הַחֹ֧דֶשׁ הַזֶּ֛ה לָכֶ֖ם רֹ֣אשׁ חֳדָשִׁ֑ים רִאשׁ֥וֹן הוּא֙ לָכֶ֔ם לְחדְשֵׁ֖י הַשָּׁנָֽה׃

This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. (Ex. 12:2)

This is the beginning of the special Torah reading assigned to this Shabbat. The new month of Nissan begins on Sunday at sundown – that’s the month containing Passover, and it’s the first month of the year. Some of us might be thinking: Rosh Hashanah is in the fall, so how is the first month of the year now?! The short version is, we have more than one new year. Actually we have four. The year begins again in the fall; the months begin again in the spring.

Here in the northern hemisphere, spring is a time for new beginnings. And new beginnings aren’t necessarily easy. I think of Louise Glück’s poem The Wild Iris, the way she depicts the new life of a bulb that has pushed its way out of the soil: “the stiff earth / bending a little,” “I tell you I could speak again.” Every bulb that winters over experiences a kind of Exodus from constriction. What a powerful metaphor for us as we prepare ourselves to go free.

Take a lamb, says Torah, and paint its blood on the doorposts. Ibn Ezra (d. 1167) says that was a onetime thing, just for the generation of the Exodus. What’s not onetime is the instruction to feast with bitter herbs and unleavened bread: hurriedly, with staff in hand and sandals on our feet. This is “a Pesach offering to YHVH,” a “festival to YHVH throughout the ages” (Ex. 12:12,14) – the origins of the ritual feast of retelling we know as the Passover seder. 

Intriguingly, Rashi (d. 1105) teaches that the lamb’s blood was meant to be painted on the inside of the doorposts. Abarbanel (d. 1508) agrees: the blood on the doorposts was placed on the inside. Its purpose wasn’t to show something to others, but to remind us of something. Maybe that it’s part of our identity to eat our feast of liberation with sandals on our feet, ready to go. Pesach wasn’t “just” about “them / then” – it is also always about us, here and now.

As we read in the haggadah: בְּכָל-דּוֹר וָדוֹר חַיָּב אָדָם לִרְאוֹת אֶת-עַצְמוֹ כְּאִלּוּ הוּא יָצָא מִמִּצְרַיִם /  “in every generation one must see oneself as if one had personally gone forth from Mitzrayim.” So what does it mean to see ourselves into this story? One answer is to map it to our personal narratives of breaking forth from stuck places or oppression. Another is to take responsibility for helping others find their way out of painful and unjust circumstance. I think we need both.

Rabbi Toba Spitzer points out that marking our doors is our first collective act toward liberation:

This is the challenge that our ancestors leave for us. We may no longer be slaves, but the world is still far from redeemed, and these questions still echo for us: What are the steps that we need to take on our own journey of liberation? How do we mark ourselves as both oppressed and free? What is the risk that we each are willing to take, to signal the beginning of new possibilities? 

The world is still far from redeemed: that is always true, and this year I know many of us are feeling it especially keenly. Repairing what’s broken in our world is communal work. Just as the building of the Mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God that our ancestors built in the wilderness) was collective work. And the Exodus from Mitzrayim, the Narrow Place, is always a collective journey. It’s never just about personal transformation; it’s also about community.

Judaism is a communitarian tradition. The highest ideals of Judaism inhere not in any individual practice, but in what we do together: what we do with and for each other, and with and for those who are more vulnerable than we. We “do Jewish” best when we do Jewish together. And that includes seder. As a generous reading of the parable of the four children (and the potential wisdom we can find in each) reminds us, the seder table is big enough to hold our differences. 

Anais Nin writes, “The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Every year, Pesach and the unfolding spring invite us to embrace the risk that comes with opening. We open our hearts (internal) which then impels us to take action (external) – to love the stranger, to invite all who are hungry to come and eat, to pursue liberation for all who are bound. The internal is necessary, but not sufficient.

Were our people ever slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt? The historical record suggests probably not. But for me that’s beside the point. What matters is that this is the story we’ve been telling about ourselves for well over two thousand years. As Torah reminds us over and over, we know the heart of the stranger because we were strangers in Mitzrayim. And because we know the heart of the stranger, we have an ethical obligation to love the stranger and to help them.

Louise Glück writes, “whatever / returns from oblivion returns / to find a voice.” This year, that speaks to me as a deep truth about recovering from depression, or grief, or any kind of tough time that might feel deadening. I know many of us have felt that, of late. The wild iris’ voice is expressed in its glorious riot of colors. It’s up to us how we express our voice, individual and collective. I believe deeply that the world needs us to use our voice to speak for what’s right.

Earlier this week, masked ICE agents in our own state detained a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk and whisked her off to Louisiana against judicial orders. She was arrested for engaging in “activities in support of Hamas.” As many outlets have reported (from the Guardian to Vanity Fair), the apparent “evidence” of this is that she co-authored an op-ed last year that called on the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. 

As a Jewish community, we will have all kinds of views on that op-ed. Some of us are appalled by it. Some of us agree with it. Both of those are legitimate Jewish opinions, and I hope we can explore them together with curiosity and kindness, maybe around the seder table!  I read the op-ed, twice, and it is lightyears away from “supporting Hamas.” And the proposition that someone can be imprisoned for writing an op-ed is profoundly chilling. 

Pirkei Avot teaches that we must give others the benefit of the doubt. I believe Jewish values ask us to do this for Rumeysa Ozturk, which means at minimum insisting on due process and compassion for her -- and for everyone. My question is: are there places where our reluctance to give the benefit of the doubt becomes a kind of hametz, the pride and puffery of stale stories or unhelpful ego, which we would do well to discard before Pesah?

I spoke recently with one of you who is struggling to figure out how to approach Passover this year given everything unfolding around us. Pesach is about freedom, they noted, but this year many of us don’t feel particularly free… or safe. I told them I draw strength from knowing we aren’t the first generation of Jews to celebrate Pesach in a time of constriction or fear. All we can do is turn to our texts and traditions, and remember that we’re not alone. 

The mitzvah most-often repeated in Torah is to love the stranger, precisely because we know what it’s like to be one. This is a deep spiritual truth. Because we’ve known tight places, we have an ethical obligation to free the bound. So as Nissan begins, let’s be like our ancestors. Let’s write a note on the inside of our doorposts about who we intend to be. Let’s take the risk of blooming – and may our flowering lead to the fruits of compassion and justice for all. 

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.)

Doikayt is a Yiddish word
central to Buddhist teaching:
"right here, right now."

Wait, that's wrong.
The definition said Bundist.
Labor unions, not zazen --

build better wherever we are.
Justice is the promised land
we may never reach.

But the mystics are right too.
When we're fully here, God
is in this place.

When I'm paying
continuous partial attention
to three different news apps

or biting back responses
to someone wrong on Facebook
I'm not really here.

But last night my son
danced with his double bass
and the headlines all fell away.

At shul the other night, someone mentioned doikayt, Yiddish for "hereness." I knew the word, but wanted to know more about its origins, so I resolved to look it up when I got home. I did, and promptly misread the first line of the definition. That's what sparked this poem. 

I love the idea of Buddhist doikayt, though.

For more on doikayt, and its origins in Yiddishist / diasporist labor circles, see Jewish Word | Doikayt: the Jewish Left is Here. For a more personal take, try this short instagram post from poet Aurora Levins Morales, including gorgeous art by Wendy Elisheva Somerson created for Morales' book Rimonim. 

I also love these words from poet Melanie Kaye / Kantrowitz, "Doikayt means Jews enter coalitions wherever we are, across lines that might divide us, to work together for universal equality and justice."

That dovetails with something I've been thinking (and writing) about a lot lately: how do we build coalitions toward justice across lines that might divide us when we are so divided as a community around Israel / Palestine? 

(And, relatedly: when we are turned against each other, who benefits? When we are busy with anger at one another, what opportunities for tikkun do we miss?)

Collaborating with members of Bayit's liturgical arts working group has become an integral part of my spiritual practice in recent years. As we brainstorm, create, workshop, revise, and polish new art and liturgy together, I feel more grounded in the now and also more ready for whatever is coming.

We just released a new collaborative collection for Pesach, and it moves me deeply. There's a lot of anxiety and grief here, which speaks from my heart (from all of our hearts.) There's also hope, to which I am clinging as fiercely as I know how. Maybe that's something you need this year too.

Here's one of the pieces I wrote for the offering:

(I'll also enclose it below in plaintext for those who need it in that format -- I know the screencap of the slide isn't readable to everyone.)

You can find the whole collaboration here: From the Depths -- available, as always, both as a downloadable PDF and as slides suitable for screenshare. I hope something here speaks to you in a way that will enliven your seders this year.

Multitude

We are a mixed multitude: some frozen in trauma,

some burning with grief. Each of us carries

at least one image of a child's unjust death

seared into our hearts. How do we walk free?

Tell me the story again of how God said,

"My children are drowning and you sing praises?!"

Every human being is a child of God,

even the ones on the other side.

This year nobody's cup of joy is full.  

Our souls feel as fragile as matzah.

Even if we and our children and our children's children

aren't certain what freedom would feel like, 

maybe we can agree that this state of brokenness

isn't it. I want to believe we can get there from here.

Maybe the only way is as a mixed multitude

holding hope for each other until we can feel it again.

R. Rachel Barenblat

There is no problem, I like to sleep.
When I'm sleeping, it's just dreams:

too many suitcases to carry, or
realizing I packed the wrong clothes

and nothing in this closet fits.
(This airport is too big, I can't find

the right gate, I forgot to turn in
the rental car...) The hum of anxiety

is constant, like a hybrid car singing
its quiet chord, but I know exactly

what I'm nervous about. Small potatoes.
Awake, the shadows are darker.

I know I can't control whether or not
this year's Haman is stoppable.

An image from The Blues Brothers. 

Two news stories are sitting in my consciousness side by side. One is Columbia University losing federal funding and the related plan to deport a Palestinian grad student activist who had a green card. As a Jew, I am deeply troubled by the chilling effects of removing funding from universities that allow certain kinds of protests. I'm even more appalled by the threat of deportation for one's political views. And doing that in our name, as though it made Jews safer? News flash: it does not.

The other story is about the rabbi who was disinvited from speaking at an anti-Nazi rally. (See also Cincinnati rabbi disinvited from rally against neo-Nazis over his support for Israel.) Rabbi Ari Jun believes "that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination in some portion of their ancestral homeland." He also believes that Palestinians have that same right to self-determination; opposes settlements, the war in Gaza, and Netanyahu; and dreams of a two-state solution. 

As Rabbi Jun notes, his views are pretty mainstream in liberal Jewish communities, but the organizers of this rally decided he's not welcome. Here's a(nother) progressive organization deciding that a Jew who supports both Israelis and Palestinians is beyond the pale. This kind of thinking is all too common (see Adriana Leigh's I Will Not Hide My Judaism in Progressive Spaces). It makes me sad, it drives a wedge between allies, and it feels deeply counter to what I think the world most needs.

Here's the real kicker, in Rabbi Jun's words:

The topic on which I planned to speak was the importance of building broad, intersectional efforts to fight against the threats of Nazism and white supremacy, despite the differences that might otherwise exist in the groups invited to such coalitions.

The kind of coalitions I am speaking of aren't always comfortable for everyone around the table, but they work. You can’t fight back against existential threats by limiting the number of people who join you. You fight back, successfully, by living within the discomfort of finding allies for specific purposes, even if you know you do not agree with them on all things.

This feels so important to me in this moment of what the Guardian calls the crisis of Trump’s assault on the rule of law. This is an unprecedented time. Things are bad, and I fear they will get worse, for so many communities: for Jews, for Palestinians, for queer people, for people of color, for immigrants and refugees. We need coalition-building. We need to be able to stand together and support each other, even when we don't agree on everything, even when standing together is uncomfortable.

We need to be able to stand together against Nazis. I don't particularly want to stand with those who think either Israelis or Palestinians should be exiled from the land -- I think that's unrealistic, it's "unserious thinking," and it's the opposite of helpful. But in order to push back against Nazis I would gladly link arms with people who hold views I find disagreeable, because the threat of Nazism is too great. I'm disheartened that the organizers of this rally don't seem to share that principle. 

And we need to support the constitutional right to peacefully assemble and protest, even if those protests make us uncomfortable. I am uncomfortable with "From the river to the sea" and "we don't want no two states." But if someone can be deported for political views, then we're back to McCarthyism. There's a reason the ACLU stood up for the rights of Nazis to march in Skokie. No matter how objectionable some views might be, Jews should stand for the right to express them.

Neither of these is the way to combat actual antisemitism or support Jews in flourishing. 

*

Here's the good news I can offer today. On Sunday, a dozen people sat around a table at my synagogue and participated in an autobiographical comics workshop called Drawing Through Conflict, co-led by local Jewish comics artist Anna Moriarty Lev and art therapist Kaye Shaddock. It was part of an ongoing series of opportunities and events organized by a small group of congregants who believe in the importance of learning together about the Middle East even when we might deeply disagree. 

Around that table we did not all share the same views about, or experiences of, Israel and Palestine. Over the course of two hours, as drawing prompts took us deeper, we allowed ourselves to be vulnerable with each other. We wrote and drew and laughed and cried and trusted each other with our stories. Does this "solve" anything in the Middle East? Of course not. But does it have the capacity to impact our hearts, our connections, and our local community? Absolutely. And I believe that matters. 

I recently started rereading High on the Hog: A Culinary Journey from Africa to America by Jessica Harris, which launched a Netflix series of the same name (about which I wrote a few years ago). Once I started rereading it, I remembered there's a second season of the show. In this moment when so many on the right are yelling about how much they hate DEI, I made a conscious choice to turn away from that discourse and to learn more about the roots of Black food and culture in this country.

In the first episode of the second season, "Food for the Journey," Serigne Mbaye serves a plate of akara, black-eyed-pea fritters with a palm oil sauce. He tells the story of visiting Gorée Island (one of the grief-soaked places on African soil from which the slavers set sail.) As slaves were fattened for the treacherous journey to come, they were fed familiar black eyed peas and palm oil. He explains to the hosts of the show that the akara he serves now are a way of honoring that painful history. 

I think of the black-eyed pea fritter recipe I learned from Black Gay Jewish chef Michael Twitty, also a shout-out to the ancestors who brought these ingredients with them across the sea. (I remember the black-eyed pea fritters I ate in Ghana in 1999 outside a very long church service held in half a dozen tribal languages in addition to English.) And I think: refusing to teach or to honor the strength, perseverance, and wisdom of the African American community is so short-sighted and sad.

In another poignant scene, a gentleman named Elvin Shields talks about what it was like to be a sharecropper in the 1940s and 50s. Picking cotton. Growing what food they could. Having to rent equipment from the landowner in order to do their contractually-obligated labor. Having to buy food on credit from the plantation store, and then pay up when the cotton was sold. (Makes me think of today's prison laborers.) And then mechanization came, and they were told on no notice to leave.

All of this was decades after slavery was over. And yet the constricted circumstances, the limited foodstuffs made available at the plantation store, even eventually forced migration -- all of it was still there... right up until the beginning of what we now call the Civil Rights era. (And now it feels like we're fighting again for the same civil rights and human dignity I thought my forebears had secured.) It is both depressing and uplifting to realize how today's struggles dovetail with what came before.

I was also moved by Mr. Benjamin Gaines, Sr. (among the last of the Pullman porters), age 99. He tells a story about an encounter with a white patron who kicked him in the ass, and about how some of the white patrons called all of them "George" (as in George Pullman.) It was an erasure of their identity: a scant step above calling them "boy" (or worse.) He also reminisces about the food the Black chefs made for the staff, and how they had a magic touch that made it feel like home.

The history of human chattel slavery and the long, deep-rooted prejudices that followed makes me so angry and sad. Some elements remind me of the Jewish history that's in my bones and the prejudices we've experienced. I guess it makes sense that I try to understand racism through the lens of antisemitism, which is the hateful bigotry I know best. And -- I also want to honor the celebratory parts of this history. There is triumph here, and artistry, and honor, and beauty. That feels important.

I want to learn more of the history of how (many) white Americans treated African Americans -- and also how Black Americans thrived even amidst hardship, in neighborhoods planted on rocky or even poisoned soil. (Including in Texas.) As a Jewish American I want to come to grips with all of this. Not in a self-flagellating way, but in a way that takes responsibility for my nation's history and my own choices while also lifting up and learning from the beauty of African American wisdom and survival. 

I know a lot of people who have been struggling with feeling hopeless over the last month or so. This book and show are a good reminder that our forebears in the struggle toward justice faced profound difficulties and found a way to survive and even thrive. That might be some of the wisdom we most need right now. At least, it might be some of the wisdom that I most need right now. And I imagine I'm not alone. Anyway: I'm finding some spiritual uplift in watching High on the Hog.

Talmud says, מִשֶּׁנִּכְנַס אֲדָר מַרְבִּין בְּשִׂמְחָה -- "When Adar enters, joy increases." (Ta'anit 21a) Or maybe, "When Adar arrives, we increase our joy."

This may be easier said than done.

In recent years I've struggled with the injunction to rejoice during Adar. My mother died six years ago during Adar I. My father died three years ago during Adar II. (This year isn't a leap year, so we just have one Adar, which means their two yahrzeits are in even closer proximity.) "When Adar enters, joy increases" --? The last few years it's been more like, when Adar enters, stock up on yahrzeit candles.

I'm no longer actively grieving my parents' absence. The loss has become familiar, its edges softening over time. But there are less-personal, more-global reasons to feel like "joy increases" might be facile and tone-deaf. Purim's tale of an evil advisor intent on destroying the Jews for Mordechai's refusal to compromise his values lands differently in a time when many of us feel increasingly unsafe. 

For those of us who are trans or gender-nonconforming, for those of us who work as public servants, for those of us whose lives are connected with any of the many agencies that have already been slashed to ribbons, for those of us worrying about Ukraine, for those of us who are anxious about the apparent dismantling of the American government, this does not feel like a time for rejoicing.

And yet.

"Talmud doesn’t say to be joyful in Adar only in good years, because then we probably would never do it." So teaches R. Irwin Keller in his recent post Telling Purim. Talmud says, this is the time of year to grow in joy, period. Because our souls need it. Because we need to remember that redemption is possible. Because we need to learn to find hope even in a story where God's name doesn't appear.

Because February felt endless -- a terrible month of watching diversity programs, international aid, cancer research, staffing at national parks, Medicare and Medicaid, the Department of Education, and so much more decimated by a guy brandishing a chainsaw and boasting about what he's demolishing -- and it is time to turn away from marinating in grief and claim some agency to lift up our hearts.

Because Purim leads us toward Pesach, as one full moon leads to the next. And Pesach is our annual reminder that freedom from constriction is possible even if we can't begin to imagine how we'll get from here to there. I cannot begin to imagine how we'll get from here to there. But at Pesach as a people we take the spiritual leap into the unknown, and Adar is our spiritual onramp to that journey.

Maybe part of the way we reach freedom lies in Purim's reminder that like Esther, we have to speak out for the freedom and safety of others. Like Mordechai, we have to stand up for what's right, and refuse to bow to those who claim power unjustly. Our freedom and safety are always inextricably bound up with each others'... and this is far from the first time we've faced injustice as a people.

There can be joy in actively embracing our values. There can be joy in standing up for justice, and for the needs of those who are vulnerable, and for what we know is right. It is a defiant kind of joy. It is joy as an act of resistance. Joy that reminds us that no one can take away our humanity, our values, our capacity to care for each other. This is a kind of joy that can coexist with anger and sorrow.

"When Adar enters, joy increases." I'll admit that feels more than a little bit implausible this year. But I remind myself that this isn't the first time in Jewish history that we have struggled to access joy in the face of injustice: not even close. Claiming the capacity for joy and hope even in terrible times is one of our tradition's spiritual tools for surviving those times with our hearts and souls intact.