal. Or we're afraid it won't feel meaningful and real the way we want it to. Those feelings of loss are real, and I honor them. (I even share them.) And... I believe that these are the mitzvot the current moment asks of us.

This moment asks us to practice the mitzvah of masking, the mitzvah of social distancing, the mitzvah of gathering over Zoom.  So that we can keep covid-19 out of our beloved community, and in so doing, can hasten the day when we will all be able to gather safely in person again, here and everywhere.

This is my d'varling from Shabbat morning Zoom services at my shul (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

I spent my Shabbat Nachamu making dilly beans. 

Dilly beans are pickled green beans. And they are not a food of my childhood. I didn't grow up eating home-canned vegetables. My parents were not people who gardened -- I suspect they were grateful not to need to preserve their own food. But my dad has always loved pickles. I remember joining him in devouring pickled green tomatoes from the big Batampte jar, cut into quarters on plain white plates. And with him I enjoyed sour dill pickles, and half sour dill pickles, as one might find at a New York City Jewish deli. And spicy pickled okra as an hors d'oeuvre (I think it's a Texas thing).

When I became a member at Caretaker Farm in 1995, I started learning how to put away food for winter.  During the years of my marriage, we put up jars of sugarfree strawberry jam; we pickled green beans and brussels sprouts. When we had a kid, our capacity to do those things diminished, and we stopped canning and preserving for a while. And when I moved out of my old house and my married life, I didn't take the canning kettle or rack for jars. My condo kitchen is tiny, and I couldn't imagine pickling here. Besides, I hadn't made time to preserve food since my kid was born.

Fast-forward to this terrible pandemic year. In the early spring when we were on lockdown, there were unprecedented grocery shortages. I know it's a sign of my privilege that I had never before lived in a world in which I might go to the store and not be certain what I would find. Would they have pasta for my son this week? What vegetables would there be? How about proteins -- chicken thighs, or fish, or even dried beans? All of those ran short in the spring. (Not to mention bread flour and yeast, both necessities for the soft challah I make every Friday to bless and eat at Shabbat.)

It put me in mind of my trip to Cuba last fall.  I remember marveling at the food we ate in Cuba (which was excellent), knowing that food shortages afflicted the island even then. (My heart breaks knowing what kinds of shortages my Cuban Jewish cousins are experiencing now.) I couldn't have imagined then that a global pandemic would weaken the just-in-time global supply lines on which American grocery store abundance depends. These days the grocery stores mostly have most things most of the time, though some items are still hard to find. But when fall comes, who knows...

Here we are in high summer -- my favorite season of the year, all lush and green. And I can't help bracing for the winter, knowing the likelihood that the pandemic will surge again when flu season arrives and when we're all confined to poorly-ventilated indoor spaces. I'm always a bit fearful of the oncoming winter. Seasonal Affective Disorder hits me every year, even when I do all the right things. This year I am extra-afraid, because I imagine that winter will mean not only long dark nights and bitter cold but also lockdown again, and shortages again, and rising death rates again, and loneliness. 

This morning I went to Caretaker with my son to get this week's vegetables. As I bent to the green bean rows and lifted each plant to scan for beans, I breathed the scent of clean dirt and greenery through my soft fabric mask. Remembering the indigenous wisdom in Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass (which I've read several times) I pressed my palms to the earth and murmured a thank-you to the soil, the plants, the careful loving farmers, and the whole web of life that makes it possible for me to pluck these vibrant, beautiful beans from their runners and bring them home.

Many Jews wouldn't pick on Shabbat, because on this day we avoid the 39 melachot, the labors involved in the building of the Mishkan, God's dwelling place so long ago. I follow a teaching from Reb Zalman z"l that holds that if gardening is one's day job, then one shouldn't do it on Shabbat. But if gardening feeds one's soul, then perhaps it is precisely the thing to do on this holiest of days. (I've written about this teaching before.) I know no holier ground than Caretaker Farm. It is a place of learning, and sustenance, and community. I am always grateful that it is a place I get to call home.

In the end I picked five perfect pint jars full, with their ends saved for some recipe this week, maybe the Valencian paella I like to make with chicken thighs and white beans and green beans and smoked paprika (thanks, Milk Street). I rigged an approximation of a canning setup, rings at the bottom of my soup pot to hold the jars above the bottom. I peeled garlic, and tore dill, and measured mustard seeds and red pepper flakes. I packed the jars with beans and seasonings and hot brine and I simmered them for five minutes, mopping up hot water when it splashed all over the stove.

Then I listened for the tiny satisfying pop! of each lid sealing as the jars cool down. (So far four out of the five jars have sealed. I'm waiting for the fifth, which still makes a clicking sound when I press on the lid. If it doesn't seal, I'll declare that jar refrigerator pickles instead.) It's not a big harvest. I couldn't have managed a big harvest in my little kitchen anyway. But it's five jars of vibrant summer green. A little bit of bounty, saved against the winter that is coming. A little bit of beauty, saved against the winter that is coming. That's balm for my worried heart, and solace for my grateful soul.

And that brings me back to Shabbat Nachamu. That's the name given to this Shabbat, the first Shabbat after Tisha b'Av. It's the first of seven Shabbatot of Consolation as we count the 49 days between Tisha b'Av and Rosh Hashanah. It's named after the first word of the haftarah read on this day: "Comfort!" Bring comfort, give comfort, offer comfort -- that's God's command. There are griefs that cannot be comforted. But in this moment, I take comfort in the bounty of this place. And I take comfort in knowing that whatever this winter may hold, I will be ready as I can be.

One of the things we do at Bayit is share curated resources and spiritual tools for "building Jewish." Our latest is Megillat Covid -- a collection of five offerings for Tisha b'Av, written in and for this time of pandemic.

Megillat Covid comprises five readings / prayers / variations on Eicha (Lamentations). One was written by me, one by Rabbi Sonja K. Pilz who is the editor of the CCAR Press, one by liturgist and poet devon spier, one by liturgist and poet Trisha Arlin, and one by my fellow Bayit co-founder Rabbi Evan Krame. Each looks at Lamentations and at the pandemic through its own unique lens, and I am honestly humbled and moved to be able to curate such a meaningful resource in this moment. 

Here's an excerpt from each of our five pieces; you can click through to Builders Blog to read each of our poems in full.

*

Crying Out by R’ Rachel Barenblat draws on images from the pandemic and asks the question: who will we be when the pandemic is gone? Here is a brief excerpt (you can read the whole piece in the PDF file at Builders Blog):

Lonely sits the city once great with people —
her subways now empty, her classrooms closed.
Refrigerator trucks await the bodies of the dead
wrapped in sheets of plastic and stacked like logs.
Mourners keep a painful distance, unable to embrace…

Along the Lines of Lamentations by R’ Sonja K. Pilz is similar to a cento (a poem that repurposes lines from another poem), as it consists primarily of quotations from Eicha, re-contextualized by their juxtaposition and by this pandemic season. Here is a brief excerpt (the whole appears in the PDF at Builders Blog):

We were laid waste (2:5).
We were stripped liked a garden;
Ended have Shabbat and festivals (2:6).
Our gates have sunk into the ground (2:9).
Elders sit silently;
Women bow their heads to the ground (2:10).
My eyes are spent;
My being melts away (2:11)….

Jeremiahs without a jeremiad by devon spier offers fragmented lines evoking our fragmented hearts in this time of pandemic. About her contribution, devon writes:

To be used to cultivate an embodied COVID megillah reading that honours the fall of Jerusalem and the ebb and flow of our bodies in the months of the Coronavirus and related social distancing. 

To honour that for those of us with pre-existing conditions (our own frail, flimsy, fabulous humanness, our addictions, chronic health issues, years of unfelt griefs suddenly flung to the surface…each of these), we can wrap our whole selves in the scroll of this weeping day. And we can arrive, just as we are.

I would frame this as a kavannah as lines of ketuvim (lines of poetical post-exilic writings) the speaker can read before beginning chanting to set an intention. Or, the lines of this work could also be read throughout the chanting, as the verses I cite appear throughout the first chapter of Eicha. 

‘V’ha-ikar…” and the essence: Pause for the moments you feel the most human. Feel. And insert the words of this piece exactly where you are. From the lines of this intention and a gentle remembrance on this solemn day where we still face ourselves, our ancestors, our communities and each other, in and beyond, always, with hope: “Jerusalem is me is you.”

Here is a brief excerpt (the whole appears in the PDF at Builders Blog):

lamentations
for those with pages
of unwritten loss
lamenting
Jerusalem
and everything else
they never had
but Are
somehow
we are…

Alas by Trisha Arlin evokes the full journey of Eicha, from weeping for the city in distress to remembrance and the promise of change. Here is a brief excerpt (the whole appears in the PDF at Builders Blog):

…Eating, Sleeping, Walking
Alone
TV, Facebook, Prayer
Alone
Coughing, Crying, Dying
Alone

Alas, loneliness!
I am so frightened.
I weep and who will hear me?…

Remember by Rabbi Evan Krame evokes the end of Lamentations, beseeching God to remember us and to let us return. Here is a brief excerpt (the whole appears in the PDF below):

God! Remember what we had? Consider and see our situation!
Our future went to strangers, our houses no refuge.
We are like orphans, without a leader, our mothers worry like widows…

^{Read the whole thing here: Megillat Covid at Builders Blog.}

"These are the words that Moshe addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan..." (Deuteronomy 1:1)

The book of Deuteronomy is in large part a retelling of everything that happened during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It's Moshe's farewell speech. Before they cross the river into the Land of Promise, he reminds them where they've been and what they've done.

And notably, in Moshe's retelling, everything becomes the Israelites' fault. Even God's decision that Moshe will not enter the Land of Promise. Remember that the first time we read that story, God said that because Moshe struck the rock instead of speaking to it gently, he would not enter the Land. God didn't say anything about blaming it on the children of Israel -- but that's how Moshe retells it.

Now, we could have a whole conversation about what the striking-the-rock thing means, and whether it's fair, and how we understand it. But what really jumps out at me this year is how, in the retelling, Moshe blames his situation on the Israelites for being quarrelsome and for having insufficient faith in God. He places all the blame on someone else.

This Shabbat -- the one right before Tisha b'Av, our communal day of mourning -- is called Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat of Vision. It invites us to turn our vision inward. To notice how we retell the stories of our lives, and where we elide responsibility. It's a very human thing to do. It's normal. Even Moshe does it, in this week's parsha. And... it's a pattern we need to break.

Where do we fall into the trap of blaming others? Do we look at our body politic and blame those who voted for the "other side," or those who didn't vote at all? Or closer to home: where our family systems might have some dysfunction, do we blame it on the other members of the family without looking at how our own actions contribute to recurring patterns? 

That's normal. It's human. And I believe that authentic spiritual life asks us to do better. It asks us to take responsibility.

Rabbi Alan Lew z"l teaches that the journey of teshuvah -- of repentance and return -- begins with the low point of Tisha b'Av. Then the updraft of this spiritual work carries us through the Days of Awe and into who we'll be in the year to come. He teaches that every year the seasonal calendar calls us to face our unconscious patterns and the recurring issue in our lives.

On Tisha b'Av we remember the fall of the Temples. Rabbi Lew points out that in a historical sense, the Temples fell because of massive military might -- first Babylon, then Rome. But our spiritual tradition ignores that.

Our spiritual tradition teaches that the first Temple fell because of idolatry, sexual immorality (which I understand as unethical boundary-crossing), and bloodshed, and the second Temple fell because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. These teachings ask us to take responsibility for our part in what happens to us. It asks us to take responsibility for what happens to our community.

I have a lot of empathy for Moses. He's been leading the children of Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and they've often been ungrateful and quarrelsome and afraid. I have empathy... and I wonder what would have happened if he'd retold their story in a way that recognized the community's struggles and took responsibility for his part in their imperfect situation. If instead of saying, "I don't take responsibility at all," he'd emphasized that we're all responsible for how our community functions, how might Torah's story have been different?

And what happens if we tell our story that way? If we tell the story of our community -- our shul, our county, our nation, our world -- with the assumption that we all take responsibility? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z"l taught that "one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible."

May this Shabbat Hazon move us to see our responsibility for each other, and with that vision, to build a better world.

This is the d'varling I offered at Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat services this Friday night. (Cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

Tisha b'Av, Jewish tradition's communal day of mourning, is coming soon.

It usually feels disjunctive to take Tisha b'Av's deep dive into grief and exile in the midst of the summer, the season I love most in the year. Many years it takes some intention and some spiritual work to connect with loss and destruction at this time of year. But this year is different. This whole pandemic year feels to me like Tisha b'Av.

On Tisha b'Av we mourn brokenness on a spiritual level: tradition says this is the date when Moses shattered the first set of tablets of covenant, enraged by the people's worship of the golden calf. We mourn brokenness on a historical level: on this date the first Temple was destroyed by Babylon, and the second Temple was destroyed by Rome, and the Crusades began, and the expulsion from the Warsaw Ghetto, and other tragedies besides. And we mourn brokenness in our own day: including, this year, the profound suffering caused by coronavirus... refracted through human prejudices that have enabled over 145,000 deaths in our nation alone, most of them people of color, and 618,000 deaths around the world.

That's so far, as of this writing. Those numbers will continue to grow.

I wrote to my synagogue community this year that "the fall of the Temples may feel like ancient history -- but with our beloved building closed, we may feel a new resonance with our ancestors who could no longer gather together in prayer. The hatreds that led to our many historical traumas may feel like ancient history -- but prejudice, including antisemitism and racism, still festers. There is so much to mourn. And tradition regards this day of mourning as the springboard into the spiritual uplift of the journey through the Days of Awe. We have to feel what's broken in order to rise up from it..."

This year we'll observe Tisha b'Av at my shul in two ways. On the eve of Tisha b'Av we'll gather -- socially-distanced and masked -- at the labyrinth outside of the closed synagogue building. In silent meditation we'll walk the labyrinth, slowly, allowing ourselves to feel the grief that comes with our building being closed and our community being scattered to our separate homes for safety's sake. Because the pandemic renders singing in person unsafe, we'll hear a recording of Eicha (Lamentations) as we walk in silence. The psalmist asked how he could sing God's song in a strange land, but in this pandemic moment we can't sing together at all. It's another loss in a year of so many losses, and it's one that hits me personally in a painful way.

And late in the day on Tisha b'Av, we'll gather over Zoom for a conversation about racial justice. Tradition says that moshiach -- the messiah, or the transformative energy of hope -- will enter the world on the afternoon of Tisha b'Av. On the year's darkest day, the seeds of hope for change begin to sprout. We'll connect with that energy by coming together on Zoom to discuss a pair of NPR interviews from On Being with Krista Tippett (one with Resmaa Menakem, one with Resmaa Menakem and Robin DiAngelo) that folks can listen to in advance. And we'll talk about the work of teshuvah (repentance / repair) and the spiritual work that dismantling racism calls us to do. 

I'm finding it difficult to face Tisha b'Av this year, in part because every time I read the newspaper feels like Tisha b'Av. There's mourning and grief and loss everywhere I look. Hospitals over-filled. Not enough respirators or PPE. The covid-19 pandemic spreading like wildfire. The murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery and so many more. Increased awareness (among white people like me) of racism and how horrific and insidious it is. The realities that the pandemic disproportionately kills people of color and that police disproportionately kill people of color and that our world is set up to disproportionately kill people of color and that in my own unconscious racism I have been content to ignore those things.

What I take from the teaching that moshiach is born late in the day on Tisha b'Av is that in our time of greatest grief we can (we must) find seeds of transformation. We have to find the seeds of something better in this awful year, and we need to water them and uplift them and bring them to fruition. In that second On Being episode I linked above, Krista Tippett cites John Lewis z"l (may his memory be a blessing) and his idea that we need to work with what is, even as we hold in our hearts the dream of the "as-if," the world repaired, the world we want to be working toward. We have to work with what is, to be with what is, to learn about what is, and be working with toward a world repaired. A world redeemed. A world no longer broken as it is now.

It's almost unimaginable. But we have to imagine it. We have to work toward it. And the first step is resisting the impulse to turn away, resisting the impulse toward spiritual bypassing, and letting ourselves feel everything that hurts. It's Av: our time to mourn...and then our time to begin to rebuild.

Image: Destruction of the Temple by Francisco Hayez, overlaid with a mass covid-19 gravesite.

"...If a man makes a vow to God or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips..." (Numbers 30:3)

It's like clockwork: every year we reach these verses at the start of Matot-Masei precisely as my high holiday preparations kick into high gear. It's July. It's summer. I want to be in the moment, not nine weeks from now. Because you know what's exactly nine weeks from now? Rosh Hashanah.

And every year I spend all winter craving summer's long light and vibrant blooms and exquisite produce and gentle warmth. I don't want to rush ahead to the holidays or to fall or to school. And wow, that feels especially true during this pandemic year.

And yet.

And yet here comes Torah reminding me about vows and oaths and forgiveness. Whether or not I want to hit pause on time, the holidays are on their way. Whether or not I feel ready, the season of inner work is coming.

A vow: Rashi writes, "This is when one says, Behold, I take upon myself an obligation which is as sacred to me as an offering." A vow is a commitment.

What vows do I make to the people in my life; to my family; to my loved ones; to my communities? What promises have I made to the community where I live and pray and celebrate and mourn? What commitments have I made to my nation, to the ideals of America, to liberty and justice for all?

What vows have I made, and am I living up to them?

Our Torah verses today distinguish between the vows made by a man, which automatically stand, and the vows made by a woman, which could be undone if her father or husband said so. Obviously that doesn't sit well with us today. Here's how I've come to understand those verses: when Torah says "woman" here, what it means is "someone who for one reason or another isn't master of their own fate."

It's as if my ten year old promised a friend something that wasn't his to promise -- "I'll have a Zoom playdate with you at 11pm!" I would need to gently tell him, kiddo, you can't have playdates at 11pm, you have to be in bed then. And if he said, "But I promised!" I would have to tell him, "That wasn't your decision to make."

I don't love the fact that in antiquity, women had as little control over their circumstance as does my child now. And, that's what it was. Today, if one partner exercised that kind of control over another, we would call that coercive and unhealthy.

Setting the gender piece aside: if a person makes a vow to God, or takes on an obligation, then we're supposed to live up to it. Sounds simple, right?

In just over ten weeks we'll stand together at Yom Kippur and take a good long look at ourselves and our souls and our choices. Are we living up to our promises? Because if not, now is the time to try to do better. Not just so we can stand before God on Yom Kippur with an easy heart... but because living up to our commitments and our values is what Judaism asks of us.

What promises have we made to each other, to our communities, to God? And are we living up to them? And if not, can we start now?

Because nine weeks from tomorrow I'll be singing the words from Mary Oliver that we always hear on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, from her poem about the goldfinches: "Believe us, it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world."

It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. May the promises we make -- and the promises we keep! -- help to bring about repair, speedily and soon. Shabbat shalom.

This is the d'varling I offered at my shul's Zoom Shabbat morning services (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.)

I posted a few days ago about the project I've been working on -- Holy at Home, a set of editable slide decks that adapt my machzor into materials designed for screen-sharing / Zoom high holiday services. 

I've been working feverishly on the project because I wanted to get the slide decks into the world in time for other shlichei tzibbur (prayer leaders) to download them and spend the summer tinkering with the for your own services too. And... today they're available!

Read all about Holy at Home -- including what kinds of things are in the slide decks, and how to preview them, and how to donate in order to receive the editable files -- here at the Bayit website.

These slide decks are in beta; this is version 1.1. We're already receiving feedback and requests for things that aren't yet here, and we are taking that feedback to heart and will release updates / expansion packs in weeks to come. So if the slides work for you as they are, mah tov -- and if not, tell us what you would need us to add in order for them to work for you; we want this to meet your needs as well as our own.

My synagogue decided some weeks ago that for reasons of health and safety, our Days of Awe this year will be streamed / Zoom-based, rather than in person. Ever since then, I've known that I would need to adapt Days of Awe, the machzor / high holiday prayerbook that we use at my shul and that I shared for public adaptation & use some years ago, into a set of slide decks designed for screenshare over Zoom.

I've been leading Zoom davenen since the pandemic began, and over those months I've changed what I do and how I do it. I've learned a lot about what works for me and for my community -- best practices, how best to share materials, and more. I knew that my work this summer would be taking what I've learned there, and applying it to preparations for a High Holiday season like no other we've known.

I know I'm not alone in needing slides like this. So I talked to my hevre at Bayit: Building Jewish, about sharing an editable set of machzor slide decks in return for a (tax-deductible) donation to Bayit. Our mission is to create, curate, and share meaningful tools for "building Jewish." In this pandemic time, when we're all confined to home, a set of machzor slide decks definitely feels like it fits that bill.

(Also, people often ask how they can support the work that for years I've put out into the world for free. Thank God, I have a job and I don't need to ask for your donations for my own support. Instead, I'd rather have folks donate in support of Bayit, the nonprofit that I co-founded. Your support will help us bring more relevant, meaningful, "pray-tested" tools and ideas and practices into the world.)

This is the first slide in the first slide deck...

Enter Holy at Home, a set of six slide decks: 1) erev Rosh Hashanah (interweaving ma'ariv / the evening service with the Sefardic custom of a seder for Rosh Hashanah), 2) Rosh Hashanah morning, 3) Kol Nidre, 4) Yom Kippur morning with Yizkor, 5) Yom Kippur afternoon (avodah and mincha), and 6) Ne'ilah. All are editable, so each community can customize in ways that will meet their needs.

Much of what’s in these six slide decks comes from Days of Awe. If you've been using Days of Awe, you'll recognize a lot of what's here -- Hebrew and English, readings and prayers, tradition and creative riffs on tradition, poetry and artwork, translations and transliterations. That said, the original material from Days of Awe has also been adapted and improved for these slide decks in a variety of ways:

1. We’ve made many typo fixes;
2. Every word of Hebrew is now transliterated and translated (more on that below);
3. There are full-color images adorning most slides, because that's possible via slides in a way it was not possible in print;
4. I’ve steered away from prayer variations or settings that are rounds, or that work primarily because of harmony (given that it's not possible to sing simultaneously over Zoom);
5. And there are also a lot of new things added to these slide decks -- new prayers, new poems, new illustrations, new approaches to haftarah -- that aren’t in the book. 

When Bayit released our volume for the mourner's path, Beside Still Waters, we committed to the promise that there will be full translations and transliterations in everything Bayit puts out. Unlike Beside Still Waters, which took a few years to bring to fruition, these slides were created by me during a global pandemic and I can't promise that I caught every extra space or typo... but I did my level best.

The slide decks streamline what’s in Days of Awe in many ways. The printed volume is rich with additional poems and readings, on the theory that someone who isn't engaged by prayer services might find meaning in thumbing through the pages and running across poems or meditations that speak to them. That doesn't work for a slideshare, where everyone sees the same screen at the same time.

In other ways, the slides remain expansive, offering multiple choices to those who lead prayer. For some prayers, there are multiple options -- e.g. three versions of Ahavat Olam, two variations on the Amidah, three versions of Aleinu. The idea is that once someone donates to receive a download link for the slide decks, they can copy the slide decks, choose which option they want to use, and delete the other slides. 

If this interests you or would be useful to you in your High Holiday preparations, let me know? We're proofreading the slides now, and our hope is to release them sometime next week so that everyone (else) who is (also) planning their Days of Awe now can get the slides, begin imagining how to work with them, begin adapting them as necessary, etc. For now... back to proofreading!

Herbs on my mirpesset on a cloudy summer morning.

Sometimes I sit outside on my mirpesset on a Shabbat morning and drink iced coffee and listen to the birds. My mirpesset is just the right size to hold a 4' x 6' sukkah in the fall. In summer, it holds two chairs, a little table, a barbecue grill. Pots of herbs -- rosemary, mint, chives, parsley, thyme. A hanging basket of brightly-colored petunias. It overlooks an expanse of green lawn, a stretch of trees (including a couple of wild apples that bloom in late May), and off to one side the road. It's quiet here. The birds have the most to say in the morning and at twilight, but someone is singing or calling out to its fellows almost all the time. I've put up a couple of strings of solar-powered lights, so at nightfall my mirpesset is ringed with little globes of gleaming light.

It's peaceful, and green, and lovely. Just as it was last year, and the year before that, and the year before that. At moments, I can almost forget that nothing is normal this year. That my son has no summer camps, because it's not safe for children to gather. That we need to mask up before leaving the house. That the pandemic is raging like wildfire now across the South and the West. That there are people screaming for the right to go mask-less because they somehow think the masks are an attempt at sinister governmental control rather than the best tool we have to combat viral transmission. That every day we learn about another instance of police brutality against Black people. That racism flourishes, and we need to stamp it out. That the world is on fire.

I'm fiercely grateful for this little oasis where I can escape the sounds of the television and the Minecrafting and my child's video playdates with friends. (I'm grateful for the tv and the Minecraft and the video playdates, too, but their constancy is wearying.) I'm grateful to be able to sit outside and listen to birdsong. And I feel guilty that I can sit outside and listen to birdsong while the world is on fire. While hospitals are filling up, prisons and meatpacking plants rage with infection, polling places are being closed and voters of color are being disenfranchised, Black people still aren't safe. I feel grateful and guilty. No, not guilty: what I feel is responsible. "In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible," Heschel wrote. Repairing the world is our responsibility.

And yet it's Shabbes. Shabbes is the day to set down the burdens of constant labor. To be a human being instead of a human doing. To live in the as-if -- as-if the world were already redeemed. As-if we had already repaired all of those broken places, disease and racism and systemic inequality. This is my tradition's deepest tool for spiritual nourishment, and in these times of pandemic I need that nourishment more than ever. So I sit with the cognitive dissonance on my mirpesset on Shabbes morning. So much is broken. And yet in this little place with my herb plants and the birdsong -- in this oasis in time, the one day each week when I don't read the Times or the Post -- I can seek for a moment to be at peace.  It's okay to seek for a moment to be at peace.