"Other people don't know what it's like," someone said to me the other day. "Walking around with constant awareness of it all. Glued to my screen. I close my office door so I can cry. And most people here don't even know. The only people who seem to get it are people who have family there too."

I've had that conversation so many times. Most often, with Jews. I'm a rabbi, I serve a Jewish community, there's no surprise there. But I've had this conversation also with people who have beloveds in Gaza or the West Bank. Two diaspora communities carrying grief in parallel. 

Sorrow is not zero-sum. "Their" trauma doesn't cancel out "ours." There is more than enough to go around. It can be simultaneously true that Jews around the world are grieving and that Palestinians and Arabs around the world are grieving, all of us broken-hearted at once.

And there's a sense that others don't "get" why we're cloaked in grief. "The world doesn't care about our suffering or our deaths" is a refrain keenly-felt both by Jews and, as Abdelrahman ElGendy notes in today's Washington Post, by Arabs. Has grief become our most common ground?

A small cause for hope came to me from Aziz Abu Sarah in a message about Meet the Peace-Makers, a series of digital events featuring "women leaders in Israel and Palestine, building the peace movement from the ground up." It takes so much vision and courage to be a peace-builder in a time of war. 

My Arabic study has slowed to a trickle. I am scattered, forgetful, unable to hold new information. Most days I just review, trying not to lose what I've learned. I do not like running. I like reading and writing also. My friend is behind the house. A tiny way of holding fast to my values.

In the words of poet Naomi Shihab Nye, "It's late but everything comes next."

Bayit just launched our first Kickstarter to support publication of Daughters of Eve, a volume of 12 fabulous feminist essays about women of the Tanakh. The essays come with discussion questions and journaling prompts. It's a really neat project, and I'm excited to be midwifing it into print. The hope is that readers will come away not only with more knowledge about the Hebrew scriptures, but also with reflections on how these ancient female archetypes influence and reveal who we are today.

Backers can support Daughters of Eve at a variety of levels, most of which come with swag (coffee mugs, tote bags, even journals and jigsaw puzzles!). Or if you're part of a book group, consider the Book Group package that gives you books, book plates, and a Zoom conversation with the author. Or maybe you and a bunch of writer friends want to chip in together on the Storyteller package that gives you a Zoom with Sally to talk about writing, story creation, character development...

I especially love the cover design for this title. To me it suggests that all of us who study Torah are engaged in a circle dance throughout the generations. All the way back to our Biblical forebears, and all the way forward to the endless generations who will come after us: we're all learning and becoming and dancing together. If feminist essays on Biblical women and the Torah study journey of self-discovery sound like your jam, I hope you'll join me in supporting Daughters of Eve. 

Donate to the Kickstarter here.

7:15am, more or less. On the way home.

On the last day before winter vacation, the school orchestras gather early and serenade their classmates in the lobby as everyone else is arriving at school. So we loaded my son's double bass into the car early this morning and I drove him to school, still in my pajamas and bathrobe. The early drive meant I was out of the house to see the sky pinking and growing lighter over the hills.

"We live in a beautiful place," I said, and my son agreed.

"This is what I get to see every morning on the school bus," he pointed out. "We live in one of the most beautiful places on earth."

I can think of more spectacular landscapes... but I didn't disagree. I'm glad he can see the beauty in where we are. And as he reminds me often, he doesn't struggle with winter darkness the way that I do. Maybe it's because I'm a transplant to this latitude, even if I've lived here far longer than I lived there. Or maybe it's because I'm older and better acquainted with sorrow. I hope it's the first one.

I've been counting down the days over the last few weeks, eager to make it over this threshold. What I think of as "real winter" lies ahead -- the coldest months, the snow and ice, the dangerous roads. But the days will start getting brighter, bit by bit. This is the nadir of the solar year. This is as far as we go in this direction. Like touching a far wall and turning around to begin the long slow return. 

My refrigerator's top shelf is full of leftovers, but I feel compelled to cook something new for dinner. As though I need to keep the hearth fire burning on this longest night. There's a Michael Twitty recipe for collard greens with coconut milk and peanuts and red pepper that is calling to me -- vibrant, bold flavors that I associate with luxuriant warmth. We made it. The days get lighter from here.

I woke yesterday to a bomb threat at the synagogue I serve. Thankfully we established security protocols after the hostage situation at CBI Colleyville a few years ago, and those protocols served us well. With prompt and thorough support from local law enforcement, we quickly determined that the threat was false. But even when a bomb threat is false, its emotional and spiritual impacts are real.

The clench of fear is real. The surge of adrenaline is real. If you've experienced a bomb threat at a school you know those feelings well. A bomb threat at a synagogue also activates other feelings too. We all know that antisemitism is high, these days, but a bomb threat hammers that home. After the panic and the fear comes a wash of despair, a cry of the heart: why do people hate Jews so much? 

Trauma is "sticky," so the bomb threat feels connected with every antisemitic slur and insinuation and attack. We don't want to give the perpetrators the satisfaction of knowing that they impacted us. And yet, I know that many of you reading will go through this too, or maybe you already have. It feels important to honor the truth of how this feels, when it happens. And it happens a lot these days.

These days are activating for other reasons, too. This weekend the former president again referred to immigrants as poisoning the blood of our country. [Gift link.] Robert Reich notes that "claiming immigrants are 'poisoning the blood of the country' is the literal language of Hitler's Mein Kampf." It's so beyond the pale, it's hard to even write about without sounding hyperbolic.

Meanwhile we know that a lot of people who are angry at the Netanyahu government in Israel are misdirecting that anger at Jews worldwide. Shots were recently fired at a synagogue only an hour away. There's no connection between that and this bomb threat, but they may feel connected. Intellectual responses may not soothe us when our activation is in the realm of heart and feelings.

So what do we do? We honor our feelings (they are real, and pretending them away doesn't help anything) even as we remind ourselves that feelings aren't facts. We focus on feeling the truth that our friends and neighbors stand with us. When we really feel that, we turn the bomb threat into even more of a failure: it leaves us feeling stronger and more supported, instead of afraid. 

And we continue to be Jewish. Honestly that's the best answer I've got. Our spiritual practices, like Shabbat and prayer, help us maintain equilibrium. Our mitzvot, like loving the stranger and feeding the hungry, give our actions meaning. Our values, like pursuing justice and repairing the world, shine like a beacon. The best response to antisemitism is continuing to live Jewishly. 

And if that feels like a thumb in the eye of the antisemites who want to wipe us out, that's a bonus. I keep returning to this quote from Tolkien* -- the one where Gandalf points out that we don't get to choose the times we live in, we only get to choose how we respond. Tolkien wrote Lord of the Rings between 1937 and 1949. These words feel extra-resonant to me now.

*I know that the far right loves Tolkien. Which is further proof of how detached from reality they are, because he hated Nazis and called Hitler a "ruddy little ignoramus." But that's a subject for another post.

Previously, on As Joseph’s World Turns… Joseph’s brothers threw him in a pit! They sold him into slavery and told their father that a beast killed him! He was falsely accused and thrown in prison! He interpreted dreams for two of Pharaoh’s servants! This week he interprets dreams for Pharaoh himself, whereupon he’s promoted to Pharaoh’s right-hand man, in charge of all the granaries of Egypt. And now there’s a famine, and his brothers come seeking food...

They don’t recognize him. Joseph seems to be testing them to see if they’ve changed. He accuses them of being spies, holds Shimon prisoner, and sends the others to bring him Benjamin. They return home with grain and they tell their father what transpired. Then Jacob says, “It is always me that you bereave: Joseph is no more and Simeon is no more, and now you would take away Benjamin. These things always happen to me!” (Gen. 42:34)

I empathize. First he lost his most beloved wife, and then he lost his most beloved son (or at least, he has every reason to think he did). I can scarcely imagine that kind of loss. And… it’s still striking to me that he doesn’t seem to acknowledge that these losses impacted the whole family. Even if the other brothers didn’t like Joseph, his death would have impacted them. What kind of father has Jacob been able to be for them all these years?

I’m also struck that he seems to be focusing on what he’s lost, and not on what he still has: the brothers who are still there, taking care of him, providing for his needs. Let’s juxtapose that with a different verse from earlier in this week’s parsha. Pharaoh has just had Joseph released from prison and said to him, “I hear you can interpret dreams.” Joseph’s response is, “בִּלְעָדָ֑י אֱלֹהִ֕ים יַעֲנֶ֖ה אֶת־שְׁל֥וֹם פַּרְעֹֽה /  Not I! God will see to the peace of Pharaoh.” (Gen. 41:16)

He’s saying: ”it’s not about me. God is working through me. If I’m a clear channel, something will come through me, maybe an understanding of your dream that will bring you to some kind of shleimut, wholeness. But I’m just a conduit, I’m not in charge. Wisdom comes not from me, but through me. Peace comes not from me, but through me. It’s not about me at all.” Notice how Jacob’s response is a kind of closing-down, while Joseph’s is a kind of opening-up.

Jacob’s losses of a spouse and a child have shrunk his worldview down to his suffering. He can’t imagine a positive outcome; he just assumes the worst. Joseph’s experienced losses too: his home, his family, his freedom. (Tradition teaches he was in prison for 12 years, forgotten and alone.) But where Jacob seems to me to be shut-down, internally adrift, Joseph seems to emerge from the crucible of his losses with humility and increased capacity to care for others. 

Torah isn’t just about “them” back “then.” It’s also always about us here and now. We all have this Jacob within us: that wounded place that experiences everything as another blow landing on an emotional bruise that never heals. Maybe it’s personal: there was a loss or a betrayal that taught us to expect more of the same. Maybe it’s epigenetic: our ancestors went through it, and we’re still feeling it. Maybe it’s collective: the Jewish people has been through so much.

And we all have this Joseph within us: the capacity to recognize that there’s a source of meaning outside of us and that a life of meaning asks us to help those in need. Every life contains brokenness, and those broken places can make us angular and sharp. Or, we can become softened, like seaglass. Our losses can sensitize us to the needs of others. We can conclude that we’re God’s hands in the world, helping whoever we can however we can. 

It’s easy lately to do what I see Jacob doing here – to say, “These things always happen to us.” We know our terrible history of persevering through persecution and pogroms. With antisemitism rising, with our fears activated by Hamas and by those who support Hamas, it's easy to feel that the whole world is against us. We may feel we can’t trust anyone to stand up for the Jewish people. It is easy to become like Jacob, mired in our own suffering. 

We can choose to be more like Joseph. To let our losses shape us without consuming us. To recognize that even though we may feel existentially alone in this world as Jews right now, that’s not necessarily true. The other day I treated myself to lunch out with a book. A stranger, seeing my kippah, wished me happy Chanukah. I didn’t know until later that she had also quietly paid for my meal. An act of anti- antisemitism. We’re not as alone as we may feel. 

In this moment of Jacob’s life all he can see is his losses, so all he expects is more loss. I say to my inner Jacob: I get why you feel that way. I honor these hurts. And: this is not all that life is. In this moment of Joseph’s life, he’s gained valuable perspective. He’s experienced what it’s like to feel that God is with him. I believe that God is always with us, but often we’re not awake to that reality. At this point in his story, Joseph is awake to that, and I think it changes him.

As always, if the “G-word” doesn’t work for you, substitute a word that does: Justice, Love, Truth, Meaning, Hope. All of these ask us to act. These are our calling as Jews and as human beings. Our job is to fix what we can and help who we can. Even if we’re not in charge of the granaries of all Egypt, even when we feel helpless in the face of the world’s vast suffering, there is always something we can do for someone in need.

These last few months have been hard. There’s so much to grieve – I don’t need to list it for you, you’re living it too. Many of us are in a pit. Torah says the pit into which Joseph was thrown was a place with no water: no Torah or sustenance or hope. But we can help each other climb out… and we can help each other remember not only what we’ve lost, but also what we’ve found: that our low times can fuel either our despair, or our capacity for kindness and care.

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.)

Christmas Lima beans are huge.
Speckled and swirled
in maroon and cream, compared
to chestnuts in festive coats.
Today they marry mirepoix:
red onion, orange carrot,
crisp celery. Six small potatoes.
Turkey bacon pretending to be ham,
rosemary from the window.
I cook them every year
at Chanukah, which is not
a pale imitation of anything.
Granted, we can't all agree
on the moral (fighting
assimilation? the persistence
of hope? being enough?) but
we kindle candles anyway.
I make Chanukah Lima Bean Soup
and what's in my stewpot
is always enough because
long before your guy
multiplied loaves and fishes
we had the amphora of oil
that lasted, like a phone
(for talking with God)
on its last legs that somehow
didn't run out of charge
and we're still here, refusing
to let our light go out.

These are the remarks my son and I gave together at the lighting of the North Adams chanukiyah in City Hall, shared as a video and as text below. May the light of our traditions continue to shine.

Chanukah celebrates light in the darkness, the persistence of hope, and the persistence of us. Two thousand, two hundred years ago an invading empire desecrated our Temple in Jerusalem and made the practice of Judaism illegal. We drove them out and rededicated our holy place. The commemoration of that rededication became Chanukah. The Greco-Syrians did not destroy us. 

A few hundred years later, the Roman empire conquered Jerusalem and destroyed our holy place. We re-envisioned our traditions to keep them alive in a post-Temple era. We renewed Judaism and carried it with us all over the world. The Romans did not destroy us. 

The Crusades decimated Jewish communities across Europe. The Crusaders did not destroy us. In 1290 all Jews were expelled from England, and in 1492 from Spain. The whims of those monarchs did not destroy us.  In the 20th century the Nazis attempted to exterminate Jews and Judaism.The Nazis did not destroy us. 

Today antisemitism is rising around the world. We still kindle our festival lights, and every night we add a candle as we rededicate ourselves to spreading light. We place our menorahs in the window to proclaim the miracle: hatred will not destroy us. The light of hope still shines. The light of our tradition still shines. 

These Chanukah lights are a reminder of our persistence. We stand up today against antisemitism – and also Islamophobia, transphobia, homophobia, and all forms of hatred or bigotry. We let these Chanukah lights be a reminder to keep persisting, to stand up for our neighbors as ourselves. Most of all, may the light of these Chanukah candles -- the light of our traditions -- keep shining throughout the years to come.

It's all right to feel distracted.
There's a war going on. Well, two.
Also an insurgency somewhere, plus
the uneasy sense that there must be
more conflict in places you can't name.
It's okay that one of these hurts
more than the others do. No one

can feel equally every worldly grief.
Maybe you know someone who is fighting
or someone who was killed. You're
a degree or two of separation from
the horrors of the front lines. Or
there are no front lines, horrors
are everywhere. You're allowed to feel

whatever you feel, including of course
sad, despairing, furious, alone
panic-stricken, unable to breathe, 
unable to sleep or maybe to wake up,
knowing how many will never wake again.
Groceries still need to be bought,
laundry washed, assignments completed.

You may stop stock-still at the sink
washing produce, seized suddenly
by awareness of everyone without water
or food to wash in it. Remember
grief is sticky, like tape attaching
to itself and refusing to pull free
so every sorrow re-opens every other.

I want to say: kindle one candle
and breathe with its light! Inside you
the tempests will settle. But this
may not be true. I can't promise when
the grief will end. Bring light anyway:
our souls are God's candles, even when
we're not sure we still know how to shine.

There are two big spiritual encounters in this week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach. When the parsha begins Jacob is alone and afraid. He grapples with an angel all night. From that, he gets a new name, Yisrael, one who wrestles with God. (Gen. 32:29) (This is the origin of one of the names our people carries to this day: Yisrael, aka Godwrestlers.) Jacob calls the place where that happened Pni-El, “Face of God,” because of his encounter there with the Holy. (Gen 32:31) 

The other encounter is with Jacob’s twin brother Esav, whom he has not seen since they parted on lousy terms many years ago. Remember, Jacob (whose given name can be understood as “the Heel”) tricked their father into giving him the firstborn blessing meant for Esav. Then Jacob fled to escape his furious brother. But now, Esav falls on his neck and kisses him. And Jacob marvels aloud to Esav, “to see your face is like seeing the face of God!” (Gen. 33:10)

I love this. The stranger with whom he wrestled all night is a face of God. And his twin brother whom he had feared to meet again as an enemy… is also a face of God. It seems that Torah this week wants us to be thinking about seeing the face of God. Not only in those whom we instinctively like or trust, but also in those with whom we might grapple or struggle. Even those with whom we might be braced for enmity and violence – they too are faces of the One.

Unfortunately, that’s not usually where our sages take this. Esav gets associated with Rome – and knocking Edom (his descendants) becomes a coded way to bemoan the atrocities of Rome. Or: take that moment when he falls on Jacob’s neck. Our scribal tradition places dots over the word “he kissed him,” which Rashi (d. 1105) reads as a sign of Esav’s ambivalence. Midrash suggests Esav was going to bite him, like a vampire, until Jacob’s neck turned to marble!

The Sforno (d. 1549) wrote, “we live among the descendants of Esau: people who are arrogant, consider themselves invincible.” Medieval rabbis often regarded Christian Europe (where it was not great to be a Jew) as the spiritual descendants of Esav. The political realities of each era got read back into Torah. And the rabbis projected their anxiety about Jewish safety, and the trustworthiness of those whom they saw as fundamentally unlike us, onto Esav.

Our sages lived in times of antisemitism and persecution. They read Torah through what was happening around them. Unfortunately, we also live in a time of rising antisemitism, and it’s easy to retroject today’s news headlines into the Torah. Some connect Edom, Esav’s descendants, with the Palestinians. So does the Jacob-Esav encounter have wisdom for us about current events? It could. But the insight it offers is spiritual, not geopolitical, and it’s about… us. 

Torah doesn’t tell us whether Esav genuinely felt love for his brother at their reunion, or whether Esav secretly wanted to bite him in the neck. Torah also doesn’t tell us whether Jacob really saw the face of God in his brother, or whether he was lying through his teeth because that’s what he thought would keep him safe. We get to choose which interpretation we favor. Here’s why I think it’s spiritually valuable to choose to see both brothers positively, especially now.

Genesis is full of brothers fighting. Cain and Abel. Isaac and Ishmael. Jacob and Esav. Joseph and the rest of his brothers. All of those stories are, in a certain way, zero-sum. One brother lives, the other dies. One brother gets lifted up, the other gets kicked out. One brother ges the firstborn blessing, the other gets a curse. One gets a special coat – and then his angry brothers throw him in a pit and sell him into slavery. It’s a whole family tree of favoritism and fighting.

When we choose to see Jacob and Esav’s encounter as genuine, we’re saying: sibling rivalry isn’t the only option. We’re embracing hope for better. We’re affirming that we want to be on a trajectory toward mutual trust, seeing each other generously, creatively visioning a shared future that’s better than our past. We can’t change Torah, but we can change the story of now. Past doesn’t have to be prologue. We can write a different ending.

I read a d’var Torah this week by Rabbi Hannah Jensen called Jacob, Esau, and Jewish-Arab Partnership. She connects how we view Jacob and Esav with an ongoing pattern of “polarization and sides-taking in the name of protecting ourselves and our ‘people.’” I think of my friend and teacher R. Brad Hirschfield’s book You Don’t Have To Be Wrong For Me To Be Right. We don’t have to live in a world of us-vs-them. We can make a different choice.

Letting go of us-vs-them might feel implausible, or unsafe, especially now. I get it. And, today is Shabbes. On this day when we live into the as-if, as-if the work of healing the world were complete, I invite us to broaden our imagination. Imagine a world where it’s not about which group “wins” – but rather a future that’s collaborative and cooperative, where the way to succeed is to lift others up. If we can imagine it, it doesn’t have to be a dream.

Jensen cites Sally Abed, co-founder of Standing Together, saying that the best way for us in America to support the Israeli people is to support the Palestinian people. I think she’s saying: it’s a false binary. One will flourish best when the other flourishes too. This doesn’t have to be motivated by altruism; it’s also enlightened self-interest. Spiritually, it’s good to seek the benefit of all. And practically, extremism loses power when everyone can thrive.

I find hope in organizations like Standing Together and Hand in Hand and Roots who teach coexistence instead of mistrust. I’ve started asking myself: whatever I’m about to do, or say, or argue, will it help people there who are trying to build coexistence? Or is it going to fuel the polarization, the zero-sum sense that only one people can “win”? Jacob and Esav didn’t figure out how to live side by side. But I still have hope that their spiritual descendants can.

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

One of the big questions I've been sitting with is: who benefits when we share horrific news out of Israel and Gaza? When does that serve a greater purpose, and when does it just harden us? I know we share links with the best intentions -- bearing witness, and uplifting voices that need to be heard. (I'm including myself in this!) I'm just... not sure we're bridging the gaps between echo chambers. 

There's a "gotcha" feeling to so many interactions on social media right now. As though anger were a virus, and whoever makes their fury most contagious, wins. Once you read this, you'll hate them as much as I do. I notice what happens in me when I read stories of horror and trauma. The turbulence of emotion, the sickened feeling of disbelief. And I wonder: are these feelings actually helping anyone?

I worry that reading these kinds of articles makes it harder to see people on the other side (or those who sympathize with them) as human beings. It harms our capacity for empathy. That's part of why I make a point of seeking out the voices of both Palestinians and Israelis. (And wow is that painful. I know the distant pain of reading stories doesn't hold a candle to actual trauma. It still hurts.)

And wow, it sure seems as though a lot of people want to discount any stories of suffering that come from "the other side." I hear people saying, that's just propaganda, you can't trust anything they say. Or sometimes, it's their own fault, look who they voted into power. And sure, there's propaganda fueling the war of public opinion. But that doesn't invalidate the horrors that are also real and true. 

If the subtext when we share news or personal stories from Israel or Gaza or the West Bank is, just read this and you'll see how barbaric Those People are -- I don't think it helps. My fear is that the more we marinate in our feelings of righteous indignation and justifiable fury, the more the world's rage and polarization benefit extremists who are perfectly happy to ignore their enemy's humanity.

I don't know how to end this post. It's taken me all week to write 400 words. I want to be a source of light rather than heat. The internet does not need more kindling for the world's angry flames.