This week’s parsha, Korah, begins with a rebellion. The titular Korah gathers 250 of his friends and they “rise up against” Moshe and Aaron, accusing them of “raising themselves above God’s congregation.” In response, Moshe falls on his face: he lowers himself to the ground, a gesture of humility. The rebels rise up against; Moshe does the opposite, bending to the earth.

Things do not go well for the rebels. In the morning they take up their fire pans, and God, incensed, threatens to destroy the whole community. Moshe and Aaron fall on their faces again, pleading with God for mercy. In the end, the earth opens and swallows up Korah and his band. God instructs Moshe to hammer the fire pans used by the rebels into plating for the altar. 

Three things stand out for me. First: our story begins with Korah and his followers falsely accusing Moshe and Aaron of seeing themselves as better than everyone else. How differently this story could have gone if Korah had come to Moshe and Aaron – not “assembling against” them, but in a spirit of curiosity, asking for a conversation instead of making assumptions.

Second: Moshe’s response is to fall on his face, the way we do on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur when we engage in prostration practice during the Great Aleinu. Every year when I let myself sink to the floor it feels like a giant spiritual exhale, like relaxing into the embrace of the earth. What a powerful choice: before he responds, Moshe “lets go and lets God.” 

And third: after the catastrophe, God tells Moshe to repurpose the fire pans and turn them into part of the altar. I see deep wisdom in this act of spiritual recycling. It reminds me of one of my favorite short poems by Yehuda Amichai z”l: 

Earlier this week I was reading updates from friends running to their bomb shelters – and thinking with anxiety and dread of those who don’t have bomb shelters and cannot hide from bombardment: in the Negev, in Gaza, in Tehran. 

“The people of Israel, Gaza, and Iran are human beings. No one deserves to live under constant rocket, missile, and drone fire.” These are words from Standing Together / עומדים ביחד / نقف معًا that landed deeply in my heart. “This is not a football game. This is real life, and entire worlds are being shattered day after day.” How much more can our hearts take? And what can we do?

Standing Together is raising funds to bring bomb shelters to underserved Bedouin communities in the south of Israel. NATAL provides trauma support in Israel. The PCRF feeds and supports children in Gaza, and the Sameer Project provides food, shelter, and medical aid. And United4Iran has a fund for survivors of the Iran-Israel war, and their work is well-respected.

Giving tzedakah is meaningful, and in Jewish tradition all are commanded to give tzedakah, even we who receive tzedakah ourselves. But I know what I can afford to donate barely touches the ocean of need. Primarily what I feel able to do is internal. I pray for peace. I extend support to the human beings I know, and I try to extend compassion to the ones I don’t know. 

I want to emulate the humility I see in Moshe. I know I don’t have the answers. I’m not in charge of the world, and that’s probably a good thing! I think falling on our faces is a great spiritual practice, especially in times of overwhelm – which is most of the time, these days. It’s a reminder that we’re not in charge. A practice of yielding, acknowledging what we don’t control.

And I want to honor God’s instruction to hammer the instruments of idolatry into tools to serve the sacred. Granted, Korah and his followers were making sacrifices to YHVH, so was it idolatry? I think it was – because I think they were putting themselves on a pedestal. I think their accusation that Moshe was elevating himself said more about them than about him.

I keep coming back to the Amichai poem about turning the swords not only into plowshares but into musical instruments, which I have on a poster on the wall in my office. As difficult as it might be to hammer an instrument of war into an instrument of music, I think it might be more difficult to hammer and reshape the human heart into one that truly beats for justice and for peace. 

And still I believe that it is possible to transform the heart, to transform ourselves. It takes a lot of work. Character work, spiritual work, cultivating middot (inner qualities) that help us live our values in the world. But here’s what I know as this week draws to its close: we can’t control the world in which we live. We can only control our own choices and who we become.

Later this summer, during the seven weeks before the Days of Awe, I’ll be co-teaching a class with my friend R. David Markus on seven core teachings / spiritual practices / qualities to cultivate. I think it’s the best response I have to a world that may feel broken and chaotic and unfair: yielding to what we can’t control, and embracing our agency to be the best we can 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.)

My favorite thing to do on Friday mornings, that long-ago summer in Jerusalem when I was in rabbinical school, was to walk the 25 minutes to Machane Yehuda market. It was especially busy on Friday mornings, because everyone in west Jerusalem was preparing for Shabbes.

We had a little wheeled basket to carry food home. I shopped at the supermarket also; there was one right around the block. But the shuk was so much better. The sounds and the scents. A hubbub of languages around me. Gorgeous produce. The air redolent with spices and coffee and zaatar.

The first time I went I worried that I stood out in my capris and tank top and kippah, but no one seemed to mind. I barely knew how to cook, in those days, so my housemates and I dined on a lot of fish and vegetables: fresh things that were hard to mess up.

Before coming home I always stopped at one particular bakery for burekas, triangular pastries filled with potatoes or mushrooms or cheese and topped with sesame seeds. They are a Sephardic Jewish cousin to Turkish börek or burek, which has roots in Türkiye and Central Asia.

Burekas made the best Shabbat morning breakfast. Especially if I also had fresh apricots or figs, maybe some watermelon and feta. I taught my Hebrew school students how to make a simple variation on them, this spring, in our class on Jewish Cuisines and Cultures. 

Yesterday -- worried in heart, mind, and soul about everyone across the entire region: the people I know, whose updates I await in anxiety; and the people I don't know, who are equally precious in God's eyes -- I made a batch of burekas to eat for breakfast this week. 

Before I eat I will thank the Holy One of Blessing for my food, and pray for every human being who is in jeopardy across Israel and Palestine and Iran. Maybe it seems naïve to pray for peace at a time like this, but it is what I yearn for. A just and lasting peace, and safety, and hope, for everyone.

The verse says "Jesus wept," but
it's in the wrong tense.
Jesus is still weeping.

He takes turns with Rachel
still lamenting her children
and Shekhinah, perennial exile.

This week they're crying
for children in bomb shelters
and even more for children outside them.

For the anorexia patient
who can't force themself to eat,
the mother whose hope has curdled,

the infant with HIV
no longer receiving medicine,
every heart in need of care.

The Holy One of Blessing
reminds them: they didn't promise
our path would be smooth.

They promised to walk with us.
It's up to us to notice
we're not alone.

Last night as I was studying Hebrew with my son, a friend texted me to let me know that Israel had attacked Iran. Many of us expect retaliation over Shabbat. None of us know what is coming, and I don’t have wisdom to offer. All I have is this prayer: may the day come soon when the Iranian people, the Palestinian people, and the Israeli people can all live in safety and peace.

* 

This week’s Torah portion, B’ha’alot’kha, takes its name from its first significant word: 

“God spoke to Moses saying, ‘speak to Aaron and tell him, בְּהַעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙ אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֔ת אֶל־מוּל֙ פְּנֵ֣י הַמְּנוֹרָ֔ה יָאִ֖ירוּ שִׁבְעַ֥ת הַנֵּרֽוֹת׃ / when you raise the lamps at the front of the menorah, the seven lamps will give light.’” (Numbers 8:2) 

When we think of lighting lamps, there’s an obvious verb we’d expect to see: להדלק / l'hadlik, as in l’hadlik ner, “to kindle the lights” of Shabbat. Instead we get להעלות / l’ha’alot, which means to raise or to ascend. It’s the same root as the word aliyah, which is what we call it when someone comes up to the bimah and “ascends” to Torah, symbolically returning to Sinai. 

The other significant words in our verse are words we might recognize: nerot, candles or lights. (In those days they were oil lamps.) Menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum our ancestors crafted for the mishkan / the portable sanctuary, like a seven-branched tree of hammered gold.. Ya’iru, they shine or give light. Two main ideas in this one verse: going up, and shining. 

Torah often speaks in the language of aliyah and yeridah (ascending and descending). When our spiritual ancestors went down to Egypt, Torah called that a descent. Joseph descended into the pit, descended into slavery, descended into Pharaoh’s dungeon… and following him, our ancestors descended into Mitzrayim, “the Narrow Place” of constriction and spiritual servitude.

And when we left Mitzrayim, “The Narrow Place,” Torah calls it an ascent. Literally, aliyah. Going up from constriction to the land of promise. Our spirits rising. As the Psalmist writes, “From the meitzar / the narrow place I called to You; You answered me with expansiveness.” That’s the spiritual move we’re making as a people. From a low place, a stuck place, rising and giving light.

As human beings our souls naturally shine. This is part of what it means to me when Torah says we are made in the image of God: our souls are like sparks from the divine fire. Our life’s work as human beings and as Jews is to repair what is broken in our world, and to let our light shine. In the words of Godspell, “If that light is under a bushel, it’s lost something kinda crucial.”

Our light wants to shine. And… the struggles of day-to-day life can obscure our light. Injustice obscures our light. Prejudice and mistreatment obscure our light. Trauma and loss obscure our light. And as the sages of the Talmud remind us in their teachings about illness, “a prisoner cannot release themself from prison” – we can’t “bootstrap” our way out of life’s narrow places.

But we can lift each other up. That’s why we’re in this life together. בְּהַעֲלֹֽתְךָ֙ אֶת־הַנֵּרֹ֔ת / B’ha’alot’kha et ha-nerot: “when you lift up the lights” – the lights are our souls, and it’s our job to lift each other up so we can shine. Because our souls need to shine, and this broken world needs all the light we’ve got. 

Ibn Ezra explains in his commentary on this verse that this section of Torah comes to teach us that the light of the original menorah in the mishkan shone also at night. In this way it’s the precursor to our ner tamid, the eternal light that shines in every sanctuary. The physical light that’s meant never to go out symbolizes the light of holiness, the light of hope, the light of God.

That’s the divine fire of which each of us is a soulspark. I don’t believe that fire ever goes out. 

Tonight we sang the words of Mi Khamokhah to the melody of the Zulu hymn Siyahamba, “We are walking in the light of God.” In ancient times a golden menorah shone a reminder of that light for our ancestors. Today I think Torah is inviting us to help each other shine that light: to lift each other up, cultivating joy in helping each others’ inner light to shine. 

*

In our morning liturgy we pray, ‘Or hadash al Tziyon ta’ir, “Let a new light shine upon Zion.” I pray for the new light of peace and safety, justice, human dignity, and mutual uplift to shine on the people of Israel, Palestine, and Iran, and on all of us whose hearts feel-together with theirs. And may we all help each other to shine our own light, here in the place where we are.

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.)

For six years I walked past these words every morning on my way into school. "Teach us delight in simple things." The words were literally foundational, cemented in to the ground beneath my feet.

I didn't know then that the bronze letters were older than the building. They had been affixed in its prior location in the 1920s, and were brought to the Starcrest campus when the school moved in 1968.

The quilt of ceramic tiles that hangs above them is more eye-catching. The letters wear the patina of age, and the steps are worn from countless generations of polished loafers and saddle shoes.

I can only remember the first verse of our alma mater song in Latin, and even less of the school hymn, "Fight the Good Fight." But "teach us delight in simple things" still comes quick to my heart.

Seeking delight in simple things has become one of my core spiritual practices. It takes effort not to slip over the line from gratitude practice into bypassing, so that's part of my everyday work too. 

But trying to notice what good there is to notice is built-in to who I've become. It doesn't erase the world's brokenness, but on a good day it shapes and changes how I experience whatever comes. 

I spent part of yesterday thinking about this school motto and these front steps, and then I dreamed I was back. "Holy [----], we're kids again," I said to one of my classmates who was walking by.

It felt like one of those dreams where my parents are still alive. And then I wake and it's just a fading memory, like the distant scent of mountain laurel or southern magnolia in bloom. 

The following words
are no longer permitted:
Accessible. Affirming.
Bias. Cultural differences.
Environmental quality.
Inclusive. Mental health.
Prejudice. Trauma.

The new head of FEMA
didn't know America has
a hurricane sesason, but
I'm sure firing
a fifth of the staff
who launch weather balloons
won't matter.

We are also forbidden
from saying anyone is
underserved or vulnerable.
No person in our nation
is vulnerable anymore.
Immigrants and refugees
don't count.

Is hope still
at the bottom of the box
or was it erased
along with clean energy
and safe drinking water
and the history
of the Enola Gay?

These words are disappearing in the new Trump Administration, New York Times [gift link]

"David Richardson, the head of the agency, said he did not know the United States has a hurricane season." Heather Cox Richardson, June 2, 2025. 

Federal Government's Growing Banned Words List Is Chilling Act of Censorship, PEN.org. 

Enola Gay Aircraft -- And Other Historic Items -- Inaccurately Targeted Under Pentagon's Anti-DEI Purge, Forbes.com.