Priests and Blessings: Naso

This week in Naso, we have the longest parsha of all the 54 weekly portions, and interestingly, we have the shortest, most concise blessing, so poetic, that appears in the Torah.

It is what we call the Priestly Blessing, which appears in an interesting place in the Torah this week:

We have just learned of what will happen to a woman (through magic, or a type of witchcraft, mind you) if she has been unfaithful to her husband; “her belly shall distend and her thigh shall sag; and the woman shall become a curse among her people.” (Ugh.)

(Nothing, on the other hand, will happen to her husband if he was seized by a fit of jealousy and was wrong. Ugh again.)

Following this curse is a description of the Nazarite, the one who dedicates themself to God, shaving/not cutting their hair for a certain period of time, making special burnt offerings in the Temple.

After this, we get the Priestly Blessing, so commonly used, in blessing our children at home and in shul, on Holy Days, in our traveling prayers.

I keep my writing brief this week, as I have continued to recover from Covid (doing much better now!), and basically felt inspired by nothing this week (well, not exactly).

But I think we need a blessing.

May you be blessed and protected

May life deal kindly and graciously with you

May favor be bestowed upon you

And may you be granted peace

Blessings for our country, our world, our dear Earth, and for each of us as we go through our personal struggles.

And say Amen. 

Miami Vice: B’midbar

I just returned from a whirlwind of a trip over Memorial Day Weekend to Miami.

I got the phone call at noon on Thursday, when I was almost three hours north of the city; the main teacher of this trip of fifteen teens, Latinx and Jewish, was sick with Covid, and they needed a replacement.

Could I make it to JFK airport by 6 O’clock that evening?

Yes! Yes! Yes! Though Crazy, Crazy, Crazy!

And I made it there before anyone!

It was my first time in Florida! (Yes, I know; unusual for a Jew, but I am an unusual Jew.)

And though I am sick with Covid, I feel compelled to write. (And of course I got Covid! No one wears masks on airplanes anymore—and especially not in Florida!)

Plus, I barely slept for four days.

But it was an AMAZING trip!

It was the culmination of a year-long program of these Jewish and Latino kids working together—yet they had barely interacted until now.

This was our job—to get them to talk to each other, separated by their own little safe groups, their very own tribes: the Orthodox Jewish boys from one school, the groups of Latino kids from their public schools, the one Jewish girl who didn’t have a tribe.

We did museums, community gardening, Salsa dance lessons, the beach…

But the most important thing was the time we spent sharing and listening to each other’s stories in smaller, mixed groups.

It was through personal stories that the kids finally connected across the vast cultural and socioeconomic chasm that separates us in our society.

Little by little, they opened up to each other.

Each one felt heard. Each one felt like they counted.

By the last day, they were dancing, playing, laughing and jumping in the hotel pool together. They had finally bonded.

This week we begin the fourth book of the Torah: Numbers/B’midbar/In the Desert.

And the first thing that happens in this last book is, everyone is counted: Each tribe, each individual—well, each male—I have to be truthful.

But that’s an important fact.

Because it begs the question: who among us is not counted? Who doesn’t count in society’s wider eye?

One of the things we did as a group was learn about the housing crisis in Florida, especially Miami.

There’s so much “speculation” going on, so much construction—but it’s all for the wealthy; the average local person is being priced out, much like in New York City.

This vice I saw in Miami of over-consumption of resources (fancy buildings, high-blasting air conditioning, bottled water) in a place that nature didn’t intend to have large human populations, is something that’s happening all over our country.

As a society that supports “market speculation,” building where we shouldn’t be for those who don’t need it, we are not counting those who need to be counted.

Seeing the immensity of the problem in such a concentrated way made me feel overwhelmed and helpless.

But at the same time, I was given an incredible gift.

Being with these young people, hearing them exchange their stories, seeing them connect despite vast differences, and listening to their solutions to the problems, their passion and drive to make change happen, gave me hope.

There was a small amount of healing in our tiny corner of the Earth this weekend.

I told them, if they are our future, then there is hope for the future of humanity.

And let us Amen.

Love the Earth (and moss): B’khukotai

The other day, I was talking to a neighbor, and I told her about the Emergency Rental Assistance Program that was created in New York State during the pandemic—incredibly helpful to many people.

She was happy to hear about the program, but soon moved on to the subject of “personal responsibility.”

She complained bitterly about people who “take advantage of the system that’s supposed to help hard-working people.”

“These people have four kids they can’t support, and take hand-outs instead of going out and getting a job—I don’t care, even if it’s at McDonald’s!” she yelled.

Her point was, people need to learn to live within their means.

True…

But then I tried to veer the conversation off the individual, towards the systemic issues that plague our society. I reminded her that McDonald’s doesn’t pay enough to cover anybody’s rent, no matter where you live.

She wasn’t having any of it: “I pay my taxes so somebody else can buy drugs by trading their food stamps for cash! My mother worked three jobs so she could feed us!” she yelled.

I see my neighbor’s pride as a beautiful thing that I wish for every struggling person, but to hear her talk this way made me really sad.

It was a reflection of the extremely successful indoctrination of millions of Americans to take the blame for being poor.

It reminded me of the Bush presidency years, when George W. commended a woman for doing just that (“You work three jobs…How amazing!”).

Where was the question of government responsibility? Where was the awareness that no one should have to work three jobs just to make ends meet?

It takes responsibility off the government for the very poor job it does in taking care of its residents.

Our taxes should be to make sure that everyone gets their basic needs met; it should be a reciprocal relationship, especially in a country with such wealth as ours.

Yet abuse of the tax system in our government, by our government and among rich and poor alike is rampant.

And then there is abuse of our land.

This week’s parsha, B’Khukotai, continues with the laws we are to abide by as a people if we are to have our needs met, with enough food for all.

It says that “God will walk among us” if we listen, but if we don’t, we will have pestilence, we will be so hungry that we eat our own children, and we will be constantly on the run, though no one is pursuing us.

It seems that’s where we are: living with widespread pestilence and constant fear—not to mention eating our children’s future away in our abuse of the Earth.

The parsha goes on to say that the land will no longer yield because we have not followed the laws of Shmita and Yovel/Sabbatical and Jubilee.

Therefore, the land will take its sabbatical, its Shabbat, its rest, simply by not yielding.

Finally, the Earth will regain its balance and God will remember the covenant God made with our ancestors.

I was listening to On Being, and I heard botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer, in an interview with Krista Tippett. She says we could learn a lot from plants and their particular intelligence, but especially from moss.

Being very small, moss is very poor at taking resources for itself, so it is forced to stick together, to cooperate and help each other; “Because it takes up very little space, moss is a great example of how to live within your means.”

Also, though made up of tiny organisms, mosses make huge contributions to us and the Earth. For instance, they filter and conserve water and prevent soil erosion—so important.

We as homo sapiens have tried to have “dominion” over the land, as we thought the Bible told us was our right, but that hasn’t worked so well, as we are seeing now.

Those who have inherited our Bible are re-evaluating; did it mean that we should exploit the earth by taking as much as we could, stripping it bare until it wouldn’t yield anymore—depriving our children of their future?

Clearly not, or those who interpreted those lines about dominion didn’t read far enough. Or maybe they chose to ignore the part about allowing the land to rest.

As usual, the Bible has been misused by the powerful to manipulate the weaker for personal gain.

Here is an excerpt form Kimmerer’s book, Braiding Sweetgrass, that I found particularly poignant:

“We are all bound by a covenant of reciprocity: plant breath for animal breath, winter and summer, predator and prey, grass and fire. night and day, living and dying. Our elders say that ceremony is the way we can remember to remember. In the dance of the giveaway, remember that the earth is a gift to pass on just as it came to us. When we forget, the dances we’ll need will be from warning: for the passing of polar bears, the silence of cranes, for the death of rivers, for the memory of snow.”

Kimmerer comments on the pain of this passage: “One of the things I had to learn was the transformation of love to grief to even stronger love, and the interplay of love and grief we feel for the world, and how to harness the power of those impulses.”

May we learn to harness the power of the love and the grief we feel for the world, our beautiful Earth, and may we remember our Covenant.

And may we say Amen.

My People, My Mountain: B’har

If there was one sentence I wish we could all believe in and live by from the Torah, it would be: “The land does not belong to you; it is Mine.”

Yes, that’s God speaking, as usual, and it is repeated several times in this week’s parsha.

The Book of Leviticus is known for being chock full of laws given over to the Israelite people through Moses on Mt. Sinai. B’har, “On the Mountain,” is no exception.

B’har is all about the laws of Shmita and Yovel, the sabbatical, every seventh and fiftieth year.

These allow the land—and the people—to rest, and all possessions, including houses and slaves, to return to their original owners or to go free and return to their families, respectively.

Of course, I understand why this law has not been followed.

It’s not only inconvenient for the farmer; it may not even be possible to accomplish such a feat as saving enough grain during the first six years of the cycle to have enough for the seventh year.

But the second part about letting all slaves go free and land and houses return to their original owners…what can I say about that other than, it’s also extremely inconvenient (yes, I’m being sarcastic) for those who hold the wealth and power; they not only don’t want to let go of it, but they actually don’t have to because nobody is making them.

It makes me think of the gun laws in the U.S. and the filibuster left over from Jim Crow, that allows laws that are bad for the majority to continue as they are, despite the majority wishing to see change. (Did you hear the discussion on Democracy Now! about law and the mass shooting, this time in Buffalo, NY, last week?)

The same is true for abortion laws; the majority of Americans don’t want abortion rights overturned.

Of course, the way we posses and treat our land reflects the way we treat our people, and vice versa.

And some people are apparently more important than others.

The episode, My Lying Eyes, on This American Life, examines different situations in which people refuse or just can’t see what’s blatantly in front of them.

One is about climate change/crisis. Another is about Ukrainian vs. Latin American refugees at the Mexican border.

My heart aches for Ukrainians fleeing for the their lives. We’re coming on three months of this war!

And I’m happy that so many people have sprung forth with donations for these victims of war, and that U.S. borders have opened for them.

But my heart also aches for the Latino refugees who have been fleeing war for years, not to mention the state of their refugee camps at the border as described in the podcast (Act 2).

If there’s anything the Bible and religion are good for today, as I discussed last week, it’s to examine ourselves, our beliefs, and to be a reflection of the society we live in today, if not to reflect the kind of society we aspire to build.

How are we blinded, not just as a society, but as individuals as well, to the suffering of those not like us?

This week’s parsha, as throughout the Torah, also has the commandment to welcome and include the stranger as much as “our own.”

It’s human nature to care about our own families and communities first. But we’re at a time of reckoning, really, where we’re being asked to care about those beyond our own “peeps.”

Here are some lyrics from the original Woody Guthrie song, This Land is Your Land, that most of us don’t know:

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Can we continue to expand our definition of “my people”?

I think the world depends on it.

The Rejects of Emor

Every so often I am asked to explain myself; how did I get here and why am I doing this work? How did I go from communist to rabbi?

Yesterday I saw a friend from 30 years ago. We spent the afternoon together and had a wonderful time reminiscing about the past, remembering the pain and the joy, and filling each other in on our lives and children as they have grown and unfolded.

Towards the end, this friend finally asked me, “So what inspired you on this path to become a rabbi?”

It was the question I was sort of dreading. I knew that my path towards religion was confounding to her, as it was to my mother and anyone else from my previous life.

How could I explain in a nutshell how something as problematic as “religion” and the Judaism that my friend—and that I and my own parents had rejected—could bring me so much joy and healing?

How does an ancient book like the Torah, with all its dreadful, sexist, racist stories and rules (don’t even get me started on Israel and its politics) give meaning to my life—a tribal religion based on a sacrificial system that has no meaning in our lives today?

Take, for example, this week’s parsha, Emor, with its rules for priestly purity and sacrifice; a priest can not “marry a woman defiled by harlotry,” nor a divorced woman; no “lame” man who has a defect (per translation) like being blind or with a shorter limb, broken leg or arm, hunchback, dwarf, is considered a full enough human being to make a sacrifice to God.

The same goes for animals: none with any defect or blemish is worthy of sacrifice.

They are all—both human and animal—rejects in God’s eyes.

But the worst is yet to come: “When a daughter of a priest defiles herself through harlotry,” she is to be burned to death, and a person who blasphemes God’s name is to be stoned to death.

This is the God my ancestors rejected.

And this is the way “ancients” lived, right?

We’re “moderns,” and we have all the answers, right? Especially those who call ourselves “progressives” or “liberals.” We’ve got it all figured out.

But are we? And do we?

What about the “lame” among us? Do we look at disabled people with pity? What expectations do we have of them? Are we respecting them through our laws? How much accessibility are we creating?

What is our attitude towards people who turn to prostitution in desperation?

Abortion was legalized in the U.S. only fifty years ago (when I was ten years old!), and strong political/religious forces are fighting hard to overturn this right.

Yet the same forces ignore rape and abuse and could care less about providing sustenance to families of young children, as lawmakers continually block legislation that could provide support.

Then there is this sudden, terrible shortage of baby formula. The monopoly that three huge formula companies have on the market, plus our market economy that allows for such monopolies, giving companies the ability to pay low wages and charge high prices, not only causes the problem, but exacerbates it.

While women shouldn’t be shamed for formula-feeding, and it’s true that some women can’t physically breastfeed, it’s also true that there’s a terrible shortage of support for women who would like to breastfeed. This is not to mention that the hospitals support the companies by notoriously sending women home from the hospital with “free” formula in spiffy little bags.

And doesn’t this all tie into our expectation that “all those mothers having all those babies they shouldn’t be having” also “shouldn’t be so lazy,” and should go to work—at minimum wage jobs that can’t pay their rising gas bills!—so even if they wanted to breastfeed, they can’t?

Yet the political/religious forces are forcing women to have the babies they don’t want to have, can’t afford, and can’t feed.

Aren't we still burning women alive, but in a different sense?

And how well do our schools address learning disabilities?

Do you still hear people (teachers included) call children lazy instead of wondering what’s getting in the way of their learning?

And how are we doing “respecting” other kinds of “rejects” of society?

How many homeless, drug-addicted, mentally ill people do you see on the street? (I live in New York City, and I see many more in the past two years). How’s our health care system handling this problem?

And how are we each doing in terms of our personal attitudes? Do we sneer at the drug addicts and prostitutes and think of them as “less than” so we can just walk on past and feel better about ourselves?

Do we use the excuse of blaming the parents who are the cause of the children being “messed up”?

Or do we have compassion for all involved, recognizing that the parents are victims who were once children too, and who, if only—if only—we as a society gave them the proper support—well, things would be different.

Like the women in our society, it feels like I’m in a Catch-22 situation; I recognize that the ancient books of my heritage are totally outdated, yet they still manage to inform us and reflect on ourselves as a society.

Worse, they serve as a mirror for our present-day life and society.

And as for the religion itself—its prayer books and spiritual practices—so much of that is antiquated as well. It needs updating as much as our sacred texts do, and I don’t agree with the opinions and practices of many other—maybe most other—Jews. Which makes it a struggle.

But I have my community that’s on the same page with me, and we find strength in each other and in singing together.

And when I feel like all is for naught and my hope has been drained, I find strength in praising the miracle and the mystery that I am still here, despite everything.

Why should I not be able to take joy in my heritage just because of others who have tried to exclude me as a woman? Why can’t I take ownership of it and redirect it to something new and renewed?

Because we can’t throw away the world we have; we have to renew it as well. And we can’t deny where we come from.

Finally I come full circle, and I am reminded that, throughout time, we have always had underground movements, as the underground abortion movement is beginning to surge again.

The oppressed, the enslaved, and the downtrodden have always found ways of getting around the restrictions.

We will find a way.

We always do.

Cleanliness, Godliness & K’doshim

What IS my obsession with toilet bowls—really??

Or is it our culture?

I got sucked into Facebook the other day, as one is wont, and saw this crazy video of a woman pouring tons of different colored liquid and powdered cleanser, and shaving cream, into an empty toilet bowl.

It had a scrubby thing blocking the hole, and she filled the toilet——all the way to the top—with this toxic stuff!!

It was disgusting—and I couldn’t tear myself away from it.

She poured layer upon layer, emptying at least six containers of Dawn and Comet, and she showed you each bottle before she squirted or shook, almost as if she were advertising the products, making cutesy little designs at each layer.

It was the weirdest thing I’d ever seen.

I watched because I wanted to see the point; was this a science experiment? Was it going to foam up and over the sides of the toilet?

No. When she was done, she put some gloves on, put her hand in, mixed it all together, and in 5 seconds, she flushed, and it all just disappeared down the toilet. All those chemicals!

And the toilet wasn’t even dirty to begin with!!

Did it reflect this obsession we have as a culture with toilets and cleanliness in general—our fear of germs and bad smells?

I saw a comment from someone: “I can’t believe you made me watch this!" (And three hysterically laughing emojis.)

I wanted to comment, ““What exactly is the message here?? This is so toxic, wasteful and terrible for the earth!” (But I didn’t want to embarrass the person who posted it—and I’m not going to give you a link to the video to make you watch it!).

This week, the Torah portion is K’doshim. It gives over lots of laws for living a holy life, some of which are repeated elsewhere in the Torah.

It starts with God telling the Israelite community through Moses, “You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God, am holy.”

It repeats again and again, “I am your God,” after each stipulation that, if followed, will make the Israelites holy.

Among these are ways to treat our fellow humans and the Earth. It’s about treating family members and the stranger with respect and care, being honest and fair; it’s about leaving the gleanings of the field or the orchard for the poor; remembering that we were strangers in a strange land; paying your workers (who work the land) on time, not drinking the blood of an animal because blood is the life-force; it’s about the holiness of animals, and allowing fruit trees to establish themselves as healthy and strong before eating their fruit.

The Torah clearly tells us that we are to be holy, as God is holy; we are to be like God.

What does that mean, exactly?

Last week, I wrote about our connection to the land as Jews; we remember this every year on Passover as we yearn to return ”next year” to Jerusalem.

The earth, as stated in the Torah, is obviously holy, or we wouldn’t have all these stipulations about how to treat it. For us to be holy, it seems to me, we need to stay connected with the holiness of our land. If you’ve seen Fantastic Fungi, then you understand how closely intertwined we are with the earth, and how much our health and life depend on the Earth’s health and life.

These “germs” actually make us stronger if we can live in harmony with them.

Yet, our consumer-driven culture has made us forget this fact, and often confuses cleanliness with the absence of life. One of the ten commandments given to us is, “Do not kill”—yet that’s all we do with the toxic chemicals we daily pour down the drain—and on our crops.

So, I end with this “Earth Prayer”:

O Endless Creator, Force of Life,…

Let us, when swimming with the stream,

become the stream.

Let us, when moving with the music,

become the music.

Let us, when rocking the wounded,

become the suffering.

Let us live deep enough

till there is only one direction,

and slow enough till there is only

the beginning of time,

and loud enough in our hearts

till there is no need to speak.

Let us live for the grace beneath all we want,

let us see it in everything and everyone,

till we admit to the mystery

that when I look deep enough into you,

I find me, and when you dare to hear my fear

in the recess of your heart, you recognize it

as your secret which you thought

no one else knew.

O let us embrace

that unexpected moment of unity

as the atom of God.

Let us have the courage

to hold each other when we break

and worship what unfolds….

O nameless spirit that is not done with us,

let us love without a net

beyond the fear of death

until the speck of peace

we guard so well

becomes the world.

(Mark Nepo, from The Way Under The Way)

And let us say Amen.

The Promise of the Land & Akharei Mot

I took a much needed break from writing last week.

But I was on a journey through Passover.

In the end, nothing really turned out the way I expected on our two seder nights, or the way it’s been in the past. I really wanted to get Rabbi Ellen Bernstein’s Passover Haggadah, The Promise of the Land, but I didn’t get to it in time.

I know this haggadah focuses our care of the land, which couldn’t be more apt for our time.

Then, this week I heard a recent episode of The Experiment that asks the question, “Should We Return National Parks to Native Americans?”

Did you know that our national parks were created by forcing native people off their land—that these lands were not the pristine lands we were taught they were?

Or that we were taught to believe that “pristine” meant only animals living on them, not the “savage Indians.”

Did you know that these “pristine” lands look the way they do because they were actually consciously shaped by the generations of people who lived there before Europeans came along?

And that Teddy Roosevelt, who is known for his love of the land and creation of the National Parks system, hated Native Americans?

David Treuer, of the Ojibwe people, thinks the National Parks should be returned to Native people.

As Jews, we focus so much on the promise of the land that God gave us, and we think so much about “returning to the land.”

It seems to me that everyone has a right to their land, though who it belonged to first and who it belongs to now gets very complicated.

And then there are people who say that of the 500+ recognized tribes in the U.S., they would never agree on anything because of the history of animosity between them, so why bother? It’s in the past. Let’s move on.

This week’s Torah reading, Akharei Mot (After the Death), returns us to the story of the death of Aaron’s sons—or rather moves on from it.

I am always struck by how quickly the story moves on from these painful deaths.

Yet, God still seems angry, telling Aaron through Moses, “Don’t come too close (like your sons did), lest you die (like your sons did).”

God hasn’t moved on. And God gets angry enough about Aaron’s sons not following his commandments.

Maybe God is really angry at us right now for not taking care of the Earth the way we should, and we just don’t hear it? Do we pass over the problematic American history we have the, the way God passed over our houses in Egypt?

David Treuer says, look at our U.S. government! It’s full of white people who have so much animosity between them, yet they work together; “Have the big idea, and work out the details later.”

What are the big ideas we all have, about our country, our world, that we doubt we can work out?

Do we move on, put it all in the past? Say, “it is what it is” and let go?

Or do we hold on to some of our anger, like God seems to, and our memory of the painful past, for the sake of telling the truth? For the sake of creating a new kind of world? Do we try to make amends for our history and the ugly way our country was created?

I think it’s worth speaking the truth and trying to make amends for our mistakes—past and present—for the promise of the land.

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?