Binding Chains & Pekudei

So, the Jewish Communist funeral from last week…

Just before I left the house in the morning, my husband, assessing my attire, asked, “Don’t you have a red scarf for your head?” (You know, for a Communist funeral, instead of the normal black and white one I normally wear…)

I went to my closet, and there was one! A bright red one.

But was it okay to break the dress code in this instance? I’d once been told to wear something pink…Anyway, I was rushing out, and better safe than sorry.

I get to the funeral home, greet the family for the first time in person—and the son of the deceased is wearing a black outfit—with a bright red scarf around his neck! Exactly the same red as the one hanging in my closet!

I was sorry.

But moving on. It’s time to begin our k’ria ritual in the family room. We gather ‘round in a circle holding hands, and instead of a melody I normally use, we sing the melody for The Internationale. It feels empowering to all in the room. The song binds us together as we recommit to the working-person’s struggle.

Then there’s Phil Ochs’ “When I’m Gone.”—instead of Psalm 23 at the beginning of the funeral.

I’d listened and practiced it probably a hundred times in the past 24 hours. I wanted to sing it well and with confidence. I was reassured that it would be playing on the TV monitor during the service. But I look and realize there will be no accompaniment for me.

So I turn to the community and call on everyone to join in and support me. As we sing, there is a gathering force as everyone’s voices join together. And it comes out perfectly. Yet again, we renew our vows to continue to live as this man Bernard did, carrying on the fight for freedom and justice.

On the long limousine ride out to the cemetery, I am with all these young people who are curious about my journey from Communist to Rabbi. I tell them my story. We talk politics. I explain that my political outlook on the world has essentially remained unchanged.

What I forget to tell them is the healing journey I’ve been on, and how this spiritual path has been a gift, how it brings me from a place of despair to one of hope every time I am singing in community, how it puts the current political situation in perspective, and heals on a level much deeper than the psychological. So deep that I want to share it with others as a rabbi.

At the graveside, we stand around and sing Pete Seeger’s “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “To This Old Brown Earth.” The grandchildren cover the grave to the very last bit of soil, pouring all their passion and love for their grandfather into each shovelful of dirt.

And I see that it brings them healing.

At the end of the day, I accept an invitation to return to Shiva house with the family. We look at photos, I see Bernard Aptekar’s amazing artwork—one whose lifelong commitment to social justice led him to use his art as a political platform to help make the world a better place for all.

This all happens on Thursday.

Friday night comes, and although I’m really too tired, I go to synagogue services.

When the prayer for the hostages is sung, I don’t stand up. Not because I don’t care, but because it makes me angry. It feels like we think we can pray our way out of this. Yes, pray for healing, pray for everyone to open their hearts and change our way of living, and that might lead to freedom. But at the moment, there needs to be political will. And—if we’re going to pray for those suffering, then let’s include the Palestinians as well. I want there to be equal compassion for all involved.

Plus, I’m just too tired to stand, physically and emotionally.

Then, the cantor, who is leading services tonight, reads a poem:

It acts like love — music, 
it reaches toward the face; touches it, 
and tries to let you know His promise, 
that all will be okay.

It acts like love — music, 
and tells the feet; 
"You do not have to be so burdened."
My body is covered with wounds this world made, 
but I still longed to kiss Him, even when God said, 
"Could you also kiss the hand that caused each scar, 
for you will not find Me until you do."

It does that — music. 
It helps us to forgive. 
When my pain became the cause of my cure,
My contempt changed into reverence 
and my doubt into certainty.

I see that I have been the bale on my own path. 
Now my body has become my heart. 
My heart has become my soul. 
And my spirit the eternal spirit.

This is by a woman sold into slavery as a young girl and forced into a life of prostitution. At the age of 50 she was freed and became a holy woman that many came to. Her name was Rabia of Basra, and she lived from 717-801 of the Common Era.

The poem makes the tears come. And they won’t stop. So hopeless does it all feel. With the resumption of the bombing in Gaza, that’s it for the remaining hostages. Tragedy in every direction, including all that is happening in the U.S.

But the poetry, with its challenging spiritual message, and community surrounding me, reminds me that there is a place to find refuge, to cry and cry until the grief is released—at least some of it. It helps me (all of us?) regain the perspective of the long “arc of the moral universe,” as our voices join together in strength for healing the world.

In the Torah reading this week, the work of building the Mishkan, the Tabernacle, a “dwelling place for God,” is completed. Just as God orders, so Moses carries out God’s orders to perfection. There are woven chains that hold in place the Ephod, the Breastplate of Justice worn by the High Priest.

The world is not perfect, nor was it ever. But we all need to hold each other, finding sustenance and strength in community, bound together like the chains of the priestly breastpiece in justice, as we face these trying times.

As Pete Seeger sang:

To my old brown earth
And to my old blue sky
I'll now give these last few molecules of "I."

And you who sing,
And you who stand nearby,
I do charge you not to cry;

Guard well our human chain,
Watch well you keep it strong,
As long as sun will shine

And this our home,
Keep pure and sweet and green,
For now I'm yours
And you are also mine

And please say Amen.

Mirrors, What a Jewish Communist Funeral Might Look Like, & Va-Yak-hel

I got an interesting funeral request yesterday that had me looking in the mirror.

It was for an 89-year-old man, an artist who lived his life as a fighter, speaking up for justice, creating art that was a commentary on society, as he believed art should be (as any good Communist would know). A a Renaissance man, knowledgeable about all history, politics, music. An admirer of Diego Rivera (whom he got to shake hands with once while visiting family in Mexico), a man who never rested, according to his wife, creating “food for the soul.”

He believed that it was neither education nor social status that gave a person their dignity. Rather, simply being human made you inherently deserving of it. He didn’t like jokes that made fun of people (and I’m guessing, like my father, jokes that made fun of a person’s race, ethnicity, or language).

A Red Diaper Baby (like me), his family had been directly involved in the Spanish Civil War, with stories of men sleeping on the floor of their house in Brooklyn, getting ready to go to Spain and join the fight.

His family spoke my language, despite my now being a rabbi. They reminded me to be proud of my Communist heritage while all my years growing up I was told I should be ashamed by those outside, who didn’t understand it, or had misconceptions about it, just as I was taught by modern American culture and those in my inner circles to be ashamed of becoming involved in Judaism on a “spiritual level.”

We spoke the same language, except there should be no mention of God at the funeral, or the soul, because he didn’t (and I’m assuming his children don’t) believe in that stuff. The only concession was the Mourners Kaddish at the graveside, as requested by a grandchild who is involved in Jewish community “on a spiritual level” where he lives. Not a problem because there’s no mention of God in the Mourners Kaddish.

What songs would be meaningful, what poetry, I asked.

The Internationale, the daughter said with a laugh as a question.

No problem, I said, laughing in response; “We sang that at my mother’s funeral!”

So here I am, looking at myself in the mirror, seeing my whole upbringing reflected back at me, represented by this man who is among the few left alive from this bygone era. Yes, a little funny, asking a rabbi to do a funeral and saying, “No God, please.” But I can do that. I’m totally comfortable with these kinds of people. Like I said, we speak the same language, hold the same values.

It’s like I’m home with them.

This week’s Torah portion continues with the construction of the Tabernacle for the Israelites to make a temporary “home” for “God” to dwell amongst them. The instructions are more specific this time, with measurements given. The people are asked to bring gifts of gold, silver, copper, and yarns of different colors.

They are asked to do so as their hearts move and impel them. They bring with so much generosity that they must be told to stop.

One curious line refers to the laver for holding water for the sanctification of the priests to be constructed out of copper. It says, “He [Betzalel, the artist) made the copper washstand and its copper base out of the mirrors of the dedicated women who congregated at the entrance of the Communion Tent. (Ex. 38:8)

Our ancient rabbis mused about this. What were these mirrors about? And they came up with a story that the mirrors came from the women who, while still enslaved in Egypt, used them to see themselves reflected with their husbands to lure them with their beauty.

The purpose? That their husbands shouldn’t give up on continuing to create future generations, despite their seemingly hopeless situation of centuries of backbreaking enslavement.

According to this story, this midrash, Moses at first rejected these mirrors for the vanity they posed, but God insisted that they were holier than anything else created for the Tabernacle; they contained love and hope. Thus, the washing bowls were made from these copper mirrors.

It’s interesting to be asked to officiate at this funeral. Yet, I see no contradiction. This man held the highest Jewish values of all. He refused to give up on humanity, despite a lifetime of discouraging political developments over decades. He was a fighter, as his family told me, in so many ways. It doesn’t matter that he didn’t believe in God or the soul. He, like Judaism teaches, believed in love of all people, that all are made in “God’s image,” even if he used different language to express this idea. You don’t need to believe in “God” any more than you need to be an atheist in order to have a deep commitment to justice.

I will be proud to lead this funeral tomorrow. And next week I’ll give you a report on how it goes.

In the meantime, let’s continue to look in the mirror, and see reflections of what some might call “God,” equally deserving of love and dignity, no matter what we look like. And when we walk outside, let’s take this lesson and aim to be generous of heart and make a practice of seeing that same image deserving of respect and dignity reflected in the faces of all those we cross paths with, despite anything we might normally judge them on.

And for one more week, let’s not give up on humanity.

And please say Amen.

Masquerades & Ki Tissa

This past week, I had one of the most beautiful Shabboses I’ve had in a long time.

First on Friday night out at Romemu Brooklyn, and then in the morning at Romemu Manhattan.

For those who know me, you know that, during the pandemic, there was a rift at Romemu, the synagogue that was my initial inspiration for becoming a rabbi—not between the two Romemus, but within the community itself (nor is it a secret).

But on Saturday, many people that hadn’t been together in years gathered for a beautiful baby naming. A couple who had met and fallen in love there, got married and had a baby.

There was a hint of the old community we had had, and many of us cried as this beautiful baby was placed on the open Torah scroll to receive her blessings. And she slept through the whole thing, totally at peace. It was the first time as far as we could remember that this had happened—or maybe we wanted to remember it that way, like we had all achieved a kind of peace since the rift began years ago.

It felt like the sanctuary, the mishkan, the Israelites were commanded to build in the desert, a place for God to dwell amongst us, a place to find peace amid the turmoil of the world.

As the Torah story develops, this week, in Ki Tissa, we are told to pay attention to the details of the instruments to be used by the priests in the mishkan: the laver, holy anointing oil, the incense. God appoints an artist, a craftsperson whose spirit is "infused with the Divine,” to be in charge of the design and carving of stones and metal work.

The chosen artist’s name is Betzalel, which can be translated in two possible ways: either, “In the Shadow of the Divine,” or “Divine Egg” (speaking of the shortage of eggs we’re experiencing in the U.S. right now…).

God gives this job to one who, like an egg, contains unimaginable potential: not a prophet like Moses, nor a priest like Aaron, as Rabbi Shefa Gold points out in her Torah Journeys—nor a king!

Meanwhile, each in the community is commanded to contribute a half shekel toward the building of the mishkan—the same, whether rich or poor. This money, called a “ransom of the soul,” is used for casting the sockets for the sanctuary, which literally hold the structure together, as Rabbi Gold stresses.

Why a “ransom”? Because the soul is in danger if we don’t consciously contribute and commit ourselves to being a part of the creation of the community, and acknowledging the equal value of all; the half shekel redeems us each from the illusion of separation.

Then, amidst this building of community, the Golden Calf rears its ugly head.

The people are anxious. Moses has disappeared to the top of Mt. Sinai, gone for forty days as he convenes with God. When is he coming back? How can they live with the anxiety of the unknown? What will become of them without their great leader?

“Make for us a God!” they yell at Aaron, threatening him. And Aaron, in his own fear and anxiety, takes all their gold jewelry, casts it into a fire, and out comes a calf made of gold—just like that.

The people are thrilled. They dance and eat and celebrate. They have their god, solid, “real,” right there in front of them.

The Golden Calf exists with no interior space, only for itself, solid, “full of itself,” glorifying only itself, taking on a life of its own, out of control, as Rabbi Gold writes. The mishkan, on the other hand, exists for the empty space within it, built to send us to a holy inner space.

The people, believing that their leader, Moses, is there to take away their impatience and fear and fill them up with a sense of power, have transferred all their hopes and dreams—and sense of power—to a material, glittery, god.

What is left, however, is an “unbearable void” (Shefa Gold again).

After my beautiful Shabbat, I was feeling so full, so connected to community. I thought, “now I have achieved my inner peace. Maybe I can hold onto it and stay grounded in it, despite the turmoil in the world around me.

It lasted through Sunday.

And the week started, and just like that, three little things presented themselves in my life, and I was thrown completely off.

They weren’t in the category of life-altering events. My family is safe and healthy, I’m not being displaced by war, deprived of food or medical care, losing my income because a bunch of people in power decided my job is not worthy or because I was on strike. I’m not facing possible eviction from my home like so many people in this country. The Department of Homeland Security is not coming to abduct me in the night for being an activist or mediator between campus protesters and university provosts, sending me down to Louisiana, depriving me of due process, threatening to deport me, despite my good legal status in the Land of the Free with the “greatest legal system in the world.”

No, the things that happened to me are more in the category of a broken heirloom dish or someone questioning my integrity. Minor, really, but enough to throw me out of my inner sanctuary. Some people would say “God was testing me.”

If I was being tested, it worked. I became distracted by little, insignificant things, interactions with people, things they said, forgetting for a day that I know who I am, I know my value, I have integrity and I live by it.

My inner sanctuary, my mishkan of empty space that makes room for the Divine was temporarily filled with doubt and powerlessness, which became my Golden Calf masquerading as the Divine, grabbing my attention away from my strength, like the glitter of my phone constantly vying for my attention.

To regain my inner sanctum, I went out into the beautiful, fake, global-warming spring (64 degrees in NYC in mid-March, though I have boycotted unseasonable weather in the past the way we should all be boycotting Amazon, Whole Foods, and Target, because we should not be “normalizing” it, surrendering to global climate catastrophe any more than we should surrender to the wealthiest people in the world controlling our future.)

After what felt like a wasted, unproductive day, I had a good night’s sleep and woke up feeling balanced again, ready to write my weekly blog. So here I am, back in the (Divine?) flow, with this blog flowing out of me.

Was it a wasted, unproductive day? I don’t think so now. I did some very deep, spiritual work that needed doing. I found myself again in the Shadow of God, or the Divine Egg, where the Divine incubates to grow and develop.

But the question remains for us all: as we enter the holiday of Purim, when we masquerade as someone else, will we allow the Golden Calf of despair, hopelessness, and anxiety to fool us in its masquerade, threatening to pull us away from the power of community, telling us we cannot, will not, will never…?

For way too long, we have been placing all our hopes and dreams into individual leaders, as we did with Obama, ignoring problems like mass deportation. We didn’t want to hear it, we weren’t allowed to say it, because he was our One Savior. That wasn’t okay, and the proof is in the pudding, and the pudding is where we find ourselves now (though the eggs in the pudding still carry the potential to create something else!).

The God of the Bible designated an artist, a more regular kind of person, imbued with creativity, not a prophet, not a priest, and demanded that we recognize the equal worth of all. When we put people on thrones, we are not valuing ourselves as equally responsible and equally powerful, or recognizing that together, we can come up with all kinds of creative ways to have an impact, making us the most powerful of all.

I hear people say, “We just have to get through the next four years,” but we’ve been here before, and the problems will not be solved by just waiting it out.

Together as a community, we are the Divine Egg. We hold the potential to grow a just and fair society as long as every single one of us participates in the building. The Golden Calf of Despair will keep rearing its ugly head if we don’t put in our half shekel and use the power we have, like in the “small” actions of boycotting that can have huge impacts, especially when the Golden Calf driving the world is money. It takes community, all of us, to build a just country and world. If we each put in our half shekel, it is not too late to redeem our souls from those who would like to own them.

I end with a quote (thanks to my friend Debra) from the Jewish prophet Micah that answers the question: “What does our God require of us?” “Only to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk modestly with your God.”

So let us stop allowing our fears and anxieties to control us, stop focusing on our individual comfort and ease and grumbling about the tiny things, start making a few simple sacrifices (like changing our shopping habits once and for all, for instance!), find our inner space of peace, fill it up with our strength and courage and creativity, put in our half shekel for the sake of all, and redeem the soul of our society.

And say Amen.

Angel or A-hole & Tetzavveh

The other day, I officiated at a funeral for a very complicated guy.

Many people had a lot to say about him. The first person to get up and speak gave two theme options to choose from: “Asshole or Angel.”

A resounding call came out from the attendees: “Asshole!”

Of course.

The speaker dramatically threw the “Angel” speech in a corner behind him. Yes, it was funny, and everyone laughed. There was so much love in the room for this man I’ll call Sam. He’d died within weeks of being diagnosed with cancer; all were shocked, many were heartbroken, many had traveled far and wide.

Simultaneously described as the most loving person you can imagine, close to a hero in some ways, and also as the most difficult, challenging person you might meet. People were obviously there because they were willing to cut him a lot of slack for the imperfect being that he was.

He was the wittiest, funniest guy, a talented violinist, would listen to you whine and feel sorry for yourself, gave great advice, was a best friend and mentor to many. He took care of both his parents and both siblings when they’d faced early illness and death. He’d give you the shirt off his back—or find you the best car, get it fixed up to pristine condition, and drive it to your house, pick you up at the airport at the drop of a hat, and tour you around New York City like he had all the time in the world. Only 62 years old, never married, no children, yet he’d been a brother, cousin, father, grandfather, uncle, to many.

He was also cantankerous, critical, opinionated, stubborn. He knew he was very bad at following the good advice he gave others. He had no filters, said what he pleased when he pleased, yelled at you if he wanted to. If he was at the literal steering wheel, you were putting your life at risk. I heard a lot about his pot-smoking (not necessarily when driving…?). He enjoyed drinking and eating (to excess), and loved teaching new and interesting curse words to the young people in his life, whether their parents liked it or not.

The opinionated part? He was fervent about justice—not only justice for “his people,” but justice for all. He was very politically active, and had officially been a Big Brother to at least one person who attended the funeral whose life he had “saved” and changed (and whose speech made me cry).

This week’s Torah reading is about the initiation of priests and the garments to be worn while officiating their duties to obtain forgiveness, a kind of cleansing, for the wrongs committed by the Israelites. One item to be worn over the heart of the priest is a breastplate that identifies the twelve Israelite tribes.

The reason for this? One interpretation is that your tribe/tribes/people are to be held closest to your heart.

Somewhere in the middle of the parsha, God reminds the people that God will “dwell amongst” them: וְשָׁ֣כַנְתִּ֔י בְּת֖וֹךְ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל וְהָיִ֥יתִי לָהֶ֖ם לֵאלֹהִֽים/V’shakhanti b’toch b’nei yisroel v’hayita lahem lelohim; I will abide among the Israelites, and I will be their God (Exod. 29:45).

What does this mean for God to live among us? And what about non-Israelites? Isn’t God everywhere already?

Rabbi Shai Held, in his book, Judaism is About Love, dedicates many pages to the Jewish mandate of “loving one’s neighbor as oneself” as pertains to the particular vs. the universal.

He asks, does Judaism say it’s okay to place one’s family, community, and people closest to the heart and take care of them first and foremost? (Yes. Of course.); is it okay to only place our own family, community, and people on our hearts? Can we justify closing our hearts and becoming indifferent to the suffering of those outside our family and people? (Absolutely not, in case you were wondering.)

For those who were frustrated by the strong opinions and ways Sam had of delivering those opinions (and probably canceling out all other opinions), it might have been hard to appreciate him, especially if you became the target of his frustration with injustice in the world or his random rants.

So, was he an asshole?

Many said yes. But it seems to me he was a special kind of asshole.

He carried Jewish values deep within him and acted upon them, especially when it came to honoring family and friends, but also to loving and caring for those outside his inner circle. It takes a very particular kind of person to become a Big Brother, for instance. I also heard that he was very upset about the actions taken by the Israeli government in response to October 7th pertaining to Gaza, and many, if not all, in his family, disagreed with him.

I imagine that he wrestled with the very questions many of us do: What does it mean to love your family, your country? Does it mean they are beyond reproach just because you love them, or that you love them less because you reproach them? What are the limits?

One of the very central Jewish values Rabbi Held brings up is that if someone you know is acting in a fashion that is unethical, you are mandated to speak up. Another value is to see others in the most positive light you can.

So, while they joked about his difficult, challenging qualities, Sam’s family and friends lived by those values as well, and gave him a lot of grace. The cousin who had Power of Attorney to make medical decisions for Sam struggled greatly, and because of the love he had for Sam, tolerated a lot of verbal abuse from him at the end—and also put all his efforts into planning the most beautiful service and gathering he could for Sam.

Sam may not have expressed himself in the kindest of ways (an understatement, I’m sure). I learned that Buddhism was very interesting and attractive to him; maybe he hoped to find equanimity in life while also fighting for justice? Apparently he could not.

Did that make him an asshole? Maybe.

But human beings are complicated beings.

One story I heard was that when Sam started college, he’d shown up at his dorm room with only a few items in hand, one of which, most importantly, was a vacuum cleaner! He was a clean freak who insisted everyone take off their shoes upon entering his home lest there be mud on the bottom. When I heard this, I was reminded of the holiness of the ground; not this week’s Torah reading, but it made me think of when God tells Moses at the famous Burning Bush to take off his shoes, for the land on which he was standing was holy ground.

To Sam, it seems, all land was holy, and all people, names to be placed on the heart, individuals deserving of respect and dignity—except, ironically, he didn’t show those feelings in a conventional way. Yet, I heard that if he had a big political argument with you, and he seemed so angry that he would never speak to you again, the very next day he’d surprise you by calling you up to offering a ride to the airport.

So, what does it mean that God wants to dwell amongst us? And does God need a home to do that, as in the tabernacle God will “abide” in throughout the Israelites time in the desert?

No, but we certainly seem to need a home for God, perhaps to remind us how to act in a way that brings dignity to all. Sam got it right in terms of the particular and the universal and love, but never quite learned how to express himself respectfully, it seems.

As humans, we are complicated by virtue of simply being human—so far from being angels, each and every one of us. We all have a lot of work to do in aspiring to be good humans. It’s especially hard to love those outside our inner circles when it feels like the world is aspiring against us.

But aspire we must to live by Jewish values.

If standing up for your beliefs, vehemently challenging what you perceive as injustices, and loving the way Sam did, means being an asshole, then we should all aspire to be bigger assholes.

May it be so, and please say Amen.

A Brush With Death & T’rumah

When something happens where you realize you could have died, it’s a chance to think about things. It can even be seen as a gift to reevaluate things.

Last week, returning from a food-shopping trip, I was standing with my neighbor Nelson (you know him) at a bus stop, and we were checking the app to see when the next bus would be arriving. Suddenly we turned around, and there it came!

For some reason, the bus stop shelter had been built about thirty feet from the bus stop post, so we had to hurry. I knew there was an old man sitting inside the shelter, so I was sure the bus driver would stop there. I rushed with my cart in tow. Just as I reached the shelter, squeezed dangerously between one wall and the curb, the bus came full speed ahead, missing me by inches. Then we had to run back in the other direction, the old man hobbling behind us, to catch the bus.

Was the bus driver having a fantasy of running me over? He had to have seen the old man waiting. Why would he make him run too?

We got on the bus, took a seat, and the old man sat opposite me. Of course, we immediately started complaining loudly about the bus driver. Why was he being so aggressive? “He saw you sitting there!” The old man nodded.

In my mind, I wondered about this false construct we live with called race. The old man was Black, as was the bus driver, so it would seem that he would want to be kind to the older man. On the other hand, was he lashing out at me as an older white woman who represented so much that is wrong with society?

Across the aisle, there was a woman who had seen the whole thing, a Latina woman who had just come from the food pantry, and we all complained together of the aggressiveness of some bus drivers. Then she got up and went to the bus driver, asking directions with “sweety” this and “sweety” that.

Nelson and I laughed about her sudden change of attitude.

But it made me think, maybe that’s exactly what he needs: love, not scolding and anger.

Perhaps the bus driver was having a really hard day. Maybe his life sucks right now, or in general. Maybe he’s angry at the world.

Or maybe none of it was intentional. Maybe he’d been speeding to get across the avenue and misjudged the distance to the bus stop, and couldn’t safely slow down faster.

In this week’s Torah reading, God gives Moses the instructions for building the Mishkan, the mobile home for God to “dwell amongst” the Israelites as they move through the desert over the next forty years. They are asked to bring gifts from the heart, materials to help build the sanctuary. They bring so much that they are finally told to stop; it’s too much.

What does it mean, “dwell amongst” them? Isn’t God omnipresent, unable to pin down, put away, place in a box? If we wonder if there is “a God,” then it certainly is easy to question God’s existence precisely because…well, honestly, isn’t it obvious? We can be apologetic and talk about God existing but not dwelling amongst us, retreating from the world after creating it, leaving it up to us (which is one theology), but that’s still problematic when we think of the mess we’re in. Can’t God step in once in a while, please, and help us?? Even a little??

So I’m thinking, since God “dwelling amongst” us sounds way too abstract, maybe it’s easier to talk about being “godly” as human beings, or acting in a “godly” manner; if God has left it up to us (free will and all, you know), it’s our job to heal the world. Thus, we can choose between caring for other people’s pain or ignoring it, as one example, between inflicting more pain or being a vehicle for healing.

I keep thinking about the Jewish Florida Man from a couple weeks back who shot a car 17 times thinking the people inside were Palestinian. It turned out they were Israeli Jews, a father and son visiting. (They were fine, thank God, though traumatized, I’m sure). And then the father went and posted on social media that they’d been shot by a Palestinian!

Meanwhile, organizations like AIPAC and the ADL were completely silent around it I guess because it’s just too embarrassing to talk about a double whammy hate crime on the part of Jews who are always claiming to be the victims. This is a dangerous mentality. It’s so much easier to be the victim than to take responsibility for our own actions and stop pointing fingers. Without a doubt, antisemitism is on the rise, but so is anti-Arab sentiment.

We’re in an all-around tragic political situation that’s caused a rise in hatred and hate crimes, which has in turn but also separately for other political reasons, made some people think it’s okay to just shoot someone because of assumptions they make.

This combined with the incident last week with the bus driver got me thinking about how we inflict and cause more pain in the world through our assumptions, and how we put people in boxes with our presumptions, the way we’d like to be able to put God in a box and know exactly what he/she/they are all about, the way we’d like to understand this crazy world.

So instead of worrying about God dwelling amongst us, maybe we should worry more about how we can think and act in more godly ways.

How generous am I in my thoughts and assumptions about others, like that bus driver? How can I be a vehicle for healing and love in the world as opposed to perpetuating anger and violence?

If I can’t say I am acting in those godly ways, then I shouldn’t be pointing any fingers.

So, what gifts can we each bring to this very messy world right now?

May we constantly reevaluate our attitudes and actions—without needing a brush with death!

May our gifts be so abundant that we come to a point where we’ve built a world where “God” can dwell amongst us.

And please say Amen.

Enlarging or Shrinking our Hearts & Mishpatim

Sometimes you meet a person who is a real inspiration.

This happened recently to me.

I met someone who, though very attached to Israel as a nation, very emotional over the hostage crisis, with close family history tied to the Holocaust, nonetheless lives with the objective of being able to engage around Israel and its moral obligations with those who might hold different views.

Barely getting to know one another, I was curious how she felt about what was happening in Israel and Gaza.

She started to respond and soon found herself fighting back tears.

And then apologizing for them—more than once.

Because, she said, she wants to be able to have difficult conversations around this issue and worries that her emotions get in the way.

But I saw it differently. The fact that she is willing to engage despite the emotionality of it for her—and even lives intentionally around this as a personal growth learning curve—makes it even more admirable in my eyes.

This week in Torah, Moses ascends Mt. Sinai again and receives more laws for the Israelites as they begin to form their new society; Moses then descends to repeat them to the people who, one voice, assent; Moses goes back up the mountain to receive the stone tablets of God’s teachings, and is enveloped in a flaming cloud where he will remain for forty days.

The laws recited to the people by Moses are all about ethical and ritual behavior: treatment of slaves and parents, murder, injury, virgins and brides, legal proceedings, dietary laws…so many of which seem to have little relevance in today’s world.

God also promises victory in conquering the Canaanites. Again, God says that, in return, they must be faithful to God’s teachings.

It’s a complicated thing: religion, the Bible and the things it says, promises God makes, what it asks of us.

We have the beginnings of ethical thinking in an ancient world, we have stories of oppression and freedom—of our people as the oppressed, but also as the oppressors. In the Bible, Jews are the enslaved but also the enslavers; we are the abused as well as the abusers.

I don't know how much of it comes from our trauma as a people and how much from political propaganda, but we have become very attached to certain stories we tell ourselves as a people—and to the idea of victimhood—that we forget—or purposely have put aside, stories of ourselves as the oppressors and avengers.

We have to be careful of how victimhood might be used as a political tool. This week I heard about how the Christian Right in the Trump Administration is pulling out that card now while Trump is rewriting the past, painting themselves as the oppressed!! (The nerve!)

But we Jews have to be cautious about this as well.

It is, after all, right there in our holy books: Israelites own slaves; Sarah abuses her slave Hagar and casts her out into the wilderness; Dinah’s brothers violently slaughter an entire town in retaliation for her rape; the prettified story of Purim and Queen Esther that actually ends with the slaughter of thousands by the Jews; the battles that God helps us win that result in the killing and expulsion of entire peoples (as in this week’s Parsha).

Yet it is precisely because we are human, as the Torah understands, capable of mistreating and exploiting each other and the land, that we receive all these laws on ethics.

In this week’s Torah reading, we are told to “turn memory into empathy and moral responsibility” (Shai Held, The Heart of Torah, Vol.1); “You shall not oppress a stranger (ger) for you know the feelings of the stranger, having yourselves been strangers in the land of Egypt.” (Ex. 23:9)

It’s interesting to me that the word for feelings is “nefesh,” meaning soul, or most inner being. It means we should understand!!

But as Rabbi Held notes, it is more honest to acknowledge that, having been victims, we actually wrestle with two possible responses to the suffering of others: we might want to ensure that no one else has to endure what we endured, or we might feel entitled and above reproach.

This latter narrative is the one coming from dominant Jewish voices these days; “What else were we supposed to do? They want to kill us.”

Rabbi Held quotes Leon Wieseltier: “The Holocaust enlarged our Jewish hearts, and it shrunk them.”

Sadly, it is our very human limitations in being able to imagine others’ suffering that gives us the capacity to injure other people.

Yet “God” says that God “hears” the moans of oppression and “sees” the people who suffer.

To be a religious person, Shai Held declares, is in part, to follow God’s example (except maybe when it comes to war…?); “To listen even when others will not, and to see even when others look away.” (p.183)

This new friend I mentioned above, by living with the intention of hearing things that are very hard for her to hear—by wrestling the way she does with her own emotional response and views that challenge her own wounded Jewish soul—is the very example of what it means to be a religious person.

Let us declare our assent in one voice to strive to be like her, and to enlarge our shrunken, wounded hearts.

Shabbat Shalom

In the Image of God, For the Love of God, & Yitro

Since last week, I have become completely obsessed with the idea of love as a central value and theme in Judaism.

I began reading Shai Held’s latest book, Judaism is About Love, and a particular idea hit me (which—wait ‘till the end…).

Rabbi Held begins with the concept of Divine Grace as a Jewish concept; it is our Torah that stresses that God loves us, not because we are deserving in any way, not because we have earned God’s love, but—just because.

We don’t have to do anything, be anything, act in any way—in order for “God” to love us.

But! The Jewish God does make demands on us!

The Torah, and later, the ancient rabbis, gave us a code of ethics. Thus, the laws we are so well known for (again, last week).

In fact, Held points out, Judaism has tremendous faith in humanity; it never gives up hope in the possibility that we are actually capable of creating a just and fair society through the way we treat each other and the land—guided by the demands made on us through our laws!

In this week’s Torah portion, the Israelites come to Mt. Sinai, and receive their first lesson in laws: the Ten Commandments—more accurately called, the Ten Utterances (dibrot in Hebrew).

As I read them this time around, I saw them in a completely differnent light. Especially the one about not making graven images of God—the very third one.

It occurred to me that God not having an image is connected to the idea that we are made in God’s image, as the Torah tells us from the beginning (b’tselem elohim). We are all different—every single human being, Jews and non-Jews—yet equally loved and cherished by God.

God puts conditions, not on God’s love for us, but on our right to the land we are meant to inherit, depending on how we behave towards each other and how we treat the land.

I was reminded of the text that says, ”Let not the land spew you out for defiling it, as it spewed out the nation that came before you (Lev.18:28).”

Taking this a step further, another Jewish value high on our list is that we as humans are not to be silent in the face of the suffering of our fellow humans, Jews or not.

Moses is a perfect example of this, as he intervenes in the face of injustice in at least three instances, as Rabbi Held points out: first, when he sees his own people being abused as slaves; then, when he witnesses two slaves fighting with each other; and finally, he rises to the defense of Midianite women who are being driven off by local shepherds.

We can imagine that Moses is full of outrage when he witnesses injustice.

Between his sense of justice and his drive to act on it, Moses is the paradigmatic Jew, and thus the one chosen for the mission of freeing the Israelites!

Moses is chosen precisely because of who he is ethically and his willingness to act on his values.

With what feels like outrageous injustices that seem to be piling up so quickly week after week in our present day, in our country and the world, a sense of outrage seems to have taken over so many of our lives.

“If you’re not outraged, then you’re not paying attention,” has almost become an adage.

Perhaps true.

In this week’s Torah portion, Yitro (Jethro), Moses’ father-in-law, comes to meet Moses in the desert where he hears of all the wonders the Israelite God has performed in helping free the people. As Israelite society is beginning to establish itself, Moses becomes its only judge. And Yitro notes that Moses is overwhelmed and depleted in trying to meet the entire community’s needs, helping settle disputes in small matters as well as large, sitting from morning ‘till night. Moses is losing himself—losing his core—in this work, as worthy as it is.

Yitro gives him advice that carries tremendous wisdom: delegate; place other wise elders in charge of smaller matters, and take on only the largest matters yourself.

Whether you believe in God and God’s love or not—for those of us who are proud to be Jewish, and purport to live by Jewish values, what is happening in the Jewish world, actions being taken by the current Israeli government and by our U.S. Administration regarding immigration, American birthright, and in its unconditional defense of Israel’s actions, among other things, should, at the very least, give us pause.

Whatever was done to us in the past does not give us license to do the same to others—lest we be spewed out…

That is, if we believe truly in our core, or at least try to believe, that all humans are equally deserving of respect, dignity, and life, no matter their personal beliefs or identity, no matter what they might have done or what we think they believe or have done, then we should be outraged—as Jews.

And we should at least be speaking up, if not acting as well, despite possible and frightening consequences, as Moses showed us by example, and as countless people demonstrated during WWII whom we now hold up as heroes. At the very least, we should be pressuring our institutions not to give in to executive orders that are not even law!!

But while we are to stand up for injustice, inspired by our love for humanity, we too must be careful not to lose ourselves. Most importantly, we must stay connected with our hearts and the love that is within. Like Moses, if we lose ourselves—our core—we cannot be effective on our mission of creating an ethical world.

May it be so.

And please say Amen.

Judaism, Loving Your Enemies, and B’shalakh

This past week I was in an immersive Jewish learning environment for three days with Hadar.

We studied different texts of Talmud and tackled difficult questions like, “How to Live in a World that Defies our Values,” and “Is Loving Our Enemies a Jewish Value?”

Rabbi Shai Held presented texts to answer the latter question specifically.

He talked about the incorrect notion that has become the norm, drummed into people over centuries by Christians, for thinking about Judaism vs. Christianity: that Christianity is about love, and Judaism is about law. Rabbi Held vehemently challenges this idea and the anti-Judaism that has come along with it, including among Jews ourselves; “We have a vengeful God. Jesus and the god of the New Testament are all about love; we’re all about the stringency of the law.”

Yet, not only was Jesus teaching Jewish values (he was not a Christian), as recorded in the Newer Testament, but go ahead and read the Book of Revelations, Rabbi Held says, and you’ll see a very punitive God and a whole lot of destruction.

When talking to Christian theologians and podcasters, Rabbi Held insists on a starting point of common understanding: “Most discussions among Jews about loving your enemy took place in ancient times when Jews had no power. Meanwhile, the same discussions among Christians took place when Christians had immense power.

“So, don’t lecture me as a Jew about the superiority of Jesus, when Christians, while preaching that Christianity was all about love, were slaughtering and torturing Jews. If we can have that common understanding, then we can begin talking.”

Meanwhile, Jews get very excited when we get to this week’s parsha and Shabbat Shira, the Shabbos of Song. But it’s a painful story if we really look at it.

We have been through 400 years of slavery, having seen the beginnings of Moses, saved first by the midwives and then by Pharaoh’s daughter, through all the plagues, and we are finally at the dramatic and terrifying moment where Moses stretches out his arm over the sea, it splits, the Israelites run through, and the wall of water closes behind them, drowning the Egyptians in pursuit of them.

Having reached the other side, the Israelites break out in song, rejoicing at their freedom and the fate that has befallen the Egyptians, and Miriam, Moses’ sister, leads the women as they dance around in celebration.

Personally, I have always struggled with the idea of a punitive, jealous God who, on the surface, seems completely responsible for the four-hundred year enslavement of our people. God tells Moses that this will happen, and also informs him every time he will harden Pharaoh’s heart.

And God is not patient or kind in many instances. He has already gotten angry several times, first with Moses for being afraid and trying to get out of his overwhelming assignment, and later with the Israelites who are grumbling and begging to go back to Egypt where “at least we had food.”

It is this angry God that Christianity has used to spread the idea that Jews are all about law, and Jesus is all about love. But as Shai Held showed us, there are many, many Jewish texts, both from the ancient rabbis and our scriptures, that challenge this idea.

Among the most well-known is that they say we are not to rejoice at the suffering and death of our enemies—specifically here, the Egyptians.

R. Held also separates texts from the ancient rabbinic that are prescriptive (“If your enemy falls, do not rejoice; if he trips, let your heart not exult.” Proverbs 24:17), and those that are descriptive (“When the righteous prosper, the city exults; when the wicked perish, there are shouts of joy.” Proverbs 11:10).

What we do, Held says, is automatically demonize those that hurt us, and our texts are telling us not to, time and again.

But it is this story that gave previous generations of Americans the strength to continue their fight and stand up to power against all odds—especially those fighting for the liberation of American Black slaves, including slaves themselves who resisted again and again, and then those fighting for an end to Jim Crow.

Meanwhile, the plague that strikes me the most these past years is the darkness that God brings upon the Egyptians. It’s described as a darkness so thick, it can be touched: וְיָמֵ֖שׁ חֹֽשֶׁךְ/va’yamesh khoshekh (Ex. 10:21).

Even after liberation, in the desert, the first waters the Israelites encounter are too bitter to drink.

We are in the midst of some really dark times, with a fear and a darkness so thick we can feel it, and the waters are very bitter.

It’s a complicated question of how to live in a world where we have to balance loving our enemies with our need to protect ourselves.

How to continue to live with love as a guide for our actions, like the midwives did, and with the courage they had as ordinary people, while living in a world that defies our values.

I had a revelation a little over a week ago that changed this whole narrative for me around the God of the Bible and God’s role in the world.

I realized that maybe, through all the times God hardens Pharaoh’s heart, lengthening the suffering and delaying the liberation of the Israelites, the Torah is trying to teach us that, ultimately, redemption and liberation are up to us.

It is up to the resisters—all of us ordinary people, like the midwives that started the whole thing, all the way to Moses who learns to speak with authority and confidence, entering and leaving Pharaoh’s presence as he pleases, despite his fear and despite a speech impediment—it’s up to all of us to make redemption happen.

God, or the Mystery, or whatever you want to call this force that connects us all, is there to give us hope, strength and courage to carry it out.

So, how do we live in a world that defies our values?

As we know very well, it’s not only between Jews and Christians that dialogue is challenging in this day and age. It is also between Jews and Jews, and between those on different ends of the political spectrum.

It may seem completely counterintuitive as things seem to get worse and worse and our outrage increases at every turn, but it seems to me that there is only one starting point to move us forward.

If one our highest value as Jews is love, as the rabbis reinforce over and over, then we need to reclaim it and embrace it entirely.

Quoting from Rav Kook, “The pure righteous do not complain of the dark, but increase the light; they do not complain of evil, but increase justice…”

And, I would add, they do not complain of hatred, but increase love.

May we learn to be purely righteous.

Shabbat Shalom.

On Sourdough, On Rising, On Longevity, On Privilege, On Seeing, On Enslavement, On Choices, On Being (too) Polite, & On Shevat

On Inauguration Day of our (again) President Trump last week, I chose not to watch.

I knew I couldn’t stomach it.

Instead, I chose to bake another loaf of my newfound joy: 100% rye sourdough. I’m still trying to get it to rise the way other sourdough does. But anyway, I’ve gotten back to having a lot of bubbly stuff on my counter, including sauerkraut and pickled beets, but also some curdling stuff: homemade yogurt. I want to live a long, healthy, life, and I have the privilege of resources to do these things.

The other thing I chose to do on Inauguration Day, which ironically fell on Martin Luther King Day, was to listen to Martin Luther King’s last speech—the one in which he talks about almost dying by a stab wound if he had sneezed.

He doesn’t know what’s going to happen now, but it doesn’t matter anymore, he says. Because he’s “been to the mountaintop.” And he’s “seen the Promised Land.” He fears nothing now. Though, like anyone, he wants to live a long life…

It brought me back to an interview I heard several weeks ago called “Don’t Die.”

I have to say, this interview intrigued me while also pissing me off.

The guy’s name is Bryan Johnson. He is a multimillionaire, and spends all his money figuring out how not to die. He spends all his time testing himself, replacing his blood and renewing his cells. He’s figured out the secret, he says, and wants to—maybe expects to—live forever. Between diet (including living with a low level of hunger all the time) and perfect sleep (the most healing thing we can do), among other things, he’s got the key.

Here’s the clincher: he says he wants to live partly so he can figure out how to make our planet sustainable for future generations.

That’s really nice of him, but maybe I’m missing something.

He says he’s building a movement, but it seems to me he could be spending all those resources helping change the political will towards action on the climate and other goals that can make life more livable for so many people.

After all, unfortunately as things stand, it’s a privilege and luxury to sleep, for instance, for the many who work two and three jobs, scrambling to pay their rent and feed their families, and maybe some of whom need to send money back to their countries.

What frustrated me the most, though, was how the journalist didn’t challenge him in any real way (which is the theme of On The Media—and how this problem has contributed to the present state of things in the United States).

I heard another journalist interviewing Jonathan Roumie, actor who plays Jesus in The Chosen. The actor was in fact chosen as the keynote speaker at the March for Life in 2023 where he said, "God is love, and true love gives way to life, not death."

What does Roumie do to make sure that families have the resources to take care of the children this “pro” life movement has “saved” so (maybe) women don’t need abortions? He goes to Africa!

Africa!!!

What an old, tired story that denies the widespread existence of hunger and inequity in the richest country in the world.

At various junctures in the conversation, I heard the journalist squirming in his seat. Was he too afraid to be impolite by challenging this??

In the Torah over this past month, we transitioned from Joseph and his family saga to the story of enslavement of the Israelites.

The story begins with a new Pharaoh “who does not know Joseph” or the Israelites, and who’s afraid of them, and orders the slaying of every first-born Hebrew baby boy.

Immediately, courageous midwives defy the orders—which results in the birth of Moses, his escape from death, and the ultimate liberation of the Israelites.

The process of liberation spans hundreds of years, and involves many plagues, and ends with the death of every first-born Egyptian.

The Egyptians have landed in a darkness so heavy, the Torah describes it as "palpable.”

Over the past weeks, fires have blazed in Los Angeles, and my friends have prayed for the winds to shift while Trump has blamed the governor and, with a cold heart, vowed to withdraw help.

Now that he is president again, and we face crisis after crisis, whether it’s fires, immigration, health, housing, gun violence, death and destruction caused by wars our government funds—and has the power to stop—Trump has pardoned all involved in the January 6th Insurrection, even the most violent among them.

Meanwhile, a very courageous bishop of the Episcopal Church, like the midwives who quietly defied Pharaoh, gently defied Trump to his face during the inaugural church service, begging him to have compassion for those who fear for their lives and futures because of his executive orders.

Trump, along with his people in government, is the one who “does not know” or care for the people and their suffering.

The truth is, every year when I read the saga of Israelite enslavement, I struggle.

Again and again, God informs Moses that he will “harden Pharaoh’s heart” after each plague. God is the one who ultimately keeps the people enslaved and lengthens their suffering! So how we can talk about a liberating God in relation to this story??

But this year, I had a sudden flash of insight.

Still at the beginning of the story, Moses, now grown, has seen the suffering of his people, and seeks to intervene. He kills an Egyptian overseer who is abusing the Hebrew slaves. Fearing retaliation, he runs away.

Now in the middle of the desert, pretty lost in his life’s trajectory, he sees a burning bush. God is about to give Moses a clear direction with instructions to return to liberate his people, and appears to Moses in a fire that “cannot be consumed.”

Hearing God’s voice, Moses hides his face in fear.

But God calls out to him: “Moses! Moses!”

And Moses answers “‘Hineni’—I am here.”

Then come the instructions. Moses repeatedly protests his assignment; who is he to do such a big, important thing? Especially because he has trouble with public speaking!

What happens next is nothing less than amazing.

Despite Moses’ difficulty with speech (and even with his brother Aaron to help him), Moses learns to stand up to Pharaoh and speak directly to him without fear. He enters and leaves Pharaoh’s presence without permission, and never bows down to him!

After each plague strikes Egypt (the royal courts are not spared), Pharaoh begs Moses to speak to God and stop the suffering.

When the plague of the locusts destroys the land, Moses speaks to God, the winds shift, and the locusts are blown into the sea.

My flash of realization was that maybe the Torah is trying to teach us that, ultimately, redemption and liberation are up to us.

If you think about it, though it seems like God is in control, it is actually Moses and other resisters like the midwives who have to act—yes, though God gives him them the courage, God is not going to act for us.

It is this story that gave previous generations of Americans the strength to continue their fight and stand up to power against all odds—especially those fighting for the liberation of Black slaves, including slaves themselves who resisted again and again, and then those fighting for an end to Jim Crow.

It is a strength that Moses himself summons from within, despite his fear.

Indeed, we are in the midst of a darkness so dense, it feels palpable.

In the large scope of things, though, our individual lives don’t matter, but rather the collective of society and the future of our planet.

We need to care enough to stop the mass killing in Gaza, not for the sake, as Trump does, of a Nobel Peace Prize, or the opportunity to have images of the liberation of Israeli hostages forever associated with his inauguration—but because we care about all human life—and the Earth that’s being destroyed with it.

So, within this darkness we find ourselves in, how will we each answer to the call?

What choices, choices more numerous than the plagues, will we make in showing up and challenging power over the next years?

This week we enter the Hebrew month of Shevat, characterized by heavy rains in the land of Israel, when we also celebrate the holiday of Tu B’Shevat, or the holiday of the trees—trees needed so badly for the health of our planet.

In Jewish tradition, rain is tied to blessing.

May we be blessed with being able to see the suffering of others, may we be renewed with fresh strength bubbling up inside and rise to occasion of presenting ourselves where we are needed, and to resist in whatever ways we are capable—not with retaliation, but for the love of all humankind and for the love of our home, the Earth.

May the political winds shift.

It’s true that we may not reach the Promised Land, but we can see it in our imaginations, and pave the way for future generations to create it.

And please say Amen.

The Best Deal Ever & Tevet

As a rabbi, I guess it’s probably more than a little blasphemous for me to say, but Christmas brings up a lot of nostalgia for me.

(Besides my family history of celebrating in the biggest, most consumerist, way, this podcast, Why Jews Wrote Your Favorite Christmas Songs, helped me understand a little more about myself, my family, American Jews, and Christmas).

This year, we lit the first Hanukah candle on Christmas Day. Tonight, this last night, and Secular New Year’s Day of 2025, we light all eight candles.

When I was a kid, Hanukah was never a big deal (and it’s a minor holiday, as Jewish ones go). We would even often forget to light the candles, which is why I inherited boxes and boxes that were only half-full when my mother died almost seven years ago.

For some reason, this “holiday season” was especially intense in the nostalgia category for me. The week has been a hard one. I’ve been feeling a lot of sadness and grief. (Need I explain why?)

So what did I do? I did the American thing, and went shopping to wipe all my sorrows away.

I was looking for a long black, wool coat (for funerals, since I started doing a lot of funerals this past year), and I knew the sales would be good after Christmas.

But I also decided I wanted to be a tourist in my own town.

So, speaking of nostalgia, I went to Macy’s at Herald Square, the original Macy’s, where my mother always took us as children. She believed in shopping for high quality for the school year, so one set of clothing sufficed from September to June, whether you’d outgrown them or not.

Macy’s was decorated for Christmas, and I went straight up to the 8th floor, on the old wooden escalator (amazing that it’s still functioning).

But all I saw around me were tourists and consumption: people with glazed looks in their eyes, seeking good deals like me—and photos to post on social media to show they’d been there.

I tried on a bunch of coats, but the quality was poor (too much polyester imitating wool), and the prices high. I was proud that I left only having spent $20 on a toaster (which I really needed).

Then I stopped in at my neighbor Nelson’s. We talked about ordering from Amazon and the easy returns, or going to outlets in New Jersey—a whole-day “experience” of taking a bus to a mall that feels like a village of stores and restaurants.

But didn’t I really want a more authentic, New York experience? And one that didn’t involve the increasing consumerism and materialism Americans have fallen into —-which Jimmy Carter warned against back in 1979 before he lost to former actor Ronald Reagan? (How crazy was that, we thought? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and idolize Jimmy Carter. As Chris Hedges points out, he did a lot of horrible things during his presidency, though they may pale in comparison to today’s world.)

The kind of consumerism that carries the “I want it easy and fast” and “I don’t care who gets hurt by it” and “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” mentality.

My Communist upbringing makes it impossible for me to put these feelings aside.

So we tried another way. On New Year’s Eve day, we went down to the Lower East Side, ate at Katz’s Deli (where we gave extra tips to the Dominican butchers and servers who so skillfully prepare the meat at this Jewish deli).

Then we started walking into thrift shops on Orchard Street, where there would at least be an intent at reusing and recycling—and maybe I’d find some “vintage” coats.

Interestingly, the place where I found a coat was an old, bare shop with worn linoleum floors, weird, old artifacts in the show windows, and a hand-written,“Going Out of Business” sign, out front.

Just on the edge of survival, the movie industry had shut them down for a couple months, they’d never bounced back, the building is being sold, and they have to get rid of everything. Freedman’s, named for a Jewish man who had opened the shop almost a hundred years ago to sell men’s “fine clothing,” was now being emptied out by a Puerto Rican family that has worked there for decades.

Yes, it was consumerist. Neither the brands nor the clothing were second-hand, or of pure wool, but we were in an area where the remnants of an old world are still palpable.

I paid cash, and then they brought me across the street to the tailor shop, where again, there was a clash—or a blending—of the old world and the new. A long, narrow shop (that would have been called a sweat shop in another era), with plastered photos on the wall of Paul Newman and Clint Eastwood, Shirly Temple, John Lennon, Sonia Sotomayor,…even a Pope.

Immigrants sat lined against one wall at sewing machines in this crummy little shop, but instead of Jews or Italians, perhaps, these were more newly arrived immigrants from the Dominican Republic, the old guys teaching the younger ones. (Ironic that the label on my new coat said “Made in Dominican Republic,” perhaps by men just like these.)

A young man had me stand on a platform in front of a three-way mirror and marked up my coat with a piece of chalk, and then his mentor, an older man, came and checked his work.

Yes, I ended up spending more on the coat because it needed to be altered (I could tell my neighbor Nelson was internally rolling his eyes at my foolishness), but it felt like I was directly impacting the lives of real people—struggling immigrants like my family—same place, same street, different era.

As we finish the story of Joseph and his brothers in Torah, with the tragic enslavement of the Egyptians as Joseph saves the Egyptians and his own family from famine, there is also a kind of peace that comes to them.

New meaning is made from Joseph’s original dreams of “lording over” his brothers and father, of the competition among them that has caused so much pain, the fancy long coat that was given to Joseph by his father as a show of his favoritism of the son he loved most that came from the only wife he loved that in turn resulted in so many hurt feelings and yearning for love that never came.

Instead of rejoicing at his dreams coming true, Joseph breaks down and wails—more than once.

His dreams are not the ones he thought they would be. His life has not turned out the way he’d hoped. He’s named his children Menasheh and Ephraim: “God has made me fruitful in the land of my misfortunes,” and “Make me forget.”

But he has never forgotten. The pain is still there, buried under his life of power and luxury as second-in-command to Pharaoh.

Yet, despite his trials, he has a chance to do something good now, for the brothers who had hurt him and whom he had hurt.

It’s an opportunity to repair and heal pain passed down through generations, and to change the flavor of his dreams—though some of it is still misguided, as in the enslavement of the Egyptians for the sake of his own family and the Royalty.

As we come to the close of the darkest month of the Jewish year and light all the candles on our menorahs, we remember that we have the power to increase the light in the world through our actions, as we increased the daily light with our candles.

Hanukkah reminds us that good is more powerful than evil. The story of Joseph teaches that we need to keep reaching for the light, even if our dreams don’t offer the clarity we wish they did. Yes, we sometimes lose sight of our goals for ourselves and the world—or maybe give up on them in despair—but these stories remind us not to. It’s generations of pain that we’re trying to repair, and it’s not easy work.

As we transition into the month we call Tevet, which comes from the Hebrew word for “good,” let’s remember the power of good over evil, and that we are able not only to reveal the good that is hidden in our lives and the world around us, but also create it, even in the small choices we make on a daily basis.

Amazon covers up all the pain and exploitation of people around the world, in our country, and also of the Earth—enslavement that happens in so many ways, hidden and sanitized, a clothing industry of sweat shops we don’t have to see from the comfort of our homes for the sake of ease.

Tomorrow I’ll return to the Lower East Side to pick up my new coat, tailored by these Dominican men (who knew?). My neighbor Nelson and I plan to take a tour at the Tenement Museum on Orchard Street, just down the block from the tailor shop where I’ll pick up my newly tailored, long, black coat. Nelson chose a tour about Jewish immigrant women, mothers, who set up garment factories over a hundred years ago in the front rooms of their tiny apartments.

The month of Tevet carries the meaning of righteous indignation and Divine Grace.

One by one, we can choose to resist the consumerist/materialist world of ease we’ve fallen into, be righteously indignant, and bring Divine Grace and light into the world, one light at a time with one choice at a time, thinking about the impact our shopping habits have on those we depend upon who provide goods and services we depend upon.

Maybe it’s not always about getting the best deal.

Or maybe, as deals go, I actually did get the best deal.

Because I got to witness people helping other people, looking out for one another, the owners of one little shop bringing business to another little shop across the street, and I got to be a part of their community for just a moment, and to support immigrants trying to find and make a better life for their families, just as my family was helped in the past by others.

May we continue to dream of a repair and peace that can come to all of us in the coming year of 2025.

Because we always have the chance to do something good.

From Bitterness and Darkness to Thanks, Dreams, and Light & Kislev

Recently, I facilitated a group conversation at the senior center at the 92nd Street Y.

The focus was Thanksgiving, our approaches to life, and how we find gratitude among the difficulties—especially the challenges of aging.

One woman, in her bouncy way, said she was in perfect health at 87 years old (except she could lose ten pounds, she laughed), and had nothing but gratitude.

She told of how her family had lost everything in the Holocaust when she was a small girl. Their big beautiful home was bombed a week after they were displaced by the nazis. She grew up with nuns, a happy child, and eventually made it to the U.S.

What a life, she said, to be saved like that!

A miracle to celebrate! Indeed!

Then the discussion turned to death, and I witnessed a sort-of argument.

“I never think about death!” said one woman. “I’m just grateful to be alive!

A man who had been slumped in his chair the whole time suddenly perked up. “I think about death every day! I’m 92! How can I not? And it makes me grateful to be alive!”

They went back and forth for a minute until I stopped them; two very different approaches to life, tragedy, and loss. Both valid. Both work.

But the wider American culture likes to make more space for one approach than the other—the positive attitude, the positive vibes.

As Jews, we’re made fun of—we make fun of ourselves, too—for being kvetchers, for focusing on the negative.

But both approaches to life are all over our Torah as well—and most dramatically in Breishit, Genesis, with its very fraught characters and family relationships.

We have the Hollywood version (or the Netflix version, for an update). We love our stories of love at first sight (Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Rachel); the recognition of the person of your dreams from afar; alighting, or falling off a camel; a strong, handsome man rolling a stone off a well; a kiss at first meeting (was it consensual?); bursting into tears…

The feeling that everything is going to be alright now that true love has been found.

But then it’s not. 

Real life hits, and we’re reminded that we can’t escape our past or make our future perfect: betrayal, manipulation, domination, competition, revenge, resentment, loss of hope, bitterness, deep disappointment and hurt; narrowmindedness, lack of imagination–in blessing mind you! (Doesn’t Isaac have another blessing left in him even though he’s “given away” the first one?? Or what else is going on here beneath the surface?)

Doesn’t all this reflect where we are now with the world situation? (Our fraught elections, global wars, global warming, lack of hope, lack of imagination…)

We wish, and somehow think we should be able to, control the outcome. And we put all our hopes and dreams into one leader who we think will save us—from ourselves, from each other…

In Chayei Sarah, Eliezer, Abraham’s servant who’s sent to find a wife for Isaac, challenges God by making all kinds of conditions about the woman who will become Isaac’s wife–if she offers water immediately to the servant, then to his camels, etc. 

Moses Maimonides, the medieval Torah scholar, calls this a sin–to tell God, “This is how it has to be, God, according to my imagination.”

The same goes for Jacob, I would argue, in the dream scene at the beginning of Vayetze, this week’s Torah portion. In the dream, Jacob sees a stairway leading to heaven with angels going up and down, and God is standing next to him, making promises of protection, of staying with him, and of inheritance.  

Jacob wakes up, declares the surprise and awesomeness that God is there, and sets up a pillar to anoint this holy place—because “God is in this place, and I did not know it.”

But then Jacob does something curious, in my mind. 

He makes another declaration, but this time with a stipulation for God: “If God remains with me, if He protects me on this journey, if He gives me food and clothing, if I return home safely, then the Lord shall be my God.” 

I think that’s pretty gutsy (though it’s not the first or last time biblical characters are gutsy with God). 

We, also, might be tempted to challenge God in this way, by making stipulations for our faith.

Why the evil in the world? Why senseless killing and wars? Why a government where profit trumps taking care of the climate, healthcare, education…?

So, yes, there’s all the darkness in Torah as we see it reflected in our lives and times.

We are tempted to become complacent and give up. Because, where is God? Where is the light?

But then Torah tells us of leaving home, of taking chances, of adventure—despite the unknown, despite the fear.

And the angels appear.

And God appears.

There’s trust and faith.

There are dreams.

This past Sunday we came out of Cheshvan, the bitter month (and it was so bitter for so many), to a new month, Kislev, the darkest month, but also the month of light and miracles.

Jewish mysticism teaches that with the creation of the world, as described in Torah, which came out of chaos, the tohu vavohu, is like a garb that covers, or hides, the great light that is God.

That God’s glory fills the whole world, but that the light is trapped, and it is our job to release the Holiness, through our actions.

So, what light can we bring in a time of so much darkness, deception, and uncertainty?

Whether your way is to kvetch or focus more on the positive, may all of it lead to action that can makes miracles happen.

May we be grateful for all we have and all we’ve had in our lives, and see miracles in places where it may not seem logical to see them.

May we expand our imaginations to dreams of a future that's hard to imagine in this moment, and bring blessing into the world beyond where we thought our imaginations could go.

Finally, may we wake up from the dream we are in and realize that the Holy is in this place and we did not know it—and that the power lies within each and all of us, individually and collectively, to save ourselves and each other.

And say Amen.

Shabbat Shalom.

Flooded by Feelings and the Soft Light of the Moon

I woke up this morning, remembered what day it was, and immediately grabbed for my phone to check the results.

Shocked, is all I can say.

Not so much that Trump won, but that the results were so strong, the win so wide across the country, that there was no question.

I’d been prepared for a week of fighting—at least! Maybe a week of violence. I’d prepared to see the electoral college in his favor. But to see the map of the popular vote!

My immediate response was to jump out of bed and into the shower faster than I have allowed myself in the past couple of weeks. “Gotta keep moving,” I said inside my head.

I was flooded by feelings I wouldn’t let myself feel.

Maybe you’ve been wondering why you haven’t heard from me in a couple of weeks. (Or maybe you haven’t even noticed.)

I’m starting a new part-time gig, as I’d alluded to a while back (teaching and pastoral care…very exciting!), so it was a perfect time to take a break—at the beginning of a new Torah-reading cycle (and not knowing what my time will allow for…).

Less than two weeks ago on Sunday, just as we had gone back to the beginning, with the book of Genesis, and we were entering the second parsha of the year, Noah, I officiated a funeral for a gay guy. That day, as I made my way to meet a bus in front of Madison Square Garden, I found myself wading through a flood of MAGA hats and "Make America Great Again” paraphernalia.

My breath quickened and my heart started to flutter uncomfortably as I realized what was happening—and what would be happening later that day in that very place (Trump rally at Madison Square Garden!). Of course, the expected location of the bus was changed, and I had to find a new route, completely out of the way.

Looking back, it seems fitting. First, the Creation of the World (Genesis). Then, its destruction with the Great Flood (Noah). And God’s witnessing the destruction that he himself (Patriarchal God of the Bible) had wrought (plus God’s promise never to do such a thing again).

And now we find ourselves in the third parsha of the year, Lekh Lekha, when Abram is told to go forth from his father’s house, and is subsequently renamed Abraham. With this, we are to imagine Abraham as a new man, fundamentally changed, leaving behind the old.

So here I was, feeling myself swept up in a flood of hatred, having to find a new path forward, trying to get to the family, close friends, and supporters of this gay man who had been the partner of the deceased—in a sea of people that believe that rights for the LGBT community are dangerous. And me, a Jew, walking through a sea of people that probably also believe that Jews are a danger to the “American Way of Life.”

All at once, Daylight Savings Time has plunged us into the deep dark of winter, just as it feels like we’re plunging deeper and deeper into darkness in our country. I imagine this is how it felt in Germany over years, as hard-won rights are being chipped away at little by little. Increasing police presence, incarcerating the “dangers to society…”

When Noah built the ark as God had instructed him, he made a window at the top—a window much too small to let any real light into the ark.

Imagine the darkness during all those months!

But the Hebrew word used for “window” here is not the usual word. It carries another meaning that the ancient rabbis commented on: a jewel, one that carries light that has been passed down through the generations—through generations of struggle and darkness.

So now what?

My father always said that things would have to get worse—way worse—before they would get better.

And we continue to be surprised that it gets worser and darker than we could have imagined.

Maybe, just maybe, we are in the throws of the end of the Patriarchy—throwing that male god out the window, and bringing in a softer light of shared energy.

One thing is for sure; there is clarity in Trump’s policies where there was little in Harris’—one that most likely would have led to a complacency. A complacency that would have been a sigh of relief that “At least we didn’t get Trump.”

No, this is not what I wished for our country at all. But it is what we have.

So, my blessing?

May the window that lets light in, and the jewel carrying strength passed from generation to generation, shed light on our path forward. Just as Abraham was commanded, “Go forth from your father’s house,” so, too, must we go forth from the house we presently preside in, and build a new one. Even if it seems that we’re going completely out of the way.

Let us be strengthened by the little bit of light that is left in the midst of the present darkness.

Or as some neighbors said to me, “Fuck ‘em.”

Wherein Lies the Blessing? (V’zot Hab’racha)

I went into Yom Kippur the other day with some trepidation.

They were reasons very complex—and some too personal to explain here.

Still, I decided I would be open, to see wherein might lie the blessing of the day.

I thought I had had my heart cracked open already on Rosh Hashanah—so what more was there? But that moment I described last week turned out to be just a preview.

During Kol Nidre, the eve of Yom Kippur, the theme of the rabbi’s sermon was Jewish shame: centuries of oppression that resulted in the need to hide: for fight or flight, and fawning.

Yes, fawning—like a dog wagging its tail and rolling over on its back, exposing its belly to show that it is not a threat.

He talked about Jews being ashamed of simply being—but also appearing to be too “tribal.” And of Jews historically giving up their Jewish roots in favor of universalism.

All true.

But it felt problematic to me. Because the reasons Jews have rejected their Judaism over the centuries are so incredibly complex and multilayered, going much deeper than oppression.

The same can be said for Jews rejecting Zionism, or Israel as a Jewish State: also very multilayered. It’s a politic that Jews brought up in a Zionist world, where their identity is so closely tied to Israel as a State that they don’t know how to be Jewish without it, find hard to understand. It is this attitude that has spawned and grown the idea that Jews who oppose Zionism or the Israeli State are full of shame and self-loathing.

But I know from personal experience that Jews who chose—and continue to choose—universalism over tribalism do so because they know deep in their heart that it is “only together that we can get it together” (quoted from Reb Zalman, the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement)--and they know this because of Jewish values!

That’s universalism.

The message of the sermon also felt problematic to me because it seemed to stress victimization vs. triumphalism as a central theme. We should be proud of being Jewish, proud of supporting Israel (at all cost?), which will make us triumphant in the face of increasing antisemitism. 

Reb Zalman also saw Jewish triumphalism as very harmful and dangerous, because it carries within it a sense of victimhood.

At the same time, he advocated strongly for Jews to hold on to our customs and rituals; we, like all peoples, he said, have a special role to play on Earth.

These were the many and complex thoughts rolling around in my head as I entered Yom Kippur day.

When it came time for Yizkor, when we remember our dead, the rabbi led us in a communal mourning for those who had died on October 7th last year.

Since I’d been knocking gently on my chest to crack open my heart, I was ready. I cried for them and their loved ones who suffered—and continue to suffer within Israel.

And the tears kept coming. Much more than they had on Rosh Hashanah.

Silently, I opened the space big enough to include everyone else who has lost sons and daughters, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers—both children and adults, innocent and maybe even not so innocent—who have died because of this war--because they are human, too, caught up in a system of hatred and revenge.

My tears were tears full of pain, but also of anger, fear, and helplessness—frustration at a political situation made worse, manipulated by powerful figures for personal gain, both in the U.S. and abroad.

Yes, I hope and wish that Palestinians who join Jewish spaces that support their plight can also cry for the Jewish dead. But I can only do my own work, as a special friend said to me recently.

When we transitioned to personal losses, I wondered what my parents would say if they were alive. I heard, or imagined, “We wanted to leave you a better world.”

The floodgates were open, and they wouldn’t stop. The tears kept coming. 

And therein lay the blessing of the day. 

I went home and slept for hours that afternoon.

And I felt cleansed and ready to get up the next morning and travel for a wedding I was officiating—yes, the day after Yom Kippur!!

Ironically, sandwiched between warm, sunny days, was a very rainy cold day in Upstate New York—and the wedding was taking place outdoors, at the edge of the woods, with only a tent covering overhead. (We were freezing!)

This was an interfaith couple. It had been very important to them to find an officiant who was aligned with their political views—and bilingual in Spanish and English.

This couple shares a deep respect for all peoples, and the Earth. They understand that we are all interdependent, and that joining together is crucial for our communal survival.

Thus, they embrace the universal.

But they also share a deep respect for their own—and each other’s—-roots. They strive to preserve their traditions.

Thus, they embrace the tribal—the particular—as well. So much so that they wanted a rabbi as their sole officiant.

So they found me!

When it was time for the processional from the farmhouse to the tent by the barn (did I tell you there was a barn?), they did their best to time it during a lull in the rain.

But as they were processing, the skies opened up.

And as they stood under the chuppah, the wedding canopy draped with the bride's Salvadorean grandmother’s lace and embroidered table cloths (see photos here!), I started by talking about the rain.

“There are two explanations for the rain,” I said.

"One is that God is crying with us for the state of the world." (They nodded solemnly.)

"The other is that God is sending down so much blessing for you on you wedding day." (They smiled broadly.)

The bride, in her beautiful, creamy, satin gown and her Jewish great-grandmother-in-law’s crocheted hundred-year-old veil trailing behind, shivered as big teardrops fell from the sky—and blessing poured down.

I talked about coming out of the holiest day of the Jewish year, Yom Kippur, a day when we vow to be better—to do better—so the world can be a little better place to live.

And I talked about the next big holiday coming this week, Sukkos, when we commemorate the temporary structures the Israelites sheltered in during their forty years in the desert—much like the temporary structure of the canopy above our heads in that moment. 

I talked about how it feels like we’re in the desert now, wandering, unsure of our destination as a country and as a world.

But that the home we build is not a material structure, but rather a feeling we create—something they will create together.

I talked about Jewish marriage in general, and theirs in particular, and its potential to both be and offer a kind of Tikkun, a repair, through the binding of their souls in this moment—and the social justice work that is so central to their lives.

That, juxtaposed with the shattered world we live in—held in the iconic broken glass that typically ends a Jewish marriage ceremony.

I could feel their deep love for each other, and their hope and wish to leave something better for future generations.

And therein—within the love and the tears and the hope—lay the blessing for the day. 

This coming Shabbat, we read the last weekly Torah portion of the year. Moses finally dies, but before he dies, God allows him to view the Promised Land from afar. And he gives blessings to all the tribes individually in the form of a poem: V’Zot Ha’bracha, “And This is the Blessing.”

This is how the story ends. But it ends only to begin again next week.

So here is my blessing as we enter into the holiday of temporary structures in an insecure world:

As we begin again, and as our work continues, may we be deliberate about preserving the particulars of our tribes while also embracing universalism.

Because we can only get it together, together, to build a home that includes life and prosperity for all, in our country and in our world. 


We can only work on ourselves, and the work starts with each of us.

And please say Amen.

A Little Torah, a Lot of Tears, & Yom Kippur

Last Thursday, the first day of Rosh Hashanah, along with a heavy heart, I had some beautiful experiences.

The most beautiful of them was during the “Great Aleynu.”

One of the final prayers of all Jewish services, recited just before the mourners kaddish, the “Aleynu” on the High Holy Days is recited and carried out in a grandiose way (thus, “great.”) It is a prayer I normally don’t recite in its entirety because I don’t like the triumphalist tone of it and our “chosenness.”

But there’s one part I love, and that’s the bowing.

On Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, rather than just bowing at the knee, we prostrate completely on the floor. And rather than submission, for me, this is a moment of complete and utter surrender.

It’s surrender to what is, as opposed to what could be, or what I think should be.

This year, as I got down on the floor covered with my large tallis, my prayer shawl, ready to go deep inside, I felt a hand inside my arm. I didn’t know who it was, nor did I get up to look, but I tried to imagine, and I imagined it to be someone I barely knew who I’d seen standing across the aisle from me.

Suddenly, there were sobs coming from her. And all at once, it didn’t matter who it was. I started sobbing as well, and we cried together. In that moment, we were so deeply connected, and it wouldn’t have mattered if it was a complete and utter stranger.

The details of our tears were most likely different, but we were speaking the same language: the language of brokenheartedness.

Yom Kippur is a time when we reckon with what is.

We face the reality of death, our own death, in our prayers and in the simplicity of the day (not a drop of water or food), and of the way we dress (all in white, as if in a shroud, no leather shoes, no make-up, unshaven, no jewelry).

It’s a reckoning with how we’ve behaved, how we have hurt others, with the intention of doing better next year—if only—if only, we can be “written in the book of life.”

It’s a time of personal reckoning, but also collective reckoning.

Assuming it is decreed already for the coming year, we recite in the prayers all the ways we might die: by fire, by water, by war, by famine…

As I heard another rabbi say in a beautiful Yom Kippur sermon this year on Chutzpod (pronounced liked your clearing your throat, as in “chutzpah”), it’s a time when we face all the “no’s,”

And the answer has been a resounding “no!” to all our wishes: “Can our governments please take full responsibility for Climate Disaster and prevent it from getting worse? Can all the hatred and hostility stop? Can these wars end? Can the corruption please stop? Can the hostages come home safely? Can all the killing and starvation in Gaza, and now Lebanon, stop? Can justice please win out? Can we at least stop killing innocent children?”

And, as Rabbi Shira said on Chutzpod, our American culture would have us bury our pain, and go out and buy a new car.

But as the Chassidic rabbis taught, the pounding on our chests that we do on Yom Kippur, admitting our faults, taking responsibility for our missteps, vowing to do better, is maybe more of a knocking on our chests to break open our hearts.

This Yom Kippur, my wish is for all of us to break open our hearts—to all the pain that exists in the world, no matter who we are, no matter what our beliefs, whether we intend to vote for Trump or Harris.

It is brokenheartedness that can make us angry and vengeful, but that can also break down the walls that separate us if we let it.

Because it is broken hearts that connects us all as humans.

And it is with a heart cracked open that we can begin to see clearly the next step forward as opposed to the “I don’t know’s” and all the “there’s no other way’s.”

When we allow ourselves to feel the pain of loss rather than girding ourselves with strength with a stiff upper lip to get through it, that is the beginning of healing.

On the anniversary of the deaths of over 1,000 Israelis on October 7th, I honored the dead and the hostages by listening to This American Life. I had been realizing that the news I listen to sensitizes me more to the death and starvation of Palestinians than those who continue to suffer inside Israel. I realized I needed to feel the same for all those suffering.

Because suffering should not be a competition.

And so, I heard stories of the experiences of hostages that were freed early on last year, and also the extreme hostility these families receive from right wing religious Jews in Israel, accusing them of “bringing it upon themselves.”

I heard stories of their captors seeing them as human—and also not.

All of it broke my heart.

This Yom Kippur, and in the year ahead, may you, too, have your heart broken open to the point where you feel connected with the pain of others, especially if it’s not the same pain as your own.

Trust the Love & Nitzavim-Vayelekh

I have a problem.

I tend to talk to a lot of different people in my life, probably too many people, when I have a problem I’m working out, but also when new and exciting prospects are coming my way (and, no, I won’t tell you until I’m on payroll…).

The problem is, then I get lots of opinions.

And I take them all to heart.

What happens is, I stop trusting my own heart, and begin doubting myself.

Then I go and share the various opinions with my husband, who then tries to weed through all of them and help me figure out who to trust and what to think and what to do.

And if he takes someone else’s opinion more seriously (especially those that are more cynical and wary, because he tends to be that way, too), I get really confused. And I lose sleep over it.

That’s what happened this week.


I finally got angry, because I realized what I needed was for him to take my side—-to trust me and my instincts, my intuition.

So I went back to him and yelled at him, and said those things to him.

And he stopped suddenly, and thought for a second, and said, “You’re absolutely right. You do have good intuition! When you wanted to marry me, everybody was telling you not to, that it was a bad idea, but you fought to marry me. You followed your own intuition. And look! You didn’t do so bad! So I trust you! You need to trust your own intuition!”

This week’s parsha, as we come towards the end of the Torah and Moses is about to die, is about faith.

Faith in our God, but also faith in ourselves.

It questions whether (and when) we should follow our own hearts.

It’s a warning about becoming too sure of our own thoughts and beliefs, our own “willful hearts.”

It reminds us of the blessings we can have, and also the curses, if we turn our hearts towards or away from our One True God, to go and "worship the gods of other nations."

It goes on, “perchance there is among you a stock sprouting poison weed and wormwood…[one who] may fancy himself immune, thinking, “I shall be safe, though I follow my own willful heart.”

How do we know when “other gods” are leading us away from the “One True God”?

What are these “other gods” in this day and age?

What is the poison infecting our souls, our beings?

As more poison sprouts up and spreads, what is that?

There is a poison of hatred, of cynicism, of rejection of the Oneness of all living creatures, which leads us to the poison of violence and war, which in turn poisons our Earth.

It seems that we need to remove the layers of cynicism, of lack of trust in each other.

Then, perhaps, we can trust our own intuition better.

In this new year, may we take the time to really examine our hearts and see what’s there underneath the layers of hatred and cynicism.

Are the layers so thick that the love underneath is so far that it lies beyond the sea, or so high in the heavens that we cannot reach it, as it says in the Torah?

No, the Torah answers, it is right here, very close to you, in your mouth and in your heart, to hear it.

Hear the love.


What traumas and pain prevent us from trusting the love, so that we may end this insanity once and for all? 

That’s all I’ve got for this week as we head into the new year.

Shabbat Shalom, and dare I ask for a sweet year?

The Tension of Living & Ki Tavo

It’s funny how good things and terrible things can all be happening at the same time, and we can feel so far removed from one or the other. 

I guess it's the tension of living, and the paradox of being human. 

The question is, can we feel it all, the good and the terrible?

I was in a little world of a big wedding I did over the weekend. Last week I was in the comfort and meaning I brought to two mourning families with the funerals I did.

I found myself turning off my feelings about the world and just focusing on my immediate tasks. I barely listened to the news. I just couldn’t.

Meanwhile, the grief and my role in the funerals felt manageable.

With the wedding, I focused on enjoying a weekend in Upstate New York in between the work, which itself was joyful.

If you remember, the wedding was Hindu and Jewish. I was overtaken by the warmth, openness, and curiosity I received from the Indian family (not to mention intricacy and beauty of the Indian dress—and the bride!!! I’ve never seen anything—or any bride—more beautiful).

I loved learning about and witnessing the faith this Indian family and community carry with them, and the similarities across cultures, as they kept noticing and repeating to me. To experience the possibility of people from vastly different experiences, histories, and lived lives so easily coming together.

After leading the Jewish Friday night prayers, so many people came up to me, excited to see and learn more about Jewish rituals at the wedding ceremony the next day.

Person after person that approached me kept saying, “We’re all one. God is one.”

And the Jewish family was just as open and welcoming. Everyone was so happy that this couple had found each other. They knew they were meant to be together.

All it takes is the ability to be open.

A willingness to open one’s heart.

There was also the sad reminder of our climate emergency as we sweated profusely in the hot sun on a mountaintop in mid-September in the northeast (even there, I managed to find joy, laughing and joking with a few people—yes, about global warming).

And as I returned to everyday life, I heard news of cell phones and pagers blowing up in the midst of civilians in Lebanon. And saw continued images of starving children and families physically trapped in Gaza.

I got angry when I again heard the phrase, “the suffering of children”—as if the parents aren’t suffering, too, as they see their children whither away? In a situation that seems to have no end, and doesn’t have to be.

And I heard more of the horrors in other parts of the world, not to mention in my own country, perpetuated by my very own government and politicians.

I wonder how we can look away.

And I just want to cry.

And yet, I, too, look away, because there are times I can’t keep looking.

This week’s Torah reading is horrendous.

It portends so many of the horrors we are seeing now. It’s terrifying: scorching heat and drought, rain made of dust, skies of copper and earth of iron, starving people eating their children (no, we’re not there yet).

All this will come to be if we do not “walk in God’s ways.”

If we do not treat other humans as human, as it implies with its lessons of how to treat others.

I wonder how we can get to the point where we don’t feel like we have to choose sides: my people over your people, or your people over my people.

Why can’t we mourn the death of any people, yours and mine. Because each and every life is precious. No matter whose.

This week is our sixth prophetic reading in a row “of consolation.”

Sometimes that’s all we can do: offer consolation, as with a funeral.

And sometimes the feelings are too much.

In poet and writer Mark Nepo’s words:

“The tension of living often comes down to this paradox we all carry between our fear of feeling anything and our need to feel everything (The One Life We’re Given).”

Sometimes we need to challenge ourselves to feel all the feelings if we dare to allow ourselves.

Because healing starts with feeling.

And what I experienced with this particular Indian family and this particular Jewish family—I want to keep it front and center in my memory as a possibility for the whole world.

May we find peace.

May we open our hearts to all, and make peace.

Shabbat Shalom.

Ki Tetzei?

Here it is Thursday, and I’ve been so busy, I’ve barely given the week’s Torah reading a thought.

I officiated at two funerals this week, and tomorrow morning I go upstate for a big wedding. So I’m just going to share a poem that I tend to read at funerals.

Yes, We Can Talk, by Mark Nepo:

Having loved enough and lost enough,

I’m no longer searching

Just opening.

No longer trying to make sense of pain

But trying to be a soft and sturdy home

In which real things can land.

These are the irritations

That rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while

But then we must listen,

The way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong

But then we must lay all distractions

Down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight

I, too, feel alone. But seldom do I

Face it squarely enough

To see that it’s a door

Into the endless breath

that has no breather,

Into the surf that human

Shells call God.

Hidden in Plain Sight & Shoftim

In the midst of what can feel like relentless darkness and bad news, it’s important to lighten things up once in a while.

Here’s something that makes me smile—and even elicits a little chuckle—each time I think of it: A Discovery of Witches.

It kept coming up in my Netflix feed, and I finally gave in to it.

Now, it’s a little scary, so be careful. You know; witches, vampires, demons…

The vampires tend to be violent and bloody, as we know, and live hundreds of years (but can be killed!). They have a hard time controlling their sexual urges, which seem to play out as an attack at the neck. They come on quickly, so you have to be on your guard—both as a lover and a TV viewer.

The witches are mostly kind, but can be violent and fiery. They’re not only hunted by humans, but will also kill their own kind!

The demons, interestingly, are the least scary of all. In fact, I’m in season 2, and I haven’t yet seen one attack or do anything truly evil.

But the series (based on the books) is about the mystery of power.

It’s also about racism. The “creatures,” as they call themselves, made a covenant hundreds of years ago, not to “cross-mate.”

If they fall in love (did I say this was a love story, too?), a rare event due to prejudice, they must keep it hidden or face severe punishment.

But they are learning that it is possible to be born of demons, say, and give birth to a witch!

They also learn from each other, slowly, as they cross barriers, that they hold beliefs about each other that just aren’t true.

But most of all, they live hidden in plain sight among humans.

The humans don’t believe in their existence, so they…well, they literally get away with murder.

Just as importantly, they are losing their powers over the centuries.

One of our main characters believes she has no powers at all. She must learn how to use them and control them. This takes her a long time, but in the process, she learns that she actually has greater powers than anyone has seen in centuries.

Which everyone wants a part of, because they’re all just trying to survive as a species.

As you can tell, this series really has me thinking.

They’re not new thoughts, more like reminders.

Reminders from energy healers and Qi Gong instructors I’ve worked with.

Reminders that we each have power, and way more than we think.

In this week’s Torah portion, we receive the injunction not to “find among us” soothsayers, augurs, diviners, sorcerers, ones who cast spells or consult with ghosts or inquire of the dead.

Prophets, however, are allowed, as long as they were “true” prophets and not false ones. How will we know the difference? Because they will make an oracle in the name of God, and it will come true—or not. (The delayed awakening to reality is problematic, don’t you think?)

Clearly, people believed in these things during biblical times. Really only until recently, was it completely acceptable—at least to believe.

We have handed all our ancient beliefs over to history, and put all our trust in—oh, I don’t know, modern medicine and doctors?

But what about the mystery of our own hidden powers?

Like the fact that we only use a tiny portion of our brain’s capacity? Or like the influence of our thoughts on reality. Or the capacity of our hands in healing?

It’s like we’re just discovering that humans have magical powers that we’d had all along, only now it’s being proven scientifically.

Let’s not give up, or give away, our power.

Whether to a political cause we imagine is lost, to prevent climate disaster from taking over—or maybe even ourselves.

Let’s not give up our capacity to have a literal hand in healing.

Let’s recover, or re-discover, as our ancient rabbis believed was possible, our power to heal ourselves and others.

Let’s take our power and make peace in the world, heal our planet, and survive as a species.

Our power is only hidden in plain sight.

May it be so, and say Amen.

Swim Towards the Shark & R’eih

What is it that we are most afraid of looking at?

In what way do the things we are most afraid of looking at feel like curses?

And how can looking at them—straight on—transform what feels like a curse into a blessing?

I heard the most amazing story this week on This American Life. It was so good, and it impacted me so much, I made my husband listen to it.

The episode was about facing that which is the most scary, like swimming towards a shark that has just attacked someone to save the person.

Ira Glass asks, “Who does that?”

Truly, who does that? (And it’s a true story.)

But the story on the episode that impacted me most was of a woman who had suffered a concussion. She lost years of her children’s lives as she suffered through her recovery, unable to care for them in a normal way, allowing her husband to step in.

At every turn, doctors and friends advised her to avoid anything that might overwhelm her concussed brain and bring on a migraine: loud noises, loud conversation, loud lighting, supermarket shopping (with children, especially).

She couldn’t follow complex conversation, and retreated from normal life.

Until one day, she found a particular doctor. Despite the fact that he sounded like a witch doctor, and was American, and she was Canadian and thought it a crime to have to pay for health care (as it is), she came to the U.S. to see him. Out of pure desperation.

And he was SO American, talking loudly, yelling at her even (not his usual practice, it turns out).

But he was a big expert on concussions. For her type of concussion (and I stress that there are several types), he told her to do the exact opposite of everything she’d been told to do; any opportunity that presented itself to swim towards the shark, so to say, she was to do.

So, go to the supermarket, especially with your small child who will be screaming for something she sees, and all the choices before you, and the horrible, fluorescent lighting…

Say YES to everything. Say YES to life.

It was hard. And painful. And brought on all the worst migraines.

But, just like he said, a typical case like hers, within several weeks, her symptoms all disappeared.

She was cured. Completely healed. A miracle.

Now she is grateful for her concussion—yes, the same one that robbed her of three years in her children’s lives, of being a full parent to them.

She sees the concussion as a blessing.

Why? Because now she lives her life more fully than she ever had before.

Now, as terrified as she is of public speaking, she regularly speaks before crowds—always bringing in how terrified she is of speaking before crowds.

She says yes to life at every turn.

This week’s Torah portion begins, “See (r’eih), I set before you blessing and curse. Blessing, if you follow God’s commandments, and curse if you do not…”

But what if our very curses can become like blessings to us?

What if, from them, we learn to face our greatest fears, and look them straight in the eye?

What if we learned to “run towards the danger” (the title of the book she wrote about her experience—which she laughingly regrets, because people always throw it in her face when she is hesitant)?

What if we took more chances, and threw ourselves into situations that might seem like they will bring us curse, and then it turned into a blessing?

What if we could look at more of life that way?

May it be so.

And say Amen.

Whistling & Eikev

I have no personal stories this week, and no inspiration of my own, so I’m drawing from Mary Oliver, and from things other rabbis’ have said about this week’s Torah reading.

So what’s it about?

It’s about walking in God’s ways.

What does that mean?

Well, for one, it means opening our hearts—and our country—to “the stranger.”

It means that if we are prosperous, we should respond with humility.

Moses reminds the Israelites that their accomplishments are not solely because of their own efforts, but also Divinely given; God gave them manna, so we should always be grateful for the food we have.

It also means that our success comes on the heels (“Eikev” means “heel”) of others who have come before us.

Maybe it means being reminded that “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is just not a thing. Because there was always something, someone, who influenced or helped in some way. So we need government policies…

Or it means Kamala Harris recognizing that Hillary Clinton paved the way for her—as did many other women—if she should be elected.

Or like me recognizing these ideas I’m sharing have been influenced by other rabbis and teachers in my life.

Or that our actions have consequences, and that we have to take care of our Earth, as the Torah specifically says again this week. (So we need government policies…)

And that maybe war and killing do not lead to peace.

I leave you with a poem by Mary Oliver called Whistling Swans:

Do you bow your head when you pray or do you look

up into that blue space?

Take your choice, prayers fly from all directions.

And don’t worry about what language you use,

God no doubt understands them all.

Even when the swans are flying north and making

such a ruckus of noice, God is surely listening

and understanding.

Rumi said, there is no proof of the soul.

But isn’t the return of spring and how it

springs up in our hearts a pretty good hint?

Yes, I know, God’s silence never breaks, but is

that really a problem?

There are thousands of voices, after all.

And furthermore, don’t you imagine (I just suggest it)

that the swans know about as much as we do about

the whole business?

So listen to them and watch them, singing as they fly,

Take from it what you can.

Shabbat Shalom.