How Whole is Your Heart? Va’era

For me these days, I go back and forth between a full heart and a hard heart.

Full of what?

Full of love. Pain. Tears.

Hard like what? Maybe like crusty layers on the outside and mushy on the inside.

I know. That sounds disgusting.

A whole heart—now that sounds peaceful.

So far, I’m not there.

So far, the pandemic is still dominating our lives. The new variant and a huge rise in Covid cases are real.

But the obsession with the vaccine and getting ourselves “back to normal” doesn’t feel like the answer to our national or global problems.

In Torah this week, Pharaoh’s heart is hard, time and again, as God brings the plagues down upon Egypt.

Each time, Pharaoh pleads with Moses and promises; tell your god to take away this plague and I will let your people go to worship your god.

Blood fills the rivers; frogs fill every bed and vessel; lice torture the animals; locusts eat the crops.

But each time a plague is lifted, the pain is gone, Pharaoh forgets, and he goes on as before—”back to normal”—until the next plague. Pharaoh’s heart is so hard, he has little concern even for his own people and their suffering, let alone the Jews.

Before the pandemic began, New York City had finally passed a law outlawing the use of plastic bags in grocery stores. It was a first, very tiny step in light of a huge, global problem.

It was quickly forgotten. Because of the emergency.

The need to survive led many individuals to think only of their own welfare and that of their loved ones.

And Covid has been a great profit opportunity for those in a position to do so.

Ordinary citizens took permission to participate in the waste and litter that large companies were profiting from, and continue to profit from, including the vaccines.

But it’s an emergency, right?

For two years now, in the midst of a climate emergency, we have collectively been buying disposable gloves and masks and hand sanitizer and wipes and more, thrown into the garbage, and all too often on the ground.

We are a disposable society, so this felt like “normal” times: our way of life as Americans. So easy to do.

Because it’s an emergency.

It’s been pretty much in the 50 degrees in New York City over the past weeks, and that’s not changing soon. For us, dreaming of a white Christmas was…just a dream. Yet the implications are not pointed out or even mentioned in the news.

Just a couple of weeks ago there was a tornado in Kentucky like none experienced before.

Yet, we have forgotten about it all too soon. The pandemic has taken priority again. Because “it’s an emergency.”

At one point almost at the end of this parsha, Pharaoh says to Moses, Okay, I was wrong. I believe you. God is great. God is real.

But Moses retorts, no, you are not in awe of God yet. You do not fear God yet.

I think that’s where we are; we are not yet in awe of God. We do not yet fear God. Or our hearts are so full of fear that we cover them over with crusty stuff, just trying to get through our days and survive.

What this means is that we do not yet understand the pandemic in the context of the world. We are still only looking at the trees and don’t yet see the forest.

Our hearts are not yet whole. Everything is fragmented and so are our hearts.

So how do we live, not with a full heart, or an empty heart, or hard heart, but with a whole heart that encompasses all that we feel: the pain, the fear, the sorrow, the tears, the despair—and the love?

How do we find our hearts and make them whole? How do we see ourselves as belonging, not just to our own families and communities, but to the whole of the human family?

That, to me, is to live in awe of God. That to me, is God.

I end with a quote from Rachel Held Evans’ book, A life of Holy Curiosity, written in friendship with Jeff Chu (you can find his interview with Krista Tippett here) on the question of wholehearted faith:

“Some days I believe in God. Other days I want to believe in God…

“For better or for worse, there are seasons when we hold our faith, and better yet, there are seasons when our faith holds us. In those latter instances, I am more thankful than ever for all the saints past and present who said yes and whose faith sustains mine. They believe for me when I’m not sure I believe. They hold on to hope for me when I run out of hope….

“They are [the people who recite the prayers] on my behalf on those days when I can not bring myself to recite those ancient words wholeheartedly.

“‘Is this what I really believe?’

“They pray for me when the only words I have to say to God are words that I refuse to allow to be printed on this page because they would make even my most foul-mouthed friend blush.

“I’ve come to believe that wholehearted faith isn’t just about coming to terms with the heart that beats inside me. It’s also about understanding how God has knit together my heart with the hearts of [other people around me].

“Wholeheartedness is about seeing and comprehending my place in a bigger family of faith; it is about risking hurt and confusion for the sake of the thing that so many of us seek: belonging.”

Thank you, Rachel Held Evans, for these words.

Because I say, let’s stop covering over our hearts with layers of distraction from what’s really real.

We will not get “back to normal” as long as our planet is out of balance, because “normal” is a world of inequities which we no longer want.

For a “whole” world, one of peace, equality and justice, our hearts must be balanced and full and open— and most of all whole.

And let us say Amen.

Oy! (Sh’mot and the Solstice)

So I missed writing last week.

It was such a hard week. For me and for Joseph.

Joseph’s father Jacob/Israel died.

Joseph himself died.

We finished the book of Genesis; it’s the end of an era: a transition.

We, too, are in transition: passing the solstice this week, transitioning into winter, entering the book of Exodus.

The days are short and the darkness long.

Dark times.

And Exodus begins with a new, dark era for the Israelites in Egypt.

The previous generations of Jacob and Joseph have long passed on, a new, worse Pharaoh has arisen. The gap between the Egyptians and the Israelites has widened.The Jews are now enslaved. They are no longer safe in this land they had entered looking to escape famine.

The new Omicron variant of Covid is flourishing and it’s scary. It’s a sign that this pandemic is far from over. Many are in danger and many are forced inside into isolation again.

Many who came to the U.S. to escape war and famine are not safe here, either.

The gap between the haves and the have-nots has widened.

But with this new era, Moses is born, though born into bondage.

He grows up privileged, but connected to his people. When he witnesses two Israelite slaves fighting, he interferes; why are you fighting your fellow? The two become angry at him; Who are you to tell us what to do? Who made you lord?

Moses then kills an Egyptian slave driver and must run for his life.

He’s got everybody mad at him.

But then he is assigned the role of savior of his people. Now married with children, God speaks to him through the burning bush and tells him to return to lead His people to freedom.

The brightness of God’s presence in the fire of the bush feels like too much for Moses, as does his assignment.

Each time Moses questions God’s choice of him as a leader, God tells Moses, “I will be there with you.”

As Moses pushes back, God keeps saying, “I will be there for you, and your brother Aaron will be there for you, too…Look, he’s on his way now, and he will be so happy to see you.”

God keeps giving Moses “signs” that will prove God’s existence and strength to “the people.”

A couple of weeks ago when I went wedding dress shopping again with my daughter, I was on the subway and in mid-town Manhattan and it was packed with unmasked people dressed in Santa hats, some in shorts (it was 60 degrees in NYC in December! Yikes! Strike 2), and they were crowding in lines together and in restaurants.

I was so angry and wanted to scream: “What do you think you’re doing? This pandemic is not over! The new variant is coming to New York! It’s probably even here now! Take your Covid and go back to where you came from, you tourists!”

I was so ready to fight my fellow humans. Was that helpful?

Whenever we finish a book of the Bible, we say, “Chazak, Chazak, v’Nitchazek: Strong, strong, let’s be strong for each other.”

That’s really all we can do sometimes: just be there for each other.

May we look for the signs that tell us that we are not alone, turn to each other and give each other strength during this dark period, and figure out how not to fight amongst ourselves: support each other.

And may we have faith that we will come out of this, that we will lead each other to freedom, and make this country and the world safe for all.

Because though the winter solstice is the darkest day of the year, we have to remember that the days begin to get brighter.

And let us say Amen.

A Reason for Jubilation? (Vayigash)

I have a gratitude practice, and last night I actually wrote that I was grateful for credit cards. I mean, I am, but…

This week in Torah, Joseph breaks down crying and reveals his true identity to his brothers—not exactly in that order. Pharaoh hears about it because Joseph’s crying is so loud that his courtiers hear it and pass along the information.

The other thing revealed? The famine is as bad as Joseph predicted. Pharaoh, like a mafia capo taking care of his people, invites Joseph’s family to live in the land, hooks them up with wagons and all the provisions they’ll need. He tells them even to leave behind their own stuff.

He guarantees them all the food they will need to get through the rest of the pandemic—oops, I mean, the famine.

Meanwhile, the rest of the people in the lands around Pharaoh come back again and again begging for food lest they die.

In exchange they give away everything they own, little by little, until finally they have even given their land to the kingdom; they owe their very lives to Pharaoh, remaining enslaved until they die.

Joseph is the one who orchestrates this entire thing.

Yet the Israelites and their sheep-herding are abhorrent to the Egyptians, enough that they will not eat in the same room with them. (It will not take long before a future pharaoh will scapegoat and enslave the entire people as they become “too numerous and powerful.”)

This morning on Democracy Now! I watched the new, illustrated mini-film, “Your Debt is Someone Else’s Asset.”

The makers of the film are advocating for another movement to cancel debt in the U.S.—student loans, medical bills, back-rent—for regular people.

They’re calling for a Jubilee, as described in the Bible. (The only criticism I have of this fantastic little film that it implies that the concept of Jubilee, or Yovel, originated in Christianity, while it's described in the Torah first.)

My favorite quote from this 6-minute film is from Thomas Jefferson, who said in 1803: “We shall be glad to see the good and influential among them run in debt because we have observed that when these debts get beyond what the individuals can pay, they become willing to lop off by a cession of lands.”

This was a strategy used as a weapon against indigenous people to steal their territory.

Our government continues encourage debtors to steal ordinary people’s money by putting us in debt.

Jefferson advocated “natural limits,” but for white men like himself—people like Donald Trump, companies like Exxon and Walmart that have had their “bad debt” bought up by the government since the pandemic began, and others like them given “forgivable loans.”

Obama bailed out the entire banking industry, which caused the crisis of 2009 to begin with, and Biden is continuing many Trump policies.

Somehow our government can afford all that and to increase military spending by $27 billion above what Biden even requested, a bill just approved by Congress. This makes it the largest military budget since WWII!

Meanwhile, they cry poverty when it comes to helping the ordinary people, saying it gives the poor and struggling “dignity.”

Debt and credit cards are sold as a lifeline, just as Pharaoh so “graciously” provided food for the starving in surrounding lands—but it is really an anchor, dragging people down, as the film points out (watch it “share” it, please!)

Let’s have a reason for jubilation! Let’s not continue the oldest form of enslavement in The Book, and call for a Jubilee.

To do it during this Shmita year, when something of the same, but on a smaller scale than the Jubilee, is supposed to happen, would be perfect.

Shmita means “release” in Hebrew, because debts are released.

We should continue any gratitude practices we all have because we all need to stay sane, especially during a pandemic, but we can also call for action. We don’t need to be like Joseph and uphold the system that enslaves us and others.

And let us say Amen.

Waking Up: Miketz

I heard a podcast about Amanda Knox, a young woman who became famous for being accused, imprisoned, then acquitted, for the killing of her roommate in Italy. Maybe you remember the case. She was only 20 at the time. That was almost 15 years ago.

It changed her life irrevocably in ways she could have never imagined. She grew up privileged, white, middle class; being wrongly accused, spending time in prison, the inability to return to her life and continue “as if,” were all a nightmare. Such possibilities were beyond her imagination.

Joseph’s experience in Torah is similar; coming from the privilege he grew up with, his life has been altered in ways he could have never imagined. Remember when he was a lad who spoke with arrogance to his brothers about his dreams? That innocence is gone.

The parsha starts with Pharaoh waking up from a dream—one nobody can interpret except Joseph. Joseph is pulled out of the dungeon where he has been languishing for a couple of years, is cleaned up and brought before Pharaoh once again.

This time, Joseph’s gift for interpreting dreams becomes useful for saving an entire region of the world from starvation; there will be years of famine ahead, and Pharaoh needs help preparing for them. Joseph's interpretation of the dream is that the years of famine will be so bad that the suffering will "swallow up" the memory of the previous good years leading up to them. 

Once again, Joseph is elevated in the kingdom. Now he is given a wife, and has two children whom he names in honor of his suffering, hoping to forget his pain.

When his brothers come to him in need, they do not recognize him, and he pretends not to recognize them. He stuffs his pain down, and runs from the room to hide his emotion. He also gives them the runaround, getting revenge for the pain they have caused him.

Joseph pushes his pain away, not wanting to feel it, hoping to forget it, yet the reality of his loss can not be denied. It comes out in ways that are not productive and even harmful.

I don’t know what Joseph learned or how he grew from his suffering. Listening to Amanda Knox, it sounded like her experience raised her consciousness about what happens to people of color all the time in the U.S. She woke up to a reality she thought she would never have to live. She is now an active member of The Innocence Project, which does good work.

When asked if she feels angry, Knox’s response was something like, she has decided it is a waste of energy and time, and that though those feelings are real, she does not want to live from that place; anger is useful, but it can also be destructive and hold you back.

Dreams can be telling.

The Piaseczno Rebbe, whose writings I am studying at the moment, wrote about Hanukkah that when we light the candles, we should be aware of every flame as a spark of the Divine. In fact, he wanted us to live in a way where, in every moment and in every little thing we could see the spark of the Divine. In this way, we will likewise create the holiness we “see.” There is no separation.

As we wake up from this pandemic dream, with suffering that swallows up memories of good times, a nightmare about being alone and separate, may we learn to see a spark of the Divine in everything and everyone.

May we know that we are not separate or alone.

May we create a world of equity where skin color and gender are not determinants of outcome.

We can not forget our suffering. Nor should we. And our anger is real, and can be useful; we can learn from it, and so we should.

Let’s keep dreaming, and let’s keep waking up.

Prostitution, Rings, and Va-Yeshev

I saw my mother-in-law and cousins yesterday for the first time since the pandemic began.

After such a long time and so much more than the ordinary keeping us all separated, I don’t know why I was surprised by the overwhelm of emotion that rose up in me as I walked into this large family gathering on Thanksgiving. I was thinking I’d kind of gotten used to it, and that seeing people again gradually wasn’t having such an impact, but it was all at once…and it did.

I was also starting to think I might not write this week, I was so overwhelmed by so many different thoughts, and I couldn’t find one that stood out above them all.

It started with the conclusion of the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, which bled into hearing about the abortion law in Texas and an analysis of the Supreme Court vs. the states, which bled into hearing about the irony of women in Mexico (where abortion is miraculously legal) helping Texan women (you can listen to the New Yorker Radio podcast and hear about both—very well done), which bled into Thanksgiving, travel out to New Jersey and the gathering of my extended family.

How do I choose one topic from all that….? My mind was swirling.

But there is Tamar in this week’s Torah reading, a woman who must find a way to take care of herself because her father-in-law Judah—and society—will not. Her husband has died and the way things work is, she is supposed to be given her brother-in-law as a substitute husband so she is not left out in the cold, but Judah keeps stalling, so she takes things into her own hands. She stands by the side of the road dressed as a prostitute when she knows Judah will be passing, sleeps with him and becomes pregnant by him.

Judah is given lots of attention in the rabbinic world for being so honorable as to ultimately recognize that he’s done wrong and take responsibility for his actions and his neglect.

Good for him as an individual, although we can’t give him all the credit because Tamar is very cleaver and puts him in a position where he must “fess up.”

Still/and, Tamar’s situation makes me think of the Texan and Mexican women. Women have always found ways of taking care of themselves and each other when society doesn’t, and their stories can be empowering, but it shouldn’t have to be that way.

It’s like the way the American media feeds us “feel-good” stories about those who turn to crowdfunding to help each other out, as described in this very good Nation article, because, despite the taxes we pay, our government does not take responsibility for the growing poverty in this—the wealthiest country in the world—not to mention the state of our heath care “system,” which isn’t really a system at all and leaves millions with millions to pay in deductibles.

It would be nice if Rittenhouse and other white supremacists took responsibility for their actions, but even nicer if our law enforcement didn’t encourage such action (read the ACLU analysis), and even, even nicer if our legal system were set up in a way to do it for them and the wider society.

So, I guess, surprisingly, I did find something to focus on here, or it found me, as if often the case.

I “lost” a ring at my mother-in-laws while we were there. This is a ring I often “lose”—it’s a thumb ring that I tend to remove separately from my other numerous rings for various reasons.

When I told my daughter about it, she said, “Ah, there must be a lesson in this because you always find it”—or it finds me, I told her, like when I left it at an Airbnb over the summer and the host found it without my awareness that I’d even left it there and she sent it to me without my even asking!

Was the lesson about the impermanence of things? Or was it about circularity and their coming back again and again?

This week, it was Tamar’s story that came back around, with its most ancient story of the “need” for prostitution. This “minor” side-story highlighted itself and overshadowed the main story of Joseph and his dreams and visions, the jealousy of his brothers, his being thrown into a pit and sold off, his ending up in Egypt in Pharaoh’s palace, put in charge of Pharaoh’s affairs, faced with the seduction of Pharaoh’s wife and thrown into the dungeon where he predicts the future for others yet again.

It’s the circularity of our stories, the circularity of our lives, and the way humanity and the world repeats itself again and again until we learn our lessons. (And I did find the ring again, just before we left!)

Maybe we could use someone like Joseph and his visions of the future right now.

Or not.

In the meantime, as we each re-integrate into greater society in our own ways, may we remain aware of the particular lessons we have learned from this pandemic from our particular ways in which we have experienced it, and find new ways of walking in the world—ways that will bring increasing light into the world, just as the increasing light of the candles of Hannukah do symbolically for us.

Wishing you a good Shabbos and a happy Hannukah.

Yes to the Dress? (Vayishlach)

I went wedding dress shopping with my older daughter yesterday. We went to one of the fanciest stores in New York City, Kleinfeld Bridal, made famous by the reality TV show, “Say Yes to the Dress.”

She wanted the whole “experience.”

The whole time leading up to it and at the store, so many thoughts were running through my head: Am I going to cry? Should I cry—like in the show (which I’ve never seen). What if I do? What if I don’t? What does that say about me as her mother either way? How much do these dresses cost? Am I allowed to ask, or will I embarrass her? What if she falls in love with a dress that costs…I don’t even know…? How do I be there for her in the way she wants me to be? How does she want me to be?

So much pressure! So many expectations! Oy! I literally got dizzy at one point while looking at her in one of the beautiful dresses, trying to suppress all these feelings swirling around inside me and just be “normal” for her.

I didn’t know until later that she’d never intended to buy anything there. I didn’t even know how the whole thing worked—that you give them a budget, show them examples of what you like. And I’m so afraid of stepping on her toes and pressuring her in any way. I know what mothers can be like (I had one!), and I’m consciously participating in changing old patterns mothers have followed for generations by backing off.

Still, I want her to be happy, and the dress is really all she cares about in terms of the wedding!

So I’m left to my imagination and my own conclusions, which is way scarier than the reality. In the end, she just appreciated my being there and supporting her, and she actually wants more guidance from me!

This week in Torah, Jacob is returning “home” after many years of living with his father-in-law. Like me, I imagine he has so many thoughts and emotions. Mostly we just know that he is terrified to see his twin brother, whose birthright and blessing he stole many years ago, causing Jacob to run for his life because Esau probably would have killed him—though we don’t really know that for a fact.

On Jacob’s journey home, he prepares for the worst possible outcome: that Esau still wants to kill him.

He divides up his entourage so as to protect his wives and children in various ways, chooses gifts for Esau of various types, and sends messengers ahead.

At night, Jacob separates himself from his caravan and sleeps alone by the river where he dreams and has his famous wrestling match with an angel who refuses to tell Jacob his name, demands a blessing (?), and changes Jacob’s name to Israel—meaning God Wrestler.

The angel seems to be saying, “It’s time to change your old patterns.”

The next day, limping from the wrestling match as he goes to meet his brother with great trepidation, none of his fears come true.

Esau runs to him with deep emotion, embracing and kissing him and crying on his shoulder. Esau is over it. He’s healed from the traumatic events of their youth and just wants re-connection and peace with Jacob.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that, later in the parsha, something truly horrendous does happen, but not between the brothers; this time it’s Dina, one of Jacob’s daughters, and she is raped. Her only “crime” is to “go out” to visit the daughters of the town. Women, as we know, were not to go out alone, and she is subtly blamed for what happens to her, not unlike what still happens today—very often not so subtly.

But her brothers are there to avenge her, and they slaughter and plunder an entire town. It’s quite gruesome, and much has been written about it.

Truly horrendous things are happening in the world, and they don’t involve wedding dresses.

The COP26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow that ended last week left disappointing—no, terrifying—results for now and our future as a world.

We need to keep doing the work that will effect positive change in the world. A big part of that work is changing how we approach the work that needs doing; if we approach it with fear and terror, then we are missing the holiness in the world.

The Piaseczno Rebbe, a Hassidic Polish rabbi who was murdered by the Nazis, wrote about our perceptions and how important it is to train the mind to see the holiness in the world. For him, it was all about our relationships—with each other and the earth. With this, he says, we will create more holiness (it’s not just Buddhists who talk about training the mind!).

Rabbi Shefa Gold and people like her would call that “raising the vibration,” or walking in the world from a higher place, a more divine place.

I don’t know what the Piaseczno Rebbe would say today, but I bet he would still say that if we all strove to live more from a place of love and holiness rather than hatred, fear and anger, the world would be a better place.

Let us try.

And let us say Amen.

Need I Explain? (Vayeitzei)

Something happened the other day that really upset me.

I was sharing a project I have in mind of creating a women’s alliance of rabbis and other Jewish professionals along these lines.

The person asked me, “Why all women?”

I don’t know if they were being ironic or not; maybe I misinterpreted; maybe they were just pushing me to put it into words, but I was taken aback: need I explain “why all women” in this day and age to someone I thought would get it immediately?

It was along the same lines as the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, a young white guy of only 17 last year, who came heavily armed to a protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin and murdered two people. The protest was against the police shooting of William Blake, a Black man. Rittenhouse was part of a group responding to a call from an armed right-wing group for “patriots willing to take up arms and defend our city tonight from evil thugs.”

Need I explain that Rittenhouse was coming to protest against the protesters of police brutality?

Like so many white murderers before him, he is defending himself as having been on the defensive when he shot and killed two people. And he shed tears to show how sincere he is. But I heard that when he got bail, he was celebrating in a bar surrounded by white supremacists like him, chanting obscene things that did not illustrate any regret.

What’s worse, the judge in his case is a Trump supporter, and all the jurors are white except one.

Asking “Why all women?” is like asking why it matters that all the jurors in a case of a racist attack against a Black man are all white.

We are still living in times where women do not have agency over their own bodies.

In this week’s Torah reading, the status of Rachel as Jacob’s wife is threatened, at least in her eyes, which means in society’s eyes, by the fact that she can not give him a child.

She, like Sarah before her, becomes desperate and pushes her maidservant on her husband to give him a child in her name (like surrogacy today).

Leah, Rachel’s sister and the other, unloved, wife of Jacob, keeps giving birth to baby boys, each time hoping she will finally be loved.

Both of these women’s self-esteem and societal standing depend on their ability to produce children, especially male children. As a result, as my friend’s brilliant daughter will point out at her bas mitzvah ceremony this Saturday, these women, including of course, their maids, have no agency over their own bodies.

Should it still be a question, why all women in a group of rabbis?

Is the woman’s “right to choose” being threatened in this country?

Should we wonder at an all-white jury in a trial about racism?

Are we still living in Jim Crow times?

Every time I listen to the reports on the Climate Summit in Glasgow, I hear how our leaders are not doing enough. And it’s true.

But I make sure to also look at the photos of all the people protesting in the streets to demand more of our leaders. They remind me of the agency we do have.

And I listen to those who say it’s not too late to save life on our planet. I am inspired by young people like my friend’s daughter.

There may be powerful people out there trying to limit our agency, but we can find the allies we need, those just as excited about the projects we are creating that can have great power to effect the change needed in the world.

And I remind myself that there are more of us than them!

Will you say Amen?

Halloween, Broken Yolks & Toldot

I’m a real party pooper; I pretty much hate Halloween. I really do. I was never good at it, and I’m so glad I’m beyond the age of having to figure out a costume for myself or my children, or how to control the amount of candy they eat—or not. Maybe I’m just not the kind of person who likes to pretend to be someone I’m not.

I do like seeing what other people do for costumes, but in New York City it also becomes an excuse for violence, so I dread it. People wear ghoulish costumes and cover their faces to instill fear and dread in strangers—like we don’t have enough of that already.

Halloween happened in Torah this week, too. And our story reflects the same structures of society set up to keep us in the grip of fear of losing what we have and pulling the wool over our eyes, thus maintaining the status quo.

And we see it in the political struggle of the Climate Summit in Glasgow while the climate emergency instills fear in all of us. Our survival depends on the outcome.

Also in both the Summit and Torah are the many hopes and disappointments, promises made and broken.

In Torah, Rebecca has twins, Esau and Jacob. While pregnant, she called out to God in her suffering: “If this is so, then why do I exist?” Pain and fear grip her as “two warring nations” grow within her.

And when the boys grow up, so different, so opposite, one connected to the earth and one connected to the home, one favored by his father, the other by his mother, they are pitted against each other, first for the birthright, and then for their father’s blessing.

Esau gives up his birthright in a moment of fear when he comes home famished from the hunt. Jacob must be afraid of being left behind, because he manipulates Esau in his moment of weakness.

When Isaac is on his deathbed, Rebecca devises a plan to have her favorite, Jacob, receive the blessing of the first born. Jacob goes along with it. When Esau discovers this and confronts his father in confusion, Isaac says he has given away the blessing already—it’s too late.

Esau is devastated and heartbroken. He wails, “Have you no blessing left for me, Father?”

“Okay,” says Isaac after much pleading, “your blessing is that you must be live with a yolk around your neck, serving your brother until you die.” (Some blessing!)

A broken promise leads to a broken heart.

Society of biblical times is set up in such a way that Rebecca, the female with so little power, must figure out how to take that power in devious ways, always working behind the scenes, pretending to be someone different to different family members—a little of Halloween.

The powerful male of the household must have the wool pulled over his eyes, almost literally, in order for the accepted societal order to be turned on its head. And birthrights are a real thing that children must compete for what feels like their survival.

And Isaac, though legally blind, could have “seen” if he’d wanted to, that his son Jacob was dressed up in kid skins and Esau’s clothes; he had his other senses intact and his common sense, yet he chose to ignore them. Isaac, also, must have been afraid in and feeling vulnerable.

Like Esau and Jacob, human beings are all different and sometimes opposite to each other, and we war with each other; we play favorites and hurt those we love; we can be devious and pull the wool over each other’s eyes; we refuse to see, even when our common sense tells us otherwise.

But the survival of human life on earth depends on breaking the existing social and economic structures of power. It depends on breaking the yolks that keep us serving what no longer works.

Also, Isaac was wrong; there is no limit to the number of blessings available to us and the world.

So, may we be blessed with clarity, full awakening and the breaking of yolks that will dismantle the structures that prevent us from bringing healing to our dear Earth and to each other.

Because loving home and loving the Earth are not opposites; they are one.

And let us say Amen.

Chaos, Caves, & Caving in: Chayei Sarah

The Bible tells us, from dust we come and to dust we shall return.

It’s a statement that carries simplicity and equilibrium.

It’s about birth and death that are supposedly on this continuum, yet we welcome one and reject the other, and what they actually share is chaos—anything but simplicity and equilibrium.

My cousin is in the process of dying. She just entered hospice, and I led a prayer circle on Zoom for her this week.

The prayer circle, as much as I tried to keep it centered, calm and focused, was incredibly chaotic.

There were tons of technological problems throughout, people coming and going, people from different walks of life, different parts of her life, and different parts of the world.

The chaos reflected the chaos we go through as we prepare to leave this beautiful earth, and the chaos on earth at this moment.

Chaos is the essence of transition—but maybe it doesn’t have to be.

Birth, we welcome with gusto, but our culture doesn’t help us at all with death. With modern science and medicine, we’ve come to believe that we should be able to live forever, and if not forever, then at least a very long time.

If we don’t, or our loved ones don’t, we feel cheated.

My cousin has been a scientist her whole life, and she loves sharing about the important work she’s done. She is proud, and for good reason.

Yet, though she has lived a long and productive life, she still mourns what she won’t get to do. In the fear and chaos of fighting her imminent death, she has bargained, denied—and refused to return.

This week’s parsha begins with Sarah’s death. Right away, there’s bargaining—between Abraham and the locals for a small piece of land at the edge of a field that has a cave. It’s a false kind of bargaining that implies that the sellers don’t really want money, yet they do, and in the end, Abraham pays good money for it. It ends up as intended from the start.

Abraham buries Sarah in the cave, and next thing we know, he’s sending his servant back to the land of Abraham’s birth to find a bride for his Isaac. She must be of his blood, but under no uncertain terms is Isaac to ever return to where Abraham came from.

Also, “Don’t worry,” Abraham says; “An angel will be leading the way for you.”

I was surprised to learn that my scientist cousin, who I thought was an atheist, didn’t scoff at the idea of angels and traditional Jewish prayer when we talked. When we prayed for her, she said she felt like she was being lifted by angels. Her fear dissipated. She felt held and secure.

In our bible story, Abraham’s servant prays, and to his surprise, finds the perfect girl, Rebecca, immediately, just as he imagined. He is so shocked that his prayers were answered that he insists on telling the family his whole story, blow by blow, before putting a morsel of food in his mouth after his long journey through the hot desert.

Rebecca’s brothers, recognizing that their sister’s match has been ordained by God, agree to let her go, but then they bargain with the servant to wait, to hang out some—because, please, just a little more time?

Though my cousin seemed finally at peace with dying, she still announced energetically to her friends on Zoom that "there was still a 20% chance of survival!”

In our story, the servant begs Rebecca’s brothers, no, please, let my mission be successful and let me move on; “The god of my master heard my prayers, and the angel who led me here has helped, so let me be on my way.”

Surprisingly, Rebecca agrees to leave right away—though it’s not a simple bus ride home to her family, and who knows what she’s getting herself into!

Rebecca carries a calm, unwavering aspect that reflects that she trusts. She has faith. She doesn’t bargain.

When my cousin felt the presence of angels, she had an aspect of Rebecca in her; I’m ready to go. I am not afraid. God is leading the way and I must follow.

I heard Katherine Hayhoe being interviewed by Krista Tippett the other day. Hayhoe is not only an atmospheric scientist who dedicates her life to reversing climate change, she is also an Evangelical Christian.

Hayhoe has no doubts about God or angels, and total faith that we still have time and that there is enough will to remedy the problem of climate change, disaster and chaos. She is bubbly and happy and is spreading the Word to climate disaster deniers who have been caught up by the political chaos. She offers solutions that people can relate to personally. She’s amazing.

Hayhoe understands that it is only politics that has created the divide we’re living in, between “Creationism” and science, between science and religion/spiritual belief—and how it serves our present political chaos.

And we have a choice not to feed and participate in the unhealthy divide our culture has created between life and death, between science and spiritual belief, all of which exist on the same continuum.

If we practice enough, I believe we can have enough faith, and with enough faith, like Hayhoe, we will have the strength to come out of the caves we may have crawled into to avoid feeling the feelings of dread and fear associated with the present chaos in our country and government and the future of the world.

With enough faith, we will have enough strength to stand our ground and not cave in to politicians who insist on creating and exacerbating the current chaos—politicians who want us to make false bargains, creating chaos in our government, that give away the health of our home the Earth in exchange for greater personal wealth.

With enough faith we will know which way is the way towards home. We will also know when it’s time to surrender.

Then we can say goodbye to the chaos we are living through now and find our equilibrium as a united earth.

And let us say Amen.

Laughing at Angels: Va-yera

I was listening to This American Life and heard this great story of a woman who was driving her mother to the hospital for her cancer treatment. Her father was in the car with them.

As usual, the woman was using her GPS, but this time, it took her by a route it had never taken her before, way out and around Queens, in New York City. They couldn’t understand it. Her father asked her, “Has it ever taken you this way?” “No,” she replied. “Never.”

Her parents started recognizing the streets, they turned a certain corner and they suddenly found themselves right in front of an old and favorite Italian bakery where they used to go years ago, exclaiming at the coincidence. Her father jumped out to buy a loaf of bread (because they’re Italian, and when you’re Italian, bread always makes you feel better, she said).

As they continued, the GPS kept taking them is strange directions, but they followed, and along the way, her parents continued to exclaim at places they’d known and frequented in their youth together, for her parents had been together since they were sixteen.

It was like they had been taken on a life review, bringing them back to the joy they had experienced together over their life together.

They didn’t know that this would be her mother’s last visit to the hospital.

A week later, she died.

We may scoff at the idea of “being led” and “angels,” but you don’t have to believe in angels to know that these kinds of things happen to us in real life, maybe not usually as dramatically, but they do happen.

We may also scoff at the Torah as being full of made-up stories that are there to teach us a lesson, yet these stories are also asking us to suspend our perception of reality for a moment and consider other possibilities.

This week in Torah, there are lots of angels, and there’s a lot of reference to sight and seeing, just like this family saw lots of things they didn’t expect to.

The title of the parsha is “Va-yera,” meaning “appeared” or “shown,” and guess what appears before Abraham’s eyes in the heat of the day as he sits in the opening of his tent recovering from his circumcision?

Yes, you guessed it (or knew it): angels.

The angels, interestingly, look like men, and they are intermittently named accordingly. They are coming to announce that Sarah will give birth to a boy within a year’s time.

This makes Sarah laugh—because of the absurdity of still having “fun” in her very old age, and also finally having the baby boy she'd given up on having years ago.

Later, an angel, or messenger of God, as they’re called in Hebrew, appears to Hagar in the desert, where she has been banished to die with her child, Ishmael. God hears the crying and sends a messenger who opens Hagar’s eyes to see that there’s a well of water right there, nearby (it’s not clear if the well was there all along or not).

The same messengers who come to announce Sarah’s pregnancy are those who lead Lot and his family to safety when God destroys Sodom and Gomorrah—except that Lot’s wife looks back to see the destruction and turns into a pillar of salt.

After the destruction and escape, Lot’s daughters find themselves alone in a cave with their father, hiding, terrified, and imagining that all life on earth is no more. This causes them to decide to get their father drunk and impregnate themselves by him (yuck), and so begin the tribes of the Moabites and the Ammonites—Israel’s future neighbors and frequent enemies!

In mindfulness meditation, there’s a lot of focus on becoming conscious of where we place our attention throughout the day and how that impacts our life; do we pay attention to the negative, like the aches and pains, the things that “shouldn’t” be, all that is wrong in our lives and in the world, every moment focused on what we need to fix?

How good are we at noticing the good and positive?

If we’re not careful, we may become frozen in that habit of noticing mostly the saltiness of life.

We may get stuck in a pillar of salt like Lot’s wife who looks back at the destruction behind her instead of forward if we’re not careful. Or we may become like Lot’s daughters who create new tribes borne out of fear and panic, enemies that become our constant companions.

Tara Brach (she has a podcast, if you didn’t know, and I love her teachings and her soothing voice) says that refocusing our attention away from the negative doesn’t mean we will forget what’s wrong in our lives or the world and become complacent, losing our drive to improve and repair; what it means is that we will be giving ourselves a respite so we have the reserve to support others through their trials and tribulations, and we may even have energy left over for the political work that needs doing to bring healing to the world.

So, I challenge us to suspend our belief system if it’s stuck in a pillar of saltiness, stuck in panic and fear of the end of the world, creating a line of progeny that becomes negative energy, passed down through future generations.

We can laugh at the idea of invisible messengers ever present to help us, or even that a person who comes out of nowhere to help us or give us important information might be an angel, but let our laughter be out of joy for the guidance we may be receiving, opening our eyes to see the possibilities that lie before us.

And let us say Amen.

Entitlement, Majesty & Lech Lecha

I heard a story last week that actually brought tears to my eyes, it was so beautiful.

It was Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love (don’t you love her??).

She was talking about the entitlement we all need to claim in order to live creatively, beyond our personal fears of failure and whatever else holds us back.

The story she told reminded me of Noah and his lack of feeling of entitlement to use his voice and stand up for Humanity before God.

Noah was contrasted in last week’s blog with Abraham who does feel entitled to use his voice in a positive way—but not yet! First he does some really messed up things.

Because, you see, there’s privilege and entitlement that carries and uses power in one way, and a feeling of privilege and entitlement that you can choose to take, even if the world says it’s not yours.

In the end, either way, it depends on how you use it.

This week, Abraham, still Abram before God changes his name, uses his privilege and entitlement in a way most of us would not want to model.

Like, he asks his wife, Sarai, (she gets a name change too: Sarah) to lie and say she’s his sister, and to submit to being passed off as wife to the powerful Pharaoh (pre-slavery)—which she does (and we hear nothing of this experience from her point of view).

Abraham’s actions come from a place of fear, so we can be a little compassionate, but the fact that he even thinks this could be at all justifiable illustrates the power dynamic of society at the time (a power dynamic just beginning to change now after millennia, as we know).

And it shows a privilege and entitlement on his part as a male figure who is more concerned for his own life and wealth than his wife and what this might do to her.

And why shouldn’t he feel entitled? God has spoken to him directly, promising him the stars and the moon and a long line of progeny, power and weath. Like Noah, Abraham has been “chosen;” “Go forth from your father’s house to a land that I will show you.”

Sarai, in her own way, in her own social standing, also feels entitled—to hand her slave Hagar over to Abram as a wife and tell him to produce the heir that she can not give him. Later, when Ishmael is born, Sarai, out of jealousy, uses her privilege to send Hagar off to die with her baby Ishmael in the desert (they don’t die, but what happens is horrifying, except that God will make Ishmael the head of a new people, as you may know).

Again, there’s privilege and entitlement that uses power, and it depends on how you choose to use it, or whether you choose to take it even if you’ve been taught it’s not yours for the taking.

Elizabeth Gilbert tells the story of an awful weather day in New York City years ago (way before the pandemic—like, “normal awful”), and she gets on a crowded bus where everybody’s having this shared human experience of discomfort and misery.

Suddenly the bus driver speaks through his microphone: “Ladies and gentlemen. I’m your bus driver. I want you to know that I can tell that you’ve all had a bad day. And I’m sorry this traffic is so bad. And I’m sorry the weather is so bad. And I can’t do anything about that. But I have an offering I want to make. Every one of you, when you walk off this bus, when you walk by me, I’m going to put out my hand and you’re going to place in my palm all your troubles and all your worries and when I get to the Hudson river, I’m going to throw all your pain out into the river.”

This broke the trance of the riders, everybody burst out laughing—and every single person took him up on his offer.

Gilbert says this man felt entitled: “He believed he had the right to interrupt the air with the vibration of his voice and his idea and invite people to open their hearts and make his bus ride, which he did every day, into something newly evolved.”

With this simple offering, this man transformed the people on the bus and himself. Who knows the effect it had on these people as they went about their lives after this?

This bus driver, with no apparent power, created a piece of magic out of the mundane. Because, “It doesn’t have to have majesty to have majesty.”

Abraham, though promised so much, and with all his access to majesty and wealth, has so little faith that any of God’s promises will actually come to fruition—or he wouldn’t have done all he did. If he had, he probably would have acted quite differently. The same is true for Sarah.

The “simple bus driver” in Gilbert’s story (not Gilbert’s words, I don’t think), with no apparent power, took the power of his imagination and his voice and changed one small corner of the universe.

We don’t know exactly how, but Abraham’s and Sarah’s different use of privilege and entitlement would have transformed their tiny corner of the universe and might have affected generations to come.

So many people feel so powerless over the overwhelming current events of the world, but we have a choice: to be like Abraham and submit to our fear and the power structures that exist, or to decide we are entitled to use our voices, in big ways that challenge existing power structures, and also in small ways that challenge power structures.

Perhaps, if we decide we are entitled, we can take God’s commandment to go forth to unknown lands and bring more majesty into the world.

Oh, No, Noah!

I was listening to a comedian, Danny Jolles, the other night and boy, did he make me laugh—unlike the story of Noah and the destruction of life on earth (check out what I wrote last year).

First Jolles says, “So many people say to me, how can you still believe in God? The Bible? It’s thousands of years old. How can you still be reading that? Science, buddy! That’s the truth! It’s proven!”

Jolles counters: “But how often do the scientists say, ‘Here, We’ve got this great new drug! It will solve all your problems.’ And twenty years later, you see your doctor and they say quietly, Oh, …uhh…you’re still taking that? We made a mistake. We’ve updated it.

“I mean, we don’t look at science journals from twenty years ago, so why should be read a book thousands of years old?

“So maybe God is up there saying, ‘Oh, you’re still reading that? Uhhh…’”

It got me thinking…Yeah, we’re still reading that, and it is really outdated, but there is still so much old wisdom to be gleaned from the stories, the same way there is great medical wisdom from thousands of years ago that is being brought back—because there are ancient ways of healing in gentler ways than the pharmaceutical companies want us to be believe.

I’m also continuing to think about Creation as we make our way into the second parsha of the year. How can you not, when all of Creation, just created (last week it was In the Beginning…), has just been destroyed?

With the flood, God destroys all that he’s just made, except for one family, headed by Noah, “the one tzadik,” or righteous person, of his generation, along with pairs of animals, to start things over again. God commands Noah to build an ark (in only seven days—things must be urgent!), and two by two…You know the story.

I was reading a drash, or interpretive writing, by Rabbi Shoshana Meira Friedman published by The Shalom Center and she talks about Noah not challenging God to defend humanity and the earth against destruction.

We are not the first to ask the question, “How much of a Tzadik—how righteous—could Noah have been? He obviously didn’t have enough righteousness to even question God in protest—maybe he didn’t have enough faith in humanity—or himself!

In fact, as Friedman points out, the Kedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, answers the question by saying that Noah, though blameless, didn’t even have enough faith in his own voice to have an effect on God’s decree.

Noah gets drunk afterwards, and Friedman suggests this is because he can’t deal with the utter destruction he witnesses plus the fact that he was silent and allowed it to take place without even a word!

If this is so, if Noah’s conscience spoke to him, so did God’s conscience speak to God.

It’s true; God realizes immediately that he’s made a mistake; he swears he will never destroy life on earth in its entirety again.

But recognizing his mistake doesn’t prevent him from making more mistakes.

Generations go by and the descendants of Noah are getting very spread out, Torah tells us. Everyone still speaks one language, but they seem to be concerned about losing touch, because they have this great idea; they will build a city with a solid brick tower, the famous Tower of Babel, high into the sky. According to some sources, this is a multi-layered temple-like thing: a meeting place between heaven and earth.

This is usually read quite cynically as, the people want to be equal to God.

But the Hebrew says, “Let’s make a tower and we’ll make a name for ourselves.” I want to be less cynical and read it as, maybe—just maybe—they want everyone to stay together, as a recognized people, and they’ll be able to be closer to God way up there in the sky!

To me, it could be the ultimate act and intention of unity—among humans and between humans and God.

God did not agree with me.

God’s take was, by trying to reach so high, they were overstepping, and what is this “making a name for themselves,” thing? Who do they think they are?

So God punishes them by “mixing up their speech” so they can’t understand each other, making their plan impossible to complete, and from then on, the people of the earth spread farther and farther apart, speaking many different languages.

It says in Torah that God scatters the people, and the word for “scatter” in Hebrew even a sense of “shattering.”

What if God knows now, and I do mean now, that “he” made a mistake—not only in destroying all life with a flood, but by scattering, or shattering, the unity between people?

And what if God is really up there thinking, “Hey, you’re still reading that? You need to get the new, revised, version. I’ve evolved since then. I realize now that those people were just trying to get closer to me. Maybe I was being a little touchy and misinterpreted their intentions.”

Religion teaches that God is perfection, but it’s obvious that God is far from perfect. Mistakes are a part of God’s journey, as they are for us. Imperfection is just a part of the universe as Creation continues to change and evolve.

Also, recognizing a mistake doesn’t automatically stop us from making more.

It has taken generations of "mistakes,” accidental and sometimes even intentional, to get to the place where global flooding is a reality that’s becoming more real every day, threatening all life.

Rabbi Friedman quotes the 13th century mystical text, the Zohar Chadash, which contrasts Noah’s silence to Abraham’s protests for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah (coming soon, to a theater near you!).

Friedman imagines Noah as an ancient man of over 900 years meeting Abraham when he was a young boy, seizing the child by the arm, hissing desperately into his ear: “When the Judge of All the Earth comes to you and tells you He plans destruction, make Him act justly.”

Friedman challenges us to remember that Jewish tradition demands that we speak up and act. We are not to lie back, despairing as we see the destruction of the world happening before our very eyes.

We really have no choice but to say, “Oh, no!” and move on to try and fix what we’ve done. We are not to give up our faith in humanity just because of our mistakes.

Let us speak for a new and revised God, whose voice we can only hear through the cries of the people, a God who now knows that separation and scattering are a mistake, and find our way back to a healthy, balanced earth though our own unity, a unity that requires our voices, our time and our money—for the righteous cause of saving life on our planet.

Let us have faith, the faith that Noah didn’t have, in the power of our words and actions to change the course of events.

And let us say Amen.

Was it Good or Was it Bad? (Breishit)

Yesterday I saw a meme: “Sorry I didn’t answer your text messages. It’s been a Jewish holiday for the past thirty days.”

It’s truuueeee!

Every year since I started observing all the Jewish holidays, I’ve been floored by the intensity of them and how exhausted I am by the end.

Were they good? Well, they were definitely different this year—which is good; a little more ease being with others in person. I know what I need and want now, which is also a good change.

This past Tuesday in the park, on Sh’mini Atzeret, the second-to-last holiday in the fall cycle, we prayed for rain. This custom is tied to the arid climate of the Middle East, but we still do it here in the Diaspora.

Rain was actually predicted for New York City that day, but I really thought it would hold off. That’s what my phone was implying, in any event, but you can’t really trust your iPhone to be terribly accurate about the weather. It’s inconsistent from phone to phone, and sometimes it says it’s raining when it’s actually sunny!

The accuracy of technology aside, we had prayed for rain, and it started drizzling. We giggled. It was good.

In fact, it didn’t seem so bad at first, and then, as we were going through the Yizkor service and the rituals for remembering lost ones, (yizkor means remembering), it started to really pour. We stood under a Ginkgo tree, which was good but not shelter enough to keep us dry anymore. We felt the magic of heavy rain, which was good.

We were chilled by the time we headed towards home, but there’s something thrilling and invigorating about being caught in a heavy downpour. By that point, there were only three of us huddled together in person and one other on Zoom (the group I led was no very small to begin with). We were soaked through and high on singing and connecting, and I felt giddy and alive. It felt really good.

And we laughed about being careful what you pray for.

If only it were as easy as a prayer and a few words to change the weather and the general course of things.

On the other hand, maybe it’s a good thing that our words aren’t as effectual as we sometimes think.

When we look back on this past year, we mostly think of it as hard and bad, and we’ve named it thus.

We’ve labeled it, and thus it is so.

Or, the opposite happens; overloaded on fatigue around how hard the year has been and having talked so much about it, we decide not to name it at all.

This week, as we start reading Torah again at the beginning, it feels like we’re starting with a bang, all about creation and life. It’s all good—we are told.

All that is needed is a word—God’s speech—and God creates light and darkness, heaven and earth, water and land, the sun, the moon and the stars, the animals and Adam.

Things start to get more complicated than just naming things when Adam is created. It takes a little thought to decide on a partner for him, and two contradictory stories come out of this. Also, we have the Garden of Eden and the serpent and the Tree of Knowing good from bad. What follows is the banishment of the first humans from the garden where, in the diaspora, they will break their backs to get food and giving birth to new life will involve pain. Life gets more complicated.

In other words, it’s not all good. This is the beginning of the human conscience and the desire to acquire the power of insight, but also for human emotions like jealousy, as in the story of Cain and Abel, Adam and Eve’s first children, which famously ends in murder.

This is the foundation of our Story and everything that will follow, all starting with God’s speech.

God saw that it was good.

And then it was bad.

God is disappointed enough in his creation of human beings that he is ready to destroy us by the end of chapter 6. The Torah tells us that God is sorry; he suffers from regret. God already needs comfort (the word for sorrow and regret shares its root with the word for comfort.)

God is in emotional pain at seeing how the human heart and thoughts bend towards the “bad.”

The labels “good” and “bad” are simplistic, yet humanity is clearly not simple. Maybe the fact that there are two creation stories points to how complicated human beings were to become; the biblical God couldn’t even decide how to make us! Ha!

For instance, it may feel good to not talk about the hard year it’s been, by which I mean lighter, and not talk about the ways in which the world is different and we are different since the pandemic began. We no longer have to convince others that gathering together is a good thing. But the disadvantage of not naming is that we don’t also get to take the time to say how our needs have changed.

As we begin a new Jewish year, with new intentions, and as we begin to slowly gather again in small groups, let us be intentional, as God of the Bible was in creation, every step of the way, in how we gather, in naming how we feel and naming our needs, and in finding new ways to walk in the world.

And remember that how we name things may be true or not, because life is never simple, but our words do have power—for good and for bad. We need to make a conscious effort to lean our hearts toward “good.” It’s just the way it is. Our negativity takes over so easily.

Also, even a downpour could be seen as good or bad, depending on our perspective and where we are in the world. So, yes, let’s be careful what we pray for.

What’s in Your Head? (Sukkot & V’Zot Habrakha)

I know…there’s been so much build-up to the end of the Torah. Week after week, Moses is saying goodbye. I guess there’s so much to say, and it’s hard to take one’s leave. Maybe that’s where the Jewish tradition of not being able to walk out the door comes from! Ha!

Well, we did it! We finished it—again. For this, we say thank you for having arrived at this time again, for having made it through another year, for arriving at this season, this holiday of harvest, again. For still being alive!

I did it. I went through an entire cycle of Torah and had something to say and write about each parsha. Who knew I could do that? I wondered, honestly. It was a challenge I set myself last year, and I’ve accomplished it.

This week’s parsha is named for all the blessings Moses gives each tribe just before he dies. They are blessings of bounty and security going forward. (You can read my last year’s commentary here, just for nostalgia’s sake pershaps: This, you say, is a blessing?).

Are we supposed to all feel blessed?

I can say that I wasn’t feeling blessed at all on Sunday when I returned to rabbinical school classes. In fact, I was freaking out. It’s my last stretch, and it was a very difficult transition. There were a bunch of new students, young whipper-snappers that entered the program while I was on leave, coming in with lots of background knowledge I did not come in with, for one. On top of that, the two classes I attended are probably going to be the most difficult classes I’ve taken yet. At least that was my perception.

But how often is our perception based in reality? Our minds play all kinds of tricks on us, don’t they? Our insecurities—okay, I’ll speak for myself—my insecurities took over, and I was totally intimidated—to the point of tears!

Also, I was actually cursed by a stranger the other day in Central Park!

She was obviously mentally ill, and I had gone to the park with my lulav and esrog (palm frond and lemony fruit) to observe the Jewish holiday of Sukkos, the “Holiday of the Booths,” which commemorates our 40-year sojourn through the desert, the instability of living out in the open (just as we are leaving the desert in Torah! Ha!), and the fall harvest festival, one which was observed by bringing the first fruits of the season as an offering to the Temple many eons ago.

Now we observe Sukkos as an “earthy” holiday, with (dare I say) some very pagan-like rituals that the Rabbis gave some beautiful mystical meaning to. Who doesn’t love shaking a palm frond around and singing, huh? And the lemony fruit! Yum.

Anyway, I had gone to connect with the earth, and to do my earth/heaven/energy practices of Qi Gong.

I had taken off my shoes and placed my lulav and esrog against one tree, my bag and shoes against another, as I stood under a beautiful canopy of trees, my “sukkah.” I had a view of the Harlem Meer, the water looked beautiful, and it all felt perfect (aside from what feels like endless summer heat and humidity).

Suddenly, from a distance I saw a woman picking and gathering brush along the side of the lake. Then she was suddenly closer to me, right under my trees, just a few feet away, looking straight at me, breaking off low-hanging branches.

“Excuse me, I hope you don’t mind. God says it’s okay. This is for the children I’m teaching,” she stated frenetically.

(Do I continue on? Okay, wait and see, I decide.) I gave some indication that I didn’t mind (I knew better), and continued doing my Qi Gong, assessing how dangerous this situation might get and strategically planning my escape if needed.

“Do you know how close to God you are?” she said aggressively, continuing to tear branches. Luckily, she didn’t wait for an answer: “Very close.” (Oh, cool!)

My go-to when someone starts ranting about God is to bless the person, hoping to disarm them, which I did, and it worked for a moment; she quietly blessed me back.

Then she started in on Jesus and the miracles he performed, even on the Sabbath, she wanted me to know.

Suddenly she stopped short, looked down at my bag and said, “Can I have a dollar? (in an annoyed voice.) I said I was sorry not to have any cash on me.

After calling me a name usually directed at women, she pointed to my palm frond. “Can I have that?”

I carefully moved towards my bag, which meant very close to her, and started gathering my things.“Can I have your shoes?”

As I started walking away barefoot, shoes under my arm, she followed me, hurling more insults and curses at me.

I was completely rattled and it took me a long time to calm down.

Ironically, we had exchanged both blessings and curses, but in thinking about it, I was probably no more rattled by this interaction than by my return to classes.

The stuff in her head was very real to her, and the stuff in my head about the challenging classwork and my intimidating classmates who know way more that I do, was all very real to me, but in the end, none of it was real. And all of it was real at the same time.

As I walked away thinking about the police being the only recourse for a mentally ill person and the tragedy of the terribly underfunded and almost non-existent mental health system in our country, I was not only rattled, feeling unsafe and exposed, I was saddened. Just saddened at the tragedy of the world we live in. Some of it is in our heads, some of it is real. And sometimes it’s hard to know the difference. One thing I know is real is that that woman lives on the street with a lot of insecurity on many levels.

Speech can be as powerful as action, as we know, especially since the years we’ve just gone through with Trump as president.

At the end of the yearly cycle of Torah, we recite a couple of phrases for strength and peace before beginning again.

May we have strength and peace and put out lots of blessings for the year to come, for the miracle of being able to create a new kind of world where everyone lives in security, safety and peace, and where mental illness is treated as an illness and not a crime.

And let us say Amen.

REALLY Late (with Push-ups): Ha’azinu and Yom Kippur

Yom Kippur came “really early” this year (for those not in on the joke, Jewish holidays are neither early nor late if you see them independently of the Gregorian calendar, but that calendar rules the human world so much that it’s hard for us to separate the two—kind of the way so many people refer to Chanukah as the “Jewish Christmas,” and if you know anything about Judaism, there is no connection!!).

Where was I?

I was really late, not only this week but even today, in sitting down to write my blog. In fact, I didn’t know if I’d get to it all, what with Yom Kippur being just yesterday and basically co-opting the entire week for those of us who observe it. But I surprised myself at the last minute after Rosh Hashanah, so here I am again—REALLY late.

But, surprise! Here I am!

I’m exhausted (with no migraine—yay!), and reflecting on Yom Kippur yesterday and what a wonderful day it was for me. I almost didn’t want to share that because it felt a little like bragging when so many people are still online for services, which feels especially hard for the High Holy Days. It’s yet another reminder that we are still…still, still, still…

But I’m going to share my experience anyway.

I was in Central Park with a group of about 40 people, the scary chance of rain and thunderstorms disappeared, and the weather was perfect in the end: not 88 degrees like the day before, only 72, with a nice breeze.

The theme for the holiday in this group was “Healing,” and a lot of healing did go on for me.

While last year I spent the day on my living room floor with my tallis/prayer shawl and a migraine, listening to and praying along with beautiful services, this year there was no migraine, and I spent much of the day under my tallis on the ground under tall trees and hearing the voices of fellow pray-ers singing with me. I didn’t worry about whether I was “supposed to” be standing or sitting; I just followed my heart and my body and what they needed at the moment. I even got to lead some prayers for the group. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

While last year I was just beginning a year’s break from rabbinical school classes, I am now re-entering classes for my last stretch and have been through a year of personal growth in terms of my studies and creativity, following my heart instead of teachers’ directives.

Moses just recited his last speech in the form of a poem to the Israelites this week in Ha’azinu. At the end he reminds the people to take heed and teach the poem to future generations, for this is what will get them through.

This is in no small thing for them, he says, but their very life.

Then God tells him to go up to the mountain where he will be able to see the land he will not be allowed to enter, and there he will die.

It is Moses’ very life we’re talking about.

It was not lost on me that we read this parsha during the same week as Yom Kippur, when we are enjoined to confess our sins, ask forgiveness in the most serious way possible, pray all day and fast in repentance; we pray for the world and ourselves.

We pray for the world and our very lives.

Yesterday, in the midst of this serious prayer, during a standing prayer we call the Amidah, people were invited to go off by themselves for quiet contemplation.

What did my husband do? He started a push-up competition in the grass with his friend.

I was standing with my friend, having a beautiful moment of prayer with her, when she spied my husband out of the corner of her eye and indicated quietly that I should take a look.

Like a little boy who couldn’t connect to prayer, there he was doing something that might have embarrassed someone else—or my younger self—but frankly I found it all pretty hilarious at this point in my life and marriage. I’ve learned to love and accept him for who he is (including his little-boy parts) and to know that he is not a reflection of me.

Also, I believe that a little bit of irreverence was the perfect medicine for all the seriousness of the day.

It’s been a hard year. And we will all die, like Moses, but under different circumstances. Most likely, God will not be giving us as much advance notice as he did Moses.

In the meantime, we keep praying, and doing, and praying.

And my husband and his friend reminded me that, while we’re still alive, we have to keep playing and laughing and connecting with our friends to get us through.

A little irreverence—and a little push-up competition—might not be such a bad idea when we’re in the middle of praying for our lives.

A Plumbing Issue: Rosh Hashanah & Va-Yeilech

I am one of those people who believes that all physical symptoms have an emotional factor to them, so when my friend told me just a little while ago that she realized that her stomach issues are connected in some way to old trauma, I was not surprised (but I didn’t say “duh”).

Funny that I just finished dealing with a major blumbing issue—not in my body, but a real one, as in my kitchen sink was backed up and it took hours for the plumber to unclog it, to flush the pipes clean, only to go work on other surrounding apartments.

So it got me thinking; how might this all be connected to Rosh Hashanah and this week’s Torah portion?

We started the intense work of cleaning out, letting go, and returning, in the past month. We have been in a different stage of the pandemic in terms of decisions on how to meet for the holidays this year (online/in-person/a combo?), we celebrated the new year in a different way, perhaps—and Moses is leaving behind his community.

Yes, this week, Moses begins his last speech to his people, informing them that, at 120 years old, he is about to die, he is putting Joshua in charge from now on, he will not be crossing over into the Promised Land with them.

One last time, he tells them how naughty they’ve been, how impossible in their turning away from God and worshiping other gods—and that they will continue in their backward ways, and probably worse—because if they were that bad with him around, how will they be when he’s not? (Yes, he actually says that.)

Still, Moses reassures them that God will be with them; they will not be abandoned. They will not be alone.

The prediction that we, as a people, would continue to be difficult has come true. There’s even a chant, “Come, Come, whoever you are, Even though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times before; Come, come again.” We always get another chance to try again, and the somber atmosphere of Yom Kippur reminds us take our vows more seriously.

I’ve realized that our work at this time of year really is a plumbing issue, maybe especially now. We have so much to flush out of our systems: old traumas, newer traumas, communities we’ve perhaps left behind during the pandemic, whether we moved or saw new opportunities arise in the past year.

And we will continue to struggle with what it means to return, return again.

As a people, and I mean as a world full of people, we will continue to struggle with what it means to have faith in the each other, in humanity—and in God, which to me means believing in the inter-connectedness of all and the interdependence we have.

Because there is no escaping global warming and climate disaster; there are no safe mountaintops to retreat to, and the air we breathe circulates around the entire earth. If we don’t take care of the earth and each other, then we’re not taking care of the One.

If we focus on what divides us, then we are bowing down to the differences—those smaller gods. I really hope we can learn the lesson Moses so wanted us to learn: that there is only One.

So on this Yom Kippur, let us get to a deeper place of flushing out our traumas, flushing out our differences, finding what unites us, renewing our faith in humanity and our ability to heal each other and the world.

That’s what I’ll be praying for this Yom Kippur: a good flush.

Shabbat Shalom and G’mar Hatima Tov; May we be written in the book of life (wherever that book is—we gotta find it).

Who By Fire…(Nitzavim)

All week I’ve been waiting and hoping for some inspiration for this week’s blog, but honestly, I didn’t want the kind of inspiration that came yesterday morning.

I woke up, after a terrifying night of hour upon hour of pelting rain, high winds, a tornado over Harlem (where I live), and non-stop lightning, only to hear that 8 people had died—in their apartments!—due to floodwaters that, in one case anyway, broke through an outside wall!

What more do we need to begin heeding the dire predictions, not just from science but from the Bible as well?

What more do we need to make the Unetaneh Tokef prayer more real: Who by fire? Who by water…? On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed, according to our tradition, who shall die in the coming year and by what means. So we pray and pray until the end of Yom Kippur for forgiveness, and to be written in the Book of Life (where is that book, anyway?).

This week, in Nitzavim, God is very angry again, but as I read it this time, God’s anger felt different to me than other times. For some reason, I felt a seriousness, a heaviness, that I hadn’t felt before.

Other times I’ve kind of scoffed at it: “Oh, God is angry AGAIN, in a frantic out-of-control way, a way that seems momentary and will pass as soon as Moses talks him down. Here He lays out (again) what he expects of the Israelites. Mostly it’s about worshiping only our One God and not bowing down to other gods. Then God will open our heart—circumcise it, cutting away the crustiness that covers it.

God clearly says that we have a choice: to choose the blessings or the curses that have been laid out for us, so that we may “live and not die.” We are told to “choose life.”

And the famous lines, “Surely this is not so difficult to grasp; it’s right in front of you, close by, not up in the heavens, not an extraordinary wonder or marvel difficult to make sense of—nor is it across the sea, far away, that we should need someone to go and get it for us and bring it back to explain it so that we can then do it.

Surely.

Yet, it’s not simple. If only back then, when the Bible was written down, God and Moses had known how difficult such a commandment would prove to be. If it were simple, we would have done it a long time ago—like, thousands of years ago.

As we watch as troops finally withdraw from Afghanistan, approach the 20th anniversary of 9/11, review the past year and a half of pandemic along with all the other confusion and chaos around the globe, we enter a time of trying to heal, of rest for the earth during this coming Shmita year, and prayer for ourselves and all that lives.

We take a break from the action so we can be renewed to continue our work of repair and hopefully begin to remove the scabs we’ve built up around our hearts, to open them again.

May it be so.

Don’t F** Up, It’s a Commandment: Ki Tavo

I know I’ve missed a few weeks of Torah blogging, but time off/vacation is always a necessity, any year and especially this year. After extending my vacation, I was then forced to cut it short in order to avoid being caught in—yes, a hurricane, yet another climate crisis.

Which easily brings me to this week’s Torah reading, Ki Tavo: When you come into the land the Lord Your God is giving you...(last week was Ki Teitzei: When you come out, interestingly enough).

As we come to the end of Torah, there are more and repeated warnings of all the curses that will come upon the people Israel for not walking in God’s ways, and all the blessings if we do.

It’s pretty frightening reading of environmental catastrophe and skies of copper when you know that’s what we actually see skies of copper as forests continue burning. There is no doubt in my mind that prophetic voices are recorded in Torah.

The confusing question remains: What does it mean to walk in God’s ways?

How many people do we each know who profess to doing exactly that, yet their value systems are completely opposite to ours?

While on vacation, I read a historical novel (yes, I had time for that!), one of the best I’ve ever read, called The Known World, by Edward P. Jones. It’s about slavery, the intricate and complicated relationships between Black and white, rich and poor, light-skinned and dark-skinned, immigrant, native and native-born. It delves deeply into the complexities of Black slave ownership, into the mind and mentality of the time and of the characters.

It’s beautifully written, fascinating, and as painful as the subject was, I didn’t want it to end.

There’s one character, a white slave owner, who believes God doesn’t care what we do, and even if He does care, you can hide from Him (we have psalms that also ask God not to hide from us, so that’s not so surprising).

Another white character, the sheriff, continually looks to the Bible for answers on how to live his life, and finds perfect justification for slavery within our Holy Book—so disturbing to us now, both the idea of slavery and that this is our holy book.

The anti-abortionist and anti-gay population today easily find what they’re looking for, too. The fact is, if you look, you can easily find something that justifies your opinions.

This isn’t to say that there are no hard truths. And those who have experienced or seen the harm and trauma our holy books have caused may have already decided to walk away.

But then they would have missed out on the parts where we are reminded to take care of each other and the earth, where we get the chance to repair what we’ve done, to set things right—to heal.

They’d also miss out on the commandment to rejoice, which appears again in this week’s parsha, and they might stay in a place of doom and gloom.

During this month of Elul, as we work on ourselves, getting ready for the High Holy Days, trying to be better people and not f** up any more than we already have, let’s not forget to put aside the hard work we’re doing at least once a day—to rejoice in who we are, the gifts we already bring to the world, and what we have.

It’s a commandment.

(Afterthought, as in P.ost S.cript: In deciding whether it was too risky to use the title I really wanted for this blog, I consulted a teacher who has been very important to me. They suggested the asterisks; “As they say, you only have your asterisk.” I decided the risk was worth it.)

The Biblical View: R’ei

Hello, friends and readers,

I’m on vacation and giving myself a badly needed break, so this is going to be super short and quick.

Mostly I want to refer you to a podcast that greatly inspired me this past week and left me with a deep amount of faith and belief for the future.

I was listening to Krista Tippett interviewing the very young and wise Rev. Jen Bailey. The title of the episode goes perfectly with this week’s Torah portion, R’ei, which means “See!” because what they talk about is something we all need to see and understand.

With only 7 weeks left to the Torah for the year, we continue on this path of last instructions before the Israelite people will cross over into the Promised Land, leaving Moses behind. It was curious that in the interview, Krista notes how her younger self always thought that Moses not getting to enter the Promised Land was the “wrong ending,” but her mature self understands that it could be a relief.

I don’t know if Krista had any idea where we are in the Torah at the moment, but her reference was perfect timing. She says that she now understands that what we will do for the rest of our lives we will not see the fruits of (like Moses), but what we do see is the younger generations and what they are capable of.

And a quote from Jen Bailey to peak your interest: “I can do what I can do during this time and also pass on that which came to me as seed, as blossom, and plant it, and let someone else tend to it. It’s okay not to build the whole house, to just lay the foundation.”

So take a listen to this sweet and comforting conversation between two generations. I have faith that you will be as inspired as I was: What We Inherit and What We Send Forth.

Good Shabbos and good week!

Starving children—Where? (Eikev)

I had an experience last week that I haven’t been able to get out of my mind.

As I was walking down the street, I saw ahead of me two young people of color wearing bright blue shirts with a professional logo—obviously about to stop me to get me to sign/sign up for something, give money for some worthy cause—and I knew it was going to be something I didn’t want to do.

I was ready to say no, to keep walking, thank you and I’m sorry, with a smile, but they took me off guard: “You look like a friendly face!”

It was perfect, really, because I’m one of a few people who really, really minds the thought that I might be perceived as unfriendly, closed, cold-hearted, in a cold city. Lots of others walked by, no problem, as I stood there observing myself, totally paralyzed: “Juliet, just leave, just walk away. What are you doing? Why can’t you? You woos!”

As this young woman started showing me photos of children that were supposed to pull at my heartstrings and whose letters I would receive, I searched for ways to say no and walk away without losing face, and things started to unravel.

(You can analyze me all you want: I know it has to do with poor boundaries and the need for outside validation, but it was also so much more complicated and deeper than that.)

First she told to pick a country. (I didn’t want to pick a country!) I said there was enough poverty in the U.S. and that I believed in starting at home. She cheerfully said, no problem! We have children to sponsor here, too!

Then, “Oops. The U.S. is fully sponsored. Choose another country.” I shrugged, choosing Mexico. Honestly, it’s all the same to me. “Oops, fully sponsored, too.” Same for the next country.

“Fully sponsored? What does that mean?” I thought. I so wanted to sarcastically say; “Oh, so you’ve solved the problem of poverty and hunger for all the children in the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala? That’s amazing!”

I actually did finally walk away, canceling the whole process I’d almost finished, which really pissed off the young woman whose time I’d just wasted. I apologized, with real reasons she had no desire to hear. It didn’t matter that I’d had no income for a year, was way behind in my rent. She probably didn’t even believe me. Most likely, I’m just another rich, white lady to her.

“Don’t say you’re sorry to me,” she said calmly, snidely, yet a little like a robot. “Say you’re sorry to this poor child who won’t get to eat because of you. I really feel bad for her.” I wasn’t entirely convinced she felt so bad for the child.

As I walked away, I literally cursed her under my breath—over and over again. Of course, I was mostly angry at myself, but she’d pushed so many buttons, she had no idea.

You see, I wanted to save all the children (more boundary problems?), but this whole thing ran against two basic principals I’d been taught:

1. Make sure you know the organization before you donate, and…

2. Although there is a place for philanthropy, this is exactly what those with money and power need in order to keep the same system going and the money in their pockets—and it’s mostly women who participate in it. It’s a feel-good thing that allows people to walk away patting themselves on the back.

In this week’s Torah portion, Eikev, we’re almost there, about to cross over into the Promised Land. It’s a continuation of Moses’ recounting to the Jewish people all that has happened to them thus far. Moses is at a stage of letting go, giving his last bits of advice before saying goodbye.

He quotes God again and again, and reminds them of how difficult they’ve been, and that, though God has chosen them, they really should thank Moses himself for having saved their behinds over and over again.

Moses makes an incredible promise: “If you follow all God’s commandments, you will be blessed above all other people, and there will be no sterile males or females—ever—among your people or your livestock forevermore, God will ward off all illness and disease, and there will be an abundance of food and wine…

…Because, remember that during the forty years in the desert, you were never hungry, nor did your feet get tired, nor did your clothes wear out.”

Herein lie the famous verses: “For it is not by bread alone that you live, but because of God’s grace. It is not by the strength of your own hands, but by God’s power,” I paraphrase.

It is not by bread alone.

I thought of the hungry children I was supposed to feed.

Then on Sunday, I heard an interview of two spectacular women with Krista Tippett, Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach, talking about courage. (Hmmm, which was I practicing: the courage to stay or to walk away? These things are never black and white.)

Within the context of courage, one of the things they talked about happened to also be the relationship between philanthropy and the system it maintains. While Glennon said that giving, even in tiny amounts, can take away a feeling of despair, she also maintains the importance of political action going hand in hand with charity, since charity conveniently alleviates without changing anything at all for the future.

Later in the Torah reading, a paragraph we recite after the central prayer in Judaism, the shema, also shows up here. It spells out in even more detail what Moses says above, both the positive and the negative; there will be total blessing for walking in God’s ways, or utter destruction and suffering for the earth and all its creatures—a total imbalance—if the people do not.

Was I participating in the evil of the world by not giving in order to alleviate the hunger of one child, walking away from the suffering of another?

In the podcast, Glennon later brings the word apocalypse in and the idea of total destruction, the world coming to an end, punishment for our evil ways (Glennon was making some sort of joke).

Then Krista jumps in and says she’d learned from some theologian that the word apocalypse does not mean actually mean destruction at all, as it is commonly used in society. In Greek, it actually means uncovering or revelation/revealing.

Glennon totally agrees and adds; harmful and destructive truths must be uncovered, then destroyed (i.e. racism, capitalism), and only then, will something new come about.

The word apocalypse, like the characters and stories of the Bible, and like the situation I found myself in, is complicated.

So is society.

Maybe the reality is, there is no perfect, happy ending. You don’t get heaven until you get to heaven. Humanity is messy. We all know how this story pans out; the Israelites do not walk in God’s ways.

And here we find ourselves today.

Maybe we need to remember this phrase: For it is not by bread alone that you live, but because of God’s grace. It is not by the strength of your own hands, but by God’s power.

May we keep trying to walk in “God’s” ways, as complicated as it seems sometimes, giving for the sake of giving while choosing wisely, and also acting to change a system where charity is a necessity.