Regret, Repair, & Floods (Noach)

There were a few things that really struck me this week when reading the Torah portion.

First, that though God believes that Noah is the only righteous one of his generation (I guess that includes his family, because he saves them all), God regrets the destruction God has wrought on Earth. Even after God concludes that pretty much only evil lurks in the hearts of men.

My response is, so should we regret all the destruction that war causes, even as we may hold the belief that all the people being killed or maimed or deported or imprisoned or whatever, hold evil in their hearts. It’s right there in the Torah.

God plegdes never to do such a thing again.

And so should we.

The next thing is that God tells Noah to make sure that he bring all, I mean all, the animals onto the ark. Specifically, God says, those that are pure and impure, those that we are allowed to eat and those we are not.

This implies that all living things and people are equally valuable and have a place on this earth.

We should take these messages to heart and begin to live by them.

May it be so, and Shabbat Shalom.

Ending the Never-ending While Beginning Again

How do I describe all the feelings coursing through me over these past days?

Was it coincidence that a ceasefire would take effect and the remaining live hostages would be returned just before the two-year anniversary of October 7th? Just when we were ready to celebrate the holiday of Simchas Torah, when we dance with the Torah, when the attack on Israel by Hamas took place?

Like many, as some began celebrating, I was still holding my breath, not even willing to entertain the possibility that this never-ending war might be coming to an end.

One of the first thoughts that actually came to me was one of relief that I would no longer have the obligation, as a Jew and a rabbi, to keep writing about this horrific war. What else, after all, do I have left to say if I don’t talk politics?

Like everyone else, I watched the videos of the hostages returning to their families. I cried for them. With them. How could I not? The thought that you might never see your child again, knowing they were languishing…I could easily imagine them as my children.

I wanted to celebrate, I really did.

I had listened to interviews that took place at Hostage Square before the imminent release. One woman had been released during an early ceasefire almost two years ago told of how she had lost her brother, father, and mother. Her mother had returned alive only to learn that both her son and husband hadn’t survived.

And she died, they said, months later “from her injuries.” But I knew it had to be as much from heartbreak.

I cried as I imagined it all. And with the thought this is what it’s like when any war ends. The suffering continues and people try to put their lives back together.

But then I heard her say a most remarkable thing.

With incredible clarity and groundedness, she said (and I’m paraphrasing), “I’m here, as hard as it is to be here, to support others who don’t know if they will see their family members again. But I also can’t forget what it’s like for the people in Gaza who have lost everything, with destruction all around them, and won’t be able to rebuild their lives yet.”

She said all this with such generosity of heart, and it stopped me in my tracks and stopped my tears.

Because this thought, too, was in the tears that poured from my eyes. The tears were about the pain but also about loneliness in thinking this, and suddenly I felt less alone.

The next day, on Simchas Torah, I went to synagogue for the last day of this seemingly never-ending string of Jewish holidays.

I wanted to celebrate. I really did. But some things got in the way. Like the idea of praying for God to save us, to help us succeed.

Because I don’t actually believe in a God that can save us. Where is the evidence? This is the work of our world, not God’s; the successes and failures, the destruction and peace, the hatred and love—this is the work of humans.

When I pray, it is to work on myself and my own heart. It is not to look to the heavens, it is not to look to an outside savior. Like we read recently in the Torah, it is not in the heavens or across the sea that you should say it is too far, or too difficult; no, it is right here, in your own heart.

This is what prayer does, the way I see it, if we do it “right.” It connects us to our own hearts. On the High Holy Days, we acknowledged that is it up to us to make the world what it is.

On Simchas Torah, we danced with the Torah, and we unfurled it and rolled it back to the beginning, to the very first Parsha, to Genesis, or Breishit. This concludes the cycle of the year, only to begin again.

For me this year, it was with joy that I danced with others to celebrate the ceasefire and the return of the last living hostages. But the joy was tinged with a deep sadness at all that has been lost and destroyed, and a feeling of loneliness at being among a minority, often a silent one, thinking the thoughts I was thinking. It could not be a full-fledged joy that others seemed to dance with while the precariousness of the ceasefire itself is at stake.

It was with sadness that I was reminded again that what Torah and Judaism mean to me are different from what they might mean to other Jews. Too often, one of the central messages of Torah and Judaism is equal love of all human beings by God as made in the very image of God: a message of universalism.

With that in mind, I pray that this message reach the hearts of more Jews and of more people around the world, so more of us can live with a generosity of heart despite personal pain.

With that in mind, I pray that all human beings that have been displaced, injured, traumatized, and deprived of their basic needs in this war receive equal treatment.

Because I am certain that with more generous, open hearts around the world, including and especially among those in power, we will come to a time when the seemingly never-ending cycle of violence, war, hatred, and destruction will come to an end.

Until that day, we will continue with our never-ending holidays and our never-ending study of these texts that are meant to instill the universal love of all humanity and of our responsibility in spreading this message around the world.

And say Amen and Shabbat Shalom.

High Holy Days, Cracked Hearts, Round Challahs, & Ha’azinu

I know it’s been a minute. More like three weeks since I last wrote.

Getting ready for the new year and all that entails, not to mention the news overwhelming our country and world…the anticipation itself was enough to overwhelm me.

And it did. There were celebratory meals to prepare, with funerals and a baby naming sprinkled in as if they were side stories.

But the funerals and the baby naming were in fact integral to the story.

Over these weeks, I’ve been getting ready to write, but not quite ready to tell a complete story, ruminating about the significance of these holidays and my work with funerals: how death forces us to confront the precariousness of life: how we are perpetually shocked by it, despite all evidence to the contrary: how the life-review we inevitably do when someone dies relates to the self-reflection at the center of High Holy Days: the promises we make to do and be better, asking forgiveness, both of our fellow human beings and a God we might not believe in: the drive we have to somehow keep trying, despite all this.

Doing a baby naming in between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur was the other end of the spectrum; the beauty of bringing a baby into the world reflects a commitment to hope and faith in humanity.

Yet in the end, it’s the same; we inevitably think of the future and the kind of world we want to create for this new life, which then forces us to think about our human legacy—which isn’t looking too great at the moment.

And although baby namings are intensely personal, they are not. And although the High Holy Days are never supposed to be solely personal, they felt especially communal right now.

In a few days, it will be the second anniversary of October 7th, a day on which I actually officiated at one of my first weddings—again, a joyful occasion that carries so much hope in the future.

But now, after all the suffering, death, and destruction that has piled onto that original, horrific day, it only felt like these holidays would be harder than they were last year.

When will we as humans decide we’ve had enough with war? When will we take full responsibility for our part in adding to the suffering—as individuals and as a communal people, whichever people that might be?

Were the crimes committed on October 7th even forgivable? And since then?

These were the thoughts overwhelming me on Rosh Hashanah last week as we communally entered the prayers for forgiveness. I sobbed as I asked myself these questions.

Yesterday on Yom Kippur, officially known as the Day of Atonement, one of the rabbis gave a beautiful sermon about personal responsibility. The theme at my synagogue this year was Aleynu, or “It is up to us.” She asked, “When there is so little we can control in life, so much randomness, where does personal responsibility come in?

Her answer? Yes. And.

It was during this sermon that I learned of the attack that had just happened that very morning on the synagogue in Manchester, England. It was a reminder of how, when we seek revenge, we end up holding an entire group of people responsible for our suffering, thus dehumanizing them.

In a different sermon leading up to the memorial prayer service, when we remember our loved ones, the rabbi spoke of the risk of being alive; inevitably, to love is to lose and be hurt. I couldn’t help thinking of the fear that goes along with giving birth, raising a child, and sending them out into the world, unprotected and at risk of—anything.

Again, I cried and cried, as much for the ones I have loved and lost as for the ones I worry about every day, both here at home and abroad, and for all the people that are suffering, some because of randomness, some due to human doing.

The rabbi told the story of two ancient sages in the Talmud, Hillel and Shammai, who debated over two years (!) whether it was worth it for God to create us, given how flawed and fallible we are and what trouble we bring into the world.

The conclusion was: “It would have been preferable had humans not been created (wow!)…However, now that they have been created, they should examine their actions. And some say: They should investigate their actions.” (Eruvin 13b)

Like individuals, I was reminded, nations need to examine and investigate their actions. Are they modeling fear, hatred and revenge, or are they modeling compassion and inclusion? Because countries are made up of individuals, so what are the implications?

But these High Holy Days are not just for taking responsibility for our actions and atoning. They are for cracking our hearts open—because when our hearts are closed, we dehumanize others, and dehumanizing any group only leads to the imposition of greater suffering in the world.

At the very end of the day, during the Ne’ila service, as the “Gates of Heaven are closing” and our prayers become more intense, the rabbi told the story of a woman who walked down to the river daily to fill two buckets with water to carry back to her house, which she carried across her shoulders. One bucket was perfect, but the other had a crack in it. By the time she arrived home each day, the cracked one would be empty.

One day it cried out to the woman complaining of its failure. “Why do you continue to use me? I am useless. I have failed you again and again.”

“But no,” the woman replied, “Look and see what you have left behind.”

And the bucket (that had no eyes and no voice) looked down and saw that on one side of the path, flowers had bloomed all along the way, while on the other side, where the perfect bucket traveled, nothing grew.

This Shabbat we read the very last Torah reading of the year called Ha’azinu. Moses gives his very last speech in the form of a poem directed at the Israelites, reminding them yet again of all their terrible sins and how unfaithful they have been. Then Moses is directed to go to the top of the mountain where he will die.

But the story is not over. With the cycle of the Jewish year, symbolized by the round challah bread we eat for the holiday, we begin again. The story continues. Until we get it right, I suppose. Until we figure it out.

With all the tears I shed over these holy days, I feel cleansed. Not necessarily of wrongdoings, not necessarily forgiven either, but renewed and ready for the year ahead.

Ready to keep moving forward, to continue trying, as hard as I can, to accept the randomness of life with equanimity, while continuing to play my part in taking responsibility for the state of the world however I am able.

And to live in a way that my cracked heart can bring beauty and encourage new growth in the world, ready to renew my faith in humanity and commit myself anew to a better future.

Blessings and Curses, Sickness and Death, the Moon and the Stars, & Ki Tavo

A few days ago, I left the city to go up to visit a friend at her farm where we would camp out on the lawn by her barn. I was so looking forward to enjoying these days and nights in the country as the summer drew to an end—so needed after a hard summer.

But on the two nights we slept outdoors, the temperature dipped to an uncharacteristic 40 degrees Fahrenheit—meaning, we were freezing! Totally unprepared, we shivered in the night, got wet from the heavy dew on our tents, and got little sleep.

In those moments of misery, we might have felt cursed.

But the Elul moon was full and the sky was clear. The middle of the night afforded an awe and the unexpected magic of a bright night sky with easily recognizable constellations. A few days earlier or later, though warmer, it would have been rainy and cloudy.

It turned out to be a blessing.

This week in Torah, as the Israelites prepare to finally enter the Promised Land, they are reminded of the blessings that will be bestowed upon them if they follow God’s commandments, and also the curses—a long litany of horrors, of death, disease, and suffering—if they do not.

Thus, the Bible tells us we should live with “yir’ah,” a word which Rabbi Shai Held discusses in detail in his book, The Heart of Torah. He points out that this word “yir'ah” has at least two meanings: fear and awe (The Heart of Torah, Vol. 2, p. 265-269).

He explains: according to the Torah, though we are to live and act out of fear of God, we are also to live in awe. Our ancient rabbis say that these are two different levels in the spiritual realm; acting out of fear comes from a baser level, like a child who learns to obey. But the objective is to reach a higher spiritual realm, and act out of awe of a power so much greater than ourselves. It is awe that should guide our lives. Because awe takes us outside and beyond ourselves and our individual problems.

Awe gives us gratitude, and helps us enter a place where we understand that the mystery of life is beyond our personal control.

Right before I left for the country, I officiated at a funeral. It was a very sad and strange situation. The wife of the deceased, after almost fifty years of what seemed to be a good, supportive marriage, had been taking care of her husband for the past two years as he slowly got sicker. It took two weeks for the funeral to take place; she had been totally unprepared for his sudden, unexpected death.

Meanwhile, numerous phone calls and prods from the funeral home did not seem to hurry the process along. It was completely beyond their control.

At this simple graveside funeral, only five family members and no friends would be present. The woman’s son and his girlfriend showed up very late to the cemetery after being mostly incommunicado. The family was anxious, distracted, and unable to be fully present in the moment as we waited. I stalled. When he finally arrived, I could see deep grief and anger in him at the loss of his father, hard as he tried to bottle it up.

After shoveling dirt into the grave, we turned to go.

But we had forgotten something; a eulogy from the daughter.

In it, she evoked love, laughter, and pain.

As she read her beautiful piece, I saw, behind his dark glasses, that her brother began to weep and shake uncontrollably, despite his best efforts. After she finished reading, she walked over, embraced him, and told him she loved him. They cried together.

Perhaps a woman who worked so hard to keep her husband alive for two years might feel cursed at the way things ended up. Were they being punished? What had they done wrong, after all, to deserve this suffering? Yet, when we talked on the phone, and she recounted their trials and tribulations, she never once expressed frustration or a feeling of victimhood; what’s the use of complaining and crying, she’d said.

Yet she, along with her children, needed to be reminded that the life, disease, and death of her husband were beyond her control.

As I reflect on my experiences over the past week, I can’t help but think that all of life is filled with curses and blessings, all mixed up together in every moment.

I am in awe of the capacity this aging woman had to care for her husband, and the pain they both—and all of them as a family—withstood.

I am in awe of the capacity human beings have to care for one another, and how the pain and the love are intertwined. Tears and laughter can mean the same thing, just as fear and awe can be wrapped up in the same word.

I am in awe of the patience and the way this very soft-spoken, humble, kind-hearted sister was able to crack her brother’s heart open in a moment.

This unexpected blessing happened in the messiness of disease and death. What followed were relief, gratitude, and the beginning of healing and repair: of Tikkun.

As we come to the last week of the month of Elul, as we prepare for the Days of Awe, always seemingly totally unprepared for the unexpected and unknown, always somehow surprised by the messiness of life and what lies ahead, I bless us with entering this new year with living in greater and greater awe and gratitude, despite the trials and tribulations, and carrying with us the capacity to create Tikkun, healing, in the world.

Double Exposure, Multivalence, & Ki Tetzei

After three months at home with us, on Sunday, my husband and I dropped off our daughter at the airport. She was heading for Jerusalem for a year of study.

Which all means I haven’t slept a good night in at least a week, but more like three months (although, being 63 now, I can’t blame it all on her).

Monday morning, my birthday (thank you!!), she arrived safely. (An excellent birthday present all by itself.)

Having our daughter staying with us while preparing to go away was a multivalent experience.

First, her destination; “Who goes into a war zone??” (unless you’re a soldier, doctor, politician…). Not to mention the multilayered feelings about this particular place in this particular point in time.

And there she is, calling, sending photos of the places she fell in love with her last time there, having an Israeli breakfast with her best friend in a charming restaurant, so excited to be at the Western Wall, running into old friends in cute neighborhoods by accident. It feels so safe and wonderful and magical.

All the while knowing there are horrible things happening very close by.

Getting her ready to leave was also like this. It was lovely and wonderful to have her home again for a time. We had beautiful moments together, especially in the last week when we were very intentional about spending time together. Several mornings, we went out to sit in the park and enjoy the cool weather and the flowers. Her last Shabbos home, her sister and brother-in-law came over, and we played games and ate ice cream and laughed a lot.

It was also chaotic with all the collected stuff of three years living on her own. And of course we were all anxious. There were lots of emotional ups and downs. At one point, it looked like she might not make it, that her trip might not happen when war broke out with Iran; her flight was canceled, and we had to buy a new ticket. There were many sleepless nights.

The same multivalence was true of my birthday. On only four hours of sleep two nights in a row, I bounced out of bed, determined to have a happy day. I was not going to lie in bed depressed over this new loss and sudden change.

Early in the morning, we hopped on a train to Cold Spring, NY, to go hiking and have some good food. Nature and fun. That was the objective. We basically hadn’t left the city all summer (because I don’t think New Jersey counts). Exhausted and literally not seeing straight, we started up a very steep mountain, aiming for 360-degree views.

There were moments I didn’t know if I could make it to the summit. Unprepared for such a strenuous hike, I hadn’t eaten much for breakfast (saving room for the ice cream, you know?), we hadn’t brought any food, and not enough water. But encouragement came from my husband and others on the trail. (Four days later, I’m still exhausted, though recovering.)

In her commentary on this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tetzei, Rabbi Tali Adler talks about double exposure and multivalence. She reminds us that more than one thing can be true at a time; the same place and time can hold beauty and horror all at once. She describes one particular day as a young child in Europe, seeing, through her grandfather’s eyes, his life before the Holocaust.

She explains it as a double exposure: “For the first time, I began to understand what it is like when something so beautiful becomes, while retaining all its magic, something terrible as well.”

It is like the Egypt of the Bible for the Hebrews: a place of great abundance and richness—but how does it look from a slave’s point of view?

“Egypt is a place caught in a double exposure,” says Adler; “For the Jews, Egypt has long been a nightmare, a place of slavery and oppression, of beatings and cold-blooded murder. One imagines that for the Jews in Egypt, every place must have a secret meaning: beautiful houses as places of servitude, cool bathing spots in the river as the place where baby boys drown.”

The double exposure comes with the understanding that the Nile is both a source of life and also a place of terrible suffering: “The first two plagues (blood and frogs) are a way of exposing the hidden underbelly of Israelite suffering to the Egyptians, of making explicit and raw what denial and callousness may have disguised. They are a way of bringing the Egyptians out of their day-to-day understanding of their country and of making the other, blurry side of the double exposure unbearably clear.”

And yet, in spite of this, she points out, we are explicitly commanded in this week’s Torah portion not to hate the Egyptian.

The ancient rabbis explain why: the Egyptians once hosted us generously during the time of Joseph, who became Pharaoh’s right-hand-man, saving an entire generation of Jews from famine.

Since she writes of my sentiments in this moment so well, I end with Rabbi Adler’s words:

“In this moment, it is we who are forced to learn that the multivalence of places does not allow us to neatly cordon off the beautiful and ugly: we are touched by the meanings of other people and groups. It is impossible, in this reading, to fully separate the memory of nightmarish tragedy from miraculous safety.

“We are commanded to give room to both, to treat our stories with the integrity and nuance they deserve. We are commanded, in this mitzvah not to hate the Egyptian, to remember the past in all its complexity: not to forget the suffering that we endured, but at the same time, not to allow our memories to become exclusively dark. We are commanded to remember honestly. We are commanded to remember moments of beauty and kindness even as we remember suffering, persecution, and darkness. We are commanded to live in the only truly honest way: in the double exposure.”

And so I hold the beauty and the magic of where my daughter is, focusing on the objective of her year there, while also holding the suffering.

In this third week of the month of Elul, a time of honest self-assessment, I choose to live in the double exposure.

Will you join me in this endeavor? It’s not easy, perhaps more challenging than climbing a mountain, I know.

Judging, Returning, Repairing, & Not-So-Secret Despair (Shoftim)

This week, I’m making right something that turned out wrong.

Last week, hoping to inspire the crowd during a Torah teaching I led, I presented an excerpt from a book I was loving.

But taking it out of context proved to be difficult; some people misinterpreted the message. So I want to explain it.

I had been only halfway through the book when I put it down for a couple of weeks; though I loved it, the truth of the message was painfully difficult. So I took a break. As I’ve shared with my readers, I’d already been feeling despair over the state of the world.

But after the misinterpretation and a conversation with the author (I know people in high places, you know—haha), I thought, I’d better finish reading. So I picked it up that very Shabbos afternoon and did just that.

Finishing to the end changed everything for me. As I approached the last pages, finding a hopeful message, I burst into tears. I wanted it to be true and possible.

The book is called, The Secret Despair of the Secular Left, by rabbinical student Ana Levy-Lyons. (She’s been a lot more than that in her life.) Here, she talks about what’s gone wrong in our modern society: our loss of connection with the Earth and our bodies, and between people and communities. Without idealizing religious life, she helps us understand the downside of living in a predominantly secular world, starting with the disappearance of a sense of awe.

She takes us on a journey through all the things that have gone awry, and the damage that’s been done by living a life dominated more and more by the internet, a “virtual” life with physical separation, leading to increasing alienation; how we’ve traded serendipitous meeting for the ease of online shopping, how profit drives absolutely everything, from the way we eat to the way we farm, from employers paying for abortion to adoption, from the way we feed our babies to entrusting our infants to the care of others while taking care of children that don’t belong to us.

It is these things and more, she argues, that have left us in despair; it’s a connection that’s been lost so thoroughly, we don’t even know what we’re missing and why we feel the way do.

Ironically, at the same time, she points out, we have been trained by our powerful capitalist system to believe and accept without question that individualism and personal choice need to and should override the greater good of society and the health of our Earth—to the point where we can’t “judge” anyone or anything for their “personal choices.” But the reality is that we often have no choice at all.

This goes further when, for the sake of ease, we still buy from Amazon. even if we hate Jeff Bezos and all he stands for. And those who can afford it still get on an airplane without hesitation for pleasure trips, putting their own personal desires above the deleterious effect that flying has on our planet. Even if we accept that global warming is real.

The thought that, as a collective, we haven’t stopped to think that maybe we should actually change our behavior when we do have a choice. Because the idea of sacrifice for the greater good has basically left our vocabulary. (How and why that happened is an interesting thing Levy-Lyons talks about in the book).

Thus, we’ve adopted a defeatist attitude; “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” and, “If only a few of us are doing it, what difference will it make anyway?” Or, “We can’t possibly overcome this huge machine that’s gotten so out of control.” Or, “We’ll just wait for this crazy guy to get out of office, and we’ll get our American democracy back on track.” But we’ve gone so far off track, we really can’t afford to wait.

Though it’s certainly depressing to read about, at the end of the book, Levy-Lyons brings us to the possibility of repair, ending with a chapter called Days of Awe, referring to the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. In that chapter, she has a section on Teshuvah which, in traditional language, means “returning to God” or “repenting.” For our more modern sensibilities, it means recognizing wrongdoing and repairing it.

With the new moon this week, we have entered into the Hebrew month of Elul, precisely the time when we begin thinking about return and repair as we approach the High Holy Days. Every day during this month we are to hear the call of the shofar, the ram’s horn, waking us up to fixing what we’ve messed up, telling us to spend time examining our actions and our hearts so we can make changes in the coming year. So we can make things right that we’ve wronged.

This week’s Torah reading, Shoftim, meaning Judges, gives the Israelites a legal system to follow when they enter the Promised Land. The title itself implies judgment.

After all, how are we to live life in a new land, in a different, new way, that brings justice and fairness, but without judgment? How can we repair something that’s gone wrong if we don’t examine it and think deeply about its consequences?

Not everything is neutral, as Levy-Lyons points out, as in the “right to personal choice,” itself an idea planted by a system driven primarily by profit.

The Torah text, interestingly, addresses the idea of false prophesy, and how we are to know we are being defrauded. It answers that, if the prediction made by a prophet does not come true, then we know it was false.

But Rabbi Shai Held disagrees with the Torah. (What???)

He explains that, sometimes, if the words of a prophet “fail to materialize,” it can be for a very different reason than being false prophecy: namely that the words of the prophet yield a change of heart and action in the people, which is indeed the intention; “The people’s repentance (teshuvah) in turn elicits a change in God’s plans.”

We see this in Jeremiah, who “makes the theological point explicit: the future is open…but God’s plans for the future are contingent, dependent to some extent on the free decisions the people make about whether or not to respond to God’s call…Even God does not know what God will do until the people exercise their own freedom in responding to or defying the prophetic summons (italics added).”

Held ends by saying, “This is one of Judaism’s most radical messages: even in the face of all the horror and sadness, hopelessness is not a luxury permitted to us. The choices we make and the paths we take really can affect the future of the world we live in. To live with God, [the Jewish Bible] reminds us, is to live in a world in which the future always remains open (The Heart of Torah, Vol. 2, pp. 241-244).” At the end of her book, Levy-Lyons encourages us to resist, even in quiet ways, to go against the grain of our seemingly overpowering culture and not give in to despair, just as Shai Held does.

People have always resisted injustice in quiet ways throughout history. Smaller actions can end up having a great impact over time, rippling out from one person to the next, from one community to the next.

Levy-Lyons encourages us to reclaim in-person socializing and meeting, reclaim control of our attention and time from the internet and social media, turn away from watching images of nature on screens and interact with the earth IRL (In Real Life), and experience the awe firsthand.

I would add, we should use air travel thoughtfully, be more conscious of the water we use, and stop ordering from Amazon even though its name tells us it’s greater than anything we can imagine, threatening to carry us away like the great river to a land from which there is no return.

Clearly, we can’t wait for our government to make laws about these things. It wasn’t happening fast enough before. Now the progress we had made is being turned back, so we must take things into our own hands, and increase the acts of resistance already being carried out by a lot of brave people.

When we want to do teshuvah in an honest way, we have to face what’s difficult and painful, and make right what we’ve wronged, first by examining, then by taking responsibility, then by changing our actions.

Because the future is still open.

So let’s do it. Join me.

And say Amen.

Re’eh & Completely Unprepared (well…)

It’s my personality to always be prepared. To a fault. Annoyingly, to others.

It’s part of my perfectionism: the Virgo in me, which can be a real curse. It makes me judgmental and demanding. (My children have already told me how I’ve damaged them, and my husband suffers every day, with my high expectations.)

As part of my spiritual practice, I struggle to be more conscious and let things go. I do it always, but especially as we enter the Hebrew month of Elul, Jewish practice says this is a time of assessment, deep introspection and self-examination. I’ve got my work cut out for me.

Of course, being prepared is a blessing in situations that require attention to detail and planning ahead—for the smallest thing, or the biggest disasters.

Towards the end of last week, there was a minor water issue in our building.

(My mother would have called it a minor disaster, of course. Like if you sprinkled water on the floor while washing dishes, she would cry out, “There’s a flood!” As a result, she had a very clean house—a blessing, but also a curse—if you didn’t live up to her expectations).

Anyway, this was a planned water shut-off that was supposed to begin at 9 in the morning and be restored by 6 in the evening.

But it did not turn out that way. Because you really never know what’s going to happen, as prepared as you try to be. By 10 O’clock that night, some of us were just beginning to get a trickle in the faucet while others still had no water at all by the next afternoon!

Many people were completely prepared. Like a neighbor who I shared water with (grateful for the Virgo—again!)

Yes, I was the one who woke up at the crack of dawn to fill buckets and pots with water, and again when there was barely a trickle the next morning, though my husband didn’t think it was necessary.

It probably would have been easier to just fill a bathtub, but I made a conscious decision not to. I don't like to waste any water, if possible. I try not to take for granted the water that flows so easily from my faucet, unaware of how much there may be left in the reservoirs. Water is the essence of life, and I am acutely aware these days that there are many people around the world who don’t have enough of it—clean or dirty—whether due to extreme heat or wars.

So I play this little game with myself that no one but me knows about (until now), preparing for a real disaster that may come at any moment so I have a sense that I am tough and will be able to survive it. For the sake of my family’s life, but also the life of others. After all, we are truly co-dependent, even if our American culture teaches rugged individualism.

The Torah reading this week, Re’eh, is about the choices we make. It starts us on a Journey of Transformation, as Rabbi Alan Lew writes in his book, This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared. It’s a book about preparing for the High Holy Days, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is a time of deep introspection. Yom Kippur, mostly known as the Day of Atonement, is really about rehearsing for our death so we may learn to walk in the world in a way that shows our appreciation for life itself, not taking anything for granted.

Re’eh is the first Torah reading during this month of preparation. It begins by giving the Israelites a choice as they cross the Jordan River to enter the Promised Land. They get to choose blessing or curse. They are encouraged to choose blessing, because choosing blessing means choosing life.

Half the people are to stand on one mountain, where they hear a series of blessings recited by the Levites who stand in the valley. The other half stand on another mountain where they will hear curses recited. And all the people say Amen.

What we learn from this, Lew writes, is that our lives literally depend on our choosing good over evil: “…And we learn that it is a matter of consciousness also. We have to come to see our life very clearly, clearly enough so that we can discern… so that we can tell the difference between the blessings and the curses, so that these things are arrayed before us as clearly as mountains, as we intone their names from the valley in between—that sliver of eternity on which we stand and that we call the present moment (p. 66-67).”

Lew continues: “We no longer perform the great pageant of the blessings and the curses [on the mountaintops]…[Instead of the physical mountains, this month of Elul], is a time to gaze upon the inner mountains, to devote serious attention to bringing our lives into focus,…to identify that which yearns for life and that which clings to death, that which seeks good and that which is fatally attracted to the perverse, to find out who we are and where we are going (p.67).”

Jewish practice makes it clear that we must engage in self-evaluation and self-judgment during this time, taking a serious spiritual accounting of our attitudes and actions. I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me—especially if I want to be prepared.

At the same time, I am living with an acute awareness that it’s probably impossible to be prepared—that the title of Alan Lew’s book is eerily accurate, especially in today’s world.

Though completely unprepared, we can still make choices that bring either blessings or curses into the world. They are choices we make moment by moment, in our attitudes, thoughts, and actions.

What is being asked of us in Re’eh is not to allow ourselves to become distracted—we must to stay focused, aware, conscious of our actions and our thoughts. It speaks of those who will secretly try to distract us, and turn us away from the Divine to which we are to cleave.

Lew asks us to examine the stories we tell ourselves, the stories we repeat and cling to, that we cleave to, the way we are told to cleave to God.

So I pass the question on: what distracts you, and what do you allow to distract you from the spiritual work that needs to be done to bring more blessing into the world?

Ahat stories do you cleave to—stories about yourself, about others and the world?

What stories do you retell because they make you feel safer and more whole in a world that feels utterly unpredictable, a world that feels like it’s falling apart?

What will you be working on during this month of Elul for the sake of life? And please share them with me as we all try to prepare ourselves.

As Lew says, our lives literally depend on our choosing good over evil, and we need to be conscious of where we are going and how our actions determine the direction we’re going in. Without consciousness, we can’t change course.

Please share your stories. (And say Amen.)

Ashes and Pockets of Light; Left, Right, & in Circles (Eikev)

Last week, I hiked up a mountain with twenty other people for a burial.

It was not the first time assisting this one particular family—for the same beloved person who died back at the end of February.

(Remember? Angel or A-Hole? This was him. Steven.)

Steven had family and friends that loved him so much, they gathered together, not once, but three times—from the far reaches of the globe—to honor and rermember him.

The first time was for a memorial service; he’d requested cremation, and that was honored.

The second time was to place some of his ashes in a plot at the family cemetery where he would remain connected to his ancestors.

That very week, I’d written about ashes in relation to Passover and a seder I had led at a senior center that week. In my blog, I’d connected Passover with the Torah reading of that week, which talked about the sacrificial system. While the Torah says the ashes from the animal sacrifices were to be placed next to the alter in a pile, Rabbi Tali Adler had quoted the ancient rabbis, saying that, into the ashes went all the hopes and dreams and prayers of the Israelites. And isn’t Passover all about our hopes and prayers and dreams for liberation?

And it was that same Friday, interestingly, that I met the family on Staten Island on a rainy, cold, nasty day, the day before Passover, to bury Steven’s ashes.

The third time of gathering for Steven was last week, when we brought the second half of his ashes to a mountaintop in Upstate New York. There, they were scattered among ferns in a forest. This was his truest wish—to be free, liberated from the confines of the world, but connected to the earth that he loved so dearly.

I suggested that everyone bring a stone or pick one up along the way. The stones were not (this time) for placing on a tombstone, the traditional way when visiting a Jewish cemetery. But what was traditional about this burial anyway? And where was the foundation laid for how to carry out such a ritual in a Jewish way?

So, instead of leaving the stones at the “grave,” people were to take them home.

But before doing that, we had to get to the top of the mountain, which proved not as easy as expected. First, we got lost on the road, taking a right turn instead of a left. We were following two different GPS’s (have you ever done that?), and had to make a guess as to which one was correct. There were various sign-posts for the mountain we were headed to, but none of them was the correct one. We lost our signal, and ended up returning to the truck stop where we’d originally met the others, and started all over again, finally connecting by phone to let the others know we were lost.

Once on the trail, distances were farther and the hike steeper than we’d thought. We passed turn-offs and had to retrace our steps. Much of the time, it felt like we were going in circles. Not having been there before, each step we took changed our expectations of what this day was supposed to look like.

Like the Israelites wandering through the desert for forty years as recalled by Moses in this week’s Torah portion, to some of us on this venture, it felt like we were wandering.

But we found wonderful surprises along the way, too, and it was so much more beautiful than I could have imagined. The bad air quality that had been plaguing us on the East Coast cleared that day, the humidity lifted, we had relief from the extreme heat, the summer bugs in the forests were nowhere to be found, and the sun came out, creating pockets of light through the trees.

At our ultimate destination, we stood in a circle in a sweet little wooded area near a lean-to, and everyone took out their stones. As they held them in their palms, I asked them to place their memories, and also lessons learned from Steven about how to live, and maybe how to die. They were to take these stones home with them, a sign of permanence in an impermanent world, from a place where Steven would only be found in spirit.

Stones, I explained, can be reminders of the bricks laid in a foundation for building a new kind of future. If anyone cared about building a future for a better world, Steven was that person.

He loved the wilderness and hiking, yes. The present state of the natural world troubled him deeply, as it does many of us. He was also deeply troubled by the present political and social state of the world. And he worked tirelessly, to make things different, to make things better and, to the annoyance of some who loved him, ranted and raved while he was at it. What he wanted was for people and governments to be kinder and more caring, to recognize the humanity in each person, and to treat them as such, even those you might deem your enemies. This was how Steven expressed his Jewishness, even if he was not aware of it and didn’t identify deeply with it in other ways.

So, just as in this week’s Torah portion, when Moses reminds the Israelites of their long, twisted journey in the desert, of all their missteps along the way and repeated lack of faith, we too were on a journey.

As a people, and as a world, we continue to be on a journey, one much longer and more challenging than we might have expected or certainly hoped for. We seem to continue to get lost along the way, turning right instead of left, with a very flawed GPS to guide us along the way—and often GPS’s with conflicting directions on how to proceed.

We hope that we will be surprised by the outcome, and that we encounter a beauty we can barely imagine, but that we know, somewhere in our discouraged hearts, is possible, if only we have the faith to continue working tirelessly to make it happen.

In the meantime, we need to continue to find and create pockets of light in the world, in the small and beautiful ways people bring goodness into the world, and place our hopes and dreams and prayers into the ashes of destruction caused by wildfires and wars, working towards creating a better future.

And please say amen.

Be Comforted, My People

I sit here writing on what is considered the saddest day of the Jewish calendar.

Yes, it’s been awhile, I know. Two months, actually, since I last published anything. These past months, the news has felt like a daily assualt, and like I ran out of words. I had nothing left to say, no sentiments of consolation, as Isaiah tells us this week, or of inspiration. Not for me, not for anyone. How could I write?

Today, when Jews commemorate the destruction of the Temple, a fast day we are supposed to sink into, I can’t find any rational reason to do so. Have I not sunk into the deepest grief for months, or maybe more correctly, even years?

But I’m slowly finding my strength, my inspiraton, again.

This week, one of the rabbis at my synagogue talksd about the fabric of the Jewish people falling apart; while we have become even more polarized due to political disagreement, our way of communicating is tearing us apart further than the disagreement itself. It’s a way of attacking each other that has become the norm over the past years, given license by the general state of disrespectful discourse in our country and our world.

The rabbi asked the question: are we as a people falling apart?

She pointed to the fact that Jewish culture and tradition rest strongly on the ability to argue and disagree.

I wondered about this. Has our unity been an illusion? Like that of our country whose history is being whitewashed? Just when we were beginning to reckon with our past as a nation? Were the ancient rabbis necessarily respectful towards each other in their disagreement?

Perhaps not. But they at least talked to each other.

Or is that an illusion as well, recorded in texts in a way that gives us that impression? Texts recorded over time, of conversations happening between rabbis that actually lived centuries apart.

I don’t know the answers. Neither does this (other) rabbi.

But I do know that we can each try our best, in each conversation we choose to have about challenging questions and views about the world, by introducing ideas in ways that others can hear—if only we do so slowly and gently, planting seeds along the way.

There may not be enough time to do things slowly, everything feels so urgent. And maybe there isn’t.

In the meantime, I draw strength from those who quietly resist with their bodies in various ways, like those who get in the faces of masked ICE agents as they kidnap people, and yet others who risk everything by speaking out, whether they are political figure, government employees, or Jews using words that are taboo in the Jewish world.

So for those on a spiritual path who, because their own pain is so deep, can’t bring themselves to talk to someone whose views are the polar opposite of their own, who can’t allow themselves to feel anything of the pain of others, I beseech you to try.

Because what is being asked of us in this moment is a very big spiritual lesson: to read, to listen, to open our eyes to the suffering of others, whoever they might be.

I don’t have any answers as to how to fix our current situation, and I often feel helpless to do so, yet I can guarantee that by screaming at and above each other, by calling each other stupid or blind, or by closing our eyes and avoiding the whole thing, we will get nowhere. Even if others are doing it, we don’t have to respond in kind.

Maybe there is no escaping the sadness. I’ve been living in the sadness for a long time, and yet I keep going. Maybe I do actually have the strength I didn’t know I had. Maybe we all do. Maybe this is the wisdom of the Jewish calendar: that we get a day to allow ourselves to be in the sadness.

And then we have to get up and keep going—keep trying.

May it be so for all of us.

The Irritating Pearls of Humanity & Shavuos

Over the past two weeks I’ve officiated at four funerals (one wedding coming up!!). What I love about funerals is getting to know about a person’s life and their family in a very intimate way.

I come away feeling like I knew the person I never met. It often feels like I become one of the family.

As I get to know them, I learn about them as unique individuals, with their beauty and their quirkiness, the things people loved about them and the things they found annoying, difficult, and challenging: the complexity of the human being.

All four of these women I helped memorialize from these past twelve days fought fiercely for their own independence, for the rights of others, and they loved fiercely. They had survived tragedy in their early lives, with parents and siblings dying at a young age, families splitting up.

At funerals I lead, I like to begin with a Mark Nepo poem that recognizes that it is from irritations that a pearl is born. (It’s called, Yes, We Can Talk—you can look it up.)

I have often had the opportunity to officiate at the funerals of those you might describe as pearls: people who lived their lives in a very intentional way, trying to make their little corner of the world just a little bit better. Pearls, not saints. (Jews don’t aspire to sainthood. It’s not our culture).

Like the social worker turned lawyer, in order to have a greater impact. She would use her voice for the voiceless: for those suffering elder-abuse, or living in group homes, the mentally ill, the money-less.

When I dug into her family history to see where she got this passion, I learned that her father had been an example to her as a famous music producer, the Robbins Sheet Music business. He would sign on people like Ella Fitzgerald and others Black artists who might not have had a voice and become famous if it hadn’t been for him. Most of all, he did it with respect, not trying to control what they did, but allowing them to be their own people in their own unique way, letting their own particular talent shine through.

But she could be difficult to work with. Her standards were high, and she had no patience for those who did not come well-prepared for court. “Don’t waste my time,” was her motto. “People’s lives are on the line.” She was tough, judgmental, challenging.

But she was also fun and funny. Everyone loved her so much, and she loved them. They laughed together and probably cried together, too.

Another one made a point of cursing a lot when interviewing people to hire, thereby eliminating those who were too uptight for the job. She was the chief editor of Planned Parenthood for some 20 years. She had a raunchy sense of humor, loved laughing, but was very serious about her commitment to women’s reproductive health and freedom; she knew how dangerous it was for women when abortion was illegal (and I’m sure was appalled at the curbing of women’s reproductive freedom today).

Yet another was a woman who did stupid things like protesting alone with her husband in front of a Nazi bookstore in Arlington, Va, back in the 1960’s. They told the police they were going to do this, who shrugged. They were on their own, with no protection. The Nazis showed up in black cars with German Shepherds, and the young couple, shaking, peeing in their pants, stood their ground. Two weeks later, the bookstore was closed. The Jewish tailor down the street thanked them.

This same woman would walk into a public bathroom marked “Colored” because she had to pee and that was the closest bathroom, but also to make a statement. She volunteered at food banks and made sure they weren’t profiting from others’ hunger. Her sons’ friends came from all different walks of life, of different ethnicities and religious backgrounds, and all were welcome in their home. She worked with Black children from poor neighborhoods, and she would drive them home, sometimes getting stopped by the police who wanted to “make sure she was okay”—because, you know, she had young Black men in her car, and that probably meant she was in danger, according to their way of thinking.

She, too, was a pearl, but no saint. She also had a foul mouth, and would direct it at the principal of her sons’ school who could never quite figure out when the Jewish holidays fell, to her frustration. (This was in Springfield, Illinois, back in the 1970’s, though I’m not sure it would be any different now.) She was passionate and tough in way of loving, and she turned her son off to playing the violin at his bar mitzvah, despite her good intentions (he actually gave it up entirely) by doing something that had the opposite effect of what she’d intended; she went out of her way to get him to meet the famous violinist, Isaac Stern. To this day, her grown sons have friends who are still afraid of her—even though she’s dead—despite knowing that she always had their best interests at heart.

Then there was the talented clothing designer, which could sound like an elite thing, traveling to and from Italy constantly, but she made clothing for friends and family, dressing them up beautifully, giving them scarves, and teaching them how to wear them. So many of those people wore the clothing she had made for them to the funeral. They cried when they talked about how they felt seen by her when no one else saw them, how she was there for them always.

This same woman was defined as very “spiritual,” very New-Age-y. Sometimes it was too much for her friends and family, and she irritated them with her constant talk of angels and heaven, always encouraging them to visualize good things happening when they were worried or facing a challenge.

But she radiated deep love for every single person, they all said, and they felt it.

Her grown nephew told of how they would walk down the street, and when they saw a homeless person, particularly one who looked like they hadn’t bathed in six months, she would stop, look into their eyes, and make him do the same while shaking their hand. (“Mortifying” is how he described it.)

All four of these women understood each human being to be worthy in their own right, no matter who they were, where they came from, or what they had done. They carried this strongest of Jewish values in their very beings, committing their lives to it, even though they came from secular families and weren’t necessarily conscious where these values came from.

There’s a mishna from our ancient rabbis that teachers: “Adam was created singly…to proclaim the greatness of the Blessed Holy One, for a human being stamps many coins with one die and they are all alike one with the other, but the King of Kings of kings, the Blessed Holy One, has stamped all humanity with the die of the first man, and yet not one of them is like his fellow” (Sanhedrin 4:5).

As Rabbi Shai Held points out in his volume, The Heart of Torah (Vol. 2, p. 94-95), “this is a staggering teaching—that never before in the history of the cosmos has there ever been another human being just like you, and never again in the history of the cosmos will there ever be another human being just like you.”

But the mishna continues: “Therefore, each and every person is obligated to say, ‘For my sake was the world created.’”

Rabbi Held, like many of us perhaps, might find this last statement troubling; isn’t there a touch of narcissism and self-congratulation in it, he asks?

But then Rabbi Held explains that he came to realize that such an interpretation of this mishnah had more to do with our modern culture, and how we are taught to think about our uniqueness as implying entitlement.

On the contrary, says, what it says about human uniqueness actually carries implications for God’s glory, not ours; it’s not about what we are entitled to, but what we are responsible for. Because “we are, all of us, called upon to serve.”

He goes on: “As human beings faced with a world so utterly broken in so many ways, we are called upon to ask not just, what can I give, but also, and crucially, what can I give?…How can I, with my own unique gifts, talents, and passions—and my unique combination of weaknesses and limitations—best serve God? God’s love is a call to service, and we answer not as human beings in general but as human beings in all our particularity.”

“There is another critical dimension to all this,” Shai Held writes: “Our uniqueness implies our irreplaceability. When the Mishnah tells us that there has never been and will never be another person just like us, it also implicitly points to the tragedy of our inevitable death: When we die, something infinitely precious and utterly irreplaceable simply disappears.”

There’s a parable from a midrash that says, “A man had a stock of fine pearls which he used to count before taking out, and count again before putting away.” So, similarly, the midrash imagines God saying to the Israelites, “You are my children…and therefore I count you often” (Numbers Rabbah 4:2).

It is this preciousness that I witness each time I officiate at a funeral. Each person is utterly irreplaceable, with a name that we hold up and vow to never forget as long as we live.

On this holiday of Shavuos, the Israelites stand in awe and terror, trembling at the sights and sounds that accompany the presence of God, ready to receive God’s teaching on Mt. Sinai.

It is said that every Jew alive today stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai. We stood there collectively, as a family.

But we stood there as individuals as well.

As we enter Shavuos, we simultaneously begin reading the Book of Numbers, in Hebrew, Bamidbar, or In the Wilderness, where counting is so central.

As human beings, we need to learn to see ourselves, too, as pearls bringing our uniqueness into the world every single day.

Faced with a world so utterly broken in so many ways, we, too, tremble at the future and the implications for our responisibility.

And yes, we can let ourselves fall apart sometimes, so we can gather ourselves together again, pick up the broken pieces, and bring our unique gifts, passions and talents, along with our unique combination of weaknesses and limitations, and figure out each next step we must take in this wilderness we are living through.

Will you join me in standing ready to love one another in all our beauty, uniqueness, and brokenness, to answer the call of service, bringing your own uniqueness, beauty and brokenness into that service?

Please say Amen in answer to that call.

What Would I Want People to Know, Danger Zones, & Akharey Mot/Kedoshim

Last week, only a couple of blocks from home, this person stops me and asks if we can talk.

“About what?” I ask. All the usual things are going through my head: What are they selling, what do they want me to sign…?”

“Anything,” they say, explaining that they will be documenting our conversation to post online.

I can see they’re sincere, so I say sure. They fasten a microphone to my shirt, and we start talking.

First we talk about the basics. I’m curious about their origins, and I learn that they come from a people that has been the victim of genocide. They don’t tell me this. It just registers in my mind.

They ask about my life. Who am I? I tell them how and where I grew up, what I did before, and what I do now. I’m not sure of their reaction. But they’re interested how the rabbi thing came about. I tell them, in a nutshell.

Then they ask, “What’s one message, one thing, you would want viewers to know?”

Oh. Wow. So many things, I think, searching my brain. I get to say anything—and I want it to be important.

We have a difficult conversation around Israel and Gaza, and how hard it’s been for the Jewish community, and how divisive. I explain some of it. Of course, I’m aware that I’m entering dangerous territory. But I’m the Real Rabbi who likes keeping things real. Plus, I believe in taking chances (with caution), I’m usually a good judge of character, and I believe I can have an impact—even talking to just one person.

My interviewer concludes, “Wow, this really is so nuanced, isn’t it.” I appreciate their willingness to think about all the different sides.

We end with my interviewer asking me if I have hope.

“About Gaza? Israel? The world?”

“All of it.”

Not so much for Gaza and Israel, no, I admit.

But then I tell them another story I’d heard, this one from “On The Media.”

A Black woman is collecting dirt on the side of the road in rural Alabama. It is the site of a lynching. The dirt is going into a jar for display at a museum of Black history. She’s filling the jar, and a white man driving by in a big truck slows down, watches, comes back again, maybe three times. The woman is understandably growing more and more nervous.

The man finally stops. He asks what she’s doing. She considers whether to tell him the truth or not. She’s in a danger zone. But she spills it.

Instead of responding with hostility, he asks if he can help. She offers the trowel. He insists that she keep it. He digs fervently with his hands.

As they’re digging, filling this jar, she starts crying. He says he’s sorry, he didn’t mean to upset her. She says no, you’re not upsetting me; you’re helping me, you’re blessing me.

They keep digging.

Then she notices that his face is turning red. She’s concerned.

“Are you okay?” she asks. “Yes,” he answers, “I’m just worried that it was my grandfather who lynched this person.”

She puts her hand on his shoulder. They cry together. He drives back with her to the museum. Together, they deliver the jar full of dirt to add to a wall of jars. They are now friends. A healing has happened.

As Bryan Stevenson says on the podcast, I’m not naive, this could have turned out very differently, but these kinds of stories give me hope. Despite the feeling that we are going backwards, there has been evolution—which is a real reason for the backlash we are experiencing now in this country.

The documenter says, “You give me hope.”

This week, very aptly for our topic, the Torah continues listing its laws for the Israelites to live by when they enter the Land of Milk and Honey.

It starts with a scapegoat—a literal goat that is sent into the desert as a way of achieving expiation for a person’s sins. Then it moves on to things like how to plant and sow your fields, leaving harvest along the edges for the poor. It talks of stealing, not dealing basely with your fellow humans, not giving false testimony or false anything, not putting a stumbling block in front of a blind person.

Further on are rules about family members whose nakedness should not be revealed. Though it doesn’t explain, it’s obvious that it’s about being exposed, vulnerable—in danger.

We all know how Jews have been used as scapegoats for society’s ills throughout history. But we are left with questions in the present day.

When do we, as nations or as individuals, take responsibility and reveal the truth? When do we lay the blame on others for our own actions, making excuses, or even deny the truth, and pretend it’s not happening?

When are we dealing “basely”?

We might be putting ourselves in danger, and there are times not to reveal certain things. But we also must be courageous and do what we can, when we can. How and when is different for each person.

So, as we come upon the holiday of Revelation, just a month out, when the rabbis say the Torah was revealed on Mount Sinai, let us pray for revelation for how and when we can each play a role and make a difference in these very confusing, dark, times.

May we sow peace and love and kindness instead of violence, hatred, and hostility. And let us speak kindly to those with whom we disagree. How else can we create the world we want to live in?

May we be vehicles for healing.

And please say Amen.

At Its Worst. At Its Best. (Tazria-Metzora)

There’s an image I can’t get out of my head. It’s a memory as described to me by two adult children of a woman whose funeral I officiated at last week.

Here it is:

A woman with two young children is alternately standing and parading her two young children in front of a synagogue on Yom Kippur. She’s dressed them up—because that’s what you do on Yom Kippur. And she’s brought them to synagogue—because that’s also what you do on Yom Kippur.

But she won’t go in.

It’s sometime in the early 1960’s. She is estranged from her father because she married a man who was not Jewish. She has also rejected any religious upbringing she had. She and her husband are atheists and active in the Communist Party.

Her mother had sent her across the country to California hoping to get her away from “those crazy Communists” (I can imagine her saying that). But instead of becoming alienated from political activism, she’d met a man, fallen in love, gotten married. Now she was alienated from her family instead.

When I asked these adult children what values they thought she’d gotten from her Jewishness, they had to think for a second. Then they remembered how Adele liked to repeat often and proudly that the Anarchist/Socialist/Communist/Union/Civil Rights/Social Justice movements had all been filled with Jews.

For Adele, being Jewish meant standing up for the oppressed. It meant becoming a headstrong woman who “stuck to her guns, never hesitating to express her opinions.” She was an “early feminist by nature, a rebel at heart: no-nonsense, independent-minded, willing to risk physical violence for her beliefs.” Not just “strong-willed,” but the “strongest-willed.” Not an easy person by any means, Adele loved a good fight, and would never back down in an argument—which she often caused.

All this, to her family, was being the quintessential Jewish mother and grandmother—”Not original at all. Sorry, Grandma.” (Everyone laughed.) And Adele had great love for her family, and appreciation for her four children and three grandchildren. These were returned to her in kind, despite the challenging person she was. And she kept hanging on, ‘till 94. Though tired and cranky, she’d wanted to make sure everyone was okay before she left, one grandchild told me.

It was a challenging crowd for me. Most of the family identify as atheists, some as anti-religious. In a way, I’m still getting used to being “religious,” so it can be difficult. Funny thing for a rabbi to say, I know. (But at this point, what else is new? These are the families that are finding me and need me. I understand them.)

We’d done a graveside funeral a few weeks prior. This time, they wanted none of the traditional prayers recited at funerals, with one exception: it would be “okay” to recite the Mourners Kaddish.

Instead of sung prayers, an old acquaintance/friend, Lisa Gutkin from the Klezmatics, played violin and sang a little Yiddish along with some Woodie Guthrie. Another friend played keyboard and sang other favorites.

Again—why exactly did they want a rabbi?

Well, their mother had. Just like those years so long ago when her father had refused to talk to her for four years, she seemed to crave Jewish connection—with her family and her “roots.”

So, what could I say to make this one “religious” moment meaningful to this crowd? I’d given it a lot of thought. And when it came time to recite Kaddish at the end, I gave a little speech.

I said, it seemed that, though Adele proudly identified as Jewish, she’d had a complicated relationship with Judaism. “Who doesn’t?” (Everyone laughed.) “Religion is problematic.” (I actually said, “It sucks.” No one laughed.)

I continued: The word “religion” comes from the Latin, religare, meaning to bind, or connect. True: it’s about binding ourselves to the Divine, but it is meant to connect us, to offer community—and maybe that’s the same thing.

Unfortunately, at its worst, religion divides, alienates, shames. (I noticed some nods, especially from the Queer people in the room.) Adele had been painfully rejected by her father, and though he’d (amazingly?) come to accept and like her husband, the damage had been done.

But Adele’s Jewish values, like the other Jews in the social justice movements she’d talked about always, whether she knew it or not, had come from the Jewish idea that humans are made in God’s image, and that every human is thus equally valuable and worthy of respect. We are not allowed graven images and statues and such because we are to see God reflected in every single person we meet.

I reminded the crowd that a few weeks ago we’d buried Adele; Jewish tradition and our Bible teach that we come from the earth and to the earth we return. Even our use of the word “roots” when we talk about family, reminds of earth. We all know it: the Earth is our home. We feel it in our bones. In burying Adele, we had reconnected her to our “Mother” in an intimate way.

If done right, religion offers connection, with family and friends gathered around to witness this beautiful, if painful, moment.

If done right, religion connects us through prayer as well.

Prayer should help us open to astonishment and wonderment at all that surrounds us, the Mystery of a hidden energy we cannot understand or explain, but that joins us, binds us to each other, to each living and inanimate object on Earth.

If done right, religion shouldn’t be about fear but rather awe, like the one Hebrew word that means both of these things.

This Aramaic prayer, the Mourners Kaddish, that we say for the dead is all praise. Yes, it is praise for “God,” but to call it the Mystery of the Universe is good enough for me, to paraphrase something one of Adele’s staunch atheist, scientist, children had once written. If we are each made in “God’s image,” then in reciting this prayer, we are praising the Mystery of Life, because Life runs through us all.

In that moment, I asked everyone to stand in praise Adele’s life and the values she inherited from her Jewish roots, values she lived—a life filled with conviction and the fight to achieve equality for all—using these ancient Jewish words.

And they all did. With perhaps a new understanding and appreciation of why, maybe, Adele had felt so bound to her Jewishness, even if she herself never quite came to understand why.

This week’s Torah portion feels like the epitome of Judaism at its worst. It reflects that part of religion that alienates and isolates rather than bonds.

It begins with one of the most painful Torah texts that exists and that has done some of the greatest harm: the rules around women, their menstrual period, and childbirth. The new mother is seen as impure, unclean, forbidden to touch any sacred object, isolated for twice as long after giving birth to a female as a male. In the same way, the menstruating woman is impure and untouchable by men. Such laws can be explained away and prettified, given spiritual beauty in an effort to justify them. Many have tried and are still trying. But the fact is, they have caused terrible pain and harm throughout generations. The damage has been done.

There’s a passage later in the reading describing skin infections and then those that pervade the walls of a house. This time, temporary removal from community can be seen as watching out for the greater good, the health of the wider community. But then the priest, who stands in for a doctor and diagnostician, must cry out, “Impure! Impure!”

How incredibly alienating to be publicly shamed in such a way.

Again, religion at its worst.

I can only imagine Adele’s terrible loneliness on those High Holy Days when she tried so desperately to find some link to her family and her roots, though she wasn’t quite sure why.

In a time when so many people feel isolated and lonely, wishing for connection, not quite knowing how to achieve it, let us open doors that allow more people in. Let us be aware of the ways in which we might alienate others, in actions or speech. Let us invite people in, conscious that we are all made in the same Image, equally worthy of love and respect.

Finally, may we act in ways that show that we know that we are all bound to each other, needing each other, and let us heal wounds of feeling cast out.

And say Amen.

Inward Grieving, Holiness in the Ordinary, & Sh’mini

Passover, in Hebrew and English, means jumping or skipping over. And I’m about to skip over my entire Passover holiday week.

Because the most wonderful thing happened yesterday afternoon—though it started in the most unexpected way.

I was walking home through the park, a gorgeous spring day, trees blooming everywhere, and ahead of me I saw a police van.

I hugged the side of the walkway, but the van switched sides, essentially forcing me to switch sides. I was annoyed. Why would they do that? It was obvious which side I was on.

As I was passing the van, it stopped. What the hell, I thought? While I’m not a person of color, and have never been directly targeted by the police, I essentially don’t trust cops. My younger daughter has even chastised me when I’ve treated them like human beings, smiling, saying hello. “They’re trained to kill, Mommy,” she says. She’s probably called them fascists as well, or pointed out that, at the very least, they’re a part of a racist, fascistic system, meant to control the population, certainly not to help, despite their motto: “Courtesy, Professionalism, Respect,” now being replaced by "Fighting Crime, Protecting The Public.” And if you’re a person of color, you’re more likely not to have experienced any one of these in a positive way.

These are all the thoughts going through my head as this police van comes to a stop.

But it gets more confusing.

As I walk past, the officer in the driver’s seat gently sticks his hand out as if to shake mine. I approach, wondering what the hell he wants. Cautiously, I extend my hand, wondering, “Why am I doing this?”

“Do you recognize me?” he says, as I place my hand in his, looking suspiciously into his face, trying to see through the sunglasses.

I absolutely don’t.

Very incautiously, surprising even myself (and I suppose showing my “white privilege”), I say, “Take off your glasses.”

He does, and simultaneously says his name: “Jorge.” I gasp, putting my hands over my mouth as if I’m on a game show and I’ve just won a million dollars.

Every once in a while, as one does with favorite students, I’ve thought of him. In fact, he’d just come to mind about a week ago. Had he finished college? What was he doing? He was very smart, and one of those hard-working students who took my teaching seriously.

We also had a special connection, partly because he was from the coast of Ecuador, like my husband. And because we used to have deep political discussions. I often brought politics into the classroom, hoping to open my students’ minds to a different way of seeing the world and the U.S. I’d been lucky to have the freedom to do so in this particular setting, having been silenced in the past (as I probably would be now, if I didn’t censure myself). I wanted my students to understand that, if they didn’t succeed as immigrants, it wasn’t their fault, but rather the system that’s set up not to help them reach their potential.

But Jorge had been very depressed, and I’d worried that he seemed suicidal. I thought it was the state of the world (how much more so now, all these years later?) I’d tried to guide him, to give him strength and hope, to let him know that past generations had been through tough times as well, and they’d kept fighting. I’d taken his class to visit the studios of Democracy Now! and I remembered him being excited and inspired. Having students like him strengthened and inspired me, too, giving me hope in the younger generation.

What I hadn’t known at the time was that the main reason for his depression was his sister. She’d been killed in a car accident.

Why hadn’t he told me??? I wanted to know.

He’d needed to grieve inwardly. It’s just the way it was.

Again, we talked politics. I was curious about his choice to become a police officer. His dream had been a PhD. But he chose the NYPD for very practical reasons: the need to survive as an immigrant. (Costco and McDonald’s simply didn’t cut it.)

But what about his political beliefs? “I haven’t changed at all,” he said. “It’s true; the Police Department is racist and backward in so many ways.” But Jorge assured me that he offers a different voice and attitude.

And I thought, in a sense, he’s turned this into holy work. Maybe you can take something seemingly unholy and make it holy.

I hadn’t changed, either, I told him, though I’m a rabbi now. Although I’d felt guilty for a long time for abandoning students who needed me, lately I’d come to realize that my work now lies elsewhere, no less holy. Instead of serving young immigrants, I bring alternative views to a world that also needs my voice, yet in a very different way.

Bringing politics into spiritual spaces…this, too is holy, as I discussed a couple of weeks ago, before Passover.

The whole encounter was such a surprise, but for another reason. One of those strange things that happens at exactly the time you’ve been pondering something, looking to understand it. Over Passover, I’d been thinking a lot about the different ways we grieve as humans. And then I run into Jorge who tells me he’d kept this huge secret from me (and the world) all those years ago, while in his deepest grief.

How we grieve, I suppose, depends partly on our personalities. Some give voice to it (like me) processing out loud. I’d always thought, isn’t it better to talk instead of keeping it all inside, all alone? But I understand now that there are those who need to be silent and process inwardly.

And here was another example, presenting itself at exactly the right moment.

How amazing, too, that this should present itself just as we come to this week’s Torah reading; Aaron's sons, Moses’ nephews, are suddenly and tragically consumed by fire. (They’ve done something deemed unholy by God.)

And Aaron, their father, is enigmatically silent in his grief.

Moses tells him to get on with the holy work of the Temple; “Remove these (unholy) bodies from the camp.” This work must override Aaron’s grief.

And it gets worse. Moses gets angry with Aaron for not eating the sacrifice he is supposed to at the proper time in the proper place, a sacrifice meant to serve the people and bring them forgiveness. He is to take a piece of meat that in other circumstances would be ordinary, and make it holy, because this, also, is a matter of life and death, though for an entire people.

Then Aaron breaks his silence. He says, “Would it have been good for me to do this (in God’s eyes)?”

Rabbi Tali Adler implies that his grief would have affected his ability to properly serve the people; too much pain mixed in with a joyful day.

And Moses concedes. It is now good in his eyes.

We, like the Torah and religion, like to categorize things neatly as holy and unholy, good and bad.

But what if we can’t serve properly because of our emotional state? What if being silent is a way of grieving? And what if being silent is a way of serving? Or what if speaking up is a way of serving when others want us to be silent?

We might serve in the unlikeliest of places and the most unexpected ways…and it might be a matter of life and death for an entire people—or the world.

May we all be blessed to turn the ordinary into the holy, and to be open to serving in unexpected ways in unlikely places. Because it may not be obvious which side we’re on.

And please say Amen.

Passover, & All Our Hopes, Dreams, Prayers…into the Ashes? (Tzav)

Earlier this week, I led a community seder at a senior center.

I started with the question of why we tell the Passover story every year and teach it to our children. And recognizing that we are experiencing very difficult times now.

I read a snippet of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, “I Have a Dream” speech. Because we’re not yet “free,” and that the Passover story teaches us that we are all responsible, each and every one of us, for contributing to the creation of a free world where no one goes hungry.

Everything went swimmingly. Until, almost at the end, a woman stood up and started yelling at me.

Maybe it wasn’t yelling, but that’s what it felt like.

She said I had taken this sacred thing and turned it “political.” And what a shanda that was (I should be ashamed, is what she meant).

At the point where we name the ten plagues and take a drop of wine from our cups on our pinkies, shaking it onto our plates for each plague, I had asked for people to name plagues of today.

People said many things, like Hamas, anti-semitism, Hezbollah, hunger, homelessness, poverty, discrimination, and I repeated them all through the microphone so everyone could hear.

Then someone said, “Trump.” The woman who yelled at me—she didn’t like that (though most everyone else did). She said she was very offended, and got up and left.

I wanted to argue, to say I had only been repeating what others said. I wanted to argue that “bringing” politics feels sacred to me.

What else, after all, were the rabbis thinking of when they talked of freedom? When they had us tell the story of brave women resisting by refusing to follow through on the order to kill every first born baby Hebrew boy? Or the courage it must have taken for Pharaoh’s daughter to bring a Hebrew baby into the palace to live in a household with her genocidal father and raise him as her own?

What was the society like, after all, in which the ancient rabbis created the seder? Was it all sugarplums and fairies? Was there not an awareness of oppression in this not-so-coded story about resistance?

The message from the Torah and throughout the generations to tell this story every year to our children is a political one. Sacred, because it’s about the collective power we have to create a society that “God” wants us to create, one of freedom.

I wanted to argue all of this. But of course I simply apologized, saying I would never want to offend anyone.

This week, the week before Passover, our Torah reading is Tzav, which gives us more details about the sacrificial system.

This system is set up for the Israelites to cleanse themselves of their wrongdoings, whether committed intentionally or not. The fire on the altar is to be kept burning, never to go out. The ashes from the sacrifices are to be placed in a pile beside the altar and then taken outside the camp to a pure place.

I heard a teaching from Rabbi Tali Adler about those ashes. She said that the ashes are all the prayers and dreams and gratitude of the Jewish people all piled up together, sacred in their representation of humanity.

What are those prayers if not hopes and wishes and dreams for better times? Sacred, as the Passover Seder is with all our wishes and hopes for a better future. A reminder not to give up.

May all our hopes and dreams and prayers for a better future, and the reminder that we have the power to resist, go into our Passover seders this year.

May we draw strength from our ancestors who lived through difficult times, and let’s keep the fire burning, never to go out.

And say Amen.

Creating Order in Systems Amidst the Chaos & Vayikra

With the news coming fast and furious, there’s a power that feels too big to control that’s overtaking us as our governmental system is being dismantled before our very eyes.

The chaos feels like Purim, when up is down, and down is up.

Instead of Purim, though, we’re approaching Passover, the “Season of Our Liberation.” President Trump declared yesterday that April 2nd will forever be remembered as “Liberation Day” due to his tariffs.

Hmmm. I especially don’t like that because it was my first daughter’s birthday. The other one was born on April Fool’s Day. Maybe they go hand in hand?

Also, liberation feels very much out of reach at the moment.

There are those who believe that what Trump is doing is good: dismantling the government and starting from scratch; making America “Great Again” by imposing tariffs all over the world and thus making Americans rich (again?); putting women back in their “proper place”; controlling what universities can teach (cuz what a mess they are, and who needs science and education anyway?); going back to a time when there were only two sexes by removing any transgender person who proudly and equally serves in the military, even those with medals (because “it isn’t real”); detaining, shackling, and deporting people without due process, even a white Canadian actress with proper paperwork applying for a work visa (talk about falling in lockstep without questioning orders! There's not even any racism involved, you know what I mean?). What do we need our governmental and court systems for, anyway? Along with civil rights, they are useless—as are air traffic controllers. (Who knew?)

But there’s also been some really uplifting news…

First, on This American Life: There’s a Judge Reyes who challenged the Trump Administration to prove that transgenderism is not real. The judge gave this lawyer a science lesson on the chromosomal system that can produce xxx, xxy, xyy, xxyy chromosomes, to name a few. And how people can be born with both male and female sex organs…She was amazing. This lawyer on the stand couldn’t answer any of her questions. The judge would not back down, and, boy, did she get called names afterwards (not okay!).

Then I heard about all the Bernie Sanders Fighting Oligarchy rallies that are drawing all kinds of people in bigger and bigger numbers, even in Trump-voting areas.

And also the huge defeat of Elon Musk’s money against the Wisconsin Federal Court. (Turns out a lot of people do still care about access to abortion and stuff, even if they want us to believe it’s not an “issue” anymore.)

The Book of Leviticus begins with the word, “VaYikra,” meaning “And he called.”

This is where God begins his specific commands for Moses to relay the sacrificial system of the Temple, introduced in detail with the chopping up animals into parts, lots of blood, fire, smoke, ashes…If you imagine yourself there, it might be scary in its messiness, but it also feels very powerful.

It’s a lot of chaos within a very ordered system.

But to quote from Rabbi Shai Held in The Heart of Torah, “To read Leviticus…is to enter a different kind of world, a small pocket of reality in which [Divine] will is heeded and perfectly executed, in which chaos and disorder are kept at bay…even as the realities outside fall painfully short of [our] longed-for dream.” (Vol. 2, p.8)

The American “system” is also very ordered, and it has been thrown into chaos by people with huge and very scary personal political agendas.

Yet, there are people fighting back, trying to create order amidst the chaos, not backing down, even if what we have as an American system falls painfully short of our longed-for dreams.

The question is, how is each of us called to act in this moment, not in a sacrificial system, but within the far-from-perfect political system we have right now. Can we join the brave souls who are pushing back in huge numbers?

And maybe part of what we are called to do is to create—and be—the order and calm within the chaos while we’re raising our voices and bringing our bodies to participate.

I know I keep saying this, but I think we need to keep hearing it; we have more power than we think.

And say Amen.

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.