Everyone Can Write History

Jewish history hinges on the Joseph story. Because of the jealousy and hatred between Joseph and his brothers they sell him into slavery in Egypt where he rises to prominence. Eventually his family follows him there. The Jewish people then build comfortable lives in Egypt until a new Pharaoh comes to power. As the Torah recounts, “A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” The people are enslaved. Their cries reach heaven and so God calls Moses to lead the people to freedom. The rest of the story is the tale we tell at our Passover seders.

It turns on Joseph. Jewish history depends on the moment Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. It also revolves around an unnamed stranger.

Jacob sent Joseph out to the fields to look for his brothers. He apparently had difficulty finding them. The Torah reports, “When Joseph reached Shechem, a man came upon him wandering in the fields. The man asked him, ‘What are you looking for?’ He answered, ‘I am looking for my brothers. Could you tell me where they are pasturing?’ The man said, ‘They have gone from here, for I heard them say: Let us go to Dothan.’ So, Joseph followed his brothers and found them at Dothan.” (Genesis 37)

If not for this stranger Joseph might never have found his brothers. They might not have sold him into slavery. Then the Jewish people might never have arrived in Egypt and become enslaved there. And we might never have drawn so much inspiration from the Seders we continue to enjoy where we retell our going out from Egypt.

Moses Maimonides suggests that this stranger is an angel. How else could one explain that Jewish history turns on this stranger’s directions? For this medieval thinker it could only be a divine messenger who set Joseph on the proper course.

I would like to think that this stranger could be anyone.

Perhaps it is the unknown, unnamed people upon which history turns. Their names are never known. History books do not even record their deeds. Instead, they tell the stories of presidents and prime ministers, kings and queens, generals and strategists. And yet history could never be written without the guiding hand of the unnamed.

Far too many people aspire to fame. They wish to be the ones whose names are recorded in the history books. They worry about their legacy. They spend precious hours wondering if they will be remembered for good.

Yet it is often the unnamed stranger who points the direction and who moves the story forward. And it is upon their shoulders that history turns.

Perhaps it is the hidden, and unnamed person, upon which history revolves.

You never know where the directions you offer might lead. You never know how the advice you give might shape history.

Forgiveness Is for the Forgiver

David Whyte writes:

Forgiveness is a heartache and difficult to achieve because, strangely, it not only refuses to eliminate the original wound but actually draws us closer to its source. To approach forgiveness is to close in on the nature of the hurt itself, the only remedy being, as we approach its raw centre, to reimagine our relation to it. (Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words)

The Torah reports: “Esau ran to greet Jacob. He embraced him and, falling on his neck, he kissed him; and they wept.” (Genesis 33)

It is a remarkable turn of events. Twenty years earlier Jacob stole his brother Esau’s birthright, and Esau then threatened to kill Jacob forcing him to run for his life. Now, Jacob is terrified about meeting his brother. He presents him with an endless stream of gifts. Jacob bows before him but offers no apology. He does not even acknowledge his wrong.

And yet Esau runs toward his brother to forgive him. Despite Jacob’s fears Esau no longer wants to kill his brother. This dramatic reconciliation is initiated by Esau rather than Jacob.

David Whyte again,

To forgive is to put oneself in a larger gravitational field of experience than the one that first seemed to hurt us. We reimagine ourselves in the light of our maturity and we reimagine the past in the light of our new identity; we allow ourselves to be gifted by a story larger than the story that first hurt us and left us bereft.

Perhaps forgiveness comes because Esau needs it. He wants to rewrite his story. He wants to let go of his justified anger and his understandable resentment. He wants to heal his own pain. Esau becomes our unexpected and unlikely hero.

We learn from him that sometimes forgiveness is not motivated by the wrongdoer’s honest reflection. It does not come from an acknowledgment of the wrongdoing but instead because the forgiver needs it.

Forgiveness has the power to transform the person who grants it more than the one who receives it.

Once we realize this, we come to understand that we might need to offer forgiveness more than we need to accept it. Only then can we become the forgotten hero of our Torah.

Only then can we write a new story for ourselves.

Heading Towards Dreams

There are approximately 7,000 languages spoken throughout the world. I speak one very well and another not as well as I would like. And yet it is the Hebrew language that conjures my devotion and summons my tireless efforts. It is our language. It contains the words that orient our Jewish faith. Other languages offer different orientations.

There is an Aboriginal language that has a unique way of directing its speakers. In English I might say, “Susie is standing in front of me” or “My tequila is on my left.” In Kuuk Thaayorre, the answers are structured around the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west. And so, Susie might be standing west, and my tequila south.

This fascinating language orients its speakers around these cardinal directions. In fact, in Kuuk Thaayorre one does not say, “Hello” but instead “Which way are you going?” And the answer might be, “I am heading northeast.” The cognitive scientist, Lera Boroditsky, who studies how languages shape our thinking, argues that people who speak languages such as these rarely if ever get lost. They always know in which direction they are traveling.

I wonder how my wandering and meandering might be different if my language provided me such an extraordinary internal compass. I can tell you one thing for sure. I would have less stories to tell. Why? Because most begin with something like I turned left when I was supposed to go right. Or I took a wrong turn and discovered this wonderful new restaurant or my phone’s battery died and I was completely lost and bumped into a long-lost friend.

In between leaving and arriving a great deal can happen. Some of it depends on right turns. More often it is influenced by what appears to be wrong turns.

Jacob leaves Beersheva. He is running away from his brother Esau who wants to kill him after Jacob stole the birthright. Jacob sets out for Haran. The Torah opens with these words, “Jacob left Beersheva and set out for Haran.” (Genesis 28) His trickery and deception set his path. Jacob never arrives at his intended destination. He is heading north.

Somewhere in between he dreams of a ladder with angels going up and coming down from heaven on it. God stands by his side. God promises never to leave him. When he awakes, he exclaims, “Surely the Lord is present in this place, and I did not know it. How awesome is this place!” But he should have known this. He is standing on the promised land.

It is this very land around which our language orients. It is the center of our world. It is the place that sets our direction.

Even the cardinal directions of north, south, east and west are imbued with meaning in the Hebrew language. In the Torah the words for west and south are based on locations familiar to people living in land of Israel. Yama means towards the Sea, namely the Mediterranean. And Negbah is more exactly translated as towards the Negev. Tzafon suggests more than north. It derives from the word meaning hidden. And Kedmah implies more than east. It suggests moving forward or going toward the beginning.

Our language always takes us back east. There we were born. There our dreams are centered.

When we were exiled from this land our language kept us oriented. We never forgot about the land whose places were embedded in how we conversed and prayed. We meandered throughout other lands. We picked up other languages and their directions infused our spirits. Our thoughts meandered away from its biblical orientation.

Rather than saying, Mah shlomcha which is usually translated as “How are you?” but conveys the more profound meaning of “Are you whole?” we say, “What’s up?” whose origins may hearken not to ancient scripture but instead Bugs Bunny’s well-known “What’s up Doc” or even that Budweiser commercial from years ago.

As I look to the east, I am wondering how we might reorient our lives and reclaim our language’s direction. Instead of asking such nonchalant questions such as “How are you?” and expecting only the perfunctory response of “I’m ok,” we should ask, “Which way are you heading? What are your dreams?”

“And Jacob dreamed; a ladder was set on the ground and its top reached to the heavens.” (Genesis 28)

Our Words Make a Difference

What follows is my sermon from the Friday night of Thanksgiving weekend when we read the portion Toldot.

This week we read about the tortured relationship between Jacob and Esau, twin brothers born to Isaac and Rebekah. Even though Jacob is revered as our forefather he can in these earlier stories act as his name implies like a heel. And Esau who the tradition sees as the father of our future enemies can sometimes appear as a sympathetic character.

The portion opens with this story. Jacob, our mild-mannered hero, is home cooking lentil stew while Esau, a skilled hunter is out in the field hunting for some tasty game. Esau comes home famished and asks his brother for some stew. Jacob tells him to first sell him his first-born birthright. Esau says and I quote, “I am at the point of death, so of what use is my birthright to me?” And this is how Jacob first supplants his older brother Esau and the beginnings of the tension between the two.

Leaving aside the questions about Jacob’s trickery let’s focus on Esau’s disregard for his obligations and most especially his statements about hunger. It is hard to believe that he was so hungry that he was at the point of death. And yet his words seem all too familiar. They make me think of my own and our own. How many times do we say, “I’m starving?” We do not really know hunger. We are as fortunate as Esau and perhaps as self-absorbed. We say his words all the time. We casually use words such as “I am famished” when we are really not. We say, “I’m starving” so often we are unaware of saying it. We say things like “I’m so hungry; I am going to die” when this is not even remotely true. I am pointing a finger at myself too.

In the Hebrew Esau describes himself as tired or weary. He states, Anochi holech lamoot—I am walking towards death. How dramatic! His emotions are the center of the universe. He sees nothing of the struggles of others. He forgets that there are so many people who are in fact truly hungry and who are really approaching death.

Likewise, when we use such words and phrases, we distance ourselves from those who are truly hungry. We diminish their truth when we muddle our own. We brush away the facts when we allow our emotions do the talking. Perhaps it is defense mechanism. We would rather think of our own needs rather than the needs of others. We would rather focus on the hunger we feel even though it will soon be satisfied rather than the hunger out there that might never be allayed. It’s almost impossible to think about the actual numbers.

Twelve percent of Americans face food insecurity. As I explained to our religious school students, food insecurity is defined as not having access to sufficient food or adequate food. It may mean people who are not able to eat three meals a day or eat even one proper meal. In this land of plenty nearly 13 million children face such conditions. In the world, it is estimated that the number is about 800 million. Here on Long Island, it is over 200,000 people. Those are sobering numbers. They are frightening statistics. They are so large that we feel like we can’t do anything about it.

But we cannot give up. We cannot give in. This is why our synagogue has an ongoing collection for the local food pantry. We want to help to make sure its shelves are always stocked so that people who are hungry and who understand what hunger really feels like can shop there at no cost. And as important as this and other efforts are this evening I want to focus on those words, and those offhand phrases that turn us inward rather than outward. I want us to think about our attitude and our language.

The words we use do matter. They shape our feelings. They influence our actions—or our inaction. They can do as they did for Esau and push him more and more inward or they can help us look outward, away from our own wants and needs to those who actually need more.

This is the essence of why we say a blessing for food. If we pause and say thank you before eating, we are more apt to think of the food we eat as a gift. The blessing is the corrective to the false words we might have offered while waiting to eat or after coming in from a long day when we inevitably say I am famished. They become the true words. They are the balance to the false words we may have said before we sat down. That’s the tradition’s theory. They force us to stop and think before stuffing our faces with food.

The Thanksgiving dinners that we just celebrated are about excess. Most, if not all, of our tables had too much food on them. It would be contrary to our American ethos to run out of food when hosting such a Thanksgiving meal. We stuff ourselves until we are uncomfortable so that we might feel blessed.

But the tradition’s counsel is that it should not have to be an overabundance of food to make us feel blessed. In fact, the Talmud asks how much food do you need to have in front of you before offering the motzi? And its answer is my rabbi David Hartman’s favorite teaching. The Talmud’s answer is k’zayit. It only needs to be as big as an olive. I am pretty sure that there is no one here or anywhere for that matter who considers such a small bite size satisfying. Such a morsel cannot possibly be filling. It is almost not deserving of a blessing especially when you put that up against last night’s meal. An olive was less than what we munched on during the football games.

That’s exactly the tradition’s point. If you say a blessing for such a small morsel of food, then your perspective and your words stay true. Food is not only an answer to hunger. It is instead an opportunity to give thanks. Rabbis think about the spirit. They reason that if the spirit is satisfied the rest can follow. They believe we will then think less about what we want and more about what other people need. We will think about those who are truly hungry.

It begins with a blessing. And leads to making room for others. And that offers us the opportunity to make sure less people actually need to say, I am famished.

Giving Thanks Can Be Heavy Lifting

When we think of prayer, we most often think about making a request of God. We ask God to grant us health. The words of the Mi Shebeirach for healing are familiar and are often our most heartfelt prayer.

Likewise, Isaac prays for his wife Rebekah. After twenty years of marriage, they remain infertile. Our forefather turns to prayer. The Torah reports: “Isaac pleaded with Adonai on behalf of his wife, because she was barren; and Adonai responded to his plea, and his wife Rebekah conceived.” (Genesis 25) If only all our similar prayers were answered with such an emphatic yes.

The Hebrew word for pleaded is “vayetar” is unusual. It suggests a prayer that is a heartfelt request. Our ancient rabbis debate its meaning. Rabbi Yohanan said, “Isaac poured out prayers abundantly.” Reish Lakish recognized the word’s similarity to that of a pitchfork and comments, “He overturned the decree just as a pitchfork overturns the grain.” (Bereshit Rabbah 63)

And I would like to add, heartfelt prayers emerge from a tumultuous soul. Their cries emerge from trials and difficulties. Like the farmer who wields a pitchfork such prayer is hard work and even painful. All our prayers cannot possibly take this form. They are too hard. They hurt too much. It can become debilitating to utter over and over again, “Why me?”

Perhaps this is why most Jewish prayers are not requests but instead thanks. When we pray, we give thanks. We are familiar with the words we offer in the evening. “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, Ruler of the universe, who speaks the evening into being, skillfully opens the gates, thoughtfully alters the time and changes the seasons, and arranges the stars in their heavenly courses according to plan.” This is emblematic of our prayers. Look at the stars. Give thanks.

Offering thanks is about acceptance.

As much as we believe that our choices are our own, that our fate is something we can write for ourselves, our prayers are instead about accepting our destiny. It is does not matter how big your Thanksgiving turkey is. It does not matter how small the morsel of bread may be. Offer the blessing, the rabbis counsel.

No matter how big or small we say thank you. Now matter how much or how little, we say, “Baruch.” This is the essence of the tradition’s message. It is also the thrust of our Thanksgiving holiday. Give thanks for the food. Give thanks for family. Give thanks for friends.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel adds, “Our goal should be to live life in radical amazement. Get up in the morning and look at the world in a way that takes nothing for granted. Everything is phenomenal; everything is incredible; never treat life casually. To be spiritual is to be amazed.”

Prayer is about burnishing the spiritual. It is about cultivating amazement.

And teaching ourselves to offer thanks can sometimes be as hard as lifting a pitchfork.

It is not just tumult that requires heavy lifting. Sometimes the hard work is as simple as giving thanks.

Dignity Requires Hard Work

This week we meet Rebekah. Her marriage to Isaac is arranged by Abraham and orchestrated by his trusted servant Eliezer. She is chosen because she offers to draw water for Eliezer after his long journey to Abraham’s native land. She also undertakes the difficult task of drawing water for the camels. This must have been a strenuous undertaking. She must have to run back and forth to the well hundreds of times. (A camel can drink thirty gallons of water!)

The rabbis do not, however, praise her physical strength and stamina. Instead, they speak of her kindness. She is the model of compassion. She thinks not only of people’s needs but those of animals. She reaches out to all of God’s creatures. This is why she is the perfect wife for Isaac. After his mother Sarah’s death, he needs tenderness and love. Rebekah offers it.

Rabbi Isaiah Horowitz, a seventeenth century teacher, fashions a beautiful story highlighting these attributes. He adds to Rebekah’s character and writes,

Rebekah displayed remarkably ethical conduct. She showed respect for fellow human beings. First, she let Eliezer drink. When some water was left over in the jug, she did not know what to do. She debated whether to give the left-over water to the camels. In doing this, however, she would place a person and beast on the same level by letting both of them drink from the same vessel. If, on the other hand, she would pour out the left-over water, this would also be a lack of respect, since drinking water would be demoted to the status of dirty wastewater. What did she do? She "ran" as if to give the camels to drink. While running, she pretended to fall, so that the water spilled from the jug. She then had an excuse to fill the jug anew from the well. In this way Eliezer was not slighted at all. (Shenei Luchot HaBerit)

Rebekah is unconcerned about creating extra work for herself. She only thinks about the feelings of others. She worries about Eliezer’s needs rather than her own burdens.

I wonder. Are we willing to go to such lengths to help others? Would we likewise add to our own burdens to make someone else’s life easier? How far would we go to preserve the dignity of another? Would we add tasks to our lengthy to do lists so that someone else is not offended?

For the sake of family, the answer may very well be yes. For the sake of friends, the answer might also be yes. For the sake of animals we might say, perhaps, if they are our pets. For the sake of strangers, I doubt it. Rebekah is concerned about strangers. She shows compassion to someone she just met.

We struggle to live up to our matriarch’s example.

We rarely put in extra effort when it comes to other people’s feelings. Ideas so important to our ancestors, like dignity and honor, feel outdated. Institutions that were once unquestioned are under attack. We don’t trust government and its leaders. We question schools and their teachers. We march into doctors’ offices with mountains of information downloaded from the internet. In an age when everyone is an expert, no one is an expert.

Dignity, however, is something that we extend. Honor is not only earned. It must be granted.

Like Rebekah we must be ready to go to extra lengths. We must extend honor and compassion to even the passing stranger.

We never know. A casual acquaintance could likewise be on a divine errand.

Amsterdam’s Past and Present

I have been thinking about pogroms—both their far too many historical examples and their modern incarnations. I find myself hesitant to use the term pogrom to describe the antisemitic violence unleashed against Jewish and Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv. I wonder if the word’s blood-soaked history turns our focus away from present scenes toward past images. I worry will we see Cossacks where they do not exist. Will we think more about history, and its emotional overtones, rather than what happened in Amsterdam?

Then again, such worries are immaterial. An antisemite is an antisemite. It does not matter what uniform they wear or in which language they curse. And my initial hesitancy to use such loaded terms may be more about a reluctance to see the new life and breath yesterday’s antisemitism has gained in our own day. Such intellectual protestations are entirely irrelevant. Pogrom is in fact an apt description of what transpired on Amsterdam’s streets last week, and what has continued into this week. Let us not add to the world’s denial of this growing violent reality. Yesterday has become today!

The mobs were organized. And their attacks were planned. The term pogrom comes from the Russian meaning to wreak havoc or demolish violently. It has come to mean any violent attacks against a specific ethnic or religious group, most especially Jews. Sometimes the pogrom is government sponsored. At the very least authorities are passive or slow to respond. Groups waited for Maccabi Tel Aviv fans on Amsterdam’s streets. And the police offered little response when these Jewish fans were attacked.

There are often all manners of excuses and justifications offered for such violent antisemitic attacks. After the infamous Kishinev pogrom, Russian authorities blamed Jewish creditors, saying it was not about Russians and Jews, but instead peasants and money lenders. Likewise, Israeli fans’ racist chants while inexcusable must not be viewed as an understandable provocation for this violence. Antisemitism is antisemitism. A pogrom is a pogrom.

Bret Stephens comments, “Notice what these attackers aren’t saying. They aren’t expressing themselves in the faddish language of anti-Zionism. They aren’t denouncing Israeli policy or speaking up for Palestinian rights. They aren’t trying to make careful distinctions between Jews and Israelis. They are, like generations of pogromists before them, simply out to get the Jews.”

The confluence of these attacks with Kristallnacht’s eighty sixth anniversary makes history feel even more present. It's not about yesterday. Such antisemitic violence is no longer the stuff of history. It is about today. The fact that this pogrom occurred in Amsterdam, the city that gives prominence to the Anne Frank House, makes it even more painful. This place, and the city that hosts it, are supposed to be about memory, and the promise of a better future, not bloody present circumstances. European leaders are again complicit.

The American Jewish Committee reminds us, “European leaders who demonize or criminalize Israel cannot credibly claim to fight antisemitism while fanning its flames. While saying that antisemitism often hides behind anti-Zionism, they use language that contributes to Israel’s vilification and, by extension, emboldens those who target Jews across Europe. This hypocrisy must end.”

The Anne Frank House, and its nearly one million yearly visitors, allows one to imagine that the very city that offered hospitality and welcome to Jews fleeing fifteenth century Spain saved many of Holland’s Jews during the Holocaust. In fact, seventy five percent of Dutch Jews were murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. Holland failed the Jewish people. Anne Frank’s family was hidden, and her father saved, by one person. It was Miep Gies who offered them safety. She hid eight people. Her Amsterdam neighbors turned them in. And only Otto Frank survived.

We forget how many cooperated with the Nazis. We tend to see the Anne Frank House as representative of what is best about Amsterdam. Museums sometimes tell us what we want to hear. We see the beautiful sunlight streaming through the attic window but forget that Anne Frank unlike the visitors who will soon see the same light when they freely walk the city’s streets was trapped in this very room. This past week we were reminded of this stark truth.

Amsterdam did not try to save Anne. Miep Gies did.

It is not about a city, but one person.

If only cities and nations could be led by the likes of such righteous people.

Have faith. History can turn on the actions of individuals.

“Then a messenger of the Lord called to Abraham from heaven, ‘Abraham! Abraham!’ And he answered, “Here I am.’” (Genesis 22)

True Leadership

Abraham is a true leader. This is why.

Before Isaac and Ishmael were born to Abraham and before Jews who trace their lineage to Abraham through Isaac and Muslims who trace their lineage to Abraham through Ishmael were imagined, Abraham struggled to keep the peace. His nephew Lot, the son of Abraham’s deceased brother, Haran, pastured a large flock while Abraham tended to his own.

The Torah reports that the land could not support both of their large flocks. There was bickering between their followers. The Torah reports: “And there was quarreling between the herders of Abram’s cattle and those of Lot’s cattle.”

Abraham quickly came up with a solution. He said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, between my herders and yours, for we are kin. Is not the whole land before you? Let us separate: if you go north, I will go south; and if you go south, I will go north.” (Genesis 13). The generous Abraham allows Lot to pick first. It is Lot who will designate Abraham’s path.

Rarely do we focus on this story. Instead, we focus on the promise made to Abraham and his descendants. “I assign the land you sojourn in to you and your offspring to come, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding.” (Genesis 17) We highlight the promise made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. We focus on the gifts given to the Jewish people.

On this day, however, I wish to highlight the magnanimity that precedes the acceptance of this gift. It is human nature that once we acquire something we hold on to it very tightly. We do not want to part with such God-given gifts. We come to believe they are mine and not yours. We come to act like there is never enough to be shared.

Abraham’s example reminds us that this magnanimous spirit is his genius. This is why he is called by God. Perhaps the mark of a true leader is one who he gives up and gives in. Abraham is a God-chosen leader because he relinquishes what he has every right to claim is his alone.

In this moment this is what I hope we can learn. To give rather than hold is the example we must follow.

And this is the leadership model we pray President Trump might emulate. (My prayer would be the same if Vice President Harris were to be our next president.) Leadership must be generous. It must be forgiving. Look to Abraham’s example for inspiration. Peace and harmony remain our dream. Unity remains our promise.

I pray. Let us stand united. Let us work together so that our nation might live up to its founding principles. Let us put aside our grievances. Let us cast aside our anger. Let us vanquish our despair. Let us be forgiving of our differences. Let us be generous to our neighbors.

And let us remember that regardless of the difficulties of any given week or the challenges, and tragedies, the world brings us on any given day, Shabbat arrives every Friday evening. And with Shabbat comes a measure of peace and harmony. And that Shabbat tranquility is so abundant that it can be shared by as many as would grasp it.

The Beauty of the Broken

Kintsugi is a Japanese art form meaning to join with gold. Artisans use gold to repair broken pottery. Rather than discarding these broken pots, they are transformed into new, beautiful works of art. The cracks become part of the artwork. This artwork embodies the philosophy that brokenness and imperfection are part of our world. They have the potential to make us whole.

According to Jewish tradition, God created several worlds before ours. These were discarded like artists discard their first, second and even third attempts. When God creates our world God decides to let stand despite its imperfections. One of these cracks in our world is what causes us continued pain. Human beings are given to doing terrible things. They bring evil to our world, others and themselves.

God knows this. God sees this. God lets it continue.

One way to read the Bible is to see it not as description of our spiritual journey but instead as God’s. It is about God coming to terms with the world’s imperfections. That journey is marked by fits and starts. One such fit is the story of Noah and the flood. The Torah states, “The earth became corrupt before God; the earth was filled with violence. God said to Noah, ‘I have decided to put an end to all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them.’” (Genesis 6)

God then shatters the world.

The mystics believed that when God created the world divine sparks of light were trapped in broken vessels. These powerful lights energize evil. God withdraws from creation, making room for us to engage in religious acts, to repair this brokenness. We must perform tikkun olam, repair of the world, to banish these shards of evil.

When the flood waters recede, God sees the world’s beauty anew. God seizes on creation’s potential. “The dove came back to Noah toward evening, and there in its bill was a plucked-off olive leaf!” (Genesis 8)

Peace remains possible!

There will always be cracks.

It is not about ignoring them or most especially discarding them. It is instead about acknowledging these imperfections and making them a part of an even more beautiful whole.

This is what God comes to realize. It is what we must also come to understand.

Repair is in our hands.

Why We Rejoice

The seventh blessing of the wedding’s sheva brachot offers words to express the inexpressible. It represents an effort to answer the question of how does one describe pure joy?

Here is its attempt: “We praise You, Adonai our God, Sovereign of the universe: Creator of joy and gladness, love and companionship, laughter and song, pleasure and delight, harmony and celebration, peace and friendship.”

The blessing offers a litany of synonyms. Its words are rhythmic. “Sasson v’simcha, gila, rina, ditzah v’chedva, ahava v’achava shalom v’reiut.” Even though I have recited these words on countless occasions and offered them to hundreds of couples, I wonder if any words can ever fully express our sense of joy.

As we look forward to our celebration of Simhat Torah, Joy of Torah, I ask, is it possible to fully rejoice in the shadow of October 7th? Do these attacks now cast darkness over this day? The attackers not only murdered thousands but desecrated our holiday. Their hate clouds our joy. They must not be allowed to obscure our celebrations.

There is always pain. Every joy is tempered by loss. At every wedding someone is absent. I wonder if we use words like celebrate and rejoice too freely. We rarely think about their profound meaning. What is the meaning of joy? Rabbi Alan Lew anticipates this dilemma when he writes,

Joy is a deep release of the soul, and it includes death and pain. Joy is any feeling fully felt, any experience we give our whole being to. We are conditioned to choose pleasure and reject pain, but the truth is, any moment of our life fully inhabited, any feeling fully felt, any immersion in the full depth of life, can be the source of great joy. (This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation)

Death and pain are not antithetical to joy. Too often we confuse happiness with joy. Simcha, however, is a feeling that we feel deeply. It is something that consumes our whole being. There can be joy where there is also pain. Even when happiness is absent and smiles come less frequently, joy can exist.

Although all holidays, with the exceptions of Yom Kippur and Tisha B’Av, are supposed to be filled with joy, only Simhat Torah has joy in its actual name. What then is so joyful about concluding the Torah reading cycle and beginning it again?

Maybe it is as simple as we have lived another year with all of life’s wonders and disappointments, joys and pains, celebrations and tribulations. We have been privileged to bear witness to another year marked by the words of our Torah. They are of course the same words year after year, but we are different. And therefore, the Torah’s meaning, is different.

We do not arrive at answers. We are travelers on the pathway of this sacred scroll. We rejoice in the journey.

Thom Gunn writes, “Reaching no absolute, in which to rest,/ One is always nearer by not keeping still.” (On the Move)

We rejoice that we might find new meaning in these same words.

Pray for Shelters of Peace

The holiday of Sukkot begins Thursday. To mark this day, we are commanded to live in sukkot, temporary booths. The Torah declares, “You shall live in sukkot seven days in order that future generations may know that I made the Israelite people live in sukkot when I brought them out of the land of Egypt.” (Leviticus 23)

The rabbis make several determinations about how these sukkot are to be constructed. They must not be permanent structures but instead temporary. Their roofs must be porous. We must be able to see the stars through its slats and even though bad weather might ruin the festive holiday meal, rain must be able to fall through the roof. In essence if a sukkah keeps out the weather, then it is no longer a sukkah but instead a house.

This is to remind us of life’s temporary quality and so that we remember the fragility of our redemption from Egypt. When we wandered through the wilderness from slavery to freedom our existence was tentative and our shelters temporary.

And yet the rabbis of the Talmud debate whether these sukkot represent actual booths or instead God’s sheltering presence. Rabbi Akiva believed they were real. He found meaning in the Torah’s historical explanation. His contemporary, Rabbi Eliezer, did not agree and believed instead that these booths signify God’s clouds of glory that offered us protection on our journey. (Babylonian Talmud, Sukkah 11b). And perhaps might likewise offer us protection during these precarious days.

In Eliezer’s imagination, the sukkot, we build and live in, point not to history but theology. They are about building up our faith in God’s protecting shelter. The Hashkiveinu prayer makes this plain. Every Shabbat evening we sing, “Spread over us the sukkah of Your peace.”

And this year most especially I would like to build on Rabbi Eliezer’s vision and dream that even our temporary structures become shelters of peace.

May God’s clouds of glory become sukkot of peace!

Love Is Not Easy but What Is Needed

What follows is my Yom Kippur morning sermon about how we are called to love the Jewish people and embrace the story of our return to the land in the face of this antisemitism cloaked as anti-Zionism.

We all deserve escape, moments when we get away from the challenges of the every day. For some it is a walk on the beach. For others it is a comfy chair and a romance novel. For some it is watching a Netflix special about a hot rabbi (the similarities are purely coincidental). For others it is a glass of wine and a sunset. We all need such escapes, and we are privileged to have access to them. For me it is training for and competing in triathlons. Why, at 60 years of age, I have decided this is how I should briefly run away from it all, would be a story for another time, but this morning, I wish to paint another picture.

The race was in rural Pennsylvania, outside of Penn State. Lining much of the bike portion, people camped out on their front yards, cheering the competitors on, shouting “You’ve got this” as we rode past. On one such yard, a person had a sign that read, “Tell us where you are from.” And I shouted, “Long Island.” and the person next to me shouted, “Michigan.” And I responded, “Go Blue.” And we started talking about Michigan and then spent some time riding alongside each other trying to figure out if our kids went to the University of Michigan during the same years. It was the distraction and escape from world events that I needed and why I relish the comradery of triathlons. Soon I was rounding a bend, fighting exhaustion at mile 35 with the approach to a climb that nearly defeated me a mile ahead in the distance, when I saw another sign that read, “If the Zionists stole your land, you would be fighting them too.”

And I shouted, “You have got to be kidding me! Even here!” And it was in that moment that I realized there is no escaping it. Such sentiments followed me on my January sabbatical. There, in Madrid, I found, graffiti that read, “Free Palestine.” And someone came along a few days later and added, “From Hamas.” And then someone else came along about a week later, made a line through “From Hamas” and added, “From Israel.” There is no escaping it. It is everywhere. It comes up in polite conversations. It comes up in heated debates. It comes up when you just want to get away from it all, be alone and ride your bike, or read your book, or walk on the beach, or enjoy your wine.

This morning, I need to talk about antisemitism and in particular the antisemitism cloaked in anti-Zionism and hatred for Israel. Since October 7th our everyday world has become a dangerous and confusing place from which we cannot escape. There are three layers to this sermon. All are wrapped up in the October 7th massacre and its aftermath. The first is the response of our neighbors to October 7th. The second is how this has infected the college campus. And the third may be the most difficult of all, is about those Jews who want nothing to do with Israel anymore or worse yet, make common cause with those shouting antisemitic hate.

Number one. With the notable exception of two Christian colleagues our neighbors’ response to the October 7th massacre was one of silence. After the attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, there was a resounding chorus of support from our neighbors. Many from our community stood with us at our next Shabbat service. Christian clergy stood by my side on our bima. For me the attacks of October 7th and those of November 4th, 2018, share a common thread and that is one of antisemitic hate. We felt both to be attacks on us. For our neighbors they appear vastly different. I realize that one seems far away and the other nearby, but for us they are connected. Hamas shares the same vitriolic antisemitic hate the Pittsburgh attacker spewed, but others only see Hamas attacking Israelis and in Pittsburgh fellow Americans. I see them both as attacks on Jews. When antisemites strike a synagogue, an American Jewish church so to speak, there is an outpouring of support but when it is directed against Jews living in sovereign Israel there is silence. Maybe that’s because it is over there and not here, but I fear otherwise.

It's almost as if there is an embrace of Jewish victimhood and a revulsion of Jewish power. Short lived were those expressions of support for October 7th’s victims. Once Israel started forcefully responding support waned and eventually turned to hatred. It’s almost like people are saying, “We get it when you build synagogues like we build churches, but don’t like it when you carve out a country for yourselves.” It’s as if people are thinking what that sign said, “What did you expect to happen when you steal their land.” This antisemitism is, as my teacher Yossi Klein Halevi pointed out, an attack not only on Jews but on the Jewish story. (“The War Against the Jewish Story”) It is an attack on a central component of our story, and this is really important. We have returned to the land. We are not colonizers. We are indigenous to the land of Israel.

Jews have lived in the land for thousands of years. True, it was only recently, that our numbers grew to millions there, but our attachment to the land is indisputable and we should not have to debate it or prove it. It is a matter of history. Of course, Palestinians can also make an indigenous claim. The Palestinian attachment to the land is also legitimate. I believe in a Zionism that proclaims a power to safeguard Jewish lives while also not denying others theirs. But we appear to live in a world where we can only believe one and not both. This antisemitism seeks to deny us our connection, and says our claim is illegitimate. It declares that we are interlopers in an Arab Middle East and don’t really belong there. “Building a life in Pittsburgh or Long Island is ok, but not where you don’t belong.” people seem to be saying. Quietly go about your Jewish lives in your homes and your synagogues, but not in our face with a prime minister and an army. We are not being Jews with how the world wants us to be Jews.

This antisemitism masquerading as anti-Zionism takes on the tropes of yesterday. The word “Zionist” takes the place of “Jew.” People say, “I am not anti-Jewish only anti-Zionist.” The worst of offenses in modern liberal parlance is to be a colonial occupier so now Israel is seen as the world’s worst offender. Somehow even though Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza in 2005, and Hamas ruthlessly took over soon after that, Israel is occupying Gaza and the Hamas terrorists who murdered, raped and burned people become freedom fighters. And this brings me to the second part of this unfolding story and its ongoing tragedy: the college campus.

When I traveled to Israel in January to volunteer on farms, I flew from Madrid. I was one of only two non-Israelis on the flight and this elicited many questions from the security agents. They could not understand why a Jew from Long Island who was able to travel to Spain would choose to forgo touring around Madrid to volunteer in Israel. They kept thanking me. And then one said, “We are watching what is happening at Harvard and Columbia.” Picture this moment. Here is some twenty something year old security agent who cannot understand how she and her friends are reviled on college campuses and depicted as the world’s enemies. You bet it is that personal. She cannot fathom it. She cannot comprehend how things have become so inverted.

But it is understandable when you realize that it’s all about denying us our story. The Jew is the perpetual wanderer, the perennial victim. That is the story the modern world wishes to tell about the Jews. But the story of our return to the land, the story of our return to power, that is not the story people wish to tell. And so, we hear, “If the Zionists stole your land, you too would be fighting them.” And had the sign read “If the Jews stole your land,” protests might have erupted and the sign might have been taken down, but substitute Zionists and it becomes legitimate discourse. We hear, “I am not antisemitic. I am not against Jews. I am just against Zionism.”

But Zionism is about returning to our ancestral land and building a home for ourselves. Israel’s Declaration of Independence makes this clear. It states, “The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people—the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe—was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing (re-establishing!) in Eretz-Yisrael the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations.” We are homeless no more. But the world prefers our homelessness. The world does not want to let us in. It seeks to deny us our story and our home. And that is antisemitism.

Of course, there are legitimate critiques about how Israel has waged this war, and people offering these criticisms are not necessarily antisemites, and such critiques should be open for debate on the college campus, but that’s not what is happening. There are no nuanced discussions about how Israel might respond differently to Hamas’ attacks or how it might operate more humanely in the West Bank. Or, for that matter, debates about how Palestinian leaders might not teach children antisemitic canards or how they might offer alternatives to their so-called armed resistance. Instead, it’s only about Israel. Israel is accused of genocide even though Hamas makes its genocidal designs plain in its charter. Jewish students are screamed at. They are blamed for the actions of Israeli soldiers or the decisions of Israeli politicians. Jewish students are harassed. And all of this is done, they say, in the name of protesting against Israel’s colonialist abuses.

People seem to forget that it is an elemental right for the Jews to have a state of their own. It is right once recognized by the world that the Jewish people should have a state whose primary purpose is to protect its citizens. To deny this only of Jews is a form of antisemitism. To those who proffer a utopian vision opposing all nation states I ask, why is that the Jewish nation-state is the one most often called illegitimate and in particular subject to such animus?

Israelis are the oppressors. Palestinians are the victims. The lines are drawn in black and white. There is no longer the grey that is supposed to be the hallmark of a college education. It is instead oppressor and colonialist on one side, oppressed and freedom fighter on the other. Israelis are guilty. Palestinians are innocent. But the world does not exist in such neat and tidy boxes. And rather than having discussions and debates, we just place every person and every idea in one box or another. You either stand with the oppressor or the oppressed. You are either with us or against us. You are either with the righteous or against as if the world can be divided into one side is 100% right and the other 100% wrong.

And so now being called a Zionist is the newest iteration of what was once the antisemitic label of dirty Jew. And I tell you what I say to that. I am a proud Zionist. And this brings me to my third and most difficult point to talk about, those Jews who do not see Israel as a central part of the Jewish story.

I understand how many young Jews feel and where their tentativeness about Israel comes from. Theirs is a generation that came of age since 9-11 and the subsequent war on terror whose promises of an end to terror have gone unfulfilled. They see an Israel that leads with military might rather than diplomatic overtures. They are skeptical that these latest battles against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists will bring a measure of peace or even quiet. I do not share many of their qualms, but I hear them. And this is what I wish to say in response to such feelings.

Antisemitism is real. It is an ongoing threat. And this calls us to remain loyal to our people. This is our birthright. Of course, you can disagree with how Jewish and Israeli leaders see things. (By the way if you want to see this in action and in living color you need only come to my house to see how this Jewish leader’s arguments are picked apart.) Of course, you can loudly proclaim your different opinions. If you disagree with Israeli leaders such as Itamar Ben Gvir and Betzalel Smotrich and even Benjamin Netanyahu, say so loudly. But let’s do so without forgetting to profess love for the Jewish people. Loyalty and agreement are not the same thing. Unity can come with diversity of opinion. Zionism need not mean fealty to Israel’s current government.

It means instead attachment to our Jewish story and that story centers around the land of Israel and the people of Israel. Beware of groups whose entrance requirement is the renunciation of millions of Jews who call Israel their home. We are but 15 million strong and nearly half live in Israel. Be cautious of organizations that insist you be a certain kind of Jew, a Jew they approve of—namely, one who renounces Zionism and Israel. Your misgivings about Israel and Zionism are welcome at my table but they are not for those places or those groups. To be concrete, if the person standing next to you at an abortion rights rally is also shouting about Zionists stealing the land, think again about where you are standing. I am not suggesting abandoning the cause. I am urging we consider the company we keep.

Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people is a supreme value. And these days, we need to love the Jewish people more. We need to love the Jewish people even when we think some of us are misguided. I know it’s hard sometimes, but these days Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people is something we need to be talking about and thinking about a lot more. And we need to allow this love to guide our actions. We need to be loving the Jewish people as much as we embrace other values like making peace. To be honest, Reform rabbis like myself have done a poor job of teaching this supreme value. The prophets who we Reform rabbis so admire, and so often quote, understood this. They loved the Jewish people even though they also thought they were up to no good.

We have taught our children the prophets’ universal values. We taught them Isaiah’s words. We joined in singing, “Lo yisa goi el goi cherev. V’lo yilm’du od milchamah. And they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not take up sword against nation; they shall never again learn war.” (Isaiah 2) But we never taught, or bothered to learn, the context of Isaiah’s words. At that time the Assyrian empire was ascendant. Israel’s power was waning. War and destruction were on the horizon. I imagine the Israelites were terrified. And guess what the prophet offers them? Words of rebuke! And harsh chastisements! (Don’t go to a prophet if you want comfort and consolation by the way.)

But we ignored all of that when we were teaching our kids. We just talked about Isaiah’s messianic vision of peace. And in so doing we not only glossed over the history but may have forgotten part of his message. The prophet’s universal dream for peace begins with these words, “Ki mitziyon teitzei Torah ud’var Adonai miy’rushalayim. For out of Zion will come forth the Torah, and the word of Adonai from Jerusalem.” Yes, the very same words we say when we take the Torah scroll from the Ark. Isaiah’s vision is a universalism that stems from particularism. It begins in Zion and Jerusalem. His world centered on Jerusalem.

Of course, I still pray for peace. I still hope, along with Isaiah, that things like war colleges will one day only exist in the history books. I don’t expect to see that in my lifetime, but I do still hope and pray for shalom. In this messy, and tumultuous, present, however, I am called not only to hope and pray for peace and maybe even work for peace, but also and this is the part we keep forgetting, hold on to our people. I am called, like the prophet Isaiah, to love the Jewish people.

The Jewish people are small in number but mighty in spirit. We are called to love them. They drive me nuts sometimes, but the love continues. Ahavat Yisrael is what we most need and now. Peoplehood matters. We are going to differ about how we should respond to this war or inevitably how we should respond to the next crisis, but we only have each other. Loyalty need not mean agreement. Devotion need not preclude disagreement. Keep the words of Rabbi Hillel in your thoughts, “Al tifrosh min ha-tzibbur. Do not separate yourself from the community.” (Avot 2) He is, by the way, the same rabbi who taught, “What is hateful to you do not do to another. That is the whole Torah. All the rest is commentary. Go and learn it.” Universalism and particularism are wrapped up in one guy and one vision. It’s always been universalism married to particularism. Care about the world at large through one’s love and attachment to the Jewish people.

I get it. Love is not always easy. Where there is love there is also passion. But we cannot give up on each other. Nearly half of the world’s Jews live in the sovereign State of Israel. We need each other more than ever. We have to stay in this fight together. We can never say, “I want nothing to do with them.” Ahavat Yisrael. Love the Jewish people.

Before I left for my December mission to Israel, I invited you to send me with hats and gloves for those Israelis who had been evacuated from their communities in the South. They left in haste and did not have the necessary clothes for Jerusalem’s winter. I created Amazon wish lists to make it easier for you to purchase these gifts. People kept calling the office to say that there was nothing on the wish list. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was going on but then I realized what happened. It was because I had to indicate how many of each item we needed. And then I became inspired. You kept buying so many of the items that the list kept getting fulfilled. You purchased so many hats and gloves that I was unable to take all of them with me and had to ship them to Israel after I returned. Your donations exceeded what I could carry. Hold on to that.

Love is not always easy. But loving the Jewish people is what this hour requires. Antisemitism is real. We cannot escape it. Let us love our birthright. Let us relearn the meaning of Ahavat Yisrael, love of the Jewish people. All the rest is commentary.

Adversity, Resilience and October 7th

What follows is my Yom Kippur evening sermon about how we can foster resilience in the face of the October 7th attacks and the antisemitism they fomented.

This past year in one of my classes with our sixth graders, we started talking about antisemitism. The discussion was prompted by yet another incident at one of our local schools. A student shared that a swastika was scrawled on a bathroom stall. Another chimed in that one was also painted in a town park. We then discussed the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. They had lots of questions. And then one sixth grader asked, “When will antisemitism end?” And I paused, took a breath and then responded, “Good question. I am really sorry to say this. It will never go away. Jews have been asking that question for thousands of years and sadly antisemitism is still here. Sometimes it is louder like today and sometimes this hatred of Jews only happens behind closed doors, but it’s always going to be here.”

And to be honest, that moment was one of the saddest in my career. It’s not that I thought antisemitism was only for the history books and a thing of the past or that I dislike it when my students ask me challenging questions. It’s instead that in twenty-five years no sixth grader has ever needed to ask me that question. Sixth graders usually ask me things like what happens if I make a mistake reading one of the prayers at my bat mitzvah or what if I forget a word in my Torah portion at my bar mitzvah. Now they are so well acquainted and so familiar with antisemitic hate that they bring different questions to their rabbi. Sixth graders should be worried about friends and sports, school and tests, and yes, bar and bat mitzvahs rather than trying to understand why swastikas are so hateful and struggling to unpack the how’s and why’s of a faraway war. But those October 7th attacks struck us at home. They terrorized us as well. They reminded us that antisemitism is never, ever going away.

And we better figure out how to steel ourselves up so we can better face what is to so many of us an unfamiliar reality. This evening is not about this antisemitism—that is for tomorrow. Tonight, I want to focus on our internal attitudes and our responses. This evening, I wish to offer suggestions for how we can fortify our souls. I wish to suggest how we can remain strong in an age when we are daily reminded that such hate is always and forever.

One answer that people seem to toy with is to pretend it does not exist. I reject this as an option. If our sixth graders see that as impossible then all the more so should we. We must not; we cannot deny reality. Let us not be fools. The ADL reported that there were 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023. That represents a tenfold increase in ten years. The numbers have skyrocketed since October 7th. There were over 10,000 antisemitic incidents recorded in the year since October 7th. Honesty and truth-telling are the first steps towards maintaining resilience. That’s what I want to focus on. How do we remain resilient is my question.

And honesty is ingredient number one. Then again so is perspective. Antisemitism is on the rise. Most of us have never experienced such levels of antisemitic hate. But the world is not ending. To be resilient a person must be both tenacious and flexible. That is what the origin of the word resilient implies. It comes from the Latin meaning to rebound. To bounce back one needs be grounded on the one hand and be able to move on the other. And so, as Daniel Schwartz argues American Jews must be tenacious and flexible. Think about this image. Buildings constructed in earthquake zones are built to withstand earthquakes. How? They are constructed to move enough when the earth shudders so as not to crumble. (Daniel B. Schwartz, “The Mystery of Jewish Resilience”) That is what we must aspire to become like. Earthquake proof buildings. You cannot eliminate the earthquakes. You can figure out how to be strong and flexible in the face of them.

In order to construct ourselves in such a manner, in order to fortify ourselves for the earthquakes we are currently facing, we must agree about the facts. There are two issues here. One is the speed with which such incidents spread in our age. Take one example from last week. A rabbi was hosting Michigan students at his home for Rosh Hashanah dinner. A man entered the home, brandished a gun and said “I’m taking everything. Give me everything.” By the time I heard about the incident at my Rosh Hashanah table, the gunman was shouting antisemitic hate and threatening the students because they are Jewish. This was not the case. It’s not antisemitism every time a Jew is victimized. Although also frightening, and extremely worrisome, sometimes it is just a robbery. Slow down. Be certain of the facts. Honesty requires thoughtful consideration. It requires patience.

Another issue is that we sometimes end up arguing about the meaning of symbols. Again, an example from these past weeks. A young Muslim woman who is a student at a nearby high school decided to decorate her parking spot with a watermelon and the words “Peace be upon you.” The watermelon’s seeds were drawn to look like checkered keffiyehs. She also wrote her name in Arabic. Jewish students, and in particular parents, found this design threatening given that the watermelon has become a powerful symbol of Palestinian pride. The superintendent erased her artwork. But a watermelon is not the flag of Hamas. Asserting support for Palestinian rights, and even criticizing Israeli policies and actions, are not antisemitic. A watermelon is not a swastika. I get it. We are feeling vulnerable. We are under attack. We feel misunderstood and misrepresented. But we have to be thoughtful. Just because someone identifies with what may be called the other side, just because they see things in a wildly different manner than we do, does not mean that person is an antisemite.

My feelings of discomfort cannot become the barometer for what is right and what is wrong. Feelings must not come to replace facts. By the way, there is another Rabbi Moskowitz who serves a nearby Long Island synagogue and who I happen to be madly in love with who views this incident differently. Yes, it is true even the Rabbis Moskowitz do not always agree! This year has made for passionate debates among family members. Emotions are running high.

It’s really hard to steel ourselves up in such a climate. We tend to get each other riled up rather than calming each other down. “Did you hear what happened at Syosset high school today?” we repeat to each other. We debate with our spouses. And this chips away at our fortitude. I understand why we feel this way. What should have elicited widespread understanding and condemnation, namely the October 7th massacre, appears to have engendered more support for the attackers than the attacked. This bewilders and befuddles us. And we then start seeing haters where there might be none. I have no interest in talking to a Nazi sympathizer who paints a swastika. I have tremendous interest in sitting down with a young student who paints a watermelon to show her support for Palestinians. I want to know more about what she thinks and how she sees this conflict even if her supporters shout hateful things towards Israel. I want to see if it is possible to hear each other’s pain and understand each other’s perspective.

There are real threats out there. Let’s be exacting and clear what those are. Remember. Resilience is a marriage of tenacity with flexibility. It’s not just about holding fast. It is also about knowing how and when to bend. Hamas and Hezbollah are our enemies not every Palestinian and not every Muslim.

Moses Maimonides, who as I taught last week, suggested it is a mitzvah to scream—which I have been doing a lot of this year—and who is also the most important thinker in Jewish history, led an extraordinarily interesting life. (That may go hand in hand with being really, really smart.) There is an important part of his biography that we tend to avoid discussing. (Jewish Virtual Library) It is this. He was born in Cordoba but soon that part of Southern Spain was taken over by a fanatical Muslim sect who persecuted the city’s non-Muslim residents. The Almohades offered Jews and Christians this choice: conversion to Islam or death. At the age of thirteen Maimonides’ family was forced to leave and wander from place to place. During these years they practiced their Judaism cautiously and no doubt, secretly. Other Jews even became Muslims outside of their homes and Jews in secret. At the age of twenty-five Maimonides’ family arrived in Fez, Morocco but soon the fanatical Muslims there executed one of his teachers for being a Jew. So, they again ran, first for a brief time to Palestine until finally settling in Cairo, Egypt. I share this not to frighten or to say again to my sixth graders, “Antisemitism has always been around,” but instead to think about those years of running and hiding. According to his own writings, these turbulent years were when he laid the foundations for much of his subsequent works. I have never thought about this fact until this year. The man who became the most important Jewish thinker spent his young years living a scared and secret Jewish life!

I have heard parents tell their children not to wear their Jewish star necklace when they go to the city or to instruct them tuck it into their shirts. That has never been a choice I remotely considered until now. A personal story. I was raised on the family legend that my grandfather was the first Jewish salesman for Pabst Blue Ribbon. It’s a different story for a different time how a man who did not like beer, wine or spirits could be such a successful liquor salesman, but I am pretty sure we were the only ones who ever spoke about this Jewish fact or more importantly even knew this. I am 100% certain this Jewish tidbit was not hailed at Pabst Blue Ribbon’s corporate offices. Why? Because they were completely unaware of my grandfather’s Jewishness. He was a Jew in private but not in public.

We had naively thought that his grandchildren and great grandchildren were on the path to a different destiny in which they could wear their Jewish pride out in public. Are my sixth graders set to become like my grandfather’s generation? Will they likewise become Jews in private but not in the public square. Are they going to live like that thirteen-year-old Maimonides? Then again, I have heard other students say that they make it a point to wear a kippah out on the streets, especially after October 7th. Antisemites be damned, they argue. That is still my go-to approach. We gave our kids only Hebrew names whereas my grandfather changed his name from Shmuel to William. Forthright and in your face is who I am. But this year I realized that quiet, silent and cautious approach stands in the company of giants. That is the house Moses Maimonides grew up in. We have to be flexible as well as tenacious.

This is what I believe. Be proud to be a Jew. Tenaciously hold on to this Jewish people and this community. We are only going to get through this together. That is Judaism’s central message. Community is how we celebrate. We rejoice together. We mourn together. You cannot say the kaddish by yourself, and you cannot dance the hora by yourself. That is what Judaism is all about. It’s also how we survive. We live on, moving into the future by holding on to each other. When a fellow community member is down, we wrap our arms around them. We may not always agree, and we often do not, but there is only one way to move forward and that is together. Remind yourself of this. We have survived far worse. If you read enough Jewish history, you come away with two determinations. 1. Wow. They really seem to hate us. And 2. Wow. We are still here.

People seem to think that we survived because in past generations there was uniformity of Jewish opinion. You will hear people say, “Back then we were of one mind. Today we are so divided.” This is false. We also seem to think that we can only hold on to each other if there is agreement, but that too is an inaccurate reading of history and antithetical to the rabbinic tradition. The rabbis teach us agreement and unity are not the same thing. Loyalty does not always mean saying yes. The rabbis elevated argument to a holy endeavor. It is called machloket l’shem shamayim, argument for the sake of heaven. I would suggest it is this passion and argument that gave us the defiant chutzpah to survive when world events suggested it might be impossible.

Perhaps part of the secret of how we survived is that we never had one answer to historical circumstances. In fact, Simon Rawidowicz, a great historian, argued that because every generation of Jews saw themselves as the last generation who if they did not do this or that, the Jewish people would not survive, is exactly why we survived. He coined the term, the “ever-dying people” and suggested that this worry about the future, this angst about the precariousness of our situation provided us with that extra spark that energized our continued survival.

Take hope from the past. Find strength in our disagreements. I know it’s hard when you think the person sitting in the pews next to you doesn’t really get it and understand things the way you do or the person standing on the bima shouting with passion doesn’t really grasp the stakes and is still talking about morals and how we should behave when it seems like they are trying to kill us but take a measure of hope that we are sitting here together. Passion and argument lead to resilience. I have faith that we will figure this out together. Hang on to community in these most difficult of times.

It takes tenacity to hang on to each other when we so passionately disagree, but this is what this moment calls us to do.

We must be tenacious. And we also must be flexible. And we must be honest. These are the three crucial ingredients that spell resilience. And it is these qualities we need to marshal when facing our now, uncertain future.

Millenia ago when Moses and the Israelites likewise faced a precarious future, God came to their rescue and redeemed them from Egypt. God freed them from slavery. It is this redemption and promise we continue to celebrate at our Passover seders. And while I do not have the patience or think it wise to wait around for God to come to our rescue again—for that we must look to ourselves—we can still glean important lessons from that saving moment. We know the story. We retell it at our Seders. God told Moses to get the people ready because come the fourteenth of Nisan God will come to the people’s rescue. But here is an interesting fact we often forget when retelling this story about the tenth plague, when we relive that moment when God takes care of our enemies for us.

The Torah states, “In the middle of the night God struck down all he first born in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 12) We are all familiar with the seder ritual enacted by our rabbis. We take out ten drops of wine from our kiddush cups for each of the ten plagues to lessen our joy.

That other people suffered so that we can be free must be acknowledged. Our cup of joy is not full because others suffered. It cannot be full because our joy came at the expense of others. Even though the rabbis believed the ancient Egyptians deserved it, they still insisted we give voice to their pain. It’s never just about us.

And here is the other lesson, although this one hidden in those words. We don’t know the exact time of our redemption. The Torah does not provide it. It just says, “in the middle of the night.” In fact, we can read the Hebrew “chatzi halila” as saying, “about midnight.” Perhaps even God does not know the exact time. Or maybe God did not provide the exact time. Or the Torah thought it better not to record the hour. Why? Because our redemption is always going to be “about then.” It cannot have a date or a time. It can never have an hour or a minute attached to it. It’s always going to be “about then.”

We can find the uncertainty about that time dispiriting, but I choose instead to see it as uplifting. Redemption is always going to be a little bit ahead of us, but never so near that I know the hour. And that is going to keep me on my toes. And that is going to keep me alert. And that’s going to keep me busy working for better days.

Antisemitism is always going to be here, but I am going to be honest about it, flexible in my approach and tenacious in my attachment to my people. We are always going to be near the hour but never, ever arrive.

Why We Fast

Yom Kippur begins tomorrow evening.

A story to direct our hearts inward and our hands outward. It is a story about Reb Dov Ber, the Maggid of Mezritch, the successor to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of the eighteenth-century Hasidic movement.

A wealthy merchant once visited Reb Dov Ber and joined the rebbe and his disciples for a meal.

The Maggid started asking questions of their guest. The rebbe asked, “Given your wealth and piety, what does a man such as yourself usually eat?” The man was humbled and flattered that the great rebbe took note not only of his wealth but his piety. He believed he had worked hard to achieve both.

“My dear Rebbe,” the man said with a mixture of pride and humility. “I can afford the finest foods, but I fear these would tempt me. I therefore make do with the diet of the poor. I eat only a slice of bread and pinch of salt.”

“How dare you desecrate God’s name in this way. How dare you defame the Creator in this manner!” the Maggid screamed. “You have been blessed with wealth and power, and yet you deny the legitimate pleasures that come along with it. This is an insult to the God who gave you these things. From now on you are instructed to eat meat and drink wine every day!”

The visitor was shocked. The Maggid’s disciples were even more surprised and perplexed. As soon as the wealthy merchant left, the students begged their rebbe to explain why he shouted at this pious man. It seemed obvious to them that the man was doing his best to avoid the temptations that come with wealth and yet the Maggid rebuked him.

“Perhaps that is the case,” the Maggid responded. “But I am certain about this. If this wealthy merchant grows accustomed to eating meat and drinking wine at every meal, he will certainly come to realize that the poor need to eat at least bread and salt. But if such a wealthy man can make do with bread and salt, then he will come to think that the poor can survive on water and stones.”

On Yom Kippur we choose to fast. We choose not to eat. For far too many this is not a choice, but instead a matter of circumstance.

Let our choice to look away from the bountiful meals we so often enjoy, turn our hearts inward causing us to think about how we can do better and our hands outward towards those who cannot afford even a morsel of bread.

Based on the telling by Rabbi Rami Shapiro in Hasidic Tales: Annotated & Explained.

I Still Believe…

What follows is my Rosh Hashanah morning sermon about how October 7th changed Israel and Israelis and why choosing power over powerlessness is the necessary choice Zionism offers us.

On the morning of October 7th, Israel and our world changed forever. I need not recount the harrowing details from that day. We are well-acquainted with its horrors. Over 1,200 people, most Israeli citizens but some Americans and others for example from Thailand, lost their lives and some 250 people from thirty countries were taken to Gaza as hostages. 5784 has been a painful and earth-shattering year for the Jewish people.

And so, on these High Holidays I can talk about little else than the events of that day and most especially their aftermath. This will be a sermon in two parts. On Yom Kippur morning I will delve into how that devastating day and the ensuing war has affected American Jewry and us, in particular how antisemitism has grown, and Israel has become increasingly ostracized. This morning, I wish to focus on how October 7th changed Israel and Israelis. And I will tell that story through the impressions I gained on this year’s many visits to the place I consider a second home.

In December, on my first trip Israel, we ventured to Kfar Azza, a kibbutz on the Gaza border that is home to some 900 people. There, on October 7th, 60 people were murdered and an additional eighteen were taken hostage. Eleven of those hostages came home in November in the brief cease fire. Two of those were later mistakenly killed by IDF troops in the Gaza Strip. The battle to retake the kibbutz extended for days. Fifty soldiers lost their lives. We were led through the kibbutz by a young man who not only lost friends but also battled Hamas terrorists. We walked along the paths, now lined by destroyed homes on either side. The largest destruction was found to these homes ringing the edge of the kibbutz. It was here that the kibbutz’s young people lived. The twenty and thirty somethings who tend to stay up late sometimes partying lived at a distance from other homes. Their patios were strewn with beer bottles and ashtrays, as well as turned over chairs. It was hard not to imagine my own children sitting around with friends on a Fall evening like that of October 6th laughing and enjoying each other’s company. Sukkahs remained on the porches two months after the holiday concluded. Fruit trees still bore fruit. I could not bring myself to eat the oranges.

Now the homes showed scars of fires and were pockmarked with bullet holes. They were emblazoned with pictures of those killed or those taken hostage. There were also Hebrew signs scrawled on the walls. Some by the army indicating “Weapons cleared.” And others written on earlier days saying, “Dead here.” And others emblazoned with a sticker from the organization Zaka indicating it had concluded its work there and gathered bodies or body parts to be prepared for burial. Susie called me soon after concluding our visit to Kfar Azza. All I could manage was to say, “I love you. I can’t talk now. It’s too hard for words.” Later that evening, when we connected, she said, “I saw some of the pictures other rabbis posted (I prefer the images created by writing than taking pictures), she asked, “How come some of the other groups touring the kibbutz wore helmets and flak jackets and you were walking around in T-shirt and baseball cap?” Apparently in the chaos that continued into December, tours were organized by the prime minister’s office, army or Kfar Azza and they all three had different requirements for their visitors. My group was organized by the kibbutz and so no helmets or jackets were required.

That seemingly absurd bureaucratic difference between the government, army and kibbutz illustrates one of the central defeats Israel suffered on October 7th. Israelis woke up that morning saying, “Where is the army?” They lost faith in the Israel Defense Forces. Israelis fought in countless wars believing their generation would be the last to fight, that one day there would be no army. Now all they can do is write poems lamenting the army’s absence during those harrowing days. Itay Lev writes, “[The army] wasn’t there when they suddenly entered./ It wasn’t there when they tore dad off mom./ Mom had said that when I grew up there would be no army./ Mom was right/ Now all I want is to tell her that she is always right./ I cried, I screamed and still she is silent.”

There were of course remarkable stories of heroism from that day. Amir Tibon and his family were rescued by his father, a former general who raced from Tel Aviv to Kibbutz Nahal Oz, battling terrorists along the way, and with his wife also detouring to rescue the injured. It took him eight hours to get to his son Amir, his daughter in law and grandchildren. Amir said without such colossal failures there would be no need for extraordinary acts of heroism. On October 7th Israelis lost faith in their army. This faith has only recently been restored, albeit not completely, with the defense force’s string of military and intelligence successes battling Hezbollah in the North. Israelis also lost faith in Benjamin Netanyahu and his strategy for managing the conflict with Hamas. What happened in past generations was not supposed to happen in sovereign Israel. With the creation of the State of Israel, modern day Cossacks were not supposed to murder, rape and burn as they did to us in my grandparents’ generation. “Maybe it could still happen there,” Israelis always thought, “But never here.”

Although largely united behind the strategy for fighting Hezbollah, an increasing number of Israelis have become dismayed over the continuing war in Gaza. Many Israelis have come to believe that the only way to get the remaining hostages home is by negotiating a cease fire. Hamas’ fighting capabilities have been decimated and the imminent threat against Southern Israel has been reduced. Large portions of Gaza have been rendered uninhabitable. Tens of thousands of Palestinians have been killed, including an estimated 10,000 children. Some 60% of Gaza’s population have lost a family member. Hamas’ reported figure of 40,000 killed is no doubt exaggerated because it does not distinguish between civilians and combatants. For many, including myself, last month’s murder of six hostages only days before soldiers reached them, illustrated that a terrible choice must be made. Negotiate for a cease fire with Israel’s avowed, genocidal enemy, to get what is believed to be the remaining 65 living hostages home or fight on to the debatable end of destroying Hamas completely. A cease fire is all that offers hope of bringing these hostages home. Already the army appears to be diverting its fight to the North. There, some 60,000 Israelis have been displaced from their communities along Lebanon’s border.

In January I was again in Israel, and I spent Tu B’Shevat, Judaism’s tree holiday, picking oranges. I was volunteering at farms in central Israel. The agricultural sector is dependent on foreign workers who fled the country soon after October 7th. Some thirty different kinds of citrus are grown on the farm where I volunteered. I discovered fields lined with rotten fruit because the farm lacked the labor to pick the oranges, grapefruits, clementines, pomelos and even pomegranates before they fell from the trees. It was exhausting work finding the oranges nestled in the middle of the trees and then trudging through the mud with bags laden with this fruit.

I worked alongside a man from Kibbutz Dan, a kibbutz on Israel’s northern border. He, his wife and three children were living in a hotel room in Haifa since October. He was without a job because the university where he teaches was now closed and so he decided to do some volunteer work. When I finished the day’s work, I picked fresh clementines from the trees. I have never tasted anything as sweet or as delicious. To mark the day’s holiday, I tried to say the blessing for the fruit of the trees, but the father’s sense of abandonment invaded my thoughts. I kept hearing his words instead of the blessing. “Kibbutz Dan is such a beautiful place. My daughters love it there. We just want to go home.” They long for their country life but are trapped in an unfamiliar city, in a small room built for overnight stays not lengthy months long stays.

And this illustrates why Israelis are united behind the struggle against Hezbollah. Although worried about the cost of a ground invasion, they recognize that this may be a necessary fight. Here the stated goal is more limited. It is to push Hezbollah forces far enough from the border, deplete it of its most threatening missiles, prevent it from firing rockets into Israel and most importantly allow residents from the North to return to their homes. They recognize that these battles are all fights against Iran as indicated by this week’s missile strikes. Still, I worry about the ongoing costs to Israelis’ psyche and Israel’s soul. Israelis feel abandoned by an indifferent world. They feel misunderstood. Most just want to enjoy what a normal home feels like. They want to stop going to so many funerals. In the past year every Israeli I know has attended countless funerals, many for soldiers. Some 350 soldiers have died since the ground war began.

On another day when I packed strawberries at a nearby farm the task was to make sure there was as close as possible to 500 grams of berries in each container. I was not particularly good at this task, especially at arranging the best-looking strawberries on top. My mind kept wandering to who might be purchasing these berries at the market. I imagined them searching for the best-looking strawberries. On my morning drives to the farm, the announcer recited the names of those soldiers killed the day before. “Sergeant Major Matan Lazar, 32 years old, from Haifa. Sergeant First Class Nicholas Berger, 22 years old, from Jerusalem. Sergeant Major Shay Biton Hayun, 40 years old, from Zichron Yaakov.” On that day there were twenty-four names in all. It was the deadliest one-day loss in the war. Maybe those shopping for friends’ or neighbors’ shiva would not choose the berries I packed.

According to the great Jewish philosopher, Moses Maimonides, it is a mitzvah to scream. Screaming, especially in pain, has its place, but this year I feel that’s all I have wanted to do. The world is on fire and all I can do is scream. The psalm assigned to these High Holidays begins with the words, “Out of the depths I call You, O Lord. O Lord, listen to my cry; let Your ears be attentive to my plea for mercy.” (Psalm 130) It is framed by the psalmists’ familiar words. Shir Hamaalot—a song of ascents. And then continues, “Mi-ma-amakim—out of the depths.” How can a song of ascents also be out of the depths? How can a song that is supposed to be uplifting begin from the worst possible place, this place of such profound pain?

Shir Hamaalot. A song. The Nova Music Festival was billed as a celebration of friends, love and infinite freedom. The site is now a makeshift memorial to the over 350 festival goers who were murdered there. Steel flowers now stand in their place. Friends and family have built personal memorials throughout the fields and in the hardened bus shelters were festival goers tried to escape the onslaught. Burned out yahrtzeit candles are everywhere to be found. I had never listened to Psytrance music before, but I have found myself listening to “Man With No Name” more and more. It really does make you want to dance. Sometimes I have to force myself to dance. Maybe that’s all we can do.

Nearly 2,000 years ago the rabbis thought the same thing as they looked to a destroyed Jerusalem and a leveled Temple. In that moment they penned the words of the sheva brachot, “O God, may there always be heard in the cities of Israel and in the streets of Jerusalem: the sounds of joy and of happiness, the voice of the groom and the voice of the bride (kol sasson v’kol simcha, kol chattan v’kol kallah), the shouts of young people celebrating, and the songs of children at play.” I have offered those words for couples hundreds of times but not until this year has this prayer seemed so contemporary. Maybe that’s what we have been doing for thousands of years—and still. Dance despite the pain.

Israelis were so excited that the Nova festival organizers from Brazil had chosen Israel as the year’s location. It felt as if they were affirming, we have arrived on the world stage. We are going to be just like every other nation. That was Zionism’s vision. We can be part of the family of nations.

I have always been enthralled with Zionism’s vision. I remain a proud Zionist. Here is the simple reason why. I choose power over powerlessness. I choose power because I have read Jewish history. We tried powerlessness for 2,000 years—since that destruction of the Temple. We suffered expulsions, massacres, pogroms and the Holocaust. No more! This is Zionism’s central message. Jewish history teaches us that we cannot rely on God alone. Prayer keeps hope alive. That’s what the concluding note of our seders accomplished. “L’shanah habah b’yerushalayim—next year in Jerusalem” sustained the hope that one day we would return to the land. But prayer did not save enough Jewish lives. For that we require the power of our own state. We do not live in a utopian, messianic world. The world may not let us dance like everyone else. And therefore, the Jewish people require power. Power is not perfect. Israel makes mistakes. And when the powerful make mistakes—as happened in this past year, those mistakes have names attached to them. They have families mourning them too.

To my conservative friends I wish to say, “We must not ignore these mistakes or excuse them. Collateral damage means human beings! They have names. They have people who loved them. That Hamas started this war with its murder, mutilation and rape of 1200 people and the taking of hundreds of hostages, that Hamas embeds its fighters in and builds tunnels under hospitals and schools and United Nations facilities does not excuse Israel of moral responsibility. With a powerful army comes great responsibility. And with a government and military comes abuses. Take account of the increase in violence against West Bank Palestinians. The New York Times is not making stuff up even though I might prefer it not always feature it on the front page.”

To my liberal friends, I must say, “Who ever said the Jewish nation is going to be perfect? It wasn’t perfect when Ben Gurion was prime minister, and it isn’t perfect now. I am not going to suggest otherwise or pretend differently. I will take working to fix these mistakes and repair these abuses and advocating for Israel to do better over going back to running for our lives—although that is exactly what made October 7th so spiritually devastating. I will take joining protestors in Tel Aviv over the worry of prior generations. No more should we worry is this czar is going to kill us or that queen force us from our homes. Having a state and an army whose primary purpose is to safeguard and defend its citizens is virtuous even though its soldiers, commanders, and political leaders do not always live up to its stated ideals.”

I embrace Israel with all its pitfalls and its many imperfections. I celebrate Israel’s many successes and its extraordinary wonders. Zionism is about writing our own story. It’s about not being history’s victims but history’s actors. It is about fighting for our lives rather than running for our lives. That’s why I am Zionist. That’s why I will never abandon Israel or turn my back on the Jewish state. I will never give up on the Jewish people. I love the Jewish people, and I love Israel. That’s also why I have visited there so many times this past year.

I can’t stay away even though this year’s visits brought me more than a few restless nights. To be candid, there are still evenings when I wake up in the middle of night beset by visions of what I witnessed, especially during that first December trip. Picture this. It was at the Shura army base. There, the group of rabbis with whom I was traveling sat in silence in a beautiful but stark room that few people ever see. It is here where families say their last goodbyes to their loved ones in this agonizing war. The process was explained to us in moving detail by one of the young rabbis who staff the base. “The body arrives here and then we work quickly to verify the identity of the soldier. We have a DNA database. We look to fellow soldiers for witness testimony. Once we have one of these two, we pre-position the officers near the fallen soldier’s home.” These are the officers who will personally deliver what Israelis call the “knock on the door.” He continued, “We hurriedly work to ascertain the second identifying mark so we can give those officers the go ahead. We then prepare the body so that the family can journey here to visit their loved one.”

We bowed our heads. None of these seasoned rabbis had any words to offer. We just sat there on the very same benches where families sit nearly every day since October 7th, staring at this marble slab in the middle of the room, imagining the fathers and mothers, spouses and lovers, children and friends sobbing and screaming. All of us have heard these cries before, we have heard the wails of those who lost loved ones, of those who lost someone years before their time, but this young rabbi who naively thought his army duties would only involve kashering kitchens, hears them every day and sometimes several times a day. And if you want to know what keeps me up at night, it is that worn look on that thirty-something year old rabbi’s face and his words, “I tell my wife I am ok. But she says, ‘No you’re not. You’re not the same.’” That room haunts my sleep.

And sometimes in my dreams, although not as much anymore as I would like, I imagine that there is a similar room for Palestinian and Lebanese children, where relatives and friends also come to say their last goodbyes. I remind myself. Imagination is a necessary ingredient for compassion. Imagining the pain of others is what pushes empathy forward. It’s what makes us human. The coarsening of our feelings is yet another victim in this unfolding tragedy. The lessening of my empathy for others is another of October 7th’s victims. As antisemitic hate and violence grow, we turn inward and grow less compassionate about the world. Terror fills our kishkes with so much fear that we can no longer feel our own hearts. I still believe. If we can only see our own pain, we lose our humanity. Then again if we do not prioritize our own pain, we lose our sense of family. To be a Jew is to hold on to both—the suffering of other human beings and the heartache of fellow Jews. This remains our ideal. This remains our dream even if this moment pushes it farther out of reach.

Jonathan Goldberg-Polin, the father of Hersh Goldberg-Polin z”l, who was so brutally murdered a little more than a month ago, said, “In a competition of pain, there are no winners.” There are no winners. And there are not enough rooms to contain all the pain and all the anguish.

It will be October 8th for some time to come. On this Rosh Hashanah let us pledge. Stand with our family. Remain proud be to be a Jew. Be a devoted Zionist. Remain steadfast in your loyalty to Israel and its people. And try to nurture sparks of compassion for all people.

Out of the depths, I proclaim, “I still believe…. I still believe…. I still believe…”

Everyone Can Change

Wednesday evening begins Rosh Hashanah.

The holiday’s central message is this. We can change and start over. We can repair relationships and mend the hurt we have caused. No one is free from wrongdoing. And no one is beyond the possibility for change.

Judaism does not believe our destiny is fated. We can always write a new story for ourselves.

There is a story about Rabbi Israel Salanter who lived in the nineteenth century and founded the Mussar movement whose goal was to return ethics to the center of Jewish life.

Once Rabbi Salanter spent the night at a shoemaker’s home. Late at night, he saw the man working by the light of a flickering candle. “Look how late it is,” the rabbi said. “Your candle is about to go out. Why are you still working? The shoemaker replied, “As long as the candle is burning, it is still possible to mend.”

For weeks afterward, Rabbi Israel Salanter was heard repeating the shoemaker’s words to himself: “As long as the candle is burning, it is still possible to mend.” He continued, “As long as the candle burns—as long as the spark of life still shines—we can mend and heal, seek forgiveness and reconciliation. We can begin again.”

This year let’s be like the shoemaker.

We need not stay up late into the night, but we can always begin again.

We can begin to make changes at any hour.

Hidden Good Deeds

This week we read a strange, and seemingly out of place verse. It reads, “Concealed acts concern the Lord our God; but with overt acts, it is for us and our children forever to apply all the provisions of this Teaching.” (Deuteronomy 30) The Hebrew text makes note of this curious statement. Several of the words have dots above each of the letters, in particular the words “for us and our children forever.”

Biblical scholars explain. Ancient scribes often used such indications to signal corrections or deletions to the original text. But there is nothing in the marked words that appear out of place. The rabbis, however, spin numerous interpretations about these scribal notations. Rabbinic commentators debate their meaning. They ask, “What is the Torah trying to teach?”

Moses Maimonides suggests that concealed acts refer to the reasons for the commandments which remain mysterious to human minds. Overt acts point to the performance of the commandments. This is why there are these extra markings above the words “for us and our children forever.” Others reason that concealed acts imply the future while overt acts refer to the present.

The Hasidic rebbe, Menahem Mendle of Kotzk thinks otherwise. He writes, “The world thinks that a tzaddik nistar—a hidden righteous person—is a person who conceals his (or her) righteousness and his (or her) good deeds from others. The truth, however, is that a tzaddik nistar is one whose righteousness is hidden and concealed from him (or herself), and who has no idea whatsoever that he (or she) is righteous.”

The lesson is not about performing deeds anonymously but instead about remaining unaware of our righteous acts.

As we approach Rosh Hashanah, I am imagining how the world might differ if people went about their day performing righteous acts while never even worrying about the praise they might receive about doing the right thing. Whether or not their deed merited the label of “good deed” shall remain forever hidden.

Rejoice! Be Glad!

The Hasidic master, Rebbe Nachman of Bratslav, teaches, “Always remember: joy is not merely incidental to your spiritual quest. It is vital.”

This week we read a lengthy list of curses, beginning with what the Torah imagines to be the worst kind of people: “Cursed be the person who misdirects a blind person on his way.— And all the people shall say, Amen. Cursed be the person who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.— And all the people shall say, Amen.” (Deuteronomy 27)

The portion continues with a list of what will befall those who disobey God’s command: “Cursed shall be your basket and your kneading bowl.” And finally, offers a brief list of blessings for those who heed God’s commandments: “Blessed shall you be in the city and blessed shall you be in the country.” (Deuteronomy 28)

The theology is crystal clear. Obey God’s commands and blessings will follow. Disobey God’s mitzvot and you will witness a lengthy, detailed list of curses. It is not a very comforting thought. Many people grow uncomfortable with the Torah’s stark theology.

The tradition appears to recognize this discomfort. When chanting the portion, the Torah reader chants these lengthy curses in a rushed, soft voice. To recite these curses in a loud, commanding voice would be to suggest a confidence in its theology. It would be to affirm something we experience to be false.

Everyone can cite examples of people who follow all the commandments and yet experience far too many calamities and likewise those who appear to subvert the rights of the stranger and appear to enjoy untold blessings. And so, what do we do? We recite these words in hushed tones.

It is almost as if the tradition is instructing us to dwell on the blessings and rush past the curses.

In a year that has offered a lengthy list of curses, how do we teach ourselves to maximize our blessings? How do we learn to minimize our curses?

Another Hasidic master Simhah Bunim of Peshischa responds. He teaches that these detailed punishments are only attached to one specific command, “Because you would not serve the Lord your God in joy and gladness over the abundance of everything.” (Deuteronomy 28) Simhah Bunim hears the Torah shouting, “Rejoice! Be glad!”

Perhaps the rebbes are correct. We need to hone the ability to take in more joy. Even when our blessings appear meager, we must rejoice. Perhaps all it takes is to assume a posture of joy and gladness.

I am beginning to detect how to reorient this cursed year. Quickly, and softly, detail the curses. Slowly, and loudly, enumerate our blessings.

And then let joy and gladness fill your hearts.

Joy is vital to our spiritual quest.

Do Not Remain Indifferent

Indifference leads to harm.

Too often we say, “It’s not my problem. It’s not my responsibility.” But the world, with all its good and all its bad, is our responsibility. What’s happening down the block and what’s going on thousands of miles away are our duties. Such is Judaism’s contention.

The Torah declares, “If you see your fellow’s ox or sheep gone astray, do not ignore it; you must take it back to your fellow. If your fellow does not live near you or you do not know who he is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your fellow claims it.” (Deuteronomy 22)

We clearly do not believe in the adage, “Finders keepers, losers weepers.” Not only are we commanded to find the animal’s owner, but we must care for it until the owner is found. Imagine the expense of caring for an ox, of making sure it has enough food for months or even years! And while I am reasonably certain that no one in our congregation, or for that matter, in the neighborhoods in which we live, owns an ox or a sheep, the implication is clear.

We must go out of our way for our neighbors. We must even incur expenses, and take on additional burdens, to help them out. The Torah places no limits on our responsibilities. They are only completed when the neighbor claims the animal. In other words, it is only when our fellow says, “Enough.”

Our neighbors’ problems are our sacred burdens. Our fellows’ difficulties are ours to help alleviate. The tradition makes plain that we must take responsibility for our neighbors’ wellbeing.

The Torah concludes, “So too shall you do with anything that your fellow loses, and you find: you must not remain indifferent.”

The Hebrew for indifferent is “l’hitalem.” It comes from the word meaning hidden. It suggests that their problems must not remain hidden to us. Its root is also related to the word for world. The Hebrew suggests that the world contains hidden mysteries which we must unveil.

Too often we think those mysteries are the world’s hidden beauties and majesties. Here it suggests that it’s the world’s difficulties that frequently remain hidden.

The world, and its troubles, are our sacred burden to help undo. They are also our duty to unveil. Take responsibility for each other.

You must not remain indifferent!

Bring Them Home Now

What follows is my sermon from the Shabbat evening service following the funerals of the six murdered Israeli hostages.

To say that this week has offered particularly painful days is a terrible understatement. It has been wrenching. The news that six hostages—namely Hersh, Carmel, Eden, Alex, Almog and Ori—were murdered only days before Israeli soldiers reached them was beyond comprehension.

Although all lives hold equal value Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s death crushed me more than those of the others. He was one of the few hostages from Jerusalem. His picture was plastered everywhere I turned in the Jerusalem neighborhood I call home for two weeks every summer. His parents Jon and Rachel, and most especially Rachel, showed such remarkable courage and poise during these past eleven months and helped me become acquainted with Hersh’s character, his passions and interests as well as his endearing quirks and loving nature.

When I heard Rachel first speak in Washington DC at the November rally, I doubted her belief that Hersh was still alive. His arm had been blown off when he and his best friend Aner tried to escape the onslaught in a fortified bus shelter. Aner was killed by grenades. Hersh lost his arm. How could he survive without emergency medical care, I wondered. But he did. She was right when she stood only days ago at Gaza’s border shouting his name and pleading with him to stay strong. And he did—for eleven months.

I watched his funeral online along with thousands of others. There were audible wails among the thousands of people in attendance. The cries became distorted on my laptop’s speakers. I marveled at his family’s strength. I admired how Hersh’s friends held each other up as they spoke. How could one not weep as Rachel spoke about her dear, sweet boy? She said,

I am honest. And I say, it is not that Hersh was perfect. But, he was the perfect son for me. And I am so grateful to God, and I want to do hakarat hatov and thank God right now, for giving me this magnificent present of my Hersh…. For 23 years I was privileged to have this most stunning treasure, to be Hersh’s Mama. I’ll take it and say thank you. I just wish it had been for longer.

There are not enough tissues for the grief this year has offered our people. Every day seems to offer enough heartbreak for a lifetime.

Hamas murderous rampage continues to terrorize us. Israel’s heavy-handed response has made us defensive in even the most genteel of settings. Let me be honest. Netanyahu is ill fitted for leadership at this dangerous and pivotal moment. The radicals he has empowered endanger lives and undermine our people’s moral fiber with their desire to resettle Gaza and their efforts to organize Jewish prayer near Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque. Let me be clear. Benjamin Netanyahu is not responsible for Hamas’ genocidal ideology or their actions, but he is responsible for Israel’s response to it and Israel’s lack of readiness on October 7th. He is no longer the right leader for Israel and the Jewish people. And Israelis are taking to the streets once again protesting his failures and most especially his abandonment of the hostages. I wish to stand with those Israelis protesting against Netanyahu and his government’s unprecedented failures and standing up for a better, and perhaps brighter, future for the country we so love.

Israel cannot destroy Hamas completely. It can degrade its capabilities. It can work with allies to cut off its funding. But it cannot wipe it out. Even if the IDF were to destroy all of Gaza and kill thousands more Gazans—God forbid—it would not eradicate Hamas. Thousands of additional dead will not make us any safer. A military cannot destroy an ideology. It can better protect its citizens and kill as many terrorists as possible, but it cannot destroy an ideology as much as justice might demand such an outcome. At this juncture Israel’s best alternative is a cease fire. Had that been agreed to a few weeks ago, Hersh would have been home, in the embrace of his mother and father, and sisters, and friends. He was among the first on the list of those who would have been released.

This week’s Torah portion speaks about justice. It states, Tzedek, tzedek tirdof—justice, justice you shall pursue. (Deuteronomy 16) Justice is a pursuit. The Hebrew is even stronger. It suggests that we must run after justice. It implies that justice is an effort. But the tradition has another saying. We read in Pirke Avot, “Be a rodef shalom—a pursuer of peace.”

How can one pursue both justice and peace? They are often in conflict. Justice demands that Israel continues its fight until it captures (actually recaptures) or kills the mastermind of October 7th’s brutality, Yahya Sinwar y”s. But that would mean condemning the remaining hostages to Hersh’s terrible fate. Life demands compromises. Preserving life most especially necessitates compromises. Saving life requires us to let go of the notions of perfect justice and even I must admit, 100% security.

Could the future price of such compromises be too great? I do not know. The tradition debates ransoming captives at length. Can a community sell a Torah scroll to fulfill the mitzvah of pidyon shevuyim?, it asks. Yes, it answers. Could paying too high a price encourage more hostage taking? The Talmud says, yes. The tradition appears as befuddled as we currently are. I know this for certain. All I can be crystal clear about right now and in this moment is those 101 families. Their pain is too much to continue to carry.

This evening Hersh’s father Jon offers the closing words. At his son’s funeral he said,

Hersh, Forgive us. Sorry we failed you. We all failed you. You would not have failed you. You would have pushed harder for justice. You would have worked to understand the other, to bridge differences. You would have challenged more people to challenge their own thinking. And what you will be pushing for now is to ensure that your death and the deaths of all the soldiers and so many innocent civilians are not in vain. Your starting point would be returning all of the hostages. For 330 days mama and I sought the proverbial stone that we could turn over to save you. Maybe just maybe your death is the stone, the fuel that will bring home the remaining 101 hostages.

May it be God’s will.