I had already written a d’varling for tonight, about Aaron’s response to the death of his son and how the silence of those who suffer invites us to respond with care. And then a congregant reached out to me this morning and asked if I could speak tonight about a breaking news story, the FBI’s arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin, and what our response to this as Jews ought to be. What moral guidance can Torah offer for the world we’re in today?

First let me share a bit of context, and then I’ll talk Torah more broadly. The Department of Homeland Security changed their policies in February to shift the status of certain previously “protected areas” or “sensitive locations” – including courthouses, social service agencies, and houses of worship. These areas used to be legally protected from “immigration enforcement,” and now they are not. Or at least: public spaces within them are not. Private spaces are.

This sparked a lot of conversation among rabbis: if ICE shows up at the door, what is the ethically and legally correct response? The Union for Reform Judaism signed on with many other faith organizations in a lawsuit challenging that rescission of the “sensitive locations” policy. Meanwhile, the National Immigration Law Center’s fact sheet notes, “ICE still needs a judicial warrant to enter any private space, including a house of worship.” 

In the case of Judge Dugan, Rep. Ryan Clancy notes that “ICE did not present a warrant before entering the courtroom; it is not clear whether ICE ever possessed or presented a judicial warrant.” (A judicial warrant is not the same as an “administrative warrant” from ICE.) This sounds to me like a parallel to how things work if ICE comes to a synagogue: they need a judicial warrant in order to enter “private space,” and it sounds like they did not show one.

Courtney Milan, a former clerk for Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, explains that the judge is accused of “obstructing” ICE through adjourning the proceedings and allowing the defendant to leave the courtroom through the jury box, “both official acts performed as a judge,” and that “a judge is given enormous discretion as to the operation of their courtroom in order to preserve due process.” The judge doesn’t appear to have done anything that merits FBI involvement.

If her arrest was retaliatory, that seems like erosion of due process. I know many of us are worried about that, especially amidst current tension between the executive branch and the judicial branch. The arrest of this judge comes on the heels of a rise in anti-judge rhetoric and hints of refusal to abide by judicial decision. There have even been claims that the judicial branch is meant to be subservient to the executive. Can Torah help us navigate this?

At the start of Torah we were in Eden, innocent and childlike, all of our needs met by God. In the book of Exodus we went down into Egypt, where we were enslaved by Pharaoh, our agency (and our humanity) denied. Now we are in Leviticus. We’re wandering in the wilderness, learning how to be a mature people with human agency who take responsibility and take care of each other. And that includes the institution of judges to help guide the people.

שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧’’ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק׃

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 18:19)

Torah tells us that we should appoint judges and officers to govern the people with justice. Torah also tells us (a verse or two later) to pursue justice with all that we are. We might see shoftim v’shotrim, “judges and officers,” as somewhat akin to today’s division of government into coequal branches who together govern with justice, but it doesn’t occur to Torah that the shotrim might decide not to listen to the shoftim, e.g. that the judges and the rulers might be at odds. 

Art by Steve Silbert.

I am envisioning a New Yorker-style cartoon, a line drawing of someone saying, “Don't you wish we lived in precedented times?” (So I asked my friend Steve to draw it.) After the pandemic, the insurrection, and the last hundred days or so of chaos, I think we’re all getting tired of living in “unprecedented times.” But once again, that’s what we’ve got. All we can do is study Torah in search of values and principles to guide how we respond to what’s unfolding around and within us.

In this week’s parsha, Shmini, Torah gives us instructions about what to eat and not eat, and descriptions of the right way to offer the korbanot, offerings / sacrifices. Torah says we have a choice: we can be like Aaron and follow the commandments, or we can be like his sons Nadav and Avihu who died after bringing ‘strange fire.’ Being a free people means claiming our agency to act, and hopefully choosing to act in a way that’s aligned with Torah.

Torah’s mitzvot are addressed to all of us, not just to judges or officials. Use honest weights and measures, don’t cheat people, don’t lie, don’t steal, feed the hungry, love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: these mitzvot are incumbent on every Jew. And, Torah also has some words about what kind of person should be appointed as a leader, a person in authority – which for Torah was simultaneously a secular role and a spiritual one. 

Torah teaches that a leader should not self-aggrandize. They shouldn’t be too wealthy, or have too many wives and horses, or bring the people backward to the way things were in constricted times. (Deut. 17:15-18) This comes at the very end of Torah. Later the sages of the Talmud and the Jewish legal tradition expound on it further, but the basic principles stand. Judges should be fair and honorable, and leaders should be humble and forward-looking. 

So what should our response as Jews be to today’s headlines – any of today’s headlines? 

There’s a story in Talmud about scholars who disagreed about a matter of Jewish law. One of them even disagrees with the Voice of God offering “the answer” from on high! That scholar quotes Torah back at God, saying lo bashamayim hee – “[wisdom] is not in the heavens, [you’ve given it to us].” And God laughs and agrees in apparent delight. The pinnacle of human development is when we claim our agency to interpret what’s just, and we act accordingly. 

Torah is not in the heavens, and neither is justice. They are ours, to steward and keep. 

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 week’s Torah portion, Shmini, contains the following somewhat shocking vignette. First we read about Aaron bringing forward a korban, a sacrifice or offering, and blessing the people. Afterwards, Aaron and Moses go inside the Tent of Meeting. When they emerge, they bless the people together, and the presence of God appears to all the people. So far, so good.

Then two of Aaron’s sons, Nadav and Avihu, apparently decide to follow suit. Were they so excited at the prospect of divine service that they couldn’t wait until it was their turn? Were they, as some commentators have suggested, intoxicated and therefore making poor decisions? We don’t know. What we do know is, they make an unauthorized offering, and they die on the spot.

Then we get these two searing words:  וַיִּדֹּ֖ם אַהֲרֹֽן׃ / vayidom Aharon. “And Aaron was silent.”

Rashi says that Aaron was rewarded for his silence by hearing the Voice of God speaking to him alone, revealing to him further details of the sacrificial system. Ramban says that he cried out without words, and was then silent. The Sforno says he took consolation in realizing that his sons’ deaths in this manner made them the highest possible “offering” he could give to God. 

Sometimes in the face of tragedy or trauma, in the face of a profound and earth-shaking injustice, the one at the center of the grief may have no words. When one’s whole soul cries out that this is wrong, this isn’t the way the world was supposed to be, there may be no words adequate to that heart’s cry. Not for the person or people most afflicted. 

This year Aaron’s silence feels like an invitation. 

The silence of suffering invites us to offer care. This is our most basic job as human beings. Whether a phone call, a text conversation, a casserole, a hospital visit: what matters is that we extend ourselves to those silenced by injustice, sorrow, or grief. This doesn’t fix whatever they’re suffering, but it can remind them that they’re not alone. Presence and care matter.

And then we do what we can. Maybe as we support those who are silenced by sorrow, together we can figure out how to support them in action. I think of Candace Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver in 1980 and who went on to found MADD. I think of the Parents’ Circle Families Forum, founded by grieving Israelis and Palestinians together… 

In the case of an injustice, someone who’s been unfairly treated or discriminated-against or wrongly accused, we can name the injustice clearly and speak against it. And maybe it’s easier for us to do that when we’re one step removed from the injustice itself. Maybe when we ourselves aren’t impacted, we have more bandwidth and energy to stand up for what’s right.

Aaron stands alone in his silence, but we don’t have to. We can always speak up for each other. We can always care for each other. When times are good we can celebrate with each other, and when times are tough we can uplift and accompany each other. This is what community is for: this is why we are here. That’s the lesson for now that  I find in our Torah portion this week. 

I wrote this for Shabbat services... and then something else caught on fire (metaphorically) and I wrote something entirely different to share at shul. So here's where the parsha took me yesterday. Stay tuned to see where it takes me today.

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.)

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.

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.)

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.)

Jacob had twelve sons, and his favorite was Joseph, to whom he gave that “technicolor dreamcoat.” (R. Danya Ruttenberg argues that it might have actually been more like a stripey princess dress.) Joseph recounts dreams of his family bowing down to him, which might be why his brothers can’t stand him. They consider killing him. They sell him into slavery.

In Egypt, he’s purchased by Potiphar. That’s when Torah first tells us that God is with him. (Gen. 39:2) Potiphar’s wife tries to seduce him, and then falsely accuses him of seducing her. He’s thrown in prison, where again, Torah tells us that God is with him. (Gen. 39:21) 

Abarbanel (15th c.) understands “God was with him” to mean that God was always in his mind. I noticed this year that Torah only begins to say God is with him once he’s in tough circumstances. Was God “not there” before, or was he just not aware of God until then? Did something change within him that enabled him to live with awareness of the holy? 

This week a friend pointed me to a sermon given by Doug Muder at a Unitarian Universalist church. He starts off with a metaphor I heard a lot last month: waiting to find out the election results felt like waiting for the results of a biopsy. And then he tells the story of his wife’s literal cancer journey, offering wisdom about living with uncertainty… which is something we all do. 

Facing a miserable situation like chemotherapy, there’s a temptation to say: okay, I’m going to put my head down and bull my way through this, and once I make it to the other side of this obstacle there will be happier days to come. But there’s no guarantee, and cancer makes that very clear. It’s possible that this is what the rest of life will be. What do we do with that? 

Doug writes: [W]e developed a practice that we eventually started calling “How is this day not going to suck?” Looking at the particular opportunities and limitations of each individual day, what could we do to appreciate being alive? 

Sometimes they could go for a walk. Sometimes his wife was weak from the chemo but they could go for a drive. Sometimes he could read to her in bed. They found what they could appreciate about being alive. 

Maybe because I read Doug’s sermon alongside the parsha, I thought of Joseph. He literally descends, over and over again: into a pit, into slavery, into prison. By any reasonable metric, things just keep getting worse. But as things decline, Torah tells us that God is with him. Another way to say that might be: he found access to hope. He found meaning. He found gratitude. 

I know that many of us are feeling anxiety and fear. Fear of stronger storms and more wildfires amid the rejection of climate science. Fear of the resurgence of diseases like polio and measles amid the rejection of vaccines. Fear of school shootings, like the one this week. Fear of bans on the healthcare that we and our loved ones need. Fear of discrimination and loss of civil rights. 

And I know that in many of our lives there are also personal challenges and difficulties. A diagnosis, or injustice in the workplace, or a sick family member. Sometimes these are invisible to everyone around us, which makes them feel even more difficult – “I’m going through this and no one even knows!” Like Joseph, we might feel that our circumstances are getting worse. 

So what can we learn from Joseph in this week’s parsha? It looks to me like what got Joseph through these downturns was the fact that, as Torah says, God* – asterisk: whatever that word means to each of us: God far above or God deep within, a relational God or a transcendent God, or maybe not “God” at all but rather Love or Justice or Meaning – God* was with him. 

And God* is with us, if we allow that to be true. If we notice. If we cultivate awareness of the holy. The Kotzker rebbe asked, “Where is God? Wherever we let God in.” When we choose hope, seek meaning, and cultivate gratitude, that’s one way to understand God being “with us.” We experience the world differently when we make a practice of those things.

A community member pointed out to me this week that African Americans are not new to thriving despite injustice, and can be our teachers. In the words of Rev. Gerald Durley, a contemporary of Martin Luther King: “I talk to people who are depressed… and I remind them, this is not our first [struggle].” We shall overcome someday is a fierce expression of hope. 

Hope is a discipline, and we can always engage in it, even if life has dealt us the worst hand of cards. Meaning is something we make, and in the words of Maria Popova, we “make meaning most readily, most urgently, in times of confusion and despair.” Gratitude is a practice, and every day gives us opportunities to get better at it. (“Yippee, another effing growth opportunity.”)

All of these come with the risk of spiritual bypassing, using spirituality to pretend away brokenness. Suleika Jaouad writes beautifully about this: both about seeking small joys during cancer treatment, and about the spiritual danger of toxic positivity. But lately it seems to me that many of us are erring on the side of feeling the brokenness too much, rather than too little. 

I invite us to be like Joseph. Even in tight circumstances, we can experience God’s presence with us. We can seek hope, and meaning, and gratitude. We can ask, “How is today not going to suck?” We can help each other ask, “How is today not going to suck?” – because sometimes when we can’t find hope for ourselves, we can find it for someone else. 

This is the balancing act: being present to what is, even when “what is” is difficult – and cultivating an appreciation of how lucky we are to be alive. And, like Joseph interpreting dreams for his fellow prisoners, we can attune ourselves to how we can be there for each other. Often helping someone else turns out to be the best way to lift ourselves up, too. 

May we take strength in that work in all the days to come… starting now, with the winter solstice and the return of the sun’s light.

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.)

When you’re dizzy, fix your eyes on the horizon. Find a faraway point and focus attention there. I don’t remember learning this; it feels like something I’ve always known. I suspect this is a piece of wisdom that came from my parents. As a kid I used to get queasy in the backseat of their big old Cadillac. (This was in Texas, back when gasoline was cheap and no one worried about the climate.) They must have taught me this trick. Somehow it can smooth the bumps of the ride. 

I’m spending a lot of time looking at the horizon these days. We live surrounded by hills, and I love admiring the spot where they meet the heavens. I’ve taken a near-infinite number of photographs of the sky at the horizon as it changes. Lately, gazing at the horizon feels like my childhood exercise of seeking balance and inner stillness in a moving car. The world is moving fast, the road is full of turns, and it is difficult to trust that we’re headed in the right direction.

So as I look at the place where sky kisses the hills, it becomes my fixed point when the world is spinning. I look at the landscape and I think about what lasts longer than we do. I think about how Judaism was around long before any of us were, and how it will be here long after we’re gone. I think about the slow arc of human progress as we try to bend the moral universe toward justice. We’re not the first generation to struggle with how long that’s taking.

Long ago, chronicled in parashat Vayetzei, the patriarch Jacob journeyed from Beersheva toward Haran. He stopped for the night at sundown, and he placed a stone under his head. He dreamed of a ladder planted in the earth with angels going up and down. When he woke, he declared that God was in that place (Gen. 28:16) and he hadn’t known. Spiritual life is a series of these awakenings. We lose sight of what matters, and then we regain it. And again.

And again. Judaism has long embraced the tension between imagining God in particular holy places (e.g. Beth El, the spot where Jacob had his revelation – or the Kotel – or the Temple Mount – or Jerusalem – or the Land of Promise writ large) and imagining that God is everywhere. In Isaiah’s words, “All the earth is full of God’s glory.” (Isaiah 6:3) After the fall of the Temple our mystics imagined the Shekhinah, God’s indwelling presence, in exile with us.

Where is God? The Hasidic master known as the Kotzker rebbe famously answered, wherever we let God in. Jacob figured that out: “God is in this place, and I did not know.” God is always in this place, even in our places of uncertainty. It’s easier for me to see God in the fixed point on the horizon that helps me stay stable and ethically upright. I struggle sometimes to remember that God can also be found in every stone along the twisting path. In this place? Really? 

I find comfort in looking toward the horizon. It’s like looking toward the messianic future of a world redeemed: I don’t for an instant imagine that humanity will get there in my lifetime, but it’s a direction, an orientation. This year I’m trying to learn better how to look down at my own feet on the circuitous path. I want to seek (even if I can’t see) God here in this place. Even when it feels like we’re going the wrong way – even like the whole world is going the wrong way.

Lately a lot of you have told me that you feel like the world is going the wrong way. Some of the rights we take for granted here, like the right to reproductive health care or the right to access the healthcare our doctors prescribe for our children, no longer hold true across the country. Measles seems to be returning; polio might do the same. The climate crisis is in everyone’s backyard, including ours – the Butternut fire in Great Barrington was only just contained. 

It’s so easy to get bogged down in every injustice. So much is not as it should be, which cues up the existential carsickness. But if all I ever do is look at the horizon, I’m not here and now. I’m projecting myself into an imagined future, or maybe into an imagined past. Neither one of those helps anyone. I don’t want to just be a passenger, gazing at the sky. Jewishly I also feel an obligation to do something: to feed somebody hungry, to comfort someone who’s afraid…

I think that’s the real work. It’s ok to feel afraid. And, we need to help each other move beyond the paralysis of fear and instead do something to help someone in need. Find one small good thing you can do for someone in the coming week. This week maybe it’s standing up for trans kids who need support. Donate to the ACLU. Connect with the Reform Action Center, the tikkun olam arm of the Reform movement, to support the LGBTQ community here and elsewhere. 

God is in the fixed point of distant steadiness and is wrapped around us as we traverse every switchback. God is in our hopes for a better future, and God is also in this deeply imperfect present. I think if we can really hold on to that, we might feel centered even when the world feels upside-down. “God is in this place, and I did not know” – I think when we help each other, when we stand up for each other, together we manifest God’s presence in the place where we are. 

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

I don't like
what I've woven
from my outrage,
every ugly headline
a bold slash
of the wrong color.
What dissonant plaid,
plasticine fabric
dyed with arguments
about who counts.
Righteous indignation
too easily curdles.
Every choice
lays a thread.
Source of Mercy --
Shekhinah wearing
embroidery glasses,
Your golden scissors
like the ones
my mother used --
untie my tangles.

Plasticine fabric. I just read the fascinating essay Ghana Must Go, so those ubiquitous bags are on my mind. 

Arguments / about who counts. This moment in the United States seems full of those: are immigrants fully human? Are trans people? (Yes and yes, obviously.)

Every choice. In the words of the Maggid of Kozhnitz on Chayyei Sarah, "The days of our lives are garments for the soul." 

Source of Mercy... untie my tangles. See אנא בכח, part of Friday night liturgy.

Attached to the filing cabinet in my office there is a quarter of a piece of posterboard. On it are the following words: “I want to connect people with God.” I wrote them as my rabbinic mission statement fifteen years ago. I was at a retreat for emerging Jewish and Muslim spiritual leaders, and I was very pregnant, which is how I know exactly when this happened. We were asked to write down one phrase that captured why we were going into this work, and that was mine. 

When I was ordained a rabbi almost fourteen years ago, I received a blessing from Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser for stepping into a lineage of teachers. It begins with Moses on Sinai giving the Torah to Joshua, who gave it to the elders, who gave it to the prophets, who gave it to the men of the great assembly. I received another blessing that day offering a parallel lineage that began with Miriam, sister of Moses – a lineage that was lost in history and then recovered again.

I was charged with teaching and preaching and accompanying those whom I serve in a way that brings healing and uplifts wholeness. And a few months later I signed a brit, a sacred covenant, with the first of many lay leaders whom I’ve had the privilege of serving alongside. We’ve updated the brit a bit, but it’s still fundamentally the same: I’m here to serve and to lead, to teach and to uplift, to accompany you as a community and as individuals in whatever life brings.

Looking back on thirteen years of service, what I remember most are intimate moments of connection. An unveiling with only a handful of mourners present. A baby naming around someone’s kitchen table. A pastoral visit with someone who was preparing to let go of this life. The big moments matter too, like Kol Nidre this year with the sanctuary packed full, or for that matter Kol Nidre during the first Covid year when we were all sheltering in place at home…

But in the kaleidoscope of images that arise for me, many are from one-on-one or small group settings. My brit is with CBI as a whole community, and yet I most often experience it as a hundred individual little covenants: with you, and you, and you... 

I still want to connect y’all with God. Though these days I always put an asterisk after “the G-word,” as a reminder that if that word doesn’t work for you, you can substitute words that do. Maybe you want to connect with meaning, with justice, with hope. Maybe you want to connect with our traditions, with the generations that came before us and the ones that will come after. Maybe you want to connect with something that endures even when the world feels bleak.

Maybe you want to connect with Torah. With the Five Books, lovingly handwritten in these beautiful two hundred year old scrolls that need our repair. With commentaries on them, and commentaries on the commentaries. With Jewish legal writings, or ethical writings, or poetry, or music – all of those are also Torah, which means all of those point “in” or “up” or “back” to the Source of All creativity, the source of love and justice in this world we’ve been blessed to inherit.

Maybe you want to ask big questions, like, “Why?” and also “How?” Maybe you want to know how to make meaning when life feels full of grief, or how to stay grounded when life feels full of joy. Maybe you want to find meaning in the passage of time, the holiness of the seasons, our changing planet, the waxing and waning moon, the stages of a human life. Maybe you want to know how the world could have changed so much, or why it hasn’t changed nearly enough. 

To be clear, I don’t personally have the answers to all of these questions. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have the answers to any of them. But I know deep in my bones that Jewish tradition does. And I know that I have the best job in the world, because I get to help you find your answers. And because we’re all growing and changing all the time, sometimes the answers that speak to us need to change as we do… which means the work I get to do is literally never done.

The work of spiritual life is never done. The work of becoming is never done. As long as we’re here, we’re growing and changing – or we can be. My covenant with each of you is a promise to accompany you in whatever life brings your way. 

The verses I chanted this morning also speak of a brit, a covenant between Avraham and Avimelekh. There’s an exchange of some female sheep, which is slightly funny because my given name means ewe. Avimelekh agrees that a nearby well was in fact dug by Avraham – which of course our mystics understand both as a physical well that delivered much-needed water, and as a spiritual wellspring for Torah’s neverending flow of wisdom and insight.

And then Avraham plants an eshel, a tamarisk tree. What’s interesting to me is, our sages don’t exactly agree on what the tree represents. The well is clearly both water and Torah, but the tree might represent new beginnings, or maybe deep roots. Tamarisks can grow almost anywhere, making them akin to the Jewish people. Rashi says maybe the eshel was an orchard, or an inn. Both are symbols of hospitality, which is a quality our mystics often attribute to Avraham. 

I love the idea of planting a tree to mark a covenant. To the Board, please don’t worry, I am not planting another tree on our grounds. I saw how much work went into watering our tiny orchard of baby fruit trees! I’m thinking about a metaphorical tree. A tree is a lot like a community, it turns out. Both need deep roots in order to flourish. Both need an outer growing edge that’s open to new ideas and change, and deep inner rings that record and remember. And both offer shelter. 

My blessing for us, at this celebration of thirteen years of service, is this: like Avraham’s tamarisk, may we be shelter for each other when shelter is needed.  May we sink our roots deep into the aquifer of tradition so that our hearts and souls are nourished. And may we bear the many fruits of sacred community, including spiritual authenticity, readiness to take care of each other when times are tough, and readiness to celebrate together and lift each other up.

This is the d'varling I offered at Shabbat morning services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires as we celebrated my first 13 years of service (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָ''ה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃

יהו’’ה said to Abram, “Lekh-lekha / Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. (Gen. 12:1)

Torah uses many different names for God. This is considered the most holy of God’s names, the one that seems to enfold all possible permutations of Was / Is / Will Be. This is God-Who-Is-Becoming, God Whom we mirror in our human capacity for growth and change. That’s the voice that says here to Abram, lekh-lekha: there’s a journey ahead of you.

This is not the journey any of us hoped to be on right now. I’ve spoken this week with so many of us who feel shellshocked and reeling. Me, too. We’re mourning the loss of a future where immigrants are welcomed, where no kid goes hungry at lunchtime, where climate science and vaccines are honored and understood, where trans and queer people can live without fear. 

And so much more. Our world changed this week in ways I know I can’t yet wholly imagine. One of the most useful things I’ve read in the past few days was an article in Scientific American called Election Grief is Real: Here’s How to Cope. It’s an interview with therapist Pauline Boss, who originated the concept of ambiguous grief in the late 1970s. Pauline says:

We should normalize the anger and the sadness. I think we jump too quickly to pathologize emotions that are scary. I think you need to be patient with yourself if you’re feeling angry, sad, grieving right now. I think that’s a normal reaction to a surprising outcome and an outcome that, in our view, is going backward and not forward.

So accept your feelings. Know there’s no closure to grief. Know you had a loss.

We need to take our time in feeling this – even though frankly it feels terrible and none of us want to dwell on it. But a seismic national shift of this magnitude is going to have enormous impacts, on us and on the world, and if we pretend that away we won’t be in a position to navigate those impacts wisely or well. So the first thing I can offer is: let ourselves feel.

And then here’s a subtle inner shift, when we are up to it. We don’t want to dwell on these feelings, but we can dwell in them – and God* dwells in them with us. (Whatever that word means to each of us right now: source of meaning or justice or hope.) Another of our tradition’s names for God is Shekhinah, meaning God Who Dwells In this broken world… and in us. 

When I say that God dwells in us, I mean possibility lives in us. Hope lives in us. Kindness lives in us. Truth and justice live in us. No amount of cruelty or coercion, bullying or gaslighting, can take these away. They are our birthright, and they are eternal. This is one of Judaism’s core tools for navigating difficult times: knowing that we are part of something that endures.

Pauline Boss goes on to say, one risk of grief is that it can immobilize us. We need to help each other forestall that possibility. She says, “You need to do something active in order to deal with a situation you can’t control… It will help to be active, not just to sit back and grumble and not just to lash out either. Action is psychologically what helps when you’re feeling helpless.” 

This is true from the micro scale to the macro one. One night this week my teen and I baked cookies for one of the kids in his Shakespeare play. It was tangible and grounding: breathing in the scent of chocolate, feeling dough under our hands. And it brought unexpected joy to another kid’s afternoon. Little things like this matter a lot right now. Making and giving are acts of agency.

And on the macro scale: there will be forms of community care and community organizing that we can do in months and years to come, and they will be more necessary than ever before. And that brings me to the other most useful thing I’ve read this week, 10 ways to be prepared and grounded now that Trump has won, an essay by teacher, activist, and author Daniel Hunter.

He begins by pointing out that after pandemic and insurrection, amidst climate crisis (I would add: after a year of horrors in Israel and Gaza, which have had a deep impact on many of us) we are already exhausted and destabilized. “Authoritarian power is derived from fear of repression, isolation from each other and exhaustion at the utter chaos. We’re already feeling it.” 

His first suggestion? Pay attention to our inner state. Trust our own emotional reality, trust what we know and feel and experience, because authoritarianism thrives by sowing and strengthening mistrust. Before we can begin to face trying to do good in this painful new world, we need to tend to our spiritual lives. We are running on empty. We need to care for our souls.

Some part of me frets, reading this: but there’s so much that’s already broken! And it’s going to get so much worse! Yes, there is, and it is. And that’s exactly why each of us must do everything we can to be steady inside, and to trust our own moral and spiritual compass. Judaism has tools for this. (Shabbat and regular gratitude practices are my first two go-tos on this front.)

Judaism has a lot of tools for this, actually. We are not the first generation of Jews to live through massive upheaval. Or to navigate increasing Christian nationalism. Or to figure out how to maintain our ethic of caring for the vulnerable in a time of rising fascism and authoritarianism. Much of human history has looked like this. Much of the world looks like this now.

And some of Judaism’s tools for this moment are a lot like what Daniel Hunter articulates in his essay. We need to let ourselves grieve, even sit shiva for what could’ve been – because if we don’t, some essential part of us may be frozen in the shock of this week, and that’s not good for us or for the world. We need humility, to recognize the vastness of the things we can’t change.

And then we need to find something we can change, and focus there. As I said to my teenager the morning after the election, we will figure out how we can help people who have it worse than we do. “Yeah, Mom. We’re white, we’re middle-class, we’re cisgender – we’re going to be fine. But other people won’t be.” Our job is always to help people who are more vulnerable than we.

So how are we going to help? Daniel Hunter suggests a quadrant of four possibilities: protecting vulnerable people, civil disobedience of unethical policies, defending our existing civic institutions, and building alternatives to what we know now. Sit with those, and see where your heart pulls you. And know that as you sit with this, you are not alone. We are in this together.

“Go forth,” YHVH says to Abram. Go out into the world and make a difference. Or maybe “Go into yourself,” because that’s another way to translate lekh-lekha – go deep, engage in soul-searching, plumb the depths of who you can be. The beauty of Torah, of course, is that the one phrase can be both at once, and both are instructions we need to take to heart this week.

We don’t know exactly what the future will hold. I don’t expect it to be easy. And yet there will also be joy and celebration and care for one another – because no one can take those away. In Brecht’s words, “even in the dark times there will be singing.” He wrote that in 1939, the year my mother and her parents fled the Nazis for what was then the safe haven of America.

No matter what the coming years hold, we know what our tradition teaches: it’s our job to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with the Source of All. (Micah 6:8) It’s our job to care for those who are vulnerable. To help people who have it worse than we do. To stand up for what’s right. That is always Judaism’s call: in the best of times, and in the worst of times. 

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.)

The verses I chose to read this morning come from the very end of our parsha, when Noah and his family have just emerged from the ark. They release all of the animals, and then Noah builds an altar and makes an offering to God. In return, God makes a promise to Noah and implicitly also to us: never again will God attempt to destroy the earth and all who dwell upon it. 

I gravitated toward these verses because they show us Noah and those under his care emerging after the storm. The worst is over. Now they rebuild. I would love to be able to fast-forward to that part in our collective story. Right now, a lot of us feel like we’re battening down the hatches in preparation for… well, we don’t exactly know what’s coming. 

And that’s hard. As my friend R. Jay Michaelson notes (How To Survive This Week), it’s easier to live with a known outcome than an unknown one, and there’s a lot right now that we can’t know. We do know that, according to a recent Axios poll, a majority of Americans expect that there will be violence on / after election day. And that’s scary. So in R. Michaelson’s words,

[I]t’s quite alright to be anxious as hell. It is justified, it is not an illusion, and things have gone very badly in the past. So whatever you do, please don’t scold yourself for not being enlightened, balanced, wise, mindful, rich, or calm enough to not lose your cool. I’ve met dozens of spiritual teachers in my time, and the ones who pretend to be awesome all the time are faking it… to you or themselves or both. 

If you’re feeling anxiety as the election approaches, you’re not alone, and you’re not “doing it wrong.” You’re just in touch with your feelings. (Mazal tov.) R. Michaelson is a teacher of mindfulness and meditation practices, and his essay has some good suggestions for managing our anxiety, so if that sounds helpful to you, check out his writing today.

I can’t tell you how the next week will go, or the weeks that follow. (Though for my part I am trying to ignore the constant breathless reporting on polls. Polls actually don’t tell us what real people are going to do in real time… or how other real people will respond. Life is a giant multivariable experiment and no one can solve in advance for what the future is going to be.) 

(Yes, my teenager is taking algebra II, how’d you guess?

I also can’t tell you the best way to spend this last Shabbes before Election Day. Some of us may need a Shabbat away from these anxieties, a time to rest and allow our souls to be restored. And some of us may need to be “praying with our feet” – knocking on doors (or phone banking or text banking) to make sure people have the information they need to vote. 

As is so often the case, Judaism supports both of these. Taking today to rest and be restored is a very Jewish thing to do! And pounding the pavement after shul to urge full participation in our democracy is also a very Jewish thing to do. You’ll know best what your own soul needs. 

I can tell you that Jewish tradition offers us next steps, no matter what. Feed the hungry, protect the vulnerable, act with integrity and honesty, engage in community life, take care of each other. The mitzvot give us a road map for building toward a better world. That road map is true and enduring, right and real, no matter what happens next week or in the weeks that follow. 

I can tell you that Jewish values call us to choose honesty rather than deceit, hope rather than despair, uplifting others rather than grinding them down. Jewish values call us to kindness, never cruelty. They demand that we love the stranger – the immigrant, the refugee. They invite us to center the pursuit of tzedek / justice and actions of  tikkun olam / repairing our world. 

The thing I don’t like about the story of Noah is that he doesn’t push back against the Divine plan to flood all of creation. He rescues his own family and the animals, as instructed, but he doesn’t say to God, “Wait a minute, aren’t there some innocent people out there?” As my friend and teacher Rabbi Mike Moskowitz writes, justice isn’t justice if it’s “just us.” 

Whatever arks we construct – whatever structures we build together in our community life – need to be big enough and broad enough to uplift everyone. I pray that our government can be an ark that lifts all of us out of harm’s way, that helps all Americans and ultimately all the world live with dignity and safety, not at the mercy of floodwaters whether metaphorical or literal. 

Maybe our task this weekend is to trust that no matter what Flood might arise, we have the spiritual tools we need to help each other through it, and to help those who are more vulnerable than we are through it. Our task is to remember that whatever the coming weeks may bring, we can and will lift each other up as we work toward the promise of the rainbow on the other side.

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

"Make the ark with rooms and pens."
Include thick creamy paper, soft
as brushed cotton, and enough ink
to write our way through.

None of us asked to be born into
the generation that might lose
everything: not just homes
falling into the waters

from North Carolina to Alaska
but also democracy. Not just
a free press, freedom to be Jewish,
freedom to not be pregnant

but also the capacity to draw
a full breath. Who does that anymore?
God, please tell me that somewhere
on this rickety boat, tucked

beside hay bales or the barrels
for collecting rain, I'll find hope.
We understand the physics
behind rainbows now, but

I'm still holding You to Your promise
that the cycles of day and night
will never again be blotted out
from the face of the earth.

"[Make it an ark with compartments (kinim)” - with rooms (kilin) and pens (medorin).]" Genesis Rabbah 31:9. Yes, I know the original text is referring to animal pens, not fountain pens.

North Carolina to Alaska. I'm thinking of Hurricane Helene on the east coast, and of recent devastating floods in Kotzebue in the far north and west.

But also democracy. See Trump tells supporters they won't have to vote in the future.

A free press. See We must fear for freedom of the press under a second Trump administration.

Freedom to be Jewish. See Trump says Jewish voters will bear 'a lot' of blame if he loses.

Freedom to not be pregnant. See If Trump wins the election, Idaho's extreme abortion ban could go nationwide. 

Capacity to draw / a full breath. See What is the no. 1 leading cause of stress for you?

"Your promise." See Genesis 8:21-22.

Earlier this week I was studying the writings of the Mei Hashiloach, also known as the Ishbitzer rebbe (d. 1854), on this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo. His musing on a seemingly unimportant half of a verse caught my eye and my heart.

The verse is הַשְׁקִ֩יפָה֩ מִמְּע֨וֹן קדְשְׁךָ֜ מִן־הַשָּׁמַ֗יִם / “Look down from Your holy abode, from the heavens[.]” (Deut. 26:15) The Ishbitzer riffs on this verse, noticing that God here is viewing us as a group. And then he writes: 

“It’s only when we are seen as a group that we can be at ease. For when God observes the community as a whole, one person clarifies the acts of the other, and each makes his neighbor look good, for each soul has some pristine facet.”

At first my study partners and I thought: is this a back-handed compliment? “Hey, next to you I look great!” But we decided instead to understand that “one person clarifies the acts of another” can mean that we make each other better. We bring out the best in each other. 

We are better together than we are apart. This is part of Judaism’s fundamental communitarianism. Judaism is not a solo activity. Think of how many mitzvot require a minyan, ten adults doing something together. Even Torah study traditionally happens in pairs.

Earlier this week I saw my Jewish Journeys students come together to do a mitzvah they wouldn’t have done alone. They were making “blessing bags” – each containing socks and gloves, hygiene supplies, protein bars – to give away to folks who are unhoused and in need.

Could any one of these kids have assembled the items and made the bags themselves? Arguably, sure; any of us could. But most of us don’t. Each kid provided one batch of items – the toothbrushes, the soaps, the jerky – and together they made short work of that mitzvah.

We are better together than we are apart. It’s a poignant and powerful message to receive from Torah now, with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur less than two weeks away. The moon of Elul is waning. Soon we’ll come together in community to start a new year together.

A lot of us learned, as kids, that the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the ideal time for teshuvah – repentance, return, turning our lives around, apologizing to those whom we’ve harmed so we’re not carrying karmic schmutz on our souls at Yom Kippur.

That’s not wrong, exactly, but it’s also not the whole story. I’d say that these weeks that we’re in now are actually the most ideal time. So that when we come together to celebrate a new year, our hearts can feel clear and light, not weighed down by the old year’s misdeeds and missteps.

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg reminds us (following Rambam), teshuvah has five steps. 1) Name and own the harm / acknowledge where we messed up. 2. Begin doing the inner work to become a better person. 3. Make restitution / amends. 4. Apologize. 5. Make better choices.

Teshuvah is a process: not just the apology, but all of the work that has to come before it – and after it. And we do the work because the work matters and it’s the right thing, not because we expect any particular outcome. Teshuvah matters, whether or not forgiveness comes.

The most important outcome, ideally, is that we ourselves are transformed. We become better people who, faced with the same opportunity to mess up, wouldn’t make the same mistake again because we’ve changed. In the eyes of Jewish tradition, that’s what really matters. 

We are better, together, than we are apart. I love the Ishbitzer’s the idea that we “clarify” each others’ actions. He’s using that word in the sense of the way an artist might mix a paint color to be clear and lovely, or how a silversmith removes anything extraneous so silver can shine. 

At our best, as human beings and as Jews, we help each other shine. What work do we each need to do over the next two weeks so that when we come together as a whole community for the holidays our hearts are clear and we can help each other really shine?

I invite each of us to find one instance where we need to make teshuvah. Maybe we hurt someone’s feelings, or didn’t take their needs into account, or shared gossip without thinking, or – you’ll know where you need to make repair. Find one thing to do to make amends.

Try to make someone in our community shaleim, try to make them more whole. This is our tradition’s language for repairing what we’ve broken. We’re not just gluing the pieces back together, “sorry I broke your coffee cup,” but trying to make the injured party more whole. 

And I invite each of us to seek out ways to help each other shine. To encourage each other, and notice good things about each other. To praise and uplift each other: maybe someone cooked a great dish, or ran a great meeting, or did something admirable. Tell them so. Make a habit of uplifting each other.

Imagine if we all did that. Imagine how we might feel different when we stand before God* (whatever that word means to us: God far above or God deep within, Truth, Meaning, Justice, Love) at Rosh Hashanah. Imagine the new year that could flow from that new beginning.

Shabbat shalom.

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.)

Shared with extra gratitude to the Bayit Board for our weekly study time.

I want to look at three verses from tonight’s Torah portion. One of them is big and systemic, while the other two are more intimate and personal. Each one suggests a spiritual practice to me – something we can actively make a practice of doing as we approach Rosh Hashanah.

צֶ֥דֶק צֶ֖דֶק תִּרְדֹּ֑ף לְמַ֤עַן תִּֽחְיֶה֙ וְיָרַשְׁתָּ֣ אֶת־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁר־יְהֹוָ֥''ה אֱלֹהֶ֖יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לָֽךְ׃    

Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and inherit the land that your God יהו;;ה is giving you. (Deut. 16:20)

This verse is one of Torah’s profoundest messages. The repetition of the word tzedek, justice, might come to teach us to chase after justice both internally and externally, inside and out. Or maybe it means that we need to seek justice for others, and also for ourselves.

Ibn Ezra says the repetition means that we must pursue justice whether we ourselves win or lose. We must pursue justice because justice is what’s right – even if it doesnt benefit us personally. Justice matters, justice is precious and holy, even when we don’t ourselves win.

The American justice system is not perfect. There are wrongful convictions (which is why The Innocence Project exists). But I believe that justice, as an ideal, is one of the ways we live up to what’s best in us. And my time serving on a jury left me feeling humbled and moved. 

“Jury service,” I wrote then, “asks us to do our best to root out any preconceptions or prejudice, and to approach everything we hear with an open mind. That's a pretty good spiritual practice for anytime, honestly. So is holding deep empathy while also upholding accountability.”

I invite us to try to live in the world, between now and the holidays, as though we were serving on a jury and someone’s future is at stake. Notice our biases, and work to mitigate them. Approach everything with an open mind. Seek accountability from a place of deep empathy. 

שֹׁפְטִ֣ים וְשֹֽׁטְרִ֗ים תִּֽתֶּן־לְךָ֙ בְּכל־שְׁעָרֶ֔יךָ אֲשֶׁ֨ר יְהֹוָ֧''ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ נֹתֵ֥ן לְךָ֖ לִשְׁבָטֶ֑יךָ וְשָׁפְט֥וּ אֶת־הָעָ֖ם מִשְׁפַּט־צֶֽדֶק׃

You shall appoint magistrates and officials in your gates, in all the settlements that your God יהו’’ה is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 16:18)

Appoint judges for your sh’arekha – your gates. For our mystics, this means not only the literal gates of our towns, but the “gates” into us. Our eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth are seven gates that we need to guard in order to ensure the justice that this week’s parsha tells us to pursue.

What do we let in through these gates: what words do we read, what media do we consume? Whose stories do we seek out, and whose stories do we ignore? Where are we getting our news? Whose voices do we center? Whose voices do we ignore, or just… not want to hear? 

And what do we let out through these gates? Are we careful with the words we speak? Do we repeat hearsay or gossip, or speak about others outside of their presence? Have our words caused harm this year? (The answer is yes, whether or not we can call instances to mind.)

I invite us to guard our gates as a spiritual practice this month. “The mind is like tofu: it takes on the flavor of whatever we soak it in,” said Reb Zalman z”l: whatever we let in these gates becomes our marinade. And whatever we let out of these gates shapes our impact on the world.  

תָּמִ֣ים תִּֽהְיֶ֔ה עִ֖ם יְהֹוָ֥''ה אֱלֹהֶֽיךָ׃

You must be wholehearted with your God יהו’’ה. (Deut. 18:13)

During Elul, our mystics teach, “the King is in the Field.” Though sometimes tradition imagines God as a King, transcendent, unapproachable, this month we imagine God “descending” into creation and walking with us in the fields, a friend Who wants to hear what’s on our hearts.

This verse invites us to bring our whole hearts to God. Here’s my invitation: suspend whatever disbelief might be getting in the way. Take some quiet time this month – whether we’re out for a walk, or driving alone in the car – and speak aloud to God, as to a friend, what’s on our heart. 

What are we worried about? What do we regret? What do we hope for? We might be surprised by what we hear ourselves say, or how it feels to hear ourselves say it. If we make a practice of this, between now and Rosh Hashanah, how might that deepen the holidays for us this year?

Three invitations: 

Pursue justice by approaching the world with the integrity of a juror. 

Guard our gates, mindful of what we’re taking in and what we’re putting into the world.

And pour out our hearts – not to the vast indifferent universe, but to an imagined beloved Friend. 

Shabbat shalom.

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 last week’s parsha we found the verses we now recite as the Sh’ma and V’ahavta. In this week’s parsha, Ekev, we read the verses that make up the next paragraph of the Sh’ma, the one that begins v’haya im shamoa, “If you listen, really listen–”  (Deut. 11:13-21) Torah says: if we really listen and do these mitzvot, God will grant us rain in its season, and good harvests.

And if we don’t, then God will close up the heavens to us and the earth will not yield what we need to survive. The rabbis of the early Reform and Reconstructionist movements removed this paragraph from the prayerbook because it felt either too supernatural or too transactional. We all know that sometimes bad things happen to good people. A life of mitzvot is no guarantee. 

Today many of us have returned this paragraph to our prayers. This evening we encountered one creative translation, from R. Zalman Schachter-Shalomi z”l. There are others, like my poem “Listen Up, Y’all.” For me, the message of this passage is deeply apt in this era of climate crisis. It may evoke different things for us at different times; that’s part of what Torah and prayer do.

Much of Torah’s richness lies in her capacity to speak to us in ways beyond the literal. Torah often functions like poetry: it has things to teach us on levels that have nothing to do with argument. Of course, as a poet, I would say that! But our whole interpretive tradition is based on the understanding that Torah speaks on multiple levels. We take Torah seriously, not literally. 

Torah calls us to teach the mitzvot to our children, inscribe them in our mezuzot, and live by them so that our generations will “endure in the land that God swore to our ancestors to assign to them, as long as there is a heaven over the earth.” (Deut. 11:21) A few verses later Torah says our inheritance will stretch from the Euphrates to the sea – a truly enormous piece of land. 

Some Jews do take passages like this as evidence for who should hold the keys to which real estate. West Bank settlers, and the government officials who support them, may read Torah as an eternal land grant. But that’s not how I read it, any more than I read the verses about scarcity and harvest as a literal prediction of what happens if we do or don’t observe mitzvot. 

Deuteronomy is the newest part of Torah, written down around 700 BCE. We’ve had a spiritual connection with that beloved land for a really long time, and that moves me deeply. But that doesn’t mean we’re the only people who do! Clearly the Palestinian people do too. And whatever the future of that land looks like, it has to include both of the peoples who call it home. 

I pray for a ceasefire in Gaza. I pray for the hostages to be returned safely, speedily and soon. I pray for an end to this terrible, tragic chapter that has shattered all of our hearts. I pray for Israelis and Palestinians both to receive the gifts that Torah this week promises: good rains in their season; new grain and wine and oil; everything human beings need in order to thrive.

Torah tells us this week to “walk in God’s ways.” (Deut. 11:22) Rashi says this means: God acts with loving-kindness, and so should we. Torah also tells us to “cut away the covering over our hearts.” (Deut. 10:16) Torah urges us to remove our protective calluses, a scant six weeks before the new year – all the better to do the work of teshuvah to which this season calls us. 

I mentioned earlier that in the 20th century this second paragraph of the Sh’ma was cut from our liturgy in two branches of Judaism because it seemed to offer an if/then promise that wasn’t borne out by the world as we know it. This isn’t the first time “The Rabbis” have made this kind of call. In Jewish tradition we don’t pray for rain during Israel’s dry season. 

At Pesach we stop asking for rain and start asking for dew. On the fall festival of Shemini Atzeret / Simchat Torah we begin asking for rain… and that’s a festival and a transition that is going to be tough this year, because last fall that was Oct. 7. I suspect we will be calling forth rain with our tears this year, and probably for many years to come.

Why don’t we pray for rain during Israel’s summer? Because our tradition teaches us not to pray for the impossible. Our sages long ago posited that to pray for an impossibility, like rain in the dry season of a desert climate, would shatter our faith. If we ask for something impossible, and it doesn’t come (because it’s impossible), we might conclude that prayer is worthless. 

I’m reminded of one of my favorite quotes from Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel: “Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart, and rebuild a weakened will.” Prayer isn’t a vending machine, where we put in a dollar and God gives us a treat. Prayer works on / in us.

And you know what we do pray for every day, in the rainy and the dry season alike? Peace. Our sages ensconced that prayer in our daily liturgy all year long, which means it must be possible. Maybe God can’t make rain out of dry skies, but with God’s help we can always seek peace. May our prayers together tonight balm our broken places and strengthen us in seeking peace. 

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.)

In this week’s Torah portion, Va’ethanan, Moses continues his long swansong, his final speech to the children of Israel at the edge of the Jordan river. In just a few weeks’ time (sooner than we think!) our reading of Torah will end with his death there. Tanakh (the Hebrew scriptures) continues with the book of Joshua and stories of conquest and Israelite kingdom, but we don’t read that week by week every year. After Simchat Torah we’ll begin Torah over again. 

In the frame of Torah, Moshe is speaking to the children of Israel, now mostly the descendants of those whom he originally led out of Egypt. After the incident with the scouts, when ten of the twelve returned to say, “the inhabitants of the Land look like giants, we felt like grasshoppers, we can’t do this,” God decided that the generation that had known slavery would not enter the Land of Promise. Their spirits were so accustomed to constriction they weren’t capable of hope.

There’s a midrash that says that every year on the ninth day of the month of Av, the anniversary of the scouts bringing their negative report, the children of Israel would dig their own graves in the wilderness and climb into them. And the next morning some of them would be dead, and they’d be buried, and the rest of the people would climb out and go on living… until one year no one from that early generation was left to die. Everyone who had known slavery was gone.

Anyway, those who remain: that’s who Moses is speaking to. He tells them the stories of everything that happened on their parents’ wilderness journey, including the revelation of the Ten Commandments (Deut. 5:6-19) – or maybe the whole Torah, or maybe all Jewish wisdom that ever was or will be – at Sinai. And then he says: okay, this is the instruction, the thing you’re supposed to really follow and obey: and he offers the Sh’ma and V’ahavta. (Deut. 6:4-9)

In the frame of Torah, he’s talking to the children and maybe grandchildren of those who knew slavery. In our own frame, these verses are speaking directly to us. Here we are, “encamped” along a boundary between what was and what will be. Between the old year that is soon to end, and the new year we haven’t yet begun. Tisha b’Av began our seven-week journey toward Rosh Hashanah. Whether we feel ready for this or not, we’re on the runway to the Days of Awe.

In a sense, Moses – or Torah – or God – is speaking these words directly to us. Listen, O Israel. That’s us: we are the children of Israel, the people Israel, that name we inherit from our ancestor Jacob who wrestled with an angel and earned the new name One-Who-Wrestles-With-God. Torah says, I’m talking to YOU. And the instruction? To love God* with all our hearts, all our souls, all our might. To teach this to our generations. To bind it to our hands and hearts.

I said God* with an asterisk after it. By now this refrain is probably familiar to many of you: if the G-word doesn’t work for you, find one that does. We are commanded to love Justice. To love Mercy. To love Truth and Meaning and Hope. Torah says: find something that matters to you and cleave to it. And let your attachment to God* or Justice or Mercy or Truth guide your actions: what you do, what you build, what you work toward, how you are in the world.

This mitzvah is self-sustaining: it says, “teach me to your generations.” It says, “write this on the doorposts of your house.” Imagine a world where every doorframe was adorned with big banners that read, “Do the right thing.” Or “Remember what really matters.” Or “Feed the hungry, care for the vulnerable, be ethical in every way.” Would we really remember, if those words were everywhere? Or would we learn to look past them and not really see? 

I think it’s probably human nature to look past our reminders. How often do we stop at a door where there’s a mezuzah and touch it and kiss our fingers, reaffirming our commitment to the ethical covenant of mitzvot that is our inheritance? I’ll admit: I forget most of the time. And I forget mitzvot. And I forget the work of teshuvah. Which is why when we hit Tisha b’Av and start this seven-week runway to the high holidays, I start to feel a deep sense of urgency.

Uh boy: there’s a lot of inner work we maybe didn’t do this year. There are places where we missed the mark and ignored it, or let ourselves believe that a half-hearted something was good enough, or let ourselves off the hook. We did not always act like a community guided by mitzvot. And the time for heshbon ha-nefesh, “an accounting of the soul,” is coming due. Torah this week comes to tell us: return to basic principles. Return to Sh’ma and V’ahavta. Start there.

What do we need to hear, this year, as we reach this point in our journey?

To what do we need to attune, both individually and communally as the people Israel?

Whose are the voices we’ve been ignoring, and what would it take for us to open to them now?

And what do we need to love, this year, as we reach this point in our journey?

What face of God or Justice or Mercy do we need to love and uplift with all our hearts? 

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.)

This week’s Torah portion, Hukat, begins with the parah adumah. The Israelites are instructed to bring a red heifer who has never borne a yoke. The priest takes it outside the camp and offers it, burning it along with hyssop, cedar wood, and something crimson. Its ashes are kept for making mei niddah hatat, “waters of lustration,” used to “purify” someone after contact with death. (More on that in a moment.) 

This is weird, and not just to us. Rashi observed that the nations of the world would taunt us about the oddity of this law, which is why it’s called a hok. Hukim are the category of mitzvot that may not make logical sense, like kashrut. We observe them as a spiritual discipline, part of accepting “the yoke of heaven,” tradition’s way of saying there’s something in the universe more mysterious than we can grasp.

I see hukim the way I see poetry that’s allusive and evocative. If I approach this like a poem or a piece of visual art, I notice how this parsha is shot through with the recurring theme of death. Immediately after the parah adumah, we read that someone who touches a dead body becomes tamei for seven days. Tum’ah is Torah’s term for the spiritual condition of having coming into contact with life or death. 

In Torah's understanding we become tamei upon encountering a dead body, menstrual blood or semen, certain forms of illness. I follow R. Rachel Adler in understanding tum’ah as a kind of spiritual-electrical charge. Someone who’s tamei is temporarily vibrating at a different frequency than everyone else. This is the spiritual state that the waters of lustration were used, in Torah times, to wash away. 

The first time I served on our hevra kadisha I understood this in a new way. It’s not that touching the bodies of our dead is somehow “unclean.” It’s more like: once I had helped to wash and dress and bless the body that had once held the soul of a human being, I felt changed. The world outside the funeral home felt weird. I felt spiritually out of phase, not quite in normal time, for a little while. 

I remember feeling that way after late-night shifts when I was a student chaplain at Albany Medical Center, too. After holding the hand of someone who was dying, or praying with someone headed into emergency surgery, nothing felt the same. As I learned much later, it's also how I felt after giving birth: I felt fragile, precarious, both heightened and dissociated, temporary and eternal all at once.

Today the parah adumah ritual is impossible. There is no high priest to make a sacrifice in the appointed place in the appropriate ways. Rambam even suggested that only one more parah adumah will ever be born, to be brought by the messiah. There are no waters of lustration anymore. Especially now that the ritual literally can’t be performed, we grow and learn through studying it rather than actually doing it. 

In place of the waters of lustration, we’ve evolved other rituals to close shiva. For instance, walking around the block and going back in through a different door: embodying both our readiness to re-enter the world, and also how mourning has made us different than whoever we were before. But the central idea that death impacts us and we need a transition to return to normalcy still rings true. 

Reading about death and tum’ah this year I can’t help thinking about Israel and Palestine. I think about the violent deaths of Israelis at the Nova music festival and the kibbutzim that were attacked on October 7. I think about the violent deaths of Palestinians in Gaza over the last 281 days. Everyone there has touched death, and no one has had the luxury of time to mourn, nor closure for their grief.

I yearn for waters of lustration that could wash away their vast grief (and ours) and soften the hearts of those who have power to create change. I wish we had a way to balm every wounded soul and body in Israel and Palestine. Healing feels impossible – as impossible as a ritual that demands a place and a role that haven’t existed in 2000 years and a sacrificial modality of prayer we no longer use.

In times like these I’m grateful that our tradition is built on hope that no matter how broken our world has been, and this year we’re all aware that it is plenty broken, a better future is possible. Even if I don’t know how we’re going to get there. The truth is, it’s not my job to know how the world is going to get there. It’s my job to care for y’all. And it's aleinu, on all of us, to do what we can to build better. 

One of my most profound memories of hospital chaplaincy is the night a kid was hit by a train. I wasn’t yet a parent, and I remember saying to my chaplaincy supervisor that I don’t know how I could have borne the parents' grief if I were. He told me that no matter what, faced with this kind of grief, all we can really give is our heart, our presence, our care. It’s the holiest gift human beings have to give.

I can’t make sense out of the magnitude of loss in Gaza and Israel. Any single person’s grief can be infinite. The grief of whole peoples…? There are no words. And that brings me back to the idea of a hok, a mitzvah we can’t explain. Accepting the “yoke of heaven” means accepting that we can't always make sense of the world. In the face of this much grief, we may not be able to make anything “okay.” 

But we can feel-with one another, and we can insist on empathy for every Israeli and every Palestinian. I know that some people think my empathy is misplaced, or that it benefits the wrong people. For me, empathy is a core spiritual discipline, and part of that discipline is extending it to everyone. Faced with inconceivable loss, our hearts and our care are all we have; they are the holiest gift we have to give.

May this Shabbat Parah bring peace to all who mourn, and comfort to all who are bereaved. 

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

Reading B’ha’alotkha this year, what jumps out at me is Pesah Sheni. God spoke to Moses saying, the children of Israel should make the Passover offering at the appropriate time. Except there were some people who couldn’t make the offering because they had come into contact with death. So they came to Moses and said, what about us? 

Moses asked God, and the answer he received was: anyone who couldn’t observe Passover at the right time, because of an encounter with death or because they were on a long journey, can make the offering at the next full moon. (Num. 9:10-12) In other words: if we miss the appropriate time and place for Pesah, we get a second chance.

We've all regretted something we didn’t manage to do. Maybe it’s something personal: I wish I’d done more to encourage people to vote. Maybe it’s something communal: the conversations we began after last month’s initial Israel/Palestine film screening were amazing, I wish we’d started listening and learning together years ago.

Here come these verses about Pesah Sheni to remind me it’s not too late. If there’s something that will bring us closer to God (remember, that’s what a korban / an offering was, from the root that means to draw near; and if the G-word doesn’t work for you, think Justice, or Compassion, or Truth) we get another opportunity.

Granted, Torah goes on to say that if we could’ve made the Pesah offering at the right time, and for some reason we just didn’t, “our soul will be cut off from our people.” (Num. 9:13) For me that’s a descriptive statement, not a prescriptive one. If we don’t engage in mitzvot or connect with community, we’re going to wind up feeling disconnected. 

So much in modern life can make us feel disconnected. I don't think I need to list those things; I imagine each of us could make our own list. And this year, on top of that, painful divisions in Jewish community around Israel and Gaza have made many of us feel alienated and disconnected in spaces where we most yearn to feel otherwise. 

But Jewish life is predicated on the premise that community matters. And I increasingly believe that figuring out how to be in community even when our views on Palestine and Israel differ is some of the most important work we can do right now – as Jews, as Americans, as human beings. 

Recently I read an interview that Roxane Gay did with the author Lamya H, included at the end of the e-book of Lamya’s memoir Hijab Butch Blues. Lamya says:

“I was lucky enough to be part of a very intentional queer Muslim community…. Not everyone was someone I would be close friends with. But because we were building this thing that was deeply intentional, everyone showed up for everyone else. It’s where I learned a lot of organizing skills, in terms of navigating conflict and being around people whose politics are different from yours, who live in the world in ways that don’t match yours – but who you deeply, deeply connect with, and who become chosen family. Navigating all of those things taught me so much about the value of kindness.”

Roxane Gay responds, “When you engage in community with kindness, it makes it possible to navigate all kinds of terrain, both good and challenging.” I read that and I thought: this speaks to me as a member of a broad Jewish community that’s struggling with the challenge of deeply-held views on Israel and Palestine, all rooted in Jewish values, that don’t align.

This year some of us are grieving what our Israeli cousins are going through, and some of us are grieving what our Palestinian cousins are going through. We may feel that difference keenly. But I believe our hearts are big enough to hold it, alongside the common ground that we all want a better future for our beloveds in that beloved land. 

We all want a better future in this beloved land, too. When I read about the plan for a "post-Constitutional" Federal government or those who want this to be a “Christian nation” – when I think about other rights that we could lose – the stakes feel impossibly high. We need each other in Jewish community now more than ever. 

Which brings me back to this week’s parsha. The Hebrew word mitzvah / commandment is a close cognate to the Aramaic word tzavta / connection. A mitzvah is something that connects us: to God (whatever we understand that to mean), to tradition, to community, to each other, to ourselves. 

Torah’s talking about someone who missed Pesah because they were in contact with death or on a long journey. But Rashi expands that. He says, it doesn’t need to be a long journey that keeps us away from mitzvot and community. Even if we were just right outside the door, we can still seek a do-over. 

Framed in modern terms, we could say: no one’s going to police what’s kept us from the mitzvot, from community, from building a more just world. We might feel like our failure to do these things before disqualifies us from doing them now, but Torah says otherwise. Torah says, re-orient, re-align, and try again. That's the work of teshuvah, which is the work of Jewish life.

In an ideal world, Pesah happens at the full moon of Nisan and sets us on a path toward covenant. “We were slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt, and God brought us out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm: out of servitude and into holy service, partnering with God in building a more just world.” That’s our core story.

In an ideal world, we’re already on that journey. And if we’re not, it’s not too late to start. It's not too late to welcome the refugee and protect the vulnerable and tend to the climate crisis and uplift human dignity. Like the saying goes about planting a tree: the best time to do it would’ve been then. The next best time is now. 

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.)

Trudging on treadmills
and surrounded by vacuum, tired
of freeze-dried anything
we'll kvetch: why did you bring us
out here to die? Was the climate crisis
really so dire?

Like our ancient ancestors
craving cucumbers and melons,
the thirsty tastes
of fertile crescent,
nothing to eat but manna
every blistering day.

Maybe a captain, frayed to the end
of his connector cable
will snap: I can't anymore
with you ungrateful wretches,
go eat hydroponic lettuce
until it comes out your nose.

What liturgies will we write
remembering this green Eden?
What revelation will we receive
in ownerless wilderness
wandering across the vastness
between stars?

Why did you bring us? Ex. 14:11. Cucumbers and melons. Numbers 11:5.  I can't anymore. Numbers 11:11. Until it comes out your nose. Numbers 11:20. Ownerless wilderness. We receive(d) Torah in a place that is hefker, ownerless; some say, we receive when we ourselves become hefker.

The idea of seeking a new home among the stars is still science fiction. But I can imagine a hypothetical generation of space refugees behaving like the Children of Israel in the wilderness, stiff-necked and grousing. Mostly I wish I could be a fly on the wall to see the liturgies they would write.