Dayenu and Cancel Culture

Tomorrow night, we Jews celebrate the first night of Passover.

Today I made my matzoh ball soup, my charoses, and a potato kugel.

I’m excited that my children are coming.

Passover almost got canceled because one of them was seriously exposed to Covid by her roommate (not on purpose).

But I’m cooking the favorite foods we only eat once a year, and wondering about how we will do a seder this year.

There’s a part of me that’s feeling like the world is just too much of a mess to talk about liberation.

Do we sit around and talk about it—again? And now we have to bring Ukraine into it, in addition to all the kinds of slavery that still exist in the world—not to mention the mass shooting in the subway earlier this week.

There’s a part of the seder meal where we sing “Dayenu: It would have been enough…”

A friend forwarded this to me from The Shalom Center, by Dr. Barbara Breitman:

Enough! Dayenu! For This and Every Year!

We praise God

at Passover

‘Dayenu’!

‘It would have been enough!’

It would have been enough

If You had taken us out of Egypt

but not divided the Reed Sea

If You had divided the Reed Sea

but not brought us to dry land

If You satisfied our needs for 40 years

but did not send us Manna

If You fed us Manna in the desert

But did not bring us to Mt Sinai...

It would have been enough!

We would have been content!

This year I am falling

I cannot say Dayenu!

It is too much!

It is not enough!

I’ve had enough!

Enough racism

Enough war

Enough vicious white men

taunting the brilliant judge

first black woman Supreme Court Justice

taunting her to ignite rage

call her just another

angry black Radical bitch

Enough bodies

dead bodies

strewn on city streets

Enough maimed bodies

Runover by tanks

Enough stockpiles of nuclear weapons

Enough chemical weapons

Enough weapons altogether!

Weapons incinerating the Earth

billowing carbon into the stratosphere

melting glaciers even faster

Enough sadism

Enough hedonism of the Super rich

Enough billionaires riding rockets to outer space

while their workers

cannot feed their children on the earth

Enough Senators

blocking Climate Change legislation

because they own stock in fossil fuel

because they own coal mines

because money and power

are their Gods

Enough plastic bottles and bags

gagging fish in the sea

suffocating birds in the air

Enough floods and fires

Earthquakes and droughts

Enough melting ice caps

Enough dead birds, dead gorillas, dead frogs

Enough extinctions

Enough desert where

there should be rain

Enough rain where

there should be sun

Enough searing

the lungs of the Earth

Enough Climate refugees

dying at borders to be free

Enough torture and tanks

Enough severed limbs

Pregnant women shuddering

in basements, giving birth

hearing bombs fall on their homes

Enough women watching

kneeling husbands shot in the head

Enough atrocities

Enough rape

Enough liars and thieves and autocrats

and oligarchs

Enough!

Enough!

Enough!

Will you shout with me

from rooftops, from mountain tops

from every Capitol and every dome

from every Church, every Mosque, every Temple

every home?

Can we make a roar loud enough

to reach the Heavens

so it will finally be Enough?

Please!

take my hand

Please!

whisper in my ear

that you have had Enough too

Reading this powerful piece threw me into a tailspin; I’m not doing enough.

Of course, none of us can do enough. The job of trying to fix this world is way too great for any one individual.

How do I go into Passover with this awareness?

So heavy, I almost want to “cancel” it.

I was in the park earlier today and someone told me I was the spitting image of Carole King.

I laughed. I guess a little. The curly hair? Maybe the nose?

I could only take it as a complement, as it was meant.

Then I went home and listened with nostalgia to her songs as I continued cooking—Songs of my early teens.

The end of the song, “Beautiful,” gave me a counter-balance to the above poem:

“I have often asked myself the reason for sadness
In a world where tears are just a lullaby
If there's any answer, maybe love can end the madness
Maybe not, oh, but we can only try…
You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face
And show the world all the love in your heart…”

I’m not sure what tears being just a lullaby means. Maybe these words reflected a kinder, gentler time in American history and the world?

Still, showing the world all the love in our hearts is a start to ending the madness.

And we can’t cancel Passover any more than we can cancel the madness in one fell swoop—or individually.

In the meantime, may it be a peaceful one for all, and may we all find liberation soon.

Scrubbing it Down & Metzora

It's a hard pill to swallow when you learn unsavory things about your people's past. The worst is when you come from an oppressed people and then you learn that they, in turn oppressed others.

I remember when I learned that Jews had owned slaves in the U.S.

Unsavory.

I was surprised to learn that there were Cherokees who owned slaves. They became slave owners in the early 1800's in an effort to be accepted as people of power by the U.S. government. They became plantation owners, along with learning English and giving up their native ways. Maybe that's partly what happened with Jewish slave owners.

Trying to fit in didn't work--for either Jews or Native Americans.

The Trail of Tears still happened.

In documentaries and photos of the Trail of Tears, we don't see those slaves accompanying their Cherokee owners, walking as the beasts of burden while their owners ride horses.

And descendants of Freedmen are still fighting to be accepted as members of the Cherokee tribe. You can hear about it in this podcast.

The same is true for people of color in Jewish American spaces; it's hard to be accepted as "members of the tribe."

This week in Metzora, people with leprosy, or plague, or whatever it was, on their bodies and in their houses must not only isolate and wash their clothes, but also scrub the stones, and re-plaster.

As we enter Passover, there are lots of preparations, including scrubbing the shelves and walls of my refrigerator and stove, washing and burning off old stuff that's collected over the year.

There is much to scrub away, from our past as a people and for each of us as individuals. It includes a history of being the oppressed and enslaved, and also of being the oppressor and enslaver.

Freedom means many things to many people.

Though I resist the deep cleaning every single year since I started keeping a kosher kitchen, resenting the overwhelm it brings me, I know that once I'm done, I feel lighter and freer, ready to see what freedom means for me--and the world.

Symbolically, I remind myself that I am coming through a narrow place (the Sea of Reeds), into the expansiveness of freedom in the desert.

May we all scrub away what needs to be scrubbed, burn that which needs burning, find light(ness) and joy in the holiday, and enter into something new and more spacious--our own version of a new level of freedom.

May we have savory meals for Passover, and may we savor this time of renewal.

And may it be so for the world as well.

And say Amen.

Spoiled Child (Tazria)

Getting old is getting old.

Stay immature.

Intelligent skin and hair products that refuse to take aging seriously.

This is the advertisement I saw on the subway yesterday for a product called “Spoiled Child.”

I have to say, I was pretty shocked and disgusted.

Appalled. Shocked and appalled (don’t you love that expression?).

Stay immature. Ugh.

Honestly. Isn’t being afraid of aging and fighting against it “getting old?” I thought our culture was changing some.

Naive me.

Ironically, all week I’d been thinking about all the skin afflictions in this week’s parsha, Tazria—and looking for inspiration.

And it in a subway ad!

In the parsha, the afflicted person is kept in isolation until they can safely rejoin community.

This brought me back to the isolation we all entered two years ago when Covid first broke out.

In fact, I realized that it was exactly two weeks ago that it was the anniversary of the day New York City shut down and we all went into isolation. That was also the day I woke up with symptoms of Covid.

And on that anniversary day two weeks ago, I lay in bed recovering from a different virus that made my eye so puffy (a type of skin affliction), I didn’t want to show my face—isolated again, yet not as intensely.

Not as intensely, I say, because the isolation we experienced for more than a year, locked up in our homes, afraid to go out or to interact with others, has evolved.

We have slowly emerged into the world again over the past year, but we’ve also come to accept a different way of relating to the world.

While some relished the alone-time from the start, others have learned how to be alone, and they’ve taken the time to get to know themselves better.

We’ve found some new ways of being.

It was also exactly two weeks ago, something else happened for me as I lay in bed, discouraged and not wanting to accept my state of being; I began a venture towards a new kind of healing.

For the first time, after years of looking for alternative health doctors, I really began to find my inner strength and determination.

I discovered Wim Hof.

Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s quite famous, with millions of followers around the world. He likes to call himself the “Crazy Dutch guy.”

The media calls him “The Ice Man.” (You can also watch him on The Goop Lab. Highly recommended).

Wim Hof has shown the world the capacity of the human body.

Through his breathing methods, exposure to extreme cold, and mind-set, thousands of people have been healed of all kinds of serious illness and disease.

Commitment is the most important, perhaps. If you don’t stick to it, it won’t work—just like everything else.

Wim Hof has helped me really believe in the miracle of my body—the miracle that the body not only wants, but knows how to heal itself by connecting to the Universal Energy (call it God, if you want—that mysterious energy).

Wim Hof is not a freak of nature. He can train anyone to do what he can do—and he does.

And he doesn’t worry about what his skin looks like, or his aging white hair. He doesn’t want to “stay immature.”

Of course, it’s way easier for a man, as we know. But shouldn’t we be taking men as an example in this (one) way, at least this time? Shouldn’t we, as women, strive to overcome the ridiculous standards society sets for us in terms of how our body looks, and go instead for the inner strength and power?

My daughters are turning 22 and 29 today and tomorrow, respectively. My greatest wish and prayer for them on their birthdays is that they put their inner strength, health and happiness above their outward appearance to face the challenges of this world, and that they continue to bloom and mature in ways that will shift the paradigm.

As a matter of fact, I wish the same for you as well.

With commitment, we can all learn to face the challenges of this crazy world in new ways, with inner strength, health and, yes, maybe even happiness.

Because who wants a society full of immature, whiny, spoiled children?

And let us say Amen.

Deaf, Blind & Dumb? Sh’mini

If you grew up in the U.S. educational system back in the 60’s and ‘70’s (or beyond—I don’t really know), then when you learned about the amazing Helen Keller, it was from the book or the play, The Miracle Worker.

We were told she was completely cut off from the world until her teacher, Anne Sullivan, came along. Helen Keller is described and shown as violent and resistant to learning as a child. The blurb on the back of the book describes her as "a wild animal.”

I just heard this really amazing podcast on The Experiment called, “The Helen Keller Exorcism.”

It’s all about the false picture—the ghost, the myth, of who she was.

From Keller’s own writing, we learn that instead of being wild and uncontrollable, she had a very peaceful childhood, not at all cut off from the world before Sullivan comes into the picture.

In the end, you learn that she went on to become a public speaker, Vaudeville performer, and to write over a dozen books. An incredibly accomplished woman, yet also forced to conform as a woman of her time.

Her true self was a very outspoken socialist and feminist, blaming the ills of women on marriage, and a defender of people with disabilities—that is, until she bought into the Eugenics movement. Then, shockingly, she advocates only for children proven to have a good working brain, of normal intelligence, to be worthy of life.

To the woman being interviewed on the podcast, one born with the same disabilities as Keller, this is a immense disappointment.

Though Keller later changes her mind about Eugenics, it takes a while for the interviewee to finally come to a place of understanding of how Keller could ever be a spokesperson for such ideas; though physically deaf and blind, Keller has heard her whole life that she is “deficient” and sees herself as a burden to society and all those around her.

Her family even convinces her that the man who wishes to marry her, and whom she is deeply in love with, must have an ulterior motive; they block her marriage. From this, we see her as an adult still sitting on the lap of Anne Sullivan—never allowed to fully be herself.

How many times are myths created and perpetuated just by repeating them enough times that everyone begins to believe them—especially about the worthiness of some people over others? How often is it deep-seated racism or sexism, or any kind of -ism, despite our greatest efforts? How often are we ourselves on the lower rungs?

This week in Torah, Aaron’s sons bring an “alien” fire for the sacrifice, one defined thus because God did not command it.

As a result, they are immediately consumed by a deadly fire.

Aaron’s sons are deemed unworthy of life because of a decision they’ve made without God’s sanctification. Their crime is to think for themselves.

Just the use of the word “alien” is a problem, both for biblical times and our times as well—as in the way we as Americans describe undocumented people, as if the earth is not their home as well, and we have ownership over the land.

Moses’ response to his brother's sons’ death is to chide Aaron for their behavior. He essentially says, “See? That’s what happens!” He takes God’s side; they were not worthy of life.

Aaron’s response to his brother is silence.

Silence can mean many things, but I think we can understand Aaron’s silence at that moment—maybe like the stunned silence I describe feeling as the war on Ukraine was beginning.

On the NPR Fresh Air episode, Healing and Heartbreak in a Chicago ER, I heard an ER doctor who talks about the hierarchy of patients that exists in Emergency Rooms around the country; there is an actual VIP list, and patients who come in are marked and treated as such if applicable.

The lives of supposedly Very Important People are deemed superior to the “common” folk—especially poor people of color—and the VIP’s get the care they need.

This ER doctor, though he teaches at a university, has remained in the ER on the Southside of Chicago. He wants to stay in touch with the humanity of the people who live there—and who hardly ever get the kind of care they need.

He wants to see even the gang members who come in with gunshot wounds as just as human as everyone else.

Our healthcare system clearly reflects our society’s attitude towards its members.

I wonder how many people would defend God’s decision to murder Aaron’s two sons on the spot? Would they say they were “deficient” in their way of serving God by acting of their own volition?

The message of this myth might be that those who do will be silenced by the hierarchical system of this God whose maleness is part of the myth.

Helen Keller was a victim of her times, obviously. As a person, as a woman with disabilities, she was seen as deficient and burdensome.

Helen Keller left Vaudeville, despite her immense talent and people begging her to stay, and went to work fulltime for an organization that was supposed to be a spokesperson for people like her. She became their poster child.

As a result, she had to conform to the story they wanted her to tell of her life—and she told it over and over again.

Her new story meant giving up her true story, which included her socialist and feminist beliefs. Amazingly and ironically, Keller herself unwittingly ended up co-creating and perpetuating the myth of who she was.

The way Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson has been treated by the GOP, not to mention the silence of the Democrats in defending her, is just more of the same. And the Democrats’ silence is not Aaron’s kind of silence.

All that Jackson is experiencing, as a woman, as a Black woman, results from the same societal ills that existed during Helen Keller’s time, even if they’ve changed somewhat. They are trying to silence her. They’re giving her a new story.

The Torah is full of myths, but that doesn’t mean they’re based on the kind of world the True God wants.

So, will the True God please stand up?

And may we be the representatives of that True God—with clear sight, hearing and speech for those in need of our support. May we not be blinded and deafened by the repetition of myths, those told about us and others, and most of all, let us not be dumb—or silent.

And say Amen.

Turning it Upside Down: Tzav

I’ve been writing this here weekly blog on the parsha over the past year and a half, and there’s something that has lately begun to bother me more and more. It’s always bothered me, but just now it’s really weighing on me, and I’m not sure how to handle it going forward.

As a woman becoming a rabbi in a male-oriented profession, of course it bothers me that the focus of Torah is on the men for the most part; rarely do we hear from women and their point of view.

By focusing only on Torah in my blogs, I have felt like I am participating in and continuing the sexism that exists in Judaism and our holy books.

I also have not properly learned ungendered, nonbinary or feminine language for prayers. It doesn’t really matter to me personally because I don’t think of “God” in binary/masculine/feminine terms at all, really. I simply translate in my mind as I was taught to do in Jewish Renewal.

In fact, I don’t think of God as any gender at all, but rather as “The Divine” or “The Source of All Life.” Sometimes I say it out loud, sometimes just inside me (you can read more about my orientation and the Jewish Renewal movement by clicking here on this link).

Also, having grown up Jewish but mostly illiterate in Judaism, I needed to start with learning the stories of the Bible.

And I was told, “Start by solidifying your knowledge of biblical Hebrew.” So that’s what I’ve been doing.

Which has been fine, because it’s been part of my development as a rabbi. You have to know the stories of the Bible in order to be a rabbi! People won’t notice if you’re not so familiar with the Prophets or Talmud, but they will notice if you don’t know the Torah.

My recent learning has also meant that it’s been a very big stretch for me to learn new language that can substitute the old in order to update the orientation. I am aware that some people may be offended or feel left out, and I never want to do that.

But this year is the 50th anniversary of the ordination of the first female American rabbi, Sally Priesand. When I heard her give a talk about her experience during a Zoom meeting last Sunday, I had just finished reading the parsha this week.

And something that had stopped me in my tracks while reading was that “the males” were allowed to eat of the sacrificial animals—translated as, “only” the males of the lineage of the priests were permitted to do so.

It struck me as strange that the text had to indicate specifically that it was the males, and that the translation had to emphasize, “only.”

Why? Was there even a question that females from the priestly lineage would be able to participate?

Apparently so, or they wouldn’t have to say it.

Which could mean that there was a time when females did participate in such rites. In fact, it is known that women had a greater role in different times and various places as Jewish leaders. This is the root of the Kohenet movement.

Also, as Rabbi Sally Priesand said, I don’t believe that God wanted women to be excluded or silenced. I believe this is a human construct.

Priesand also points out that God introduces Godself as “Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” , I will be what I will be—meaning, anything we need God to be in any moment.

Which makes the whole male orientation of the Torah suspect, of course—meaning, which stories were canonized and who made those decisions?

From Priesand, I also learned of Regina Jonas who was the actual first modern ordained female rabbi, born and educated in Berlin in the 1920’s. She was with her community until her murder at Auschwitz.

I’d never heard of her, though I had learned of Janusz Korczak when I was child—the famous Polish children’s writer, doctor, orphanage headmaster who accompanied his young orphans as they were taken to Treblinka to be murdered along with them despite numerous opportunities to escape.

Was Korczak more famous because he was a male? Or because he was first a children’s writer?

Without a doubt, I think it’s safe to say that it was and is easier to become famous as a male for doing things like they did. We are less surprised and touched when a woman chooses to do the “motherly” thing of caretaking and accompanying.

And both Priesand and Jonas had a hell of a time becoming recognized as legitimate rabbis, or even as worthy of being ordained, simply because they were female.

So how do I proceed at this point with my writing, now that I am better schooled in Hebrew and the Torah?

I know what my next “stretch” is, but I’m not sure exactly how that will manifest. I feel a little impatient with myself.

In the Zoom meeting, Priesand was asked to talk about patience as a woman and how to remain so in today’s world with all the changes we feel we should have seen by now.

As women, we are so used to being asked to be patient. Patience is a virtue, they say.

Yet, we often feel like there’s no time for patience. Our patience is running thin—not just as women, but as humans, no matter what our label, who want to see a world that’s improving, not falling backwards.

Yet, again, in a sense, patience, like love, is something we must have. Without it, we lose our humanity.

I heard Krista Tippett ask Thich Nhat Hanh about this problem—who died recently at the age of 95—a man who had compassion and forgiveness for the American soldiers who were responsible for so much death in his home country.

He said violence cannot end violence; only compassion and understanding can do that: listening deeply; removing wrong perceptions is what will end war and terrorism. We need to be able to talk to each other. Restoring communication is what will create peace.

People in power would say they can not wait for communication to happen. But is there an alternative? The war in Iraq was based on wrong perceptions. We got caught in Iraq and Afghanistan for 20 years as a result. What will happen in Ukraine?

Thich Nhat Hanh said in this interview back in 2003, “You have the right to be angry, but you don’t have the right not to practice in order to transform your anger; you have the right to make mistakes, but you don’t have the right to continue making the same mistakes; you have to learn from the mistakes.”

He points out that the U.S. created more terrorism in the Middle East through our war against it. The same was true of Vietnam in terms of communism.

It follows that having less patience will not create faster change.

Yesterday was Purim, and on Purim, you’re supposed to turn everything on its head: get so drunk that you can’t tell your friend from your enemy.

That’s what this group of women is doing with the Torah in Beit Toratah (“Her Torah”); rewriting the entire Torah by feminizing all the masculine characters and language, and masculinizing all the feminine. It’s a fascinating practice, because when you read it with the changes, it doesn’t actually solve the problems of oppression and domination.

You realize how disturbing it is that now the women are the rapists and warriors and the men are the raped and murdered.

Is this really what we want? To simply turn the tables?

Not if it’s the same old Empire under a different name, like Putin identifying with Soviet Monarchs just as much as with the old Russian Tzars.

So, what do we do?

We focus on love, on sending love, on nourishing, on building, on feeding and caring for—even for our “enemies"—just like Tich Nath Hanh said and lived by.

Maybe this is women’s work, but again, we don’t need to define it that way, because both men and women are capable of the same. What we are trying to do is build a world that is non-binary, that does not differentiate between women’s and men’s domains—that acknowledges that all are capable of nurturing and caring.

This time around, let’s really turn everything on its head.

Only then will we overcome this world dominated by war and hatred.

We are in the death throws of the patriarchy, which would make anyone impatient. But we can still make a different choice.

Instead of reacting and smashing things, let’s practice love and patience—all of us, for everyone.

And let us say Amen.

How do we?? (Va’yikra)

Last week, like I said, I felt speechless with regard to the war in Ukraine.

I think I’m finding my voice, though.

It's not that I didn't actually have anything to say about it. I've just been in shock. I still feel a little like, what's the point in talking about it?

I hear of and see the images, like everyone else, of air strikes on hospitals and schools; of thousands leaving on foot in freezing temperatures; of food and water shortages, refugees entering Poland, the doors to the borders open—still.

My heart breaks. Can we all take just one more thing? After two years of pandemic?

Of course, analysis is necessary in order to understand, and that takes talking.

And then there is the manipulation of words and speech—like Putin’s excuse for the invasion, calling Ukraine a place full of Nazi-sympathizers.

Meanwhile, he is the Anti-Semite Nazi-sympathizer. Ukraine has moved beyond that to a great extent it would seem, with their elected president a Jew, and with a huge Jewish community that was stable and safe, unlike in the rest of Europe.

In terms of speech, I’m also thinking about the silencing of journalists in Russia, but also about the outpouring of support for the refugees from Poland and other countries.

I’m wondering, as we watch the images, if there is more sympathy for these refugees than others; so many references to and parallels with WWII from the start. True, there are important Jewish sites, yet this is not a Jewish war.

Is the outpouring of support for these refugees greater because they are European and white—more “like Americans”? Is it because they dress like us and their way of life is more familiar to us?

Do we see them as more human than we did and do those forced to flee from Iraq and Afghanistan—the dark-skinned Muslims, labeled terrorists—labeled less than human, like the Jews were during World War II and throughout history? 

How much did we buy into that?

Why is our government and the European Union not taking a stronger stance? Is it really about not wanting to repeat the errors of war over the past 20 years? How is this at all the same as our invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan?

The people of Russia may be in the dark about what is going on in Ukraine, though I imagine that’s changing as companies like BP and McDonald’s close up and pull out.

But we are not in the dark, and haven’t been.

Yet our response, like God’s in so many places in the Bible, is too late to prevent the suffering of millions of people. 

This week’s parsha is all about how to make expiation for different types of wrongdoings contrary to Israelite law: when one does so knowingly; when one unwittingly does so—and when one does not speak up when they know someone else has done so.

Of course, in the Bible it’s as simple as bringing animals as offerings for sacrifice. It’s all laid out for us, clear, though maybe not so clean; there’s always lots of blood.

The journalists in Russia are in a position where, if they speak out, they are arrested, tortured, maybe killed–yet they and Anti-War activists continue to do so.

Their blood is being spilled—and they are doing so willingly, sacrificing themselves, so to speak, for the greater good.

How can expiation be made for the rest of us, though, in a case like this?

The crimes are committed knowingly, but expiation must be made for those who unwittingly commit crimes as well, not to mention those who are silent.

If we believe that Mashiach (the Messiah) will come when we create a world of love and peace, equality and justice, then we need to scream louder.

The trauma we have all experienced over the past two years of the pandemic, in addition to the ways the pandemic has plunged many into deeper debt, greater housing and food insecurity, leaves people feeling zapped of energy to participate in protest, not to mention more depressed; trauma leaves people without the strength to speak out effectively.

Again, I am still kind of speechless, but I know I must find my voice.

May we all find our strength and our voices, despite the trauma, and may our governments find more than their voices.

Scary Good Girls (P’kudei)

I have no words for what’s happening in Ukraine. Yet, do I have the right to talk about anything besides the Ukraine?

Also, anything I would say, others have said already.

All are upset, angry, incensed, frightened.

Some are inspired by those staying back and fighting—civilians taking up arms to defend their country. Others are inspired by worldwide meetings for prayer.

So, instead of talking about Ukraine, I’m going to talk about a series I’ve been watching obsessively every night over the past couple of weeks: Good Girls.

My husband, who, like many men who fit the stereotype, loves watching war movies—the gorier the better—finds this show too scary;

All at once, very serious, very deep and very funny: ridiculous, unlikely, impossible, yet believable enough on certain levels that you get hooked. It keeps the heavy stuff just light enough that you can keep watching. It matches the reality and tragedy of life with the absurdity of people and our idiosyncrasies.

Above all, perhaps, it calls out societal problems that make it impossible for many to live a “normal” (and honest) life: low-paying jobs, high mortgages, medical bills, and basically no safety net in the wealthiest country in the world for those who play by the rules.

Three unlikely women—two sisters who couldn’t be more different, and the third, their best friend—from middle class backgrounds: the sisters are white; their friend, Black. They are “good girls” in desperate straights for different reasons.

They start their life of crime by robbing a grocery store, and are sucked into a whole crime ring. As they get deeper and deeper in, they both can’t and don’t want to get out because of the money, as hard as they try, as much as they commit each time to stop.

It gets bloody and gross, but also manages to stay light enough to laugh. It gets crazier and crazier—kind of like our world right now.

This week we finish reading the Book of Exodus. It’s a leap year, a “pregnant year,” as the term in Hebrew is translated; the month of Adar is doubled up; the double parshas (parshiot) we normally have are singled out.

Adar is the month of Purim, the holiday that tells (and acts out) the story of Esther and Mordechai and Haman, when everything gets turned on its head and we are “commanded” to get drunk enough to not know our enemy from our friend.

Good Girls break most, though not all, stereotypes we live with as Americans; the “nice, white girls” are criminals; the Black woman and her family are educated, honest and straight-laced under normal circumstances; the gang leaders, though Mexican and covered in tattoos, are not sexually manipulative and have very sophisticated taste in furniture.

And so it goes.

P’kudei is a repetition of the construction of the Tabernacle in all its detail. It is a finishing. A completion in itself. It’s how the Book of Exodus ends.

The parsha ends with God filling the space with “his” glory, during which time Moses can not enter the tent—not sure if it’s because he’s forbidden, or literally unable.

By day, a cloud (apparently God) settles over it, and by night, fire fills it.

This will happen throughout their forty years in the desert; as long as the cloud hovers over it, the Israelites know that they can not move forward. The lifting of the cloud signifies that it is time to move on.

Can we stand just one more thing? Another war? Along with a pandemic?

Can’t we just move on, beyond the horrors?

Cloud covering by day; fire by night. How do we move on?

We the (good and many) People of the United States of America, along with the people of Ukraine and all good people around the globe, are trying our hardest, in our own individual and collective ways, to do what we can to change the status quo, to stand up for and defend and preserve what needs defending and preserving: to put out the fires, to clear away the clouds: to see clearly what needs to be seen and to lay the foundations for a new world.

The double month of Adar, pregnant with possibilities, along with the shmita year and the leap year are supposed to offer us opportunities for newness.

Maybe we can’t see it clearly yet. And we can’t figure out why the fires—all the time, it seems. And we don’t know how our story ends.

In the meantime, like the story I heard of a Ukrainian mother laughing despite everything, we have to keep laughing: it’s our resilience.

Hazzak Hazzak v’nitchazek. Strong, strong, we must be strong—for each other.

That Can’t Be All: Vayak’hel

Just the other day, a friend texted that she has to go for surgery next week and she’s scared.

I started thinking right away how I could support her. I decided I should offer to organize and lead a healing circle for her. I immediately went into overdrive, planning it all in my head.

At first she had a hard time accepting such a gift. She was embarrassed. How could she deserve such a thing? And to be the center of attention like that?

I told her the wise things others had said to me in the past, but that I never really believed applied to me—that in receiving you are giving, and how important it is to learn to receive as much as to give. Platitudes, but true.

Once she’d accepted these tenets, she said she’d like to ask others to make offerings, and I immediately relaxed. I could breathe. I didn’t have to do it all myself. I could let it unfold in a more relaxed way. We talked and I sent out an email.

No sooner had I done that than people started responding. It seemed like every singly person wanted to offer something—a prayer, a psalm, a song, a poem.

All were humble, saying only if there was room for them. Of course there was room!

But then it got to the point where so many offers were pouring in, I wondered if I should tell them, no more! But how could I? The richness of it and the desire to give were so beautiful and touching.

It made me laugh, because it reminded me of this week’s Torah reading; the Israelites are asked to bring their gifts of precious metals, special yarns, stones, skins, craftsmanship as offerings to help in the building of the mishkan, the tabernacle, that temporary dwelling place for God in the desert.

The response is so great that Moses has to say, Okay, enough! Stop. There’s too much.

But I wondered, how can it be too much?

It feels like such a let-down when a person wants to give and they’re told they can’t. I thought, there must be other channels for these gifts.

Because there can never be an over-abundance of love and sharing, and that’s what the gifts represent. They are our natural desire to build something beautiful for others, but also for the common good.

Again, like I talked about last week in “I Asked for Rags” in relation to our limited imaginations, there must be another way of using all the offerings; there are endless ways that society needs improvement.

As for me, it was another lesson in accepting help from others as a gift as well, and that I don’t have to do it alone, either.

May we open our imaginations and find ever more creative ways of giving and accepting gifts—for, as much as it is a platitude, in the receiving there is giving, and in the giving, there is receiving.

And say Amen.

And I Asked for Rags: Ki Tissa

My older daughter is in Mexico this week with her fiancé for a friend’s wedding. She texted me and asked if I had any special requests.

Special requests? As in “things to buy.”

I hadn’t thought about it, but then I remembered the floor-cleaning rags I brought home with me when I lived there back in the 80’s. I still have one, a hearty, cotton weave, and it’s starting to fall apart. You can’t get those anywhere in the U.S., at least not in New York. Who knows if they still even make them? Maybe they get everything from China these days like we do?

I know you’re probably laughing. Of all the things I could ask for, I want some rags!

But it wasn’t for lack of imagination. I could think of beautiful hand-blown glasses. Or some hand-painted Mexican scenes, or woven hangings. You know: indigenous handicrafts.

But, honestly, I not only have everything I need and more; I still have the gorgeous things I brought back from Mexico over thirty years ago.

This week in Torah, the people get nervous waiting for Moses to come down from the mountain. He’s been up there way too long talking to God.

In their anxiety, they gang up on Aaron, Moses’ brother, and tell him to make for them a god. Aaron commands them to give him their gold and he makes a molten calf.

God tells Moses to hurry down from the mountain, and he finds this mayhem.

In his fury, he takes the two tablets he has carved with God’s words on them and smashes them to the ground.

After some 3,000 die at the hands of their own people, brothers slaying brothers and other kin, neighbors slaying neighbors, Moses tells God to forgive the people their terrible sin.

Moses almost threatens, if you won’t, “please erase me from your Book of Life.”

So much about this story is disturbing. Does Moses regret having lost his temper?

Moses claims that God has commanded brother to slay brother. Does he now regret not having challenged God earlier? Otherwise, why speak up now, after the fact?

It is obvious that the Israelites lack the imagination to fathom the greatness of God; they can’t understand how God could be more than a carved image.

But Moses also lacks the imagination to understand the people’s fear and anxiety as they learn about this new “God” thing, or to find other ways of solving the problems among the people besides killing.

And Aaron lacks the imagination to figure out how to put the people off a little longer. Maybe he tries, but the story doesn’t tell us that.

But we can understand that, right? Because we also jump to do before thinking. We also lack imagination. We can’t fathom God either.

Not only that; we are so limited in our thinking that we can’t imagine solutions to the problems we have on Earth at this moment—the many, serious problems—beyond what we already know. We are living in such trying times, yet we each of us so limited in our thinking, that we only draw on our previous experiences.

In the parsha, after all has calmed down, Moses tells God to let God’s way be known to him; Moses really wants to wants know God. Perhaps this is a sign that he is trying to know how to do things differently next time—because his imagination does not allow him to know.

Sort of in response, God tells Moses to go carve out two new tablets to replace the ones Moses shattered.

By the end of the parsha, Moses’ face is glowing with God’s glory after being in conversation with God. This glow is frightening to the people, and Moses learns to cover his face so as not to freak the people out.

We, also, would like to really know God—and perhaps not be frightened by the glow of the Divine. We, also, would like God to show us the way forward.

Unfortunately, all we can do is keep trying to open our minds to a way forward that we can’t even imagine, so when we see the glow, we can be open to it and not turn our faces away.

Maybe then we can carve new tablets as well: tablets that have hewn on them the way for recreating the world in ways we can’t even imagine.

Going “back to normal” shouldn’t even be in our vocabulary.

Because as we know, often things have to be broken in order to build something new. Without them being broken, we often even lack the imagination to know that something needed fixing in the first place.

And the rags? Well, maybe they’re there to help clean up the mess, making a clean slate for the new tablets we will carve out for our future.

Bells on Their Robes & Blood on Their Hands: Tetzaveh

Since reading this week’s parsha, I’ve been wondering what I carry on my heart.

Last week we got the detailed instructions for building the Mishkan, the sanctuary to be carried through the desert.

This week it’s detailed instructions for the priests. We learn all about the special robes and layers Moses’ brother Aaron and his sons are to wear in order to serve as priests. There are even bells along the bottoms of the robes.

The priests are to serve God on behalf of the people, and they must live up to certain standards and live by certain norms in order to be worthy. This is very sacred work.

As part of the fancy clothing, they are to symbolically carry all the tribes of Israel over, or on, their heart.

And there are instructions for the sacrifice of animals and how to use the blood, with their hands, putting it on the edges of the ears, splashed around the sides of the altar and dashed onto their sacred clothing, covering them the blood.

What’s that about, I ask?

On the Radio Lab podcast last week, they played the very first episode from fifteen years ago. One of the stories I heard really had an impact—on my heart.

It was a young boy and his best friend playing “Journalist” for a week, interviewing family, friends, neighbors, teachers. They were from a very poor Black neighborhood in Chicago. One lived in a house that had been in his family for decades, and the other lived in the low-income housing projects close by. Both lived in overcrowded, dilapidated conditions. They describe a neighborhood of high crime, drugs and extreme poverty. The public housing is infested with cockroaches.

These boys are good students, the best, trying to figure out through their interviews why some people, like the sister of the one in the house, who had once been an A-student, give up and lose hope, and some are able to get through it.

The sister interviewed is seventeen at the time, with a baby, and so depressed she barely gets out of bed. Others take care of her baby.

Her brother asks her, “How many of your friends have been killed over the years? Fifty?” “No,” she says, “not fifty.” “Forty? Thirty?”

“Yeah, maybe thirty.” Thirty people around her age!! That’s enormous!!

“Do you know who killed them?” “Some of them. But I’m not gonna tell you who.”

The boy talks about finding dozens of firearms in various people’s houses. He talks about the drugs and alcohol and the addictions in his family alone. His grandmother has lost two out of her ten children to killings. She describes the changes the neighborhood has gone through since the family bought the house generations ago.

They are, I guess you might say, among the lucky ones, just for having a house.

I was counting the years, and I realized that these boys, if they are still alive, would be my older daughter’s age now. Completely different lives and experiences. Completely different prospects.

And I wondered: if they are alive, have they lost hope? Did they continue to be honor-roll students? Did they make it out?

And if they are still alive, what scars are on their hearts?

If not, who has blood on their hands: the neighbors, or the politicians? And what was the purpose of their sacrifice?

I think it’s important to hear stories like these first-hand, as Radio Lab did so beautifully in this case, so we can be witness to the struggles of the poor, the Black, the disenfranchised. It’s too easy to think only of “our own tribes” and say, “Those people just need to try harder. They’re lazy. My people made it. Why can’t they?”

It’s too easy to think only of our own tribes, to carry only our own people and their struggles on our hearts. It’s much harder to understand other people’s circumstances and history. And those holding the power don’t really want us to understand. They want to keep our tribes separate.

Maybe that’s what the blood is all about: to remind us that all life, everyone’s life, is sacred. Blood is life-giving. And it looks the same, no matter what tribe you’re from.

And we should be of pure heart to serve God on other people’s behalf. To take that a step further, our politicians should be of pure heart to serve the people. They should not be allowed to serve if they have blood on their hands.

That’s the negative stuff.

It’s also true that there’s a shortage of workers now because, since Covid, people are not willing to sacrifice their entire lives for a big company’s gains.

I get courage from the fact that workers are gaining control and power because of this shortage. People are organizing to unionize in places like Starbucks—and they’re winning. People now know what their priorities are.

They know what is sacred to them.

As we come out of the pandemic, whenever that happens, may we stay in touch with what is sacred to us, keep our priorities straight, carry those things on our hearts, and draw strength from each other to create the sacred world we want to live in.

This is my hope and prayer.

And say Amen.

Carving out the Gifts of T’rumah

l just started acupuncture in my umpteenth effort to get to the root of the twenty-plus years of migraines I have suffered.

The acupuncturist told me to take a hot bath with Epsom salts when I get home. Being the good patient that I am, I have listened to him.

Good patient! Ha!

It’s been two years since I’ve had a bath. I’m normally very bad at taking care of myself.

When my children were young, I hardly ever carved out time for myself. I didn’t know how, and I didn’t feel deserving. I was trying so hard to undo a bit of faulty parenting I’d had, and didn’t know how to find the balance.

Not that my mother neglected me, no. She just bought into society’s value of “career” over children—especially for a woman of Liberation! She was a woman who had to do it all, and do it well—which left her with little for herself. She had to be desperate—or sick—to rest.

So, like her, I have to be in a place of desperation to give myself the gift of a bath. Or to spend money on something like acupuncture.

But for the past three weeks, since I started acupuncture, I have come home, filled the bathtub, poured salts and a few drops of essential oils into it, and soaked. This week, I even added a candle! Then I got into bed.

This week in Torah, instructions are given for building a sanctuary in the desert.

The Israelites have walked from slavery to liberation; they’ve been given the ten commandments (“utterances” is a more correct translation); they’ve trembled as they heard and saw God through thunder, lightning, fire and smoke at Mt. Sinai.

But I think my mother missed the memo about the sanctuary you’re supposed to build after you’ve been liberated.

Yes, now it's time to build a structure to “carry” God with them through the wilderness. In the wilderness, they don’t know where they are going, or where they will end up, but they will have this sanctuary.

Whether the people actually need a container for God, or God thinks they need it, there are very specific instructions for its construction: precise measurements, and gold, silver, and copper; a certain type of wood; an altar with vessels, candelabras; tent cloth and coverings of special skins and threads.

The specifics are repeated again and again and again. They’ve got to get them right.

These are stated as gifts for God—t’rumah. Or are they gifts to the people? A beautiful space to retreat from the world…?

But then there’s a most striking thing. The doorway to the sanctuary must be carved with two cherubim embedded in it.

These cherubim are fiery, scary looking angels with huge wings spread out, guarding the sanctuary. They are not cute, fat baby angels with little wings like we see depicted in old European paintings.

And God says that God will appear between them, between that fire, and speak from there.

In this crazy world, where our lives are filled with busy-ness, it’s all too easy to allow the to-do’s to intrude on any private, quiet time we may try to carve out (get the pun?) for peace and beauty.

So the Torah is right; we do need a container. We have to be precise and intentional about it. We have to make it beautiful. It’s a place to “hear God’s voice.”

And we have to be fierce about protecting it.

Last week, I talked about being intentional about time, approaching it as sacred, choosing carefully how we fill it—not getting stuck in our human construct of it.

The sanctuary we are to build for “God” is in fact a true construct of humanity. It’s a sacred place, different from time in that way. We can see it and feel it with our senses, the water, oils and candle.

I remember times in my life when I tried to create that for myself, and when someone intruded on it, I would scream and yell. Looking back, that was because I didn’t feel deserving. Having waited until I was desperate, it came out in a fiery way.

If I’d realized before I was desperate that it was time to take space for myself, then maybe I wouldn’t have been so fiery about it. Maybe those fiery angels could have just been symbolic.

Maybe all we need is a fiery inner voice that tells us we are deserving. There’s enough loud clamoring in the world around us, full of unmet needs: desperate people not being heard.

But we can’t begin to hear each other if we ourselves have unmet needs.

Yet, maybe some of us with access to such a sanctuary don’t feel deserving of it, especially when so many others are suffering.

And at the same time, carving out a sanctuary for ourselves will make us people who are better able to respond to the clamoring voices around us.

A Wedding Stuck in Time & Mishpatim

So many of the laws in Torah given to the Israelites this week on Mt. Sinai seem stuck in time:

Daughters sold by their fathers and what to do if the acquirer decides he doesn’t want her anymore; skimming the first yield of your vats; giving God your first born son? (What is this, Rumpelstiltskin? Snow White?)

Others are more translatable to today’s world—like what to do if you find your enemy’s ass lying on the ground, heavily burdened by a load on its back. (Well, you help the animal even though you hate your enemy—duh! It’s not the animal’s fault, i.e. don’t take it out on the one who didn’t do anything to you.)

Or what about “Eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth…”—which doesn’t mean you take someone’s eye or tooth out if they took yours out. Rather, the payback should be equal to the infraction; the punishment should fit the crime. Isn’t that something we’re stilling learning? Take a look at our Criminal Justice system.

But it’s so easy get stuck in the details, which don’t just seem stuck in a time very much past and only sometimes make sense to us in our time.

Similarly, we get stuck in time in our present daily lives—sometimes specifically stuck in figuring out time, thinking we can “conquer” it or “beat” it. We get bogged down by all the things that need to get done, thinking that once we’ve done them all, we’ll get to what really matters. Yet, that might never happen because we’ve filled our days with the “have-to’s".

We treat things like our children as “disturbing" us, taking us away from our “work”—a distraction (those among us who haven’t been there, please speak up)—while our children are screaming for attention, reminding us that they are what matter most.

I had just heard Oliver Burkeman, author of Time Management for Mortals talking about this very thing with Krista Tippett (the title is deliberately misleading) when I had a terrible dream.

I dreamt that I’d missed my daughter’s wedding just getting things ready for it. All I could think of was, what are we going to do about the food for a park wedding?

I woke up crying.

I talked to her that morning, and she told me how she was stressing about the food thing for the park wedding!

And here we got her a beautiful dress, and she’s not going to be able to enjoy it; it won’t feel like a real wedding.

She’s dreaming again of doing it in Dominican Republic. Her fear of Covid is gone at this point; her fiance just had it and she didn’t get it again. And by the summer, it will all be better…

Finally, after much discussion, I say, “Fuck it. Let’s do it in D.R.”

“Really, Mommy?” she says sweetly.

“Yes. These are the important things in life. Let’s just do it. No regrets.”

“Aaaaawwww, thank you, Mommy…”

She’s so happy. I’m so happy. It’s settled.

Then it’s not.

She calls the next day; the timing is all wrong. She’s rushing. She’s trying to please everyone, and finally realizes that’s not possible—a good lesson for life.

Here we are again, faced with time.

Like the timing in Torah being all wrong for us. Yet it’s also timeless.

Because, what is time, after all? We plan, we do everything according to what’s “right,” but anything can change in a flash. If there’s one thing we should have learned from Covid, it’s to let go of the plans, let go of the to-do’s as much as possible, and just remember that paying attention to what really matters is the most important thing.

I was just reading the Piaseczner Rebbe again yesterday. He taught that time is a construct of humanity, the way we count the days and the seasons according to the sun or the moon. Yet if we treat time as sacred, that changes everything.

May we remember what is sacred each time we begin to worry about time—and act on it.

And say Amen.

Snakes—or toilet brushes? (Yitro)

This past Monday, we remembered the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Also, Desmond Tutu died just before the new year.

Both of these men had great faith in God and in humanity. They believed in the possibility of achieving justice and equal rights—freedom and transformation—and never stopped until they died.

If you remember, last week in Torah, the Israelites walked to freedom through two walls of water as Moses parted the sea with his staff.

Moses’ staff is a very important symbol of transformation. Back when Moses was asking God, “How will I prove to others that you’re for real?” God demonstrated his power by turning Moses’ staff into a snake. (Or better yet, maybe Moses’ staff became a toilet brush for those toilets of mine that needed a good scrub last week!)

This week, now in the desert with hundreds of thousands of Israelites, Moses is struggling with his responsibility and leadership. All these people depend on him for his knowledge about God and to manage their legal disputes.

Moses must learn to delegate, and it’s his father-in-law, Jethro (Yitro), who imparts such wisdom to him. Jethro comes with wisdom around leadership as a priest, but also brings Moses’ wife and children; “Don’t forget your family,” is this piece of wisdom.

But Jethro also now understands that “God” is greater than all other gods. Having heard of all the wonders God did for Moses’ people, he now believes. He now has faith.

The Israelites, for their part, also hear. Moses is instructed to bring them to the foot of Mt. Sinai where they witness and hear God through thunder and lightning. And they hear God’s voice as he gives over the ten commandments, one of which is not to worship false gods—to remember that everything, though seemingly separate, is interconnected and One.

Terrified and trembling at such a spectacle, they now have faith in the One God.

I can’t believe that it’s less than two years ago that the Black Lives Matter movement was full of energy. Those voices could be heard loud and clear—as a powerful One. Back then, white voices willing to talk about race and take responsibility for racism were loud and clear.

Now, it seems like a distant past. The voices of racism have gained power.

Now, there are laws in several states prohibiting the teaching of Critical Race Theory. Many other states are moving toward such bans, which often include any kinds of books that point to slavery, Jim Crow, or the Civil Rights Movement.

Many white parents proclaim their fear that their children could be “harmed” by making them “uncomfortable.”

They declare that Racism is no longer a “thing.” (Listen to Talking While Black on This American Life—it’s fascinating, absurd and disturbing!)

Yet today, we can still hear God’s voice crying out for One-ness.

We, like the Israelites, hear it through huge, destructive storms, often with loud claps of lightning and thunder like we only rarely used to hear. God is telling us to take care of our precious earth, and with greater frequency and more urgency.

We hear it through contemporary, sometimes thundering voices similar to Martin Luther King, but more often in the collective voices of people in the streets shouting for equality and justice for all people, not just the privileged and the white.

Those voices may not be as loud or as powerful at the moment as those seeking to separate and divide us, to worship false gods—but we must not lose faith. We mustn’t forget the power of our voices together. Marin Luther King and Desmond Tutu would be very disappointed if we did, after all that was achieved and all the lives sacrificed.

We must not forget the power of transformation, not just of symbolic transformations like staffs turning into snakes, but a real awakening of our all belonging to One Human Family and to Earth.

And can we say, Amen?

Toilet Bowls and Walls of Water: B’Shalakh

I was at an online conference this week. I would have normally been present for it in Colorado, but in-person was canceled due to Covid. It was so disappointing for me not to be with my friends and colleagues, I had a hard time staying present for the screen at first.

At one point, I got up to go to the bathroom, and just to stall for more time, I began scrubbing my toilet. Then I went to the other bathroom (yes, I have two!) and scrubbed that one, too. Both were long overdue for a cleaning, so I had a good excuse.

And now I feel like I have nothing to say about the Torah this week, but I can’t not write when this is the centerpiece of Torah!

I mean, who doesn’t have an image in their head from a movie or a coloring book of a wall of water, one on the right, one on the left, Moses with his long robes and staff leading hundreds of thousands of people through dry land to freedom, with Pharaoh’s chariots behind them.

Okay, here’s something; the parsha starts like this: “When Pharaoh let the people go (b’shalakh) God did not lead them (v’lo nakham) by way of the land of the Philistines, although it was nearer; for God said, ‘The people may have a change of heart (yinakhem) when they see war, and return to Egypt.’”

In other words, they will become discouraged or afraid because the Philistines may not let them go through their land and they’ll start a war. Thus, they might have a change of heart, turn around and go back to Egypt, back to the place where they were slaves, because that seems easier at the moment—less scary than what they’re facing.

The word for “lead” is the same spelling as the word for “change of heart.” Why? I couldn’t find any commentaries on this by from “the rabbis.” Does this mean I’ve got nothing here? Am I wrong? Probably. But no matter. Life is all about taking chances.

The point is, the Israelites don’t get to freedom in a straight line. None of it is easy. Just like for us. Are we heading to freedom? Eventually? I don’t know. We can hope.

But also, speaking of words, hope is a useless word, really. It takes us out of the present and into the future, and then we worry. All the time. So much. Useless.

Anyhow, God is leading them in a roundabout way to freedom. It’s a scary road they’re on. It’s a scary road we’re on, too.

When things are hard and we face challenges, we might easily have a change of heart and turn around to what we imagine was easier. We begin reminiscing of old times, like they were better times. But they weren’t. They really weren’t.

It’s the same as I’ve been saying; we think we want to go back to the way things were before—to some “normal.” But we don’t really. And we can’t anyway. The way things were, the way we were, was unsustainable, just like in the 1973 movie with Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. They wished they could work it out, but the reality is, though they loved each other, they just couldn’t.

Whether we’re heading towards freedom or not, whether God is leading us in a roundabout way or not, one thing is for sure; we must go forward. There is no other way to go.

For that, we must stay present. Aware. Awake. Taking risks. Paying attention. Whether it’s to the toilet bowls or the online conferences. (Forgive me. I’m feeling very silly tonight. It’s bedtime. But can we still say Amen?)

Come into the Darkness: Bo

All I’ve been hearing about, besides the pandemic, over the past two weeks is January 6th. As I write today, it’s January 6th, a new day to commemorate in U.S. history, and all I can think about is darkness.

As the ninth plague, after the locusts eat all the greenery and before the death of the firstborn, a darkness descends upon Egypt so thick, it is described as “palpable.” It is a darkness so heavy, the people are paralyzed; no one can see “his fellow.” They do not move for three whole days!

It’s a darkness worse than winter, maybe like the darkness of the pandemic, the darkness of our global climate crisis, the darkness of our political situation.

And so many of us are so caught up in day to day and moment by moment survival, we can not see beyond our own noses. We are almost paralyzed. For sure, we can not “see our fellow.” We also cannot hear our fellow. We can’t even talk to our fellow.

My father would have said, “That’s exactly where they want us.”

By “they” he meant, “The Ruling Class.” He would explain: “If everyone is so poor, competing with each other, blaming other groups for their problems, there’s no time or energy for organizing.”—At least not the kind of organizing that brings people together.

What we saw on January 6th was exactly that; the “other” is causing our problem.

In other words, it’s a kind of slavery, but a very clever kind of slavery, hidden from view. “They” have us exactly where “they” want us: tied up in our technology and shut away in our houses to the extent that that can happen, while “they” are happily inventing more distractions for us, keeping us scrambling—not to mention hopeless and in despair at the enormity of the world’s problems.

But there’s something else in this week’s parsha; before we even know how the story ends, before we even walk to freedom, there’s a hint that this story will not end badly.

Despite the oppression, despite the darkness and death all around, God tells the Israelites that there will be a holiday commemorating this time in history; their children will one day ask about this, and they must be ready with an answer. It’s actually spelled out here.

Though the worst is perhaps still to come, there is a story of victory in the end.

This story, so central to Judaism, was the story that kept African American slaves going; it was a story of liberation they needed to hear, and it was their faith in God that kept them going, moving, trying, fighting. It was a faith cultivated over generations, not overnight.

That’s the kind of faith we need right now to keep moving, trying, fighting. It’s faith we need in order to talk to, see and hear each other despite the darkness.

We can afford to stop for a few days to rest, but we can’t afford to be paralyzed by the darkness.

And let us say Amen.

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.