דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְיִקְחוּ־לִ֖י תְּרוּמָ֑ה מֵאֵ֤ת כּל־אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ תִּקְח֖וּ אֶת־תְּרוּמָתִֽי׃…וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃

Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved… And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them [or: within them].  (Ex. 25:2, 8)

This week in our ancestral story we begin building the Mishkan, a portable home for God. Torah will spend the next several weeks describing the blueprints for, and then the building of, this holy place for the divine Presence. Midrash regards the mishkan as not only a blueprint for the Temple but also a microcosm of the world, and teaches that in a cosmic sense God planned at the very beginning of creation that we would build it – for God’s sake, and also for our own.

Some renderings of how the mishkan might have looked.

“Let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell within them.” In Hebrew the word used here, mishkan, literally means a dwelling-place for God. Shekhinah (the divine Presence) dwells in the mishkan (sanctuary) – those words share a root.  In English, the word sanctuary can mean both the physical structure (as in our synagogue sanctuary) and also a sense of safety and acceptance, as in “I seek sanctuary.” A sanctuary is both a sacred space, and a safe space. 

When we create sanctuary, God dwells within us. I think the inverse is also true: if we take sanctuary away – if we make someone unsafe; if we refuse them shelter and care – we are pushing God away. It is a fundamental tenet of Judaism that we are all made in the divine image and likeness. When we create a space where it’s safe to be who we are, we are making space for God. When it is unsafe to be our whole selves, God’s presence is diminished. 

For some of us, right now, a lot of places are increasingly unsafe. Both Charlotte Clymer and Erin Reed have been writing about the last month’s anti-trans executive orders, passports being confiscated, erasure of resources, and legislation to remove protection from discrimination. Standing by as civil rights protections for our trans siblings are removed goes against the grain of Jewish values and, as my friend R. Mike Moskowitz teaches, also against Jewish law. 

If these things impact you, you already know all of this and I am preaching to the proverbial choir. If they don’t impact you, you may not have thought much about them, or may not be aware of them. It’s easy not to feel the slings and arrows that are aimed at someone else. I’m inviting those of us who aren’t impacted by this specific form of prejudice to empathize with those of us who are – and, fueled by that empathy, to act. That’s what Judaism asks of us. 

If we want our community to be a mishkan, a dwelling-place for God*, then it has to be a safe dwelling place for God’s children in the infinite range of human diversity, including diverse expressions of gender and sexuality. (*Whatever God means to each of us, God far above or deep within. As always, if the “G-word” doesn’t speak to you, find one that does. Justice, Meaning, Truth, Integrity: all of these ask us to strengthen our Jewish values in these times.)

If we want our community to be a mishkan, a dwelling-place for God*, then it has to be a safe dwelling place for God’s children no matter where they come from. The Reform movement has been actively engaging in this work for decades. As Jews, we have very clear instructions on how to treat every immigrant and refugee. We are commanded to “love the stranger for we were strangers in the land of Egypt.” Torah tells us this 36 times: that’s how important this mitzvah is.

This weekend has been designated as Refugee Shabbat by HIAS, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. HIAS builds its work on Torah’s teaching that we’re commanded to love the stranger because our people know the heart of the stranger. We’re commanded to care for the immigrant and the refugee because our people have been immigrants and refugees. This mitzvah links us back to the Exodus, which is the foundational story of who we are as a people.

In the last month, HIAS has joined the Reform, Conservative, and Reconstructionist movements in challenging the decision to allow ICE to enter schools and houses of worship. The places where we learn and pray should be safe spaces for everyone. In welcoming immigrants and refugees we live out the Jewish value of hakhnasat orhim, welcoming the stranger, as exemplified by the patriarch Abraham whose tent was open on all sides in welcome.

Rhetoric suggesting that immigrants are “invaders” harms not only immigrant communities but the fabric of our country as a whole. (That rhetoric was also behind the massacre at Tree of Life in Pittsburgh. That synagogue was attacked because they are welcoming to immigrants and refugees.) And the scarcity mentality that says we can’t afford to help others is profoundly un-Jewish. In our tradition even those who receive tzedakah are also obligated to give. 

Some renderings of the ark topped with two keruvim.

A few verses after the verse saying “let them build Me a sanctuary that I might dwell within them,” Torah describes a pair of golden keruvim – that’s a kind of winged angel. We’re instructed to make a pair of keruvim atop the ark, facing each other. Once they’re built, God’s voice will emerge from the space between them. I think this comes to remind us that we find God in relationship. We hear God when we listen into the relational space between us. 

Martin Buber taught that God is present when we relate to one another in an I/Thou way: treating the other human being as a sacred facet of God, just as we are. This is the opposite of dehumanization. When this is our way of being in the world, our obligations to each other are luminous and clear. Every immigrant and refugee and displaced person is a Thou, worthy of infinite care. So is every human being of every gender expression. So are all of us 

In the coming week, may we find God’s presence between and among and within us.

May we feel moved to give what we can, to do what we can, to create a home for God – which means creating safety for each other. 

And may we make space for God by working toward a community that’s a safe place for all.

I reached out to CBI members who are active in supporting immigrants locally, asking them for actions we could take in the new week, and here’s what they sent me:

• Volunteer with Jewish Family Service of Western MA, Berkshire Immigrant Center, or BASIC.
• Join Greylock Together's newly formed Immigrant Support action team which will be focusing on Northern Berkshire. 
• Ask local schools, town boards, and elected officials what they are doing to support immigrants. (There are three relevant bills currently going before the MA legislature; member Wendy Penner can share more information if you’re interested.) 
• If you have friends or neighbors who are immigrants, reach out to them. Tell them you are glad they are here, and let them know you want to find a way to affirm and support them, their loved ones, and the larger immigrant community.

And here are two suggested actions from HIAS:

• Tell Congress: VOTE NO on Mass Deportation and Detention! - HIAS.org 
• Tell Congress: We must resume critical humanitarian programs now! - HIAS.org 

You can find other action items at HIAS.org. 

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

This post is about grief and death and loss and children in Israel and Palestine. If these aren't subjects you can face right now, you might want to scroll on by and skip this one. Take care of yourself.

My heart keeps breaking for Kfir and Ariel, two Jewish children taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 at ages 9 months and 4 years. Their bodies were returned a few days ago, and forensics confirms that they died by their captors' hands. Everything in me rebels against the mental image of that horror.

I've spoken to so many Jews who feel alone in this. It's unfashionable to care about Jewish deaths, about Israeli deaths. Our hearts get stuck in our throats like a bone of grief every time we see a baby with ginger hair, and it feels like the rest of the world doesn't understand or notice or care.

That is an old groove, carved on our collective hearts by centuries of persecution and Jew-hatred, and it is easy to reinforce that groove now. I am trying to smooth away that groove because I don't want to live in it, but right now I feel like my skin is being sandpapered away, leaving my heart exposed.

There is no good way to make this transition, so I'll just say it bluntly: every Palestinian child killed during this war was someone's family, too. They shouldn't have gone through this either. The death of every child, the death of any child, is an entire world destroyed. Nothing about this is ok.

I know that someone will yell at me for mentioning the suffering of the wrong side. (No matter which side they think that is.) Someone will say, "It's not the same; how dare you mention their losses and ours in the same breath?" I am a mother with a tender heart. I feel all of it. I can't not grieve.

Ariel and Kfir should not have died. Ayman and Rimas, Palestinian children killed in the West Bank this week, should not have died. Children should be able to grow up into the whole of who they will become. Nobody's children should be at risk. This is not the way the world should be, for anyone. 

I don't think any of us should be yelling at each other about what or how we grieve. I wish we could give each other more grace. Living in grief has an impact on both body and soul, and we have all been living in grief for a long time now. Anyone who cares about anyone "over there" is living in grief.

I've been trying to write this post for days. Words usually come easily. Not now. I want a better world, a world of peace and safety for everyone: every Israeli and every Palestinian. I know that we are very, very far from the world as it should be. I can't find the right words. Only the cry of my heart.

המקום ינחם אתכם בתוך שאר אבלי ציון וירושלים

 إِنَّا لِلّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُون

Worth reading:

• On hostages and broken hearts, R. Danya Ruttenberg, Life Is A Sacred Text
• Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir Bibas Deserved A Better World, Lior Zaltzman, Kveller
• Navigating through grief and hope for Gaza, Salena Tramel, New Lines magazine, written during the first brief ceasefire

A couple of years ago I wrote a pair of Sukkot poems, Fragile and Rejoice. In the manuscript for my next book of poetry, they're a two-part poem titled "Shekhinah says." You could read them as written in God's voice to us, or as written in a human voice to a human beloved. (Or both at once.)

In recent months composer Adam Green (who is also the music director at my synagogue, Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires) wrote a musical setting of those two poems. And yesterday, at our belated Tu BiShvat concert, the two-movement piece was premiered by the CBI Choir. 

It's an incredible honor to have a composer write music to uplift my words. Melody and rhythm give them a whole new layer of meaning. I love that one piece feels wistful and soft, like watercolors or fog in the valleys -- and the other, written in 5/4, feels multilayered, surprising, like it ends too soon.

Every time we sing these poems, I'm hyperlinked to what I was feeling when I wrote them. I can call the exact feelings to mind and heart. And now the poems also have another layer, because I hear them in harmony! Adam also switched the order of the two poems, which (for me) subtly changes their arc.

When I wrote the poems, I was praying for a trajectory from fragility to rejoicing. I began with what's broken, and closed with the hope of wholeness. Adam's choice to put them in the other order makes an existential point: even within wholeness, we are fragile. But in that fragility, we are not alone.

The recording you'll hear, on the YouTube video embedded above, isn't a perfect studio recording. This was recorded live at our concert, which moved through the four seasons the way a Tu BiShvat seder does. (Here's the program as a google doc, in case you're curious what other pieces we sang.)

Making music with the CBI choir is one of my great joys. Singing in harmony connects me with God more immediately and wholly than anything else I know. I feel lucky that I get to sing with this ensemble, and that together we get to learn from and with Adam -- and savor the music he writes.

The sheet music is available for download at Adam's website, along with music for his setting of my Baruch She'amar poem, which we premiered last November. Let me know if you decide to sing either of these where you are -- words and music are both available under a Creative Commons license.

When my angled knife cuts through
the air smells sharp and clean.
Shreds of cabbage pile up.
Fennel, apple, scallion, celery.
Lemons, olive oil, kosher salt.

I learned this as "Shabbat salad."
Searching for its origins, I find
salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese,
and another variation (same name)
on a Palestinian cooking blog.

File this alongside salat katzutz
(or salata falahiyeh, same thing,
the chopped one with the cucumbers) --
one of those foods everyone wants
to claim as ours. Someone

I don't know yelled at me
recently on Facebook that there's
"no standing together with evil,"
which is what he said "all of them"
are. I hear this from both sides.

I wish I could set a banquet with
no chairs empty. This is medicine:
like the first shoots of spring
that I believe with a perfect faith
(though it tarry) will someday come.

I learned this as Shabbat salad. See Shabbat Salad at Sivan's Kitchen (video and recipe).

Salatet malfouf, which is Lebanese. See salatet malfouf. See also A Jew Cooks Palestinian: Cabbage Salad Edition.

Salat katzutz / salata falahiyeh. See Salata Falahiyeh (Palestinian or Farmers Salad). In the Jewish Diaspora it's often called Israeli salad; in Israel it's usually either called סָלָט קָצוּץ / salat katzutz (chopped salad) or סָלָט עֲרָבִי / salat aravi (Arab salad.) Its Arabic name is سلطة فلاحية  salata falahiyeh.

With no chairs empty. See The Empty Shabbat Table.

I believe with a perfect faith. "In the coming of the Messiah. Though he tarry, nevertheless do I believe that he will come." From the prayer Ani Ma'amin, adapted in turn from Rambam (d. 1204), arising out of his commentary on mishnah (c. 200 CE.)

For more background: 

• Anthony Bourdain Explains the Israel-Palestine Conflict Through Food, The Washington Post, 2013. Watch the episode of Parts Unknown here on YouTube, or read the transcript - though watching is more powerful. The second half of the episode in particular lands differently now than it did 12 years ago. 
• Here's why Palestinians object to the term 'Israeli food', Reem Kassis in The Washington Post, 2020. All About Israeli Food (a response to the previous piece), Ilana K. Levinsky in The Times of Israel, 2022.
• In a new war over eating Middle Eastern food, eating hummus and shawarma has become a political act, Andrew Silverstein in The Forward.  2023.

May all be fed, may all be nourished, may all be loved. 

When I sat down to read this week’s Torah portion, Yitro, this verse jumped out at me:

וְאַתָּה תֶחֱזֶה מִכּל־הָעָם אַנְשֵׁי־חַיִל יִרְאֵי אֱלֹהִים אַנְשֵׁי אֱמֶת שֹׂנְאֵי בָצַע

Seek out, from among all the people, capable individuals who fear God— trustworthy ones who spurn ill-gotten gain. (Ex. 18:21)

The speaker here is Yitro, father-in-law of Moshe. Moshe has been carrying the burden of all the people and all of their questions and needs. Yitro instructs him that he should appoint honorable, trustworthy people to serve as “chiefs” of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and let them judge the people and answer their queries, so Moshe won’t be quite so overloaded. 

Rashi (d. 1105) says anshe-hayil (“men of valor” or “of worth”) could mean wealthy people who won’t be swayed toward injustice by the promise of profit. But he immediately balances that by noting Torah’s instruction that these also be anshe emet, “people of truth,” whose word is honorable and respected, who would never engage in unethical business practices.

Ramban (d. 1270) says that an ish hayil means one who is wise, alert, and fair. He goes on to add, “‘people of truth, hating בָצַע’ means those who love the truth and hate oppression. When they see oppression and violence, they cannot tolerate them, their whole desire being only to ‘deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.’” (That’s Jeremiah 21:12.)

We learn a few things here about the kind of society Torah envisions. Power is not concentrated in one leader. Instead it’s broken up, with different people tending to different segments of the community, so that everyone has both recourse and accountability. Meanwhile, Ramban also says here that אַנְשֵׁי אֱמֶת שֹׂנְאֵי בָצַע are meant to “love truth and hate oppression.”

I don’t think the call to love truth is just for our leaders. I think this can be an instruction for all of us. We’re all called to love truth, to live truth. One way we live this commandment could be through teaching and learning our nation’s complex history, even when it’s a painful one, because only when we face who we’ve been can we grow into who we’re meant to become.

I think loving truth also has to mean recognizing our biases and making sure the stories we share with others are real. In a world of increasing disinformation and misinformation and deepfakes, it’s all too easy to lose sight of what is actually true. As Jews, we are called to be otherwise. Such a world needs us to be anshe emet, people of truth, more than ever.

The mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov (d. 1760) wrote that “anyone who makes a judgment of truth, the real truth, becomes a partner with God in the work of creation.” When we judge the world with truth, when we discern right from wrong and value what is true, we are partnering with the Holy Blessed One in a way that keeps the world turning.

I think Torah’s call to hate oppression likewise isn’t just an instruction for our government, though in my ideal world a government’s purpose is to lift people up, not push them down. But for me the instruction feels kind of detached. How do we live that? The opposite of oppression is liberation, so another way to put this is: seek freedom and human dignity for all.

Tu BiShvat is the first of three full moons in a row that serve as stepping-stones on a spiritual journey. The first one, this one, is when we feel the first stirrings of spiritual spring. Maybe we’ve felt frozen or paralyzed. Now is time for thaw. At Purim, as we read the a story of Esther hiding and revealing her Jewishness, we’ll look inside at who we are and what we stand for.

And a month after that is Pesach, festival of freedom. Not just freedom “from” – from oppression, from servitude, from injustice – but also freedom “to.” Freedom to be all that we are. Freedom to speak and think and dream. Freedom to dedicate ourselves to what matters, to build a world of compassion and justice not just for ourselves but for everyone. 

This week’s Torah portion also includes the Aseret ha-Dibrot (the 10 commandments.) You know: honor Shabbat, don’t murder, don’t steal, don’t bear false witness. Those are important. But Judaism has always emphasized that our covenant with God is all 613 mitzvot, not just those ten, which is part of why Jews resist calls to post “the big ten” on schoolroom walls. 

And honestly, this week, that earlier verse feels at least as important. I keep coming back to the Baal Shem Tov’s teaching that when we uphold truth, we partner with God. And I keep coming back to things I know to be true, like: Vaccines save lives. Gender-affirming care saves lives. Feeding the hungry saves lives. And there is no greater mitzvah than saving a life.

All of us can be be anshe-hayil, people of valor, people whose word is worth something. All of us can be anshe emet, people who stand up for what’s true, people who call things what they are. All of us can live in a way that supports liberation: not just freedom from, from oppression and want and fear, but freedom to. Freedom to speak, to pray, to dream, to be. 

Tu BiShvat marks the beginning of spiritual spring. Even though where we live is still covered with snow, the lengthening light is drawing forth the abundance of the harvest to come. Look inside and feel spiritual sap rising. Cultivate the inner rise of good intentions and hopes for better. We can harness the turning season to support our work toward a world redeemed. 

Things we can do in the coming week to build toward a better world:

• Put on your own oxygen mask. Here’s an essay I found helpful recently: Help With Despair Over the State of the World: 25 Tips from a Buddhist Monk.
• Uplift truth; be mindful on social media. Here is good advice from Gus Andrews, author of Keep Calm and Log On: More Ways to Spot Fake News and Break Out of Your Filter Bubble.
• Call congresspeople to express your priorities. 
• Give tzedakah (local ideas: the Berkshire Food Project, Louison House; national ideas: The Trevor Project, the American Cancer Society).
• Help build our synagogue community. Here is a contact form where you can reach out to join the Hesed / Caring committee, the Hevra Kadisha / volunteer burial society, the Cemetery committee, or the Tikkun Olam / Healing the World committee. The choir is also accepting new members as we begin preparing for our June 1 Shavuot concert.

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) Shared with extra gratitude to the Board of Bayit for studying the Baal Shem tov together this year.

Shabbat morning: I sat down in the sanctuary to tune my guitar. I like arriving early and playing a little bit of music for God. In summer I sing to the birds and the trees and the herbs in our pollinator garden. At this season I sing to the snow-covered landscape. And always to the silent Presence that fills every room when I open myself to notice. On this particular morning my fingers plucked their way to chords that fit a half-forgotten melody. It was insistent in me. It wanted to be remembered.

I sang the melody haltingly to myself. After a few minutes I realized it was Shnirele Perele, a Yiddish folk song I learned 25 years ago from Rabbi Arthur Waskow. I remember tears in his eyes and his voice as he sang it. He was so suffused by fervor for the hope of a better world. He is in his 90s now, still writing contemporary midrash, still working toward a world redeemed that he will surely not see. Then again, these days I don't imagine I will live to see it either. It was easier to feel hopeful then. 

The Yiddish lyrics were written down a mere 125 years ago. They promise that Moshiach will come this very year; that our redemption is at hand. What a fervent prayer that must've been in 1901, after the pogroms that characterized Jewish life in Russia and elsewhere in the late 1800s. (And after the centuries of persecution that preceded those.) Can we even imagine a world without injustice or suffering or hate, a world where we can be who we are as Jews without fear? 

When the first daveners arrived, I taught it to them. We used it as the melody for Modah Ani, our morning gratitude prayer, and for Adon Olam. My subconscious brought it back to me, I decided, as a reminder to lean into the messianic hope inherent in Shabbat. As broken as our world has been over the last week, Shabbes comes to remind us that we can live into the hope for better. Is there any more quintessentially Jewish act than that? Amidst the world's shards, we live in hope.

Shnirele Perele performed by the Klezmatics in Berlin, 2007

Na'aleh L'artzeinu: a simple melody with an intricate story, the musical history of this melody in both Hebrew and Yiddish modalities

Lyrics in Yiddish, English, and transliteration

Coming Soon, a daily April poem inspired by this Yiddish folksong, 2013

This week’s Torah portion contains one of the most visually beautiful passages in Torah. Some compare this calligraphy to brickwork, like the bricks Torah describes our ancient ancestors making for Pharaoh. Others compare it to waves, like the sea we crossed en route to freedom.

This is the Song at the Sea, which linguistic scholars tell us is one of the oldest passages in Torah. It’s the origin of the words of “Mi Chamocha,” the song of liberation which we sing at every service: “Who is like You among the gods, Adonai? Who is like you, wondrous and holy?” 

These are the words our ancestors sang upon crossing the sea and escaping Pharaoh. For our mystics, this story is an example of deep inner faith. After all, we walked into the sea not knowing if it would part (and many midrashim suggest that it didn’t part until the last minute.)

In every era we find ourselves walking into the sea hoping it will part. Sometimes this is individual. We each cross challenging seas in our personal lives: a diagnosis, a job loss, a grief. And sometimes it is communal, as in our ancestral story where we all seek safety together.

Torah teaches that a mixed multitude left Egypt. Just so in our day: we are not seeking freedom alone. On the contrary, I believe that the only way to freedom is together. The only way to a better world is together. The only way to a world of greater compassion and justice is together. 

This week our world has felt very distant from compassion and justice. I’ve felt crushed about the shuttering of USAID, which had been providing AIDS medication across Africa, defusing landmines in southeast Asia, and caring for malnourished babies and toddlers in Sudan. 

Some of you may know that my ex-husband Ethan lived in Ghana. I was blessed to travel there with him twice in his years running Geekcorps (“like the Peace Corps, for geeks.”) I only spent a few weeks in Ghana, but it was enough to give me a lifelong feeling of connection.

The people I met in Ghana were amazing: musicians, teachers, traders, digital entrepreneurs and more. And every Western geek I met who spent time in the developing world through Geekcorps came away spiritually transformed (though that’s my term, not theirs.)

The thing is, people everywhere are amazing. And that includes people in every place where USAID worked, all over the world. This funding freeze is catastrophic. Even a 3-month pause will result in 136,000 babies born with HIV. (And HIV is only one of the organization’s concerns.)

I want to note that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a global health program implemented by USAID in more than 50 countries, was founded 20 years ago by Republican President George W. Bush. I do not see this as a partisan issue. I see it as a moral issue.

The United States spends less than 1% of our budget on foreign aid. For us as a nation it is a minuscule amount. And for many, that tiny amount of money was the difference between famine and food, between having mosquito nets for malaria or retrovirals for HIV and not having them.

I’m ashamed that our country is withdrawing humanitarian aid from people who need it – especially when we can so easily afford to provide it. I asked our reps in Congress to do something, but I don’t know if they can. And then I donated to the Berkshire Food Project.

The best answer I know to the feeling that we are squeezed tight in the narrow straits of injustice is to do something to help someone else. Join our Hesed (Caring) committee and bring a meal to someone who’s sick. Join the hevra kadisha, the group that prepares us for burial.

Or join up with a secular group that is working toward or supporting a cause you believe in. Maybe it’s supporting teachers in an era of book bans. Maybe it’s supporting immigrants and refugees. Maybe it’s supporting vaccination access to help keep our communities healthy. 

I know this may sound pollyanna. It is a drop in the bucket compared with everything that needs repair. But I believe it is how repair happens: each of us doing what we can to help others. Tikkun olam – “repairing the world” – is a Jewish imperative. It is our obligation as Jews.

Our job is to bring repair, and as CNN notes, right now some people are doing everything they can to break things. If you’re feeling a disjunction around that, you are not alone. Of course, many of us feel deeply connected with one of the places in the world that may feel most broken.

Many of you reached out to me in dismay this week over the suggestion that the United States should “own” Gaza and relocate its population. Many American Jewish groups, including the Reform movement, oppose this as ethnic cleansing and not an expression of our Jewish values. 

I’ve also heard a lot of fear that even this suggestion of a plan may jeopardize the ceasefire and put our beloveds at risk. For my part, I still hold out hope for organizations like Women Wage Peace, Standing Together, and Women of the Sun, who are working toward justice and peace.

Whatever our views on Israel and Gaza, I invite all of us to Drawing Through Conflict, a March 9th program organized by our Israel / Palestine Learning Committee, where we will use art to explore our personal relationships with the peoples and places of the middle east. 

I am really excited about this program, and I really hope you will all come. You don’t need to be an artist to participate. No one’s going to try to convince anyone of anything. All of our perspectives are welcome. And we can learn more about each other, with care and curiosity. 

I believe we owe it to each other to support each other as Jews even when we disagree. I also believe we owe it to our secular community to find ways to support those who are vulnerable, even when that means partnering with others with whom we might not agree on everything.

When Torah says a mixed multitude left Mitzrayim with us, that means it wasn’t just us. The Exodus was for everyone who was seeking freedom, Jews and Egyptians alike. Maybe that was hard for our ancestors. But we did it anyway, because freedom is for everyone, not just for us.

Literally Mitzrayim means Egypt. But in a bigger-picture sense, mitzrayim is wherever we experience being min ha-meitzar, “in narrow straits.” We are in mitzrayim now. The only way to freedom is together, even when we differ.  It’s our job to help each other cross the sea. 

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

Everything is interconnected. I take this as an article of faith. It is a first principle, like gravity. 

In a human body, everything is connected. I know that sometimes pain over here is actually caused by something wrong over there, because the systems of our bodies are not wholly discrete. Among human beings, everything is connected: no one is an island. And any human being with empathy and compassion feels-with others, which means that what happens to you can have an emotional impact on me and vice versa.

On our precious planet, everything is connected. Wasn’t that the world-changing insight of seeing our planet from space for the first time? We realized that no matter what international boundaries we may draw, what happens here can impact over there. Pollution knows no borders, and pandemic knows no borders. Thankfully hope, care, and connection don’t need to stop at borders either. 

Interconnection is a spiritual truth. As Rabbi Arthur Waskow has taught for decades now, we breathe out what the trees breathe in, and the trees breathe out what we breathe in. In this way we are “interbreathing.” (In the words of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh of blessed memory, we inter-are.) Maybe that’s what our sages meant when they named God as Nishmat Kol Hai, the breath of all life. “God,” that shorthand word encompassing all of our highest ideals of the holy, can be found in the sanctity of the planet's shared breathing in which we keep each other alive.

And yet.

A Gulf researcher at a federal agency, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that her colleagues began removing, pre-emptively before Trump’s inauguration, language from their files that might rile future administrators. Anything related to the climate crisis, of course, but also, she said, any reports that used the concept “One Health” – a term adopted by federal scientists and doctors that means approaching a problem holistically by examining the “interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment”. Seeing the big picture is now verboten. [Source, The Guardian - emphasis mine]

Now apparently reference to the interconnectedness of all things is being edited out of scientific papers. As though fundamental truth could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

In recent days, some on the Christian right have named empathy a sin. That’s as baffling to me as saying that we shouldn’t consider the big picture. I believe that empathy is a moral and spiritual imperative. We have to open our hearts to the feelings, experiences, and needs of others. This is a core human faculty. Spiritual life calls us to be compassionate. When I see someone who is hurting, I can imagine what it would feel like to be in their shoes. And, ideally, that imagining moves me to engage in the ethical mitzvot that Torah describes: feeding the hungry, caring for the powerless, loving the stranger. 

Doing right by others can take so many different forms. On a global scale, caring for others might look like providing AIDS medication across Africa, defusing landmines in southeast Asia, and caring for malnourished babies and toddlers in Sudan. Actions like these bring moral principles to life. They’re the right thing to do. Perhaps you’ve already guessed that the actions I just listed are all part of the work of USAID, which seems this week to have been frozen by the same people who deny the interconnectedness of all things. (Evidently they seek to shut it down altogether.)

Maybe you saw the image that was circulating this week of janitorial staff at Quantico, where the FBI is headquartered. It shows staff following instructions to paint over a mural that until last week featured the words “FAIRNESS,” “LEADERSHIP,” “INTEGRITY,” “COMPASSION” and “DIVERSITY.” [image source, NYT | article source, WaPo]

The mural isn’t the point, of course. The words themselves aren’t even the point. I just can’t wrap my mind around a worldview in which one would try to erase these qualities or would regard them as a negative. Fairness, leadership, integrity, and compassion are among my guiding lights; I wouldn't want to be otherwise!

And diversity is core to the splendor of creation. Torah teaches that humanity is created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, which means our diversity is a reflection of the Divine. Our diversity is holy. 

What upside-down and backwards world is this, in which empathy, integrity, and compassion are disparaged and the fundamental interconnection of all things is denied?

It can be difficult to cultivate hope in the face of gratuitous cruelty like the decision to withdraw humanitarian aid from people in need. I remind myself, again and again, that hope is not a feeling: it is an action. Hope is a discipline (thank you Mariame Kaba.)

I sustain hope by holding on to what I believe. And I believe that our world is interconnected. Our hearts and souls are interconnected. Empathy and compassion are good things. Human beings have a responsibility to each other. Integrity and fairness are among the highest of human ideals and we should aim for them always. All of these are part of the big picture of ethical life in our world, and none of them will ever stop being true.

There's much in the world that you and I can't control. (Though we can contact our congresspeople to express our views -- here's a useful starting point.) But we can all aim to follow the instruction of our sages in Pirkei Avot 2:5: "in a place where there are no mensches, be a mensch." In a time when a lot of people seem to be making (or overlooking) unethical choices, we can choose otherwise.