In yesterday's Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson noted that some of yesterday's Executive Orders are, in the words of one observer, “bizarre legal fanfic not really intended for judicial interpretation.” Even so, they are already causing harm. One of my friends reported panic attacks upon reading about the EO that attempts to ban transitioning or gender nonconformity.

So many of these "bogus decrees" (in Jennifer Rubin's words) are appalling. Ending birthright citizenship? Pardoning the violent rioters who engaged in the January 6th insurrection? Not to mention withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and from the World Health Organization -- as though we were not an interconnected planet where the climate crisis and pandemics impact everyone.

One of the president's wealthiest supporters spoke to the crowd and threw two Nazi-style salutes. (Wired has an article about neo-Nazi delight at his gestures). And then the Anti-Defamation League denied that these were Nazi gestures, which leaves many Jews reeling. Many of us grew up believing that the ADL's purpose was to call out antisemitic hatred. It's hard to square that circle now.

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that involves manipulating someone into questioning their own reality, feelings, and sanity. One of its tactics is lying, while insisting that the lie is the truth. Like denying the lived reality of trans people. Or claiming that January 6 was "a day of love," or that there is no climate crisis, or that the sieg heil everyone just witnessed is not actually a Hitler salute.

And all of that was just within the first few hours. We are in for a ride. 

The best thing I read yesterday was Beth Adams' beautiful essay How to Survive at her blog The Cassandra Pages. She notes that we are entering a time that we know is going to be difficult, and we need to remember to take care of ourselves and those around us. The coming years, she notes, will ask our mental and physical strength. I would add emotional and spiritual strength to that list. 

Beth writes:

[T]here is almost always something life-giving to notice, like the mother and child on the bus today. There is color. There is music. There are words. There’s the smell of food being prepared, or flowers in a supermarket display. There is the cold of winter on my cheeks, and the warmth of the distant sun which can still be felt even in sub-zero temperatures. There’s the taste of coffee, salt, lemons, chocolate. We miss so much when we’re wrapped up in ourselves and our worries — and our screens — and we have to train ourselves to turn back to the actual world, which is right there, existing, waiting to be noticed — full of sorrows, yes, but also full of beauty, joy, and simplicity.

Beth calls us to connect with our innate humanity. She invites us to notice beauty amidst brokenness, and from noticing to move into doing: plant seeds, bake bread, learn a language... something creative and constructive, something we can materially change. I found a similar message in an essay by Jared Yates Sexton that a friend sent me yesterday, called Preparing for the Storm:

Pick something to learn or do or construct. Learn a new language. Pick up a guitar. Start painting. Find some hobby that illustrates materially that things build over time. Something that, when we get to January 1st, 2026, you can look at and realize that your efforts and energy are important and constructive.

(Most of his post is more explicitly about preparing for authoritarianism and political collapse, though in typical fashion I'm drawn toward the spiritual instructions. For me, the encouragement to make music or art is inherently an invitation to spiritual life.) In early March of 2020, when Covid was new to us, I wrote a letter to my congregation which I cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. I wrote:

My friend and colleague Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes that now is a great time to double down on our spiritual practices… and if we don’t think we have any, now is a good time to develop some! Whether that means prayer, meditation, yoga, making art, listening to music: we should lean into whatever sustains our hearts and souls in this time. Because we’re going to need every ounce of strength and compassion and rootedness we’ve got in order to take care of each other.

It was true at the start of the pandemic, and it is true now. I am resolving to make more art in the coming months and years: not because I am an artist (poet, yes; artist, no!) but because creativity nourishes my soul, and I need all the nourishment I can muster. We all do. I'm going to bake bread and cook new recipes and sing in harmony as often as I can, because those things will help me stay steady.

Here is the best counsel I can offer:

Give yourself permission to pay less attention to the news. Feeling tempest-toss'd by each new horror is objectively exhausting, and we will need our strength in order to care for each other. Practice kindness. As Pirkei Avot instructs, give each other the benefit of the doubt: many of us are already struggling emotionally and spiritually. Hold fast to what you know is true and what you know is right.

Be ethical: let your integrity shine, even when it seems like it doesn't matter because the world is so broken. (It does matter, especially when the world is so broken.) Don't let anyone convince you to rewrite the past. (It's easy to think in Orwell's terms -- "we've always been at war with Eastasia" -- witnessing current attempts to whitewash the insurrection. There will be more of this. Resist it.)

The new regime was clear that they intended to begin with a campaign of "shock and awe." Shock and awe, according to Wikipedia, is "a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight." What we're witnessing is shocking, yes. But awe? Think about what brings you awe.

I feel awe when I encounter beauty. I feel awe at the range of human diversity, including diversity of gender expression. I feel awe when I consider our precious planet: its many fragile ecosystems, the vast currents of our oceans and skies. I experience awe when I see people lifting each other up. On a good day, the fact that I'm alive, that God restored my soul to me this morning, brings me awe. 

Awe connects me with that infinite source of justice and mercy my tradition names as God. The "G-word" may not work for you; if that's the case, find a source of meaning that does speak to you, Truth or Justice or Hope or simply doing what's right because it's right. Cultivate a sense of awe, and let it buoy you. We will need to lift each other as we stand up for those who are more vulnerable than we.

In the words of my friend and colleague R. David Evan Markus, "The call of liberation resounds until the root causes of bondage – false superiority, xenophobia and hate (even in polite form) – are history." In the words of poet Aurora Levins Morales, "Another world is possible." Don't give up. We have work to do, and we have each other, and I believe that together we can be stronger than we know. 

My heart breaks for everyone suffering fire in California. This week I’ve been struggling not only with the fires, but also with untrue things people are saying about the fires. One notorious figure has even claimed that the wildfires are being spread intentionally as part of a globalist plot. The term “globalist” is often a coded way of blaming the Jews, so that’s worrisome.

What shocks me even more than the conspiracies is how some want to hold back aid, or argue that a government has no obligation to help people who voted for the other party. I remember similar arguments early in the pandemic when supplies of ventilators were limited. In my mind, the role of government is to care for all of its citizens. The alternative… well, let’s turn to Torah.

At the start of this week’s parsha, Sh’mot, Torah tells us that a new king arises in Egypt who did not know Joseph. And the new Pharaoh says, ugh, there are too many of these immigrants. (Ex. 1:9) Meaning the children of Israel, who had fled to Egypt to escape famine. Rashi notes that Pharaoh describes us as a “swarm,” like vermin. This is dehumanization.

This is how Hitler described the Jews. It’s how white racists have often described people of color. This kind of language normalizes hatred. Judaism invites us to do the opposite. Judaism invites us to uplift the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, recognizing that every human being is made in the divine image and deserves dignity, rights, and respect.

Pharaoh’s an extreme example of what not to do. There are subtler examples, like Noah. Our sages agree that he was the best of a bad generation. But he falls short compared with patriarchs like Abraham, whose tent was open on all sides and who offered hospitality to all. Noah only saved the animals and his own family. Our sages ask us to do better than that.

That’s another place where Jewish values differ from what we’re seeing in the news. I believe Judaism calls us to resist any political litmus test for who “deserves” aid. People impacted by fires or floods – or for that matter, people impacted by famine or war – deserve our help because they are people. Noah failed that test. But fueled by Jewish values, we can do better.

Turning again to this week’s parsha, this week we meet the role models Shifrah and Puah, the brave midwives who helped Jewish women give birth despite Pharaoh’s orders to drown all of the Jewish baby boys. They followed their conscience, and they did the right thing – even though helping Jews was dangerous, even illegal. Judaism calls us to emulate their bravery.

Hatred seems to recur – from the Pharaoh who wanted to wipe us out, to the talking heads blaming California’s wildfires this week on globalists and diversity. But resistance to hatred and dehumanization also recurs throughout history. From Shifrah and Puah in this week’s parsha, to everyone today who chooses not to demean but to uplift.

Alongside the parsha, I’ve been reading Octavia Butler’s prescient science fiction novel The Parable of the Sower. Published in 1993, her book begins in 2025. In her book, the climate crisis has intensified, as has wealth disparity. California is on fire. A Christian nationalist is running for president with a campaign slogan that echoes Hitler. (She wrote this 30 years ago.)

The protagonist of the book, Lauren Olamina, writes verses in her journal that become the sacred text for a new religion she calls Earthseed. Here is the first one: 

God is Change

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

It’s powerful to read her verses this week, when we also read the story of the burning bush. Moses sees a bush that burns but is not consumed, and out of the bush, God speaks.

God says: tell Pharaoh to let My people go. When Moshe asks, who are you? God says, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh: I am Becoming What I Am Becoming. (Some translations say, “I Am What I Am,” but I think that’s too static.) One way of understanding the name YHVH – which seems to simultaneously mean Is / Was / Will Be – is to say, as Lauren Olamina says: God is change. 

The Parable of the Sower is a dark story. (And its sequel is darker.) Butler imagines some of the worst of what human beings can do to each other amidst an unholy conflagration of wildfires, scarcity, racism, and fear. But it is also a hopeful story. Because it posits that community is possible, and a better world is possible… and I think Butler believed we can get there. 

Here are a few more words from Butler, from an essay she wrote in 2000:

“There’s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There’s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers – at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.”

We can, and I think we must. Judaism calls us to stand up for the vulnerable, love the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. (In the new week, we who can will direct funds toward helping those impacted by fire.) Judaism calls us to resist dehumanization: not just those who would dehumanize us, but those who would dehumanize anyone. This is our sacred call.

This call lands poignantly on this Shabbat when we remember Martin Luther King z”l. We are far from realizing his dream of what America could be. But bending the arc of the moral universe more toward justice is holy work that is everyone’s to do. We don’t have the luxury of saying, “It isn’t working, I give up.” Shabbat enables us to rest, which we all need. Then we keep going.

I read an essay earlier this week by Benjamin Hamlington, a research scientist at NASA who lost his home in the fires. He writes, “Even if thriving isn’t possible…protecting what is most important to us, supporting vulnerable communities across the globe, and ensuring a decent life for our kids can be possible and is worth working towards as best as we can.”

Dr. King taught that “The time is always right to do what is right.” We might feel as though the small things we can do don’t matter, but I invite us not to give away our power. "There are thousands of answers" to the systems and structures in our world that are broken and causing harm. We can be among those answers, if we choose to be. Let's choose to be. 

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.)

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayehi, the patriarch Jacob dies. When Joseph’s brothers learn of their father’s death, they become nervous: what if Joseph decides now to pay them back for all the ways they mistreated him? But Joseph says, “Have no fear. Am I a substitute for God? Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good.” (Genesis 50:20)

Joseph has been through the wringer: thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, cast into jail, even forgotten and abandoned there. But that’s not where he focuses his memory. By this point in his story, he has the sense that everything that befell him was for a reason: so that he would be in a position to rescue the children of Israel (and the nation of Egypt) from famine. 

Joseph’s story is the classic example of “descent for the sake of ascent.” Our mystics understand this as a spiritual teaching: when we make mistakes we “fall away” from God or from our best selves, and that very falling can be what spurs us to try again and do better next time. Every mistake becomes an invitation to teshuvah. I love that. 

But Joseph’s falling and rising are a bit more literal than that. Down into Egypt and into the dungeons; up to become Pharaoh’s right hand man. Everything seemingly bad that happens to him puts him in the place where he needs to be in order for something better to unfold. As it says in Mishlei (Proverbs 24;16), “Seven times the righteous person falls, and gets back up.”

(Or as the Buddhist proverb has it, “Fall down seven times, get up eight.”)

Though I don’t know if Joseph could have said “God intended it for good” to his brothers when he was still in tight straits. Even if one can look back and say, “it worked out for the best,” one might not feel that way in the moment. I also think “Something good might come out of this” is an attitude one can try to have, but is never a useful thing to say to someone who’s suffering.

The mishna teaches (Brakhot 9) that we should bless the bad things that happen to us, even as we bless the good ones. I don’t think this means, “Thank You God for the fire that just burned down my house.”  It could mean something like the line from Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide (d. 1723), “My barn having burned down, I found I could see the moon.”

I first encountered that line of poetry when I was in college, and I thought it was beautiful. I still do. Though I have experienced enough loss that it lands differently with me now. I’ve learned that we can’t rush the transition from the experience of loss to personal growth or meaning-making. And sometimes we can’t find a way to make meaning; the loss goes too deep.

Maybe the idea of blessing the bad things hinges on a different understanding of l’hodot, which I usually render as “to thank.” Hat tip to my friend and colleague R. Sonja Keren Pilz, who brought this teaching forward for me this week as we met with others in Bayit’s Liturgical Arts Working Group to brainstorm toward an upcoming collaboration on gratitude. 

She pointed out that the Hebrew word l’hodot with different prepositions after it can mean either to be grateful, or to admit and acknowledge. Sometimes we can genuinely feel grateful for where life has brought us. And sometimes we can’t reach gratitude. Sometimes the world feels broken and we can’t access that inward upwelling of thankfulness – it’s just not available to us.

That’s when the other definition of l’hodot comes into play. Maybe we don’t always need to be happy about whatever’s unfolding. There can be a kind of blessing simply in recognizing and naming what is. God, the world is literally on fire right now. God, our nation feels fragile and divided right now. I can’t thank God for those things, but I can acknowledge that they are true. 

Authentic spiritual life asks us to be real, even when something difficult is happening. And once we make it to the other side, then maybe we can seek out some way to make meaning from our experiences, as Joseph did. For me, one of the purposes of spiritual practice is being able to feel – as we read of Joseph when he was in prison – that God* is “with us” even when life is hard. 

(God* = whatever that word means to you today: God far above or deep within, or if that word doesn’t work for you, try Meaning or Justice or Truth...) Whatever may be unfolding, regular spiritual practice can help us remember that we’re not in this alone. We have that Presence our tradition names as God. And we have each other.

I don’t know how to make meaning from the horrifying wildfires we’ve witnessed this week from afar. There is nothing I can say that would make any of this ok. Psalm 92, the psalm for Shabbat, says tov l’hodot l’Adonai ,“It is good to give thanks to God,” but that might ring hollow in a week with so much destruction and loss. So I’m leaning into the other meaning of l’hodot.

We can admit and acknowledge and recognize: this catastrophe is caused, and compounded, by climate crisis. It is intensified by human choices and policies. And therefore it is aleinu, it is upon us / it is our responsibility, to do everything in our power to shift those choices and policies, and to take care of our fellow human beings as best we can. 

A Prayer During the Southern California Fires 2025

by Rabbi Nicole Guzik

Ribono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, protect those impacted by the devastating Southern California fires. Guide them towards shelter and safety. As family, friends, neighbors and fellow Angelenos experience physical and emotional loss, may we turn towards each other with open homes and open hearts.

God, spread a blanket of security over the firefighters and first responders that serve our community. Grant them strength and courage and may each one come home safely to those they love.

Let us be reminded of how to help one another. Holy One of Blessing, give us increased compassion and an abundance of kindness that we may extend our hands and hearts to those in need. As the prophet Elijah experienced, “There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by God’s power, but God was not in the wind. After the wind—an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake—fire; but God was not in the fire. And after the fire—a small, still voice.”

God’s small, still voice runs through each one of us. May God’s voice compel us to reach out to each other and find pathways that lead to hope and ultimately, peace for all in need. Amen.

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.)

That's one of my contributions to a new collection of liturgical poetry and artwork arising out of the avodah blessing of the Shabbat amidah, co-created by members of Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. (I'll enclose my prayer below in plaintext for those who need it in that format.) 

We begin our offering by asking some of the questions this piece of liturgy prompts for us:

Is service the same as prayer? Is all work a form of service? How do we (want to) serve today? These questions, and others, animate our collective offering on the theme of avodah. We hope that our offering serves to open up your deep questions, too.  

You can find the whole offering here: Avodah / Service. There's work by Trisha Arlin, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, R. David Zaslow, and me.  I love how we each chose different facets of the prayer to unpack, riff on, and uplift. As always, I think that together our contributions make up something that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

I serve today

I serve today by turning off the news.

I serve by refusing to blame everyone or anyone.

I serve by re-training myself not to check 

to find out what terrible thing has happened 

in the last fifteen minutes. I serve by affirming

it’s okay to feel joy even in times like these. 

By taking teenagers to the nursing home

and afterward praising the adolescent boy

who answered the repeated questions kindly

as though each time were the first.

I serve by admitting I don’t have the answers.

By promising I’m here for what you need

and meaning it. By reminding us to focus

on the horizon, the fixed point, our hope for better

that we may not live to reach. And that’s okay.

Judaism was here long before we were.

Someday our childrens’ childrens’ children

might cross the border into promise –

into lions lying down with lambs, into vines 

and fig trees and enough water to grow them,

and no one ever again will take our rights away,

no one ever again will make us afraid.

--Rachel Barenblat

There is a mental image I'm carrying with me. A mother, a bit younger than me, sitting on a folding chair in front of a cement wall. She is holding a toddler who clings to her like a life raft. Her eyes are closed and exhaustion is written in every line of her face. Another night of the alarms going off, the family racing to the bomb shelter, the frightened child trying to sleep in their mother's arms.

Another mental image: a desperate father holding a malnourished child, pleading on Bluesky for the aid that would enable him to maybe get a loaf of bread. There are so many people like this that they run together in my mind. I'm not proud of that. I want to be able to say that I take every person's suffering seriously. I know that every human being is a spark of God, made in the divine image.

The mother holding her child is Israeli. The father holding his child is Palestinian. I know one of them personally, and read her Facebook updates often. The other is a stranger to me. I ache for both of them. Their situations are not the same, but both are suffering. Their fates are bound up together. As a recent Forward article notes, neither of these peoples is leaving that beloved land. 

I know that Israelis are lucky to have bomb shelters. (I wish Gazans had them too.) I also know that doesn't erase the trauma from the barrage of rockets, coming now from the Houthis. At least I think that's who's bombing now. It's hard to keep track. And it's easy to feel like everyone hates Jews anyway, so does it matter who's trying to kill us this time? Isn't someone always trying to kill us? 

Some people hate Israel because they hate Jews, and they would prefer that we not exist at all. (Sometimes that takes the form of actively trying to wipe us out, which is an old story but apparently one that is evergreen.) Some people abhor the actions of Israel's government, or the actions of several consecutive Israeli governments. (Some of the most ardent among that group are Israeli Jews.) 

Some say: but the occupation, and the brutality of the war on Gaza, mean that Israelis deserve to be bombed. And some say: but October 7, and the first and second intifadas, mean that Palestinians deserve to be bombed. And some say: empathy for "those people" just normalizes evil. My heart rebels against all of those views. No one deserves this. This is not the way the world should be. 

My heart breaks for everyone living under fire. My heart breaks for every Palestinian parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted during a famine, in winter, in war -- and for every Israeli parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted in a bomb shelter.  Anguish on behalf of suffering parents and children is not partisan. This suffering doesn't nullify that suffering.

I keep thinking about every parent who is terrified for a child, or trying to comfort a child, or God forbid grieving the loss of a child. I think about the Prayer of the Mothers and Women Wage Peace. I think about the Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace by Sheikha Iktisam Mahameed and Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum. I know I can only imagine, from a distance, what parents in that place endure.

The thought I keep coming back to is: no one should live like this. Surely every Israeli and every Palestinian has PTSD -- not just from the last 456 days but also from the years that preceded them. No one should live (or die) like this. And yet countless thousands are living and dying like this. I put my hopes in the coexistence activists of Standing Together, though their dream feels distant.

I didn't want to begin a new year without acknowledging that the suffering in the Middle East is a constant background hum. In the words of Yehuda HaLevi (d. 1141), my heart is in the east. Of course, 1000 years ago he was yearning for a Jewish return to Zion; it's different now. But the constantly of the yearning remains. How I yearn for all of the peoples of that land to live in safety and peace.