It’s a big moment in our parasha, Shemini, in the middle of the third book of the Torah, Vayikra, Leviticus: after a week of preparation, Moses and Aaron and his eldest sons, Nadav and Avihu, are consecrating the Mishkan and the Aaron family are being consecrated as its priests. This may be the moment of a lifetime, or at least since they had the big moment on Sinai.

And then, Nadav and Avihu offer what the Torah calls alien, strange fire, and God zaps them then and there. Of course, pages and pages of commentary have been written to explain it.

Aaron watches his two eldest sons die, consumed by fire, in front of him. And what is his response? Vayidom Aharon—Aaron was silent. His reaction has also been analyzed ad infinitum…indeed, in the new Mussar Commentary to the Torah, the essayist Rabbi Jonathan Kraus notes several rabbinic theories.

But what I’ve always wondered about is – where is his wife, their mother? Surely, this invisible woman, the mother of Nadav and Avihu, must have had feelings about this horrible event…Where is she?

Invisible like so many women we might expect to hear from—Mrs. Noah, taking care of everyone on the Ark…Mrs. Joshua during the meeting of Joshua and Tamar…or even Mrs. Matisyahu, mother of the Maccabees…or even Pharaoh’s daughter, who goes nameless in the Torah.

So many generations of Jewish women silenced…partly because our voices might be too sensuous for men’s ears, like the sirens of Greek mythology. Or the Rabbis didn’t believe we could have anything to say that would be worth hearing. They grouped us with children and slaves in lists of exclusions from mitzvot. And “relieved” us of the burden of time-specific mitzvot because we were tending the children (our WHOLE lives? Really?).

Indeed, it continued for millennia. When my mother died 40 years ago, her three daughters, two nieces, sister, mother, and closest women friends did not count in the minyan, so our Conservative temple in Queens brought in the traveling minyan to say Kaddish. It still infuriates me four decades later.

In my rabbinic period history class in seminary, we read an article by Professor Gail Labovitz about the reason for all these laws: so that the rabbis could study and be taken care of. The article with all its detail broke my heart, because there was no good reason for all these laws, none, not one—and I had come to love our Sages…I needed to reconstruct my love for them and for Jewish teachings.

Obviously, I did. I’m here standing in front of you. I had to remember my joy in reading Letty Cottin Pogrebin’s Deborah, Golda and Me. Pogrebin has been a hero of mine as one of the founders of Ms. Magazine—when I was still in high school. The fact that she struggled with Jewish sexism the same way I did, and found a way through it, brought me back to Judaism in my 30s. As did Susannah Heschel, Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s daughter and Professor of Jewish Studies, who edited On Being a Jewish Feminist. And Rachel Adler’s Engendering Judaism. I had already learned one could be a feminist and an active Jew, which was mind-blowing and thrilling.

Indeed, on that famous other hand, we have lots to celebrate—all Jews, not just the women. But I DID want to lay out the reality of what it was like for women in our tradition (not so different in other faith traditions or cultures around the world). Just as I think it’s vital for me (and hopefully other white folks) to learn the too often hidden history of Black experience in and contributions to American history, I think it’s important for us to understand women’s experience in Judaism.

Here we are, on the 54^th anniversary of my Bat Mitzvah (yikes), the weekend after the one hundredth anniversary of the first ever Bat Mitzvah ceremony, AND 50 years of women in the rabbinate.

See? So much to celebrate!

In biblical times, we had our own proverb: Eshet Chayil, Proverbs 31, describing us as Women of Valor. It’s a piece of sacred text that our husbands are supposed to read to us every shabbat…How many of you women hear it? How many of you mean say it or some version?

A woman of valor, who can find? Her worth is far beyond that of rubies. Her husband’s heart trusts in her, and lacks no treasures.

And then it goes on for another 29 verses…

Or imagine sharing Marcia Falk’s reinterpretation of it—something each partner can share: she calls it the Blessing of the Beloved, taken from song of songs:

One partner says, How fine you are, my love, how fine you are.

The other responds: How fine you are, my love, what joy is ours.

And together they say: Of all pleasure, how sweet is the taste of love.

Can you imagine saying THAT as you light your candles and bless your children?

Now we have so many women rabbis that there has been for years a story of the young boy who asks his rabbi if men can be rabbis, too? We are blessed that Rabbi Sally Priesand was the first woman ordained by a seminary 50 years ago, because she made decisions about her life based on what would be good for women, rather than herself, which in turn, was what was good for the Jewish people.

Thanks to the women who followed her into the rabbinate, we have new rituals for miscarriages and stillbirths, and divorce—rituals that didn’t exist before women rabbis were there to recognize the need for them. Women have brought a different sensibility to ritualizing daily life. Indeed, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg’s book, Nurturing the Wow, brings a new look at sparking spirituality into our young children, as does Lisa Miller’s The Spiritual Child.

And we have Debbie Friedman. Debbie’s CDs were the soundtrack to my reentry into Jewish life. My daughter Olya and I listened to them in the car for years. And I was certainly not the only one. I don’t think there is a Jew who does not know her Mi Sheberach.

When she died too early, people all over Judaism, EVERY stream and branch, were touched and grieving. Her music brought all of us together. She almost singlehandedly changed liturgical music, bringing music we could sing together. While it is wonderful to hear cantorial music, xit’s also a joy to sing together, to have that mystical, magical connection that joining voices creates. A lot of that is thanks to Debbie. She had to struggle with heavy criticism that it was “just” folk music, but it sang to people’s hearts. At her funeral, people spoke about how often the music just poured through her, as a conduit for the holy. And she sparked people like Julie Silver, and Craig Taubman and almost everyone who came after her or alongside her.

Many of my favorite teachers—in person or through their writings have been women rabbis and professors. Certainly Susannah Heschel. And Rachel Adler. And Rabbi Anne Brener, whose Mourning to Mitzvah is now a classic text to help people in mourning through their journey.

Another one is Rabbi Judith Hauptman. Her book, Rereading the Rabbis: A Woman’s Voice, shares one of my all-time favorite midrashim from the Talmud, as well as her perspective on it:

An apostate once came before (the famous) Rabban Gamliel, and said, “Your God is a thief. He stole a rib from Adam when he was asleep.” Rabban Gamliel’s daughter (was sitting nearby) told her father, “Let me handle this one,” whereupon she began to act as if a calamity had befallen her and asked to summon a police officer. When asked what had happened, she said that thieves had broken into her room the night before and taken her silver goblet and left a gold one in its place. The apostate then chimed in, “But how can you call that an act of theft if they left you, in place of what they took, something of greater value? Would that such thieves would come upon us often!”

“That’s precisely the point,” she replied.

I would love to end the midrash here, but it continues…

“Was it not to Adam’s benefit that God took his rib and left him in its place a woman as his maidservant? (BT Sanhedrin 39a)

Now, I might object to this as yet another sexist bit of Talmud: the woman in place of rib is there to serve. Hauptman points out that Ms. Gamliel is not a self-effacing maidservant, but a self-confident, intelligent, and aristocratic woman. She is living proof of the opposite of what she says. This, Hauptman continues, reminds us that the Rabbis were ambivalent about women.

Okay, that’s an understatement.

Now we have scholars who read the texts from a different perspective, a woman’s perspective, and the text has different meaning. Now that the prohibition against reading our sacred texts has been lifted, we can ask, as Susannah Heschel teaches, whose interests are being served by a text, not just what the text is saying, but what it is concealing. And that is part of what makes Judaism so exciting today.

And finally, we have Marcia Falk, whose siddur, The Book of Blessings, and other books offer all of us new ways of thinking of God, rather than the Old Man with the long beard sitting on a throne…but as the Wellspring of Life, the Holy Sparks, and other images that permeate our sacred texts—and do not conjure an anthropomorphic deity. (As Maimonides taught us in the Mishneh Torah, all the references to God’s body parts—God’s back, finger, nose, face—are all there because our ancestors couldn’t relate to a God beyond human form.) But I hope we can. We can see God as non-binary even.

It used to be – and still is in Orthodox streams of Judaism —that women can’t sing when men are present—because it would cause them to leave their thoughts of God for more “secular” thoughts. We would not be able to hear Erica leading us in song.

I’ve always wondered why the Rabbis thought they were so weak that they couldn’t control themselves in the face of women’s voices, considering learning self-restraint is a key Jewish practice. If someone has an idea, let’s discuss later. But it reminds me of one of my favorite Golda Meir stories: when there was a serial rapist in Jerusalem, some of the men in government wanted to issue a curfew for women. She told them that instead there should be a curfew on men—as they were the ones causing the problem.

It’s all in perspective…and the more diversity in perspectives we have, the richer our tradition.

So let’s celebrate that women have been rabbis for the lives or most of the lives of many of us, that we have begun to welcome the voices of so many others into our tradition, and we have so many women –rabbis, liturgist, musicians, theologians, professors, and indeed all women—to contribute their unique gifts to our community.

 

This wasn’t where we expected to be by now. We thought the vaccination rate would have stopped variants and we’d be having concerts again, and masks, at least here, would be a thing of the past. Deaths to covid would have ended… But here we are, masked…in a small group…

 

I have to say the fact that none of you have gotten Covid is amazing—awe-inspiring, even. But the social isolation, the loneliness, the not being able to hear anyone through a mask, the underlying fear…and the grief for and of so many are soul-wrenching.

 

As society reopens, I’ve read and heard stories that stand my hair on end or make my heart ache or both. And rather than using our time alone to envision a better future, many people (including me, I admit) are showing that we haven’t improved ourselves as much as the times require.

 

Cases in point:

 

A restaurant on Cape Cod gave its staff a “Day of Kindness,” closing to give staff a break from too many customers who had become abusive. Restaurants all over the country shared similar anecdotes.

 

Flight attendants are being squeezed on both ends. First, the airlines are requiring them to work longer hours with less break time between flights. More people are flying than 2 years ago in the same period, with fewer staff to serve more flyers. (I admit, this shocked me.) Then, because it is the flight attendants’ responsibility to police mask use onboard, they are suffering three times more abuse from flyers—including physical abuse.

 

A friend told me about a friend of his, a nurse at Highland Hospital. She described the PTSD that she and her colleagues are experiencing—from working around so much death and fear…and then going home and accidentally infecting their family—and losing loved ones because of their work.

 

Then all the climate crises: my former congregants in Tahoe are experiencing the trauma of the fires, while one of us lost her family home, where everyone gathers. Just imagine how hard it is for the Tahoe rabbi to organize High Holy Days right now.

 

Thanks to Hurricane Ida, my sister’s building flooded outside of New York City, but she’s been one of the lucky ones: she has electricity and can take her dog for walks, and doesn’t live in a basement apartment.

 

The people in Louisiana are without electricity amid excessive heat warnings.

 

One third of the counties in the US have experienced a weather disaster this summer, according to the Washington Post, including us with our severe drought.

 

I could add Afghanistan and Texas—and the women in both places facing serious threats to their humanity. And racism. And transphobia. The increase in antisemitism. January 6 and the threats to our democracy.

 

Rabbi Leah Herz calls it a tsunami of tsuris.

 

And I know that many of you—you who have marched, organized, advocated, donated, served, taught—you are tired. One resident (at SPT) noted that it now takes her an hour to get dressed in the morning and almost that long to get ready for bed, and she doesn’t have the energy in between to do much about what is happening in the world.

 

I know many of you are discouraged: you wanted to leave the world a better place than you found it. (Know this: you already have, I promise you.)

 

What to DO??? Let me offer a few suggestions.

 

The first is that you don’t necessarily have to DO much.

 

Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan monk who wrote in In Love with the World,

 

People everywhere try so hard to make the world better. Their intentions are admirable. Yet they seek to change everything but themselves. To make yourself a better person is to make the world a better place. Who develops industries that fill the air and water with toxic waste? How did we humans become immune to the plight of refugees…? Until we transform ourselves, we are like mobs of angry people screaming for peace…Nothing is more essential for the twenty-first century and beyond than personal transformation. It’s our only hope. Transforming ourselves is transforming the world.

 

The Chofetz Chaim, the 19^th-20^th Century Polish chassidic rebbe, had a tremendous impact on the Jewish world through his writings and teachings. When asked how he had achieved this success, he answered, “I set out to try to change the world, but I failed. So, I decided to scale back my efforts and only try to influence the Jewish community of Poland, but I failed there, too. So, I targeted the community in my hometown of Radin but achieved no greater success. Then I gave all my effort to changing my own family and failed at that as well. Finally, I decided to change myself, and that’s how I had such an impact on the Jewish world.”

 

Different cultures, same story…

 

Ok, I exaggerated…you DO have to DO something…keep working on being the best you you can be. We can talk about the particulars another time.

 

I shared the Chofetz Chaim story with my Wise Aging group in Santa Rosa, and one person, an inveterate hippie, reminded us that we are all made of energy, and the energy we put out in the world ripples and affects the people around us. One angry person can spark a mob. One hopeful person can spread hope.

 

That’s a definition of social contagion: when energy as manifested as behavior or emotions spread spontaneously through a community or social network. On the positive side, research shows that happiness spreads through a social network, up to three degrees of separation from the initial happy person. If you have a happy next door neighbor, you are 34% more likely to be happy. You might want to seek out the happy people in the community and spread it around to the less happy people.

 

Jewish tradition is filled with stories of social contagion. The building of the Golden Calf when Moses was late coming down Mt. Sinai and the mass hysteria following the reports of giants from the spies are two of the negative ones.

 

On the other side, after the Golden Calf incident, Moses asked the people whose hearts were so moved to bring gifts to build the Mishkan. They brought so much that Moses had to ask them to stop them.

 

And we have the midrash of Nachshon: he was the one person who was willing to step into the Sea of Reeds as the Egyptian army nipped at their heels. He waded in up to his eyeballs before it parted, and then everyone followed to the other side and to freedom.

 

And when she reached the other side, Miriam joined Moses in the Song of the Sea and all the women followed her. Indeed, Rashi commented that Miriam and the righteous women surely believed in redemption, because they packed musical instruments for celebration while making haste to leave Egypt behind. (Rashi on Ex. 15:20)

 

We have such influence over each other—for good and for disaster…Certainly all the rudeness at restaurants and planes and the unwillingness to wear masks or be vaccinated fall into the disaster category…One person acts out and so does the next person. And the next and the next…

 

But we can be forces for good.

 

Another person at my meeting added that social change often comes because of role models—think Gandhi and MLK and John Lewis. I shared one of my favorite stories—about how MLK and John Lewis’ example led to Cory Booker being in the Senate…so yes. Being a role model for good is important.

 

Here, you don’t really have to DO anything except BE your wonderful selves.

 

Yet I wonder: can we be satisfied with knowing that working on ourselves is enough? Can we believe that by making ourselves more patient, more hopeful, more generous, more welcoming, kinder, we help to transform the world?

 

The High Holy Days, in its most challenging liturgy, offers us another way—or three. Toward the end of the Unetaneh Tokef prayer—who shall live, who shall die…the liturgist hands us three ways to “mitigate the severity of the decree.” And I think these are the true crux of the prayer.

 

Teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah…

 

T’shuvah is often translated as repentance…It comes from the root that means return or turn. It’s about turning back to our purest, truest selves, who we are after we’ve cleaned up our act, or polished it. This is the lesson of both the Chofetz Chaim and Mingyur Rinpoche. It is also about a change in perspective. Alan Lew, in his amazing book, This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, notes that teshuvah changes the way we see what happens to us or the world. “We no longer see things as evil, we simply see them as they are, and that makes all the difference.”[1]

 

The next is tefillah—generally translated as prayer. The word itself is a reflexive verb—it’s something we do within ourselves.  Rabbi Ami Silver believes that it involves inhabiting our inner experience, listening to what is happening in the present, allowing our inner reality to express itself…” Arnie Eisen, Chancellor Emeritus of the Jewish Theological Seminary, notes that “Prayer is about exposing and facing up to depths of self, asking difficult questions and trying to answer them.” My friend and colleague Rabbi Shmuly Yanklowitz teaches that “we know prayer changes us. Prayer sparks a moral revolution in our soul.” On the other hand, Rav Kook taught that “when praying, we feel at one with the whole creation, and raise it to the very source of blessing and life.”

 

Prayer is complicated. It can be about connecting to God, or about pouring energy into the universe, or seeking answers to difficult essential questions, or feeling at one with all of creation…It can certainly calm the soul. If you are not someone who believes in God, however you imagine God, you can still pray.

 

And finally tzedakah…generally translated as charity. It’s about doing justice, what is required of us. It CAN be donations, but it can also be time and it can be labor or expertise…But it’s what is required of us, out of a sense of justice, a sense of what’s right. You have all done works of tzedakah, whether with your wallets, your work, your engagement. And I believe, from conversations we have had, that doing them makes you feel more connected with the world, with others.

 

I think I should make one thing clear…working on ourselves, turning to our truest selves, practicing tefillah and tzedakah…all of these offer us multiple choices for seeking to help make a better world. But all of them require practice and kavannah or intention. We can’t just wish our way to a better attitude. But DO consider hanging out with the people who are happy. If you want more ideas, come see me sometime. And think about spreading hope, kindness and generosity wherever you go…

 

And as my teacher, Reb Mel Gottlieb was wont to say: Any way is a way if you make it a way.

 

But you have to make it a way.

 

Shana tovah….

[1]  Lew, Alan. This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared: The Days of Awe as a Journey of Transformation (p. 131). Little, Brown and Company. Kindle Edition.

In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson tells a story of going to dinner with a family friend. The friend is white, Wilkerson is Black. They are at a trendy, arty restaurant in a major American city. Their waiter is curt with them, takes their order and walks away. When an all-white couple arrives at the table next to them, the waiter scurries over, is quite charming with them, takes their order and brings their drinks immediately. The family friend, meanwhile, becomes angrier and angrier as the other table and other diners who arrived after them are served ahead of them. Calling over the waiter doesn’t help. When their entrées arrive, they are cold. The friend becomes incensed, recognizing it rightly as racism, and makes quite the white privileged fuss. She calls for the manager, who apologizes profusely, but she storms out of the restaurant, with Wilkerson following in her wake. Wilkerson noted that if she made such a fuss every time she experienced this type of racism, she would quickly die of high blood pressure. She was also glad that her friend had been radicalized by sharing the experience of racism.

Does it really take having to have an experience to recognize wrong? Can we, in the areas in which we have privilege, sense the hurt others feel, and take the responsibility to alleviate their pain, let alone their situation? And can we, in the areas where we lack privilege—as Jews; for some of us, as women—find the allies who will do the same for us? In this time of division, where do we turn? How do we move forward without being able to look the beast in the mouth—the racism, sexism, antisemitism on which our society was founded? If we can’t look at it, we can’t cure it.

On Rosh Hashanah, I spoke about the three components of the prophetic stream—that we experience love, especially divine love; that we can articulate what is wrong in our society; and, that we have the vision and desire to imagine a different way to be. Part of that is being able to talk across differences—as Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Scalia did. To be able to engage in dialogue with people who are different from us—culturally, background, class, etc.

On Yom Kippur, I confess that I find it hard to hold a conversation with people who don’t share my moral values: the values of honesty, care for the vulnerable, shared responsibility for our communities and our own actions, commitment to making the world kinder, more generous and more just than I found it. The only times I have been successful is when I am ensconced in my role as a chaplain. Something happens then: I commit to listen to them, to engage in conversation that serves their best interests and not tell them how I feel or what I think in general. I listened to two Jewish couples in September 2016 telling me how lonely it was to be a Jew for Trump in the East Bay, how they didn’t trust Hillary, and thought giving a businessman a chance would be worth it. How much damage could he do? I commiserated about their loneliness in their congregations. I offered some gentle counter arguments, but we treated each other with respect.

I want so much to be able to sit and listen openly to people with whom I disagree, when I’m not the chaplain. Who can sit in discomfort and listen openly to opposing points of view.

As I’ve reflected on this over the many years I have still not succeeded, I think of our torah portion with its invitation and admonition—“I set before you this day life and good and death and evil…therefore, choose life, that you may live, you and your seed” and our haftarah, that eloquent piece of Isaiah 58 that asks us, “Is that the fast I asked of you?”

I want to live in a world where we recognize everyone’s divine spark, their inner worth.  Where we eliminate our caste system, in which Black people are on the bottom, white people on top and Jews never in quite a secure place anywhere. Where Black lives are indispensable, rather than disposable, where antisemitism disappears rather than being on the rise, and where we worry less about property and more about humans. All humans. Where, as Isaiah admonishes us, we unlock the shackles of injustice, let the oppressed go free, share our food with the homeless poor, and clothe the naked.

That’s what choosing life is to me this year, this moment.

But how to get there? Given the world we live in right now. One answer comes from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who dedicated her life to unlocking the shackles of injustice: “You just have to move forward and get to work, step by step, case by case.”

R’ Nahum Ward-Lev provides another way of looking at it. Looking at the journey each of us is on, a journey toward liberation, he described both the importance of listening—the chaplain’s primary tool, and of dialogue, in creating such a world. He noted that we become liberated from the limitations of our habits of thought and perception when we listen to another person’s perceptions, especially someone who is different from us.

But I keep getting stuck at the place where I hear the other person tell me that racism is okay because Black people are inferior or criminals, or Jews are good with money and control the media throughout the world.

Paulo Freire, the author of The Pedagogy of the Oppressed, noted that “Dialogue cannot exist…in the absence of a profound love for the world and for people…Love is at the same time the foundation of dialogue and dialogue itself.” He also noted that dialogue cannot exist without critical thinking AND when one party denies rights to the other party.

We can’t really talk to people who are not engaged in critical thinking. And we must think critically as well. How often do we rely on our feelings without engaging our reasoning as well? I’ve been known to do that. I get so wrapped up in my righteous indignation, or my righteous anger (it’s always righteous, isn’t it?) that I can’t respond in that gentle, reasonable chaplain way.

Ward-Lev identified five character traits that are necessary to be in true dialogue with another person. These are curiosity, courage, vulnerability, respect, and empathy.

We need to be genuinely curious about what the other person thinks, not just to argue our point, but to expand our own thinking and to create a deeper bond with the person. Maybe even reach an I-Thou with the person. One of my Mussar sisters reminds us regularly when we are in a tense encounter with someone we serve—or a loved one—we should practice curiosity, and it works every time…

Courage allows us to put our own comfortable and settled worldview at risk. What if we learn something that will challenge us to re-think something core to our being? I remember when I worked at the Women’s Needs Center and a mother called to ask about abortion services for her daughter. She told me she didn’t believe in abortion—it was murder, after all—but her daughter was different—“she was a good girl.” I­–and my peers in women’s health, have heard versions of these stories repeatedly, much to our chagrin. As RBG taught, “reacting in anger or annoyance will not advance one’s ability to persuade.” Years later, I heard an analysis that when people who are antichoice actually meet people who have had abortions, it changes their point of view. The same applies to people who are homophobic: when they meet a gay person, and engage in real dialogue with them, their views are likely to change. It takes courage to allow such deep positions to be challenged.

At the same time, don’t think you need to roll over. We do not stand idly by. But, again, quoting RBG, “Fight for the things that you care about, but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.” In addition to courage, we need respect, empathy and vulnerability, so they can hear us.

Vulnerability is essential. During my chaplaincy training, training with a peer group that requires trust, we would spend the third day of orientation, for each of my 4 units, sharing a meal that resembled a Passover seder. Over a hard-boiled egg, we told stories of our origins. The candy evoked stories of childhood. The hard, salty nut invited stories of hard things in our lives. I sensed that this would require us to reveal the pain in our lives. I shared mine, with my voice wavering. At each unit, this allowed others to share their heartbreaking truths: sexual assault, parental mental illness, abandonment, and so on. And thus, we became a cohesive group who knew each other on a profound level.

And of course, how can you have a deep dialogue with anyone without mutual respect? I can’t imagine it. If you don’t think that person is as good as you are, they can’t talk to you. If they deny you your humanity, how can you talk with them? As I mentioned last week, if we don’t see each other as a servant of God, then we live in an unbalanced world, with hierarchies and power games. Respect also allows us to truly see and hear the other, and being seen and heard is so powerful.

Finally, we need empathy. We need to listen between the lines, in the empty spaces to really understand what the other is saying. We are social creatures—that’s how we survived back in the very very old days. And in the new days of neuroscience, we learned about mirror neurons that give us the ability to experience the feelings of others.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s okay not to be able to talk with people who don’t think Black lives matter, or trans lives, or Jewish lives. Maybe we can’t find a way across the chasm, because they are denying other people’s rights. On the other hand, maybe, just maybe, we can find a place where we do share moral values. I can’t think of one right now, but there must be one or two.

Maybe, just maybe, I need to follow another of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s teachings: “Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”

One step at a time. The Temple wasn’t built in a day. We may not be able to finish the work, but neither are we exempt from taking it up, said Rabbi Tarfon.

Let’s get started.

Let’s choose life.

Let’s talk.

 

Thanks especially R’ Nahum Ward-Lev and his wonderful book, The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets: Then and Now. Also to Ruth Bader Ginsburg for both having done so much for the equality of all Americans and for her inspiration to keep fighting. And Isabel Wilkerson for her brilliant book, with its many openings to NOT have to experience something to feel it deeply.

So many of us are experiencing so much right now. Fear, anxiety, courage, resilience, brokenness, sleeplessness, hope, loneliness. We’ve never lived through anything like this. As Americans, nothing like this has ever crossed onto our shores—wars happen elsewhere, epidemics happen elsewhere, we’ve led reasonably charmed lives that way. There is no new normal, because nothing right now is normal. Personally, communally, nationally or globally. We can’t be with our loved ones while they lay dying. Loved ones are dying alone. Too many people are dying of something we maybe should have foreseen and planned for and organized better. We were not built for social isolation; loneliness is not good for our emotional or physical health. The recession has cost ten of millions of us jobs and loss of income. Women are stuck at home with their abusers. Structural racism endures. Antisemitism is rising again. Children are still in cages on the border—and in the heat. Climate change has something to do with that heat. Fascism is spreading. Democracy may be ending before our eyes. Our country feels as divided as I imagine it felt before and during the Civil War, and now we get to experience it on social media.

And I bet if we unmute, I would hear more specific ways in which brokenness is all around us.

Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann defines brokenness as “any kind of loss, pain, struggle or disappointment.” Estelle Frankel, a Jewish therapist and author, says brokenness comes from the “times when our lives, as we have known them, are shattered by the intrusion of fate or disappointment.” Shatterings, like the broken call of the shofar last week.

I’ve tried to tell myself that I feel fine—I’m living with my beloved husband, who is in good health, baruch HaShem, and my daughter’s belly has burgeoned as her pregnancy has progressed (she’s 38 weeks now). My cats sit on me and purr during the ubiquitous zoom meetings and as I call people or write. But within three days, I arrived at a doctor’s appointment 24 hours early, and gave people for 2 different zoom meetings the wrong information for the link. Nothing life shattering, but clearly denoting some lack of concentration. And again, I bet I’m not alone in this.

Now, I’m here to tell you, this brokenness is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, we Jews have experienced and continue to experience it even in joyful situations. We break a glass at weddings, to remember the destruction of the Temples—and to remind ourselves that we can hold joy and brokenness at one time. We break matzah during our seder to show that we can still find each other and become whole again. We hear the shevarim blast of the shofar, there to remind us that brokenness can lead back to wholeness, that the wails of grief can be supplanted by wholeness.

Another example goes back to the Exodus. While Moses was up on Mt. Sinai receiving the tablets of the Law, he was gone a little longer than the people expected. Finally, they couldn’t handle their anxiety any longer and they built a Molten Calf, treated it like a god and danced in a frenzied way. God took notice and lost God’s cool and prepared to destroy us, until Moses talked God down. [Slide 5] Moses descended the mountain and indeed the sight of that idol-worship was too overwhelming for him, and he smashed the tablets. After a plague and a time out, Moses climbed back up the mountain to receive the second set of tablets.

The Torah never tells us what happened to the first set, but midrash has it that we gathered the broken pieces and placed them in the Aron HaKodesh, the Ark of the Covenant, alongside the second set. We not only gathered our broken pieces together, but elevated them into the holiest of our holies.

Similarly, the Japanese practice Kintsugi, the art of fixing broken pottery. [Slide 6] Rather than using a camouflaged epoxy, Kintsugi employs a special tree sap lacquer dusted with powdered gold, silver or platinum. The gold glitters in the conspicuous seams of the pottery. It emphasizes breaks rather than hiding or disguising them. Some say that the repaired piece is even more esthetically pleasing than the original.

Another Jewish way of addressing brokenness comes from Isaac Luria, the revolutionary mystic of the 16^th century. He taught that when God created the world, God poured divine light into vessels to contain the light. However, the vessels could not hold the intensity of that holy light and shattered, falling into pieces onto the earth. While we can’t see them, according to Luria, they are there, and we can, through doing mitzvot, lift these sparks and cause cosmic healing. So, at the very start and heart of creation is brokenness. Part of the fabric of life itself. It is how it is. Out of brokenness, Luria is telling us, can come not just healing, but cosmic healing. We can make those vessels even more beautiful than they might have been before they shattered.

Artist Phillip Hansen shared in his TED talk that he had developed a shaking in his hand so that he was unable to do the pointillist art that he had practiced. By trying so hard to address it, he damaged a nerve, he discovered when he finally saw a neurologist. The doctor couldn’t do anything for him medically, but encouraged him to “embrace the shake”. He did. By embracing his limitations, he found himself full of newfound creativity, and curiosity for exploration. [Slide 8] Here’s what he did when he decided to see what he spent less than a dollar on art supplies. No longer hiding them or trying to overcome them, he found himself more than accepting them—but, well embracing them as the broken tablets were embraced by the Ark—and by us.

The Chassidic rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Kotzk, the Kotkzer Rebbe, taught that nothing is more whole than a broken heart. And a Chassidic tale about the Shema starts with a student of the Kotzker asking him, “Why does the Torah tell us to ‘place these words upon our hearts,’ rather than in our hearts?” The rebbe tells him, “It is because as we are, our hearts are closed and we cannot place the holy words in our hearts. So we place them on our hearts. There they sit until one day, the heart breaks and the words fall in.”

The broken heart holds a space for us to let in wisdom, understanding, hope, acceptance, love.

This is NOT to say that bad things happen so that we can learn from them. Rather that when they happen, we can use them as what Rabbi George Gittleman taught me is another f-ing opportunity for growth—an AFOG, and I’m sorry for the one word, but AFOG works better than A-OG.

As we deal with this world, we need all the tools we can muster to live in it, and we have been given a wealth of them from our tradition.

If we remember the vessels that were broken at the beginning of creation, we know that we can repair them, take them up one at a time, honor them, and make them more beautiful, more holy than before.

When the shofar blows Shevarim, and we hear the wails of pain, we remember that brokenness and wholeness are part of a cycle—from brokenness to wholeness and back again and back to wholeness again.

The first set of tablets, the broken ones, shattered in anger, anger at idolatry, teaches us that we honor brokenness, indeed place them in the holy of holies—whether that’s the Ark of the Covenant or our hearts.

The Kotzker rebbe reminds us that when our hearts are broken, we have the opportunity to grow again—in compassion, in love, in empathy, in wisdom.

May we take these lessons and wrap them in the words of the great rebbe, Leonard Cohen, who taught us:

 

To ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering.

There is a crack in everything.

That’s how the light gets in.

 

 

Many thanks to Rabbi Lauren Grabelle Herrmann, Leonard Cohen, Philip Henson, and the Kotzker rebbe for help with this teaching.

 

 

 

 

 

I have never lived through a year like this year—I know I’m not alone. Our lives changed in a flash for reasons far beyond our control. People have been laid off—including some of us here together— and some of those jobs will never return. The relief packages, as usual, favored the wealthy rather than those in actual need. Our elders are isolated in ways none of us ever imagined, and people who live alone are suffering serious consequences from that social isolation. We hail essential workers as heroes, or even superheroes, but too often they lack adequate PPE, and too often they can’t quarantine from a loved one who has COVID. A host of other fall-out is happening from this that is STILL beyond our control.

Then, as my vet’s office posted a  sign recently, “Mother Nature, welcome to the 2020 party”— 10,000 lightning strikes sparked over 600 fires across the state, and over five thousand homes have been lost up and down the West Coast, and lots of us haven’t been able to go outside because of the residue of all those losses in the air. The Gulf Coast experienced one of the worst hurricanes in its history. Iowa lost 10 million acres (43%!) of its crops to a derecho, a weather phenomenon I’d never heard of before.

We’re in the midst of the Amidah, where we share our deepest gratitude and pain with the Ruler or God of Israel, however you envision or relate to this holiness. On the High Holy Days, it contains important additions, and one of these is the Unetaneh Tokef, a piyyut, or prayer/poem, that talks about who will live and who will die and how.

All these experiences are a part of this prayer. Who by fire, who by water? We know that. The first four people to die from the lightning fires died when trees fell on them—instantaneous, totally unexpected deaths. Who by plague, who by beast, or knee in the neck? We know that too.

Who will be calm and who feel storm-tossed? Sheltering in place has led to a vast increase in mental health issues, many based on social isolation or loss of jobs. But I know someone who battles various emotional issues who is excited by the Zoom photography classes she is taking.

And then the prayer hints that God strikes the guilty. No, no, no, NO.

I’ve lost family members to painful deaths who had suffered anguish while alive. For years, I hated this moment of the service. I don’t believe in a God who would cause them to suffer.

I don’t accept a vision of a God who decided that anyone deserved to die alone of COVID or to suffer the miseries of social isolation while… General Pinochet of Chile lived a long life.

However, I experienced a sea change in my approach to the prayer poem, and I offer it to you now.

In seminary, I dove into the language of the piyyut. The overwhelming beauty of the piyyut’s imagery washed over me and into me. Its message squarely puts our own responsibility for our actions in a primary place. These books of life and death are open, and it is OUR signature, based on our actions, that is on every page. God does not do this choosing: the piyyutintentionally uses the passive voice – On Rosh Hashanah it is written, on Yom Kippur it is sealed.

Spoiler alert: Every one of us is going to die at some point. From what I heard last night, many of us have lost loved ones this past year. Others will lose loved ones sooner than we are ready. We do know we have almost no control over that. We have some control: we can eat right, exercise, take our medications. We can stop smoking. But we can stop paying attention for an instant and we can be hit by a bus, or fall and get a brain injury. We could—we have—experienced fires, droughts, earthquakes or pandemics.

But in some key areas we DO have significant control. First, we can invoke the power—the tokef—and the opportunity of the holiness of this day. Jewish tradition expects us to live a righteous life every day, but we know it’s easy to let things go, let things accumulate. These are the days when we come face to face with the reality that our actions have consequences, that we may have hurt others and damaged ourselves and that we can repair what we can.

These are also the days when we look at our inner resources: Can we face the day when our children are sick or our parents or siblings die or we lose our jobs, or our pensions, or our homes? Can we brave the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or everyday life, or will we take arms against a sea of troubles?

Midway through the piyyut we reach the key moment when the liturgist tells us: it’s up to us. We learn that teshuvah, tzedakahand tefillah sweeten or soften the evil of the decree. Some translations say that it will “avert” or “change” the decree, and that seems unlikely. But, as modern liturgist Marcia Falk writes, these virtues temper the evil of the decree—not the decree itself, but our perception of it.  While the prayer acknowledges the reality that our lives will end in death and that we may suffer the consequences of the imbalances of our life, it tells us that teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah are the centering, stabilizing forces that not only mitigate life’s harshness but keep us on course, and indeed help us avert a psychological death as we live the fullness of our lives.

How exactly DO teshuvah, tzedakah and tefillah work?

The rabbis proposed that teshuvah was one of the items created before the universe, “as a healing force embedded in all creation that draws all things back to their source in infinite oneness”. I think of it as God knowing that we were somewhere on the evolutionary chain and we would have free will. With that free will, we would need the power of returning to that pure soul we were given. In the words of R. David Wolfe Blank (z”l), it’s about returning to the core essence of who we are, and losing those qualities we pick up that distort our essential being. When we’ve done that wrong thing, we have to find a way home. That act of turning toward home, toward our pure soul, toward our center…that’s the essence of teshuvah.

Prayer, tefillah, is the spiritual aspect of teshuvah that speaks to repairing our relationship with God, asking for a healing of that rift, seeking reconnection. We can also see it as the chance to express our innermost needs and gratitude and to recognize that we can’t do this alone. It can be an acknowledgement that we do not control everything.

Tzedakah comes from the same root as tzedek—justice. We can think of it as the moral level of teshuvah. Once we’ve turned inward, it’s time to turn outward and repair our part of the world. As Maimonides teaches, we need to acknowledge what we’ve done, feel remorse, apologize, clean up our mess. As Dr. Louis Newman describes it,

These gestures all involve giving something to the person or people we have offended… righting the scales again, restoring what we have wrongfully taken. This…is, perhaps, the hardest part of all. It requires us to face those we have hurt.

Rabbi Alan Lew (z”l) noted that these activities—teshuvah, tefillah and tzedakah—won’t change what happens to us; they actually change us. We will understand what happensdifferently. These spiritual practices help us to experience what happens not as evil, but simply as what happens.^[1]

As a hospital chaplain, I’ve been with people as they deal with horrific news. One man with stomach cancer had to give up his job, but then dedicated himself to serving his church community. A breast cancer survivor chose to serve as a spiritual care volunteer at the hospital. It’s that attitude that softens the decree, or the hand we’re dealt, as well as surrounding us with community.

We don’t generally have control over how we die or how our loved ones die, or when we die, but we do have a choice about how we live, how we act. Our limits are real, but our possibilities for transformation are no less real.

May we open our hearts wide enough to find our way home, to our centers. May we recognize the possibilities of change in our lives and use our traditions to find balance as we make those changes.

[1]     Alan Lew. This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, p. 14.

It’s been a year, hasn’t it? And yet we gather today to celebrate the birthday of humanity— and I want to talk about creation. It’s like we are in the midst of a huge pregnancy, waiting for an election, for a vaccine to prove safe and effective, and in my family’s case, waiting for my first grandchild, in 3 weeks.

 

It’s been something—the first time I’ve ever lived with a pregnant woman through her pregnancy, which started not long before we began sheltering in place. (We adopted our beloved daughter Olya almost 30 years ago.) The first trimester felt like those first three months of the pandemic—worrisome but with the intention of helping each other and being calm and grateful that we all had or were providing support.

 

In the second trimester, we realized that maybe we were in for a long haul, but Olya was in the best mood and was feeling the best I can remember in a long time. That alone caused joy in our house. This was also the time when most of us realized that we were not in a sprint but a marathon. We might have done better had we imagined it as a relay, recognizing that each of us had a part. We wear our masks, maintain physical distance, haven’t congregated in a group for months. Not because we are making a political statement, but because we want to be part of the public health solution. Nonetheless, some of us have felt the loneliness of the long-distance runner, especially people who are sheltering alone and lack good internet access or computer skills, or indeed access at all…

 

And now we’re in Olya’s third trimester. She’s uncomfortable, ungainly, needs help getting her socks on, anxious about the birth. She can’t sit for long, especially by the end of the day. She feels like it’s never going to end. And that’s where a lot of us are: we can’t picture an effective vaccine or real cures any time soon. And so, we wait, trying to connect, trying to maintain hope for a happy outcome.

 

I have faith that we will emerge from this state: for my family, with a hopefully healthy happy baby. For all of us, a new world that we can play a part in creating. And so tomorrow, we are reading about creation. I encourage us all to imagine what creation of the post pandemic world might look like, feel like, BE like. I want to offer a few ideas about a Jewish vision of that new world.

 

The first idea comes from the wonderful book, The Liberating Path of the Hebrew Prophets: Then and Now, by Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev. His teachings have been heart opening to me in ways I haven’t felt since I first read Alan Lew (z”l)’s This is Real and You are Completely Unprepared, the best High Holy Days book I’ve ever read.

 

Ward-Lev teaches that the prophetic stream in general and of each of the individual prophets shared 3 qualities:

• An encounter with divine love and concern for the world
• Courage to name oppression
• And the moral imagination to articulate an alternative future. (p. 11)

 

Just hearing those words makes me feel that what happened before is happening again, as though he were writing right this minute, rather than last year, or in the prophets’ case, millennia ago. We might not be prophets—our sages taught us that the age of prophets ended long ago. But most of us know what Ward-Lev describes as “the presence of a great love, a love that includes the whole world” (p. 11) in some form or experience or moments. We too are aggrieved in the face of oppression, and we want change: a better, more just world for all. Fueled by our own particular yearning, we can follow our ratzon, our will, to help to liberate some corner of the world’s oppressed peoples.

 

The prophetic stream didn’t just spring from the prophets themselves—in some ways, it’s been flowing since the moment when God began to create the heavens and the earth/ בְּרֵאשִׁ֖ית בָּרָ֣א אֱלֹהִ֑ים אֵ֥ת הַשָּׁמַ֖יִם וְאֵ֥ת הָאָֽרֶץ. The first words of the Torah. When God kick-started creation, God didn’t do it just by DOING it. No, God spoke that important word, “יְהִי”—Let there be. God called forth every new creation—sun and moon and stars, water and dry land, grasses and trees and seeds, animals of all sorts, and finally us humans… God spoke the words in a call to liberate our inherent potential, and we—everything in creation—responded by fulfilling that potential. Seeds brought forth grasses and flowers and trees, the stars twinkled, the waves crashed, the bees made honey.

 

We have been in relationship with God, the energy of creation, from the beginning. As we say in the Hamotzi— הַמּוֹצִיא לֶֽחֶם מִן הָאָֽרֶץ—we give thanks for the lechem—bread that comes forth from the earth. Of course, we don’t harvest bread; we bake bread from the flour we buy at the store that got it from the trucker who loaded in from the miller who bought the wheat from the farmer. We have always been in relationship with God and nature and other people. Always, from the beginning. Nahum-Ward describes this as God’s great love for all creation.

 

Each day, God liberated the energy of each new part of our universe and empowered it to emerge. Our creation story empowers US to face the chaos that was present at the beginning and is present now in our time, “see it clearly for what it is, and, in relationship to that chaos, bring forth new ways of being,” (p. 47) as Ward-Lev proposes.

 

Imagine it—here we are in this pregnant moment—this gestational period of waiting, suffering, grieving, conserving energy, and someday, the birth of a new time will come. What will it look like? And what will we each be doing? How will we be with each other? Will we be kind? Will we act? Will we sit on the sidelines, thinking someone else will do it, I’m too old, or disabled, or busy, or otherwise indisposed? Will we help to build policies that take care of the widow, orphan and stranger, all vulnerable people? Will we recognize the spark of the divine in each human being—no matter what they look like, whom they pray to, or whom they love, or whom they vote for?

 

These are the questions we need to ask ourselves and our community: How much like prophets can we be?

 

Have we encountered divine love and concern for the world?Doesn’t have to be flashy—could just be love between people, or with animals…bigger than ourselves. Yes?

Have we been cared for? I have.

Do we have the courage to name oppression when we see, hear or encounter it? I hope so.

And do we have the moral imagination to imagine—and help to enact an alternative future? I think so.

These are some Jewish questions for our time…And I offer a few suggestions for answers.

 

During the Aleinu prayer that we pray at the end of each service, we too often skip over these words:

 

Therefore we put our hope in You, Eternal our God, to soon envision the tiferet—the glory, the beauty—of Your courage, to remove all idols from the Earth, and to completely cut off all false gods—envision here greed, power, celebrity, arrogance—to repair the world, Your holy world. And we hope to live for the day when all that breathes—animal, mineral, vegetable—good and wicked and in between—turn to You—for that world of kindness, beauty, truth and love.

 

Imagine this vision of the post-pandemic new world: a world that is repaired so that each of us recognizes and values ourselves AND every other person (and living thing) as being the image of holiness, and therefore our society—both its laws and policies and our interactions with each other—offers equality of opportunity, equality of treatment by those chosen to lead us through free and fair elections, and that all of us would turn toward kindness and love. Tzedek, tzedek, tirdof/Justice, justice shall you pursue. Equal justice under the law is another component of a Jewish vision of a post-pandemic world.

 

We could also turn to the weekday Amidah prayer for inspiration. The 13 intermediate prayers also propose a Jewish vision of our post-pandemic world. This would be a world in which

1. we were all filled with wisdom, understanding, and knowledge;
2. we have the opportunity to turn toward goodness, away from our mistakes and poor behavior;
3. we could acknowledge our mistakes and be forgiven;
4. we would be seen and supported in our internal battles;
5. we would pray for healing for ourselves and our loved ones;
6. nature would secure all of us enough to eat;
7. all of us would experience freedom and realize that each of us is part of one family;
8. equal justice would prevail;
9. wickedness would disappear;
10. our elders, our sages and all of us would be cared for;
11. the meeting of Heaven and Earth—the connection with the divine—would be protected and valued;
12. our prayers would be answered (although sometimes the answer might be no or not yet);
13. and finally, we would serve all that is holy in the world…

 

Our people have prayed for these condition 6 days a week for millennia. It prescribes a healthy vision of a healthy, happy world.

 

As Rabbi Tarfon pronounced in Pirkei Avot, the wisdom of our ancestors, while we are not expected to finish the work, neither are we allowed to desist from taking it up. I imagine many of us saying, How long, dear God, how long, must we live in a world of such division and hatred, such income inequality, in a world where black lives don’t matter and antisemitism thrives; where terrorism can be applauded by the police, and cheered from the highest places in government? Where insults are hurled daily and lies multiply before our eyes?

 

No, it is time for us to recognize that even in the last weeks of pregnancy, even in the later months of the pandemic, we must not stand idly by the bloods of our neighbors. Whether we write post cards, text or call other citizens, our own family members, our representatives; whether we march for justice, take care of our elders, or ask for or grant forgiveness, act with overt kindness, treat everyone with respect, feed the hungry—we must act to make this new, post-pandemic healthy and happy for everyone. That’s what we Jews do, what we have always done. We might not arrive at such a world in our lifetimes, but that doesn’t allow us to stand around do nothing before the face of suffering.

 

Let us empower each other to bring forth what is the best in ourselves and empower our communities and nation and world to bring forth our best potential to be the world we want it to be.

 

Ken yehi ratzon. May it be your will.

The Jersey City shooting is only the last in a large recent run of antisemitic murders. At the same time, several Los Angeles Jewish institutions, ranging from the American Jewish University to day schools to a synagogue, have been vandalized. And we remember that Temple Sinai was vandalized with antisemitic writings during the High Holy Days a little over a year ago. What I had thought was underground or submerged or even almost stamped out is clearly on the rise.

 

I would attribute this largely to the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, and the way he spews white nationalism, within which antisemitism is endemic. By inviting white nationalists to come out of the shadows, he has invited them to do their thing with us. And they have gladly accepted the invitation.

 

Here we are just about at Chanukah, which commemorates other attempts to silence us, stop our practices, force us to give up our heritage. The Maccabees saw that they had, in the words of Perchik from Fiddler on the Roof, “… something that I would die for, someone that I can live for too; now I have everything, not only everything, I have a little bit more: besides having everything, I know what everything’s for.” Love, family… fighting for the rights of the vulnerable, standing up to power, keeping our identity and values and connection to the holy… That’s our Perchik, the descendant of Judah and his brothers and his band of fighters.

 

And here we are with the Executive Order on Antisemitism, based on the Working Definition of Antisemitism. On the surface, I want to applaud it. And then, I feel my knee jerking, because it came out of THIS White House. And then I think…well, try to take a look at it. How would I feel if Obama had done something like this?

 

And then lo and behold, Obama DID do something about this. As Kenneth Stern, one of the authors of the Working Definition, wrote, “The [Obama] Department of Education made clear in 2010 that Jews, Sikhs and Muslims (as ethnicities) could complain about intimidation, harassment and discrimination under this [Title VI] provision.”

 

So it’s there already.

 

Again, since this is the season of Chanukah, Hillel comes to mind—the great rabbi of the turn of the Common Era, who often debated and disagreed with his partner, Shammai. We follow the decisions of Hillel almost all the time. For example, we light one candle the first night, two the second and so on, which Hillel supported, as opposed to Shammai, who wanted to start with eight and have us count down. Hillel’s reasoning was that the light is holy light and we always want to increase holiness rather than diminish it.

 

The Talmud teaches that eilu v’eilu—these and these are the words of the living God…but we use the decisions rendered by the school of Hillel, because he and his students would treat their opponents with respect, stating the reasoning of the other side first, before stating their own.

 

So I decided, in honor of Chanukah, when our people were prepared to die rather than give up their heritage, but adapted to live to continue it, and in honor of Hillel, to try to look at this Executive Order from the point of view of the White House and then see what I think. I consulted with a variety of writers, rabbis and scholars and just plain Jews writing in journals, blogs and newspapers.

 

So, here goes: as Tevye would say, on one hand:

 

First, antisemitism is on the rise now as it wasn’t in 2010. So protecting Jews, especially on college campuses, where we know—from Berkeley to SF State to UCLA—that Jewish students are facing serious exclusions, seems important. A classmate of mine, Rabbi Neil Blumofe in Austin, wrote recently on Facebook:

 

just last year, at the University of Texas, a student walked out of a presentation that I was giving in a Religion and Journalism class, because I identified as a Zionist. She proceeded to malign a Jewish student in the class throughout the semester because the student volunteered that she had gone on Birthright. The offending student was removed from the class and then ultimately, reinstated. For the Jewish student, this caused a crisis of fear and anxiety about her burgeoning relationship to Israel and to organized religion.

 

It is getting progressively worst, and wanting to protect them is important.

 

And it is possible that just affirming what is already there, placed there by the Obama Department of Education will give it a little more force. It provides a more expansive definition of antisemitism (which might be part of the problem—more on that in a minute).

 

In addition, according to Harvard Law professor Daniel Hemel, it is NOT reclassifying Jews as a nation or a nationality—it is adding Jews to the list of people protected under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, as the Obama administration did.

 

On the surface, it sounds great. Or at least good.

 

But here are the down sides of it. As Tevye would say, “On the other hand…”

 

It is likely that it will be used to squelch the ability of Palestinians—or anyone—to criticize Israel. I am an opponent of BDS in general, largely because the main people in it do not acknowledge the right of Israel to exist at all. But I am also a proponent of the two state solution, and believe that the occupation does not serve Israel well, and definitely does not serve the Palestinians well. And so I can see how they (and we) might have some grounds to want to criticize the government of Israel. Let’s think about Eretz Yisrael—the Land of Israel—as different from Medinat Yisrael—the state of Israel—the government. And as different from Am Yisrael—the people of Israel (Jews). They all have overlap in a Venn diagram, but are different, especially in terms of antisemitic speech. One can condemn Netanyahu without being antisemitic—in fact one can do that and be a profound lover of Am Yisrael, the Jewish people.

 

If universities are worried about their federal funding (think of all those Pell grants, for example), they might be less willing to let their students bring in Pro-BDS speakers. Professors might choose to cover other aspects of Jewish history than what is happening now. And groups will threaten and likely file lawsuits against universities (as they have done), which would dampen free speech without much effort at all. I think this is a real concern, even as the Executive Order claims to protect Freedom of Speech. Universities are supposed to be places that promote free exchange of ideas, always keeping in mind that free speech entitles one to be nasty, but common kindness asks us to think about whether we want to.

 

Jared Kushner, in his NY Times op-ed piece, said that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. While it definitely can be, it doesn’t have to be. There are tests for that.

 

One of the examples given in the Working Definition as an example of antisemitism is that it is not okay to say that Israel is a racist country. If I were Palestinian, I would likely believe that to my core, based on my experience—indeed, I myself might think that as well. How can we prevent them from saying it?

 

There is also a concern that critics of Israel will accuse Jews of using the instruments of the state to suppress political opponents. It reminds me of the centuries of us being “court Jews”—who were sort of protected by the landed gentry or royalty—serving as tax collectors and moneylenders, and hated by the rest of the people in the area for those jobs, let alone the underlying antisemitism.

 

But also important to me, in assessing my knee jerk reaction, is that this President consistently trafficks in antisemitic tropes himself: just recently, he described a group of Jews as money hungry people who had to vote for him, because the Democrats would destroy the economy and money is all we care about. He talked about our disloyalty to Israel, when we are Americans. He spoke about the “good people” on the side in Charlottesville who chanted that Jews would not replace them. He wants Jews to count his money. And on and on. The order might not think of us as a nation, but he surely seems to.

 

Then, the order was announced at the White House Chanukah Party, attended by Pastor Robert Jeffress, who says that Jews are going to hell—because we don’t believe in Jesus as the Messiah, and Rev. John Hagee from Christians United for Israel (CUFI), which supports Israel, because they want all of us to go to Israel so that the Rapture can happen—which means he expects and wants all of us to convert or die. He has warned of an international Jewish plot led by the Rothschilds to undermine American sovereignty, called Hitler a hunter sent by God to kill Jews who refused to move to Israel (and therefore a good thing?), and described the Anti-Christ as a half-Jewish homosexual. So he invited two profoundly antisemitic people to his signing of the executive order on antisemitism.

 

Finally, I think the President has chosen to do this because he is trying to peel off just enough Jews to help with his electoral victory next November. He doesn’t need all of us, just a few.

 

Shutting down free speech, even speech we find hurtful, is not a way to prevent antisemitism, and will not protect us from vandalism and physical violence. Standing up for our values, and standing with other people in vulnerable positions as well as ourselves, will strengthen our alliances—for ourselves and for others. Doing that, I believe, will serve us better.

 

Thanks to Daniel Hemel, Rabbi Jill Jacobs, Rabbi Neil Blumofe, Rabbi Shmuley Yanklowitz, Professor Robert Levy, Kenneth Stern, for their writings and conversation on the topic.

 

At a wedding I officiated a wedding last August, I was introducing the shehekeyanu blessing that celebrates how great it is that we had all made it to this glorious day together. I mentioned that we have blessings for everything, and suddenly, out of my mouth came something along the lines of—like Elizabeth Warren has a plan for everything, we have a blessing for everything. People laughed, there was no consternation. However, I was surprised at myself, as this was probably the first vaguely political thing I had ever uttered at the 90 or so weddings I’ve been blessed to officiate.    Two weeks later, during a rehearsal with another couple, the bride specifically asked me—without having heard the above—not to say anything political at their ceremony. She was worried about one of her uncles. Then she told me that she had recently been at her fiancé’s nursing school ceremony where the speaker talked about the importance of people being kind and compassionate to each other—and some people objected to such a statement.   What a time we live in, when encouraging people to be kind and compassionate is a controversial concept. Being kind and compassionate.    So let’s talk about this, as we think about choosing life and the fast God expects of us today. I began thinking about what God expects of us at the moment we were told that any Jew who voted for a Democrat was being disloyal—to Israel. An old antisemitic trope worth its own sermon (and there were several such sermons given all over the Bay Area last week).    But what that trope made me think about was—well, what DOES it mean to be a Jew? Here we are, this tiny group of people, just barely 2% of Americans and less than point two percent of the world. What makes us who we are? Is it our loyalty to Israel? Is it keeping kosher? Is it a commitment to social justice or tikkun olam? Is it a commitment to study and having a critical mind that celebrates the argument or the chiddush—new insights on older problems? Is it a commitment to Torah with a capital tav or a small one? Is it a commitment to kindness and compassion—chesed and rachamim?  On this day—the most sacred, solemn day of the year, we can look at what our texts tell us God expects of us. The Torah reminds us often to take care of the poor, widow and orphan, that threesome that represents the vulnerable, and to welcome the stranger, because we were strangers in Egypt. The Torah is a profoundly political document—discussing how we should be in community, as well as a moral compass, with lessons to argue about through the millennia.   Earlier this morning we looked at the Talmud—and our daily liturgy, which remind us that certain of our behavior earns us entry into the world to come—those acts of gemilut chasadim—acts of loving kindness, as well as caring for the sick, the bereaved, the bride, offering hospitality, study, making peace. It’s these acts of kindness and compassion, not blind or even sighted loyalty, that are what we are supposed to focus on.     Our morning blessings remind us that we are expected to clothe the naked, free the captive, open the eyes of the blind, and recognize above all that we—and everyone else—are created so that we can distinguish day from night, right from wrong, good from evil.    But then, today—today—when we read that we are supposed to choose life, we also read about what kind of fast we are supposed to do. Not one that shows that “I’m fasting better than you”, or that “I’m fasting so that God will notice my goodness,” while the rest of my life I engage in bad behavior… Fasting today is not meant to be the be-all and end-all of our religious commitments. Indeed, fasting without the intention of spiritual growth, is an empty ritual, one not worthy of spiritual connection.   We have responsibilities, expectations, tasks to do that reflect our desire to be in touch with what is most holy, most good and just. These are daily responsibilities, not ones stored up just for a fast day, or just for Yom Kippur: tasks to do every day.   So let’s look at them more closely, these spiritual tasks that the ancient rabbis thought were what would make us a holy people and individual holy people.   First, Isaiah tells us we are not to oppress our workers. Still a problem today. Today we can work for a higher minimum wage, or paying our workers in a timely manner, or giving them breaks and weekends, safe working conditions, and health care. A friend of mine worked at a job for 5 years, a school that was a collaboration between religious organizations. When the collaboration ended this spring, the religious leaders neglected to tell her she was out of a job. That’s an example of oppressing our workers.   God is also NOT looking for a fast that leads to quarrels and violence. I know hunger can make us crabby. But those of us with a sumptuous break fast ahead of us and a refrigerator full of food can surely spend one day experiencing what too many of our neighbors and fellow humans experience regularly.   Isaiah moves on: we are to loose the bonds of wickedness—which most commentary, including by Rashi, believes means that we should eliminate all perversions of justice and oppression. Practice justice. Let the oppressed go free.    Bobby Kennedy spoke to the ADL and American Jewish Committee in 1961, and he might have been giving a drash on this verse: (Imagine his Boston accent) “Every time we turn our heads the other way when we see the law flouted, when we tolerate what we know to be wrong, when we close our eyes and ears to the corrupt because we are too busy or too frightened, when we fail to speak up and speak out, we strike a blow against freedom, decency and justice.”[1]   This is also still a problem today—a major problem. I think Isaiah is calling us–for example—to join in actions to end mass incarceration, or to enforce the Flores Agreement protecting children at the border, or support women’s reproductive rights.    He could just as easily be speaking about ending bullying and harassment in schools and work places.    Or helping people with serious depression.    Oppression appears in so many forms, from the internal to the global.    Notice that we can explore these words literally or metaphorically, spiritually or politically, or a personal level or a communal level.    But notice also that freedom from oppression is about kindness and compassion—chesed and rachamim, or as Senator Cory Booker stated recently, “What does love look like in public? It’s justice.”   Next, the prophet comes to the heart of the matter: feed the hungry. House the homeless. Clothe the naked. While you are fasting, feeling that self-denial, give to those who live their life in want.   How intensely personal these exhortations really are: share your bread, bring the homeless into your home, cover the naked. Become personally involved. Show your humanity by touching theirs, come close enough to feel their pain as you can touch your own. Open your home, open your heart, open your compassion. To those you see as Other.    Not all of us are going to be able to get so close and personal, although on some level we might long to. When my daughter Olya was young, she would ask us to invite homeless people home, and we would, regretfully, say no. We still wrote our checks to homeless shelters, and we all can still come to lunch with seniors or volunteer with the food bank, or advocate with the Marin Organizing Committee or help when it is Gan HaLev’s turn to help with the rotating shelters, or give our used clothes away to those it will help. It’s not the same as what Olya and Isaiah are asking of us—creating the intimacy of sharing our bread or inviting people into our homes, but it’s surely something.    And at the same time, Isaiah tells us that we should not become so enamored of the other, the vulnerable, that we forget our own family, our own flesh.   As someone who has various family members who don’t talk to each other (including to me), that last phrase—do not hide yourself from your own flesh… really spoke to me this year. Again, I think a whole sermon could cover family struggles and disaffections and generational stress and repeated patterns. And I think Isaiah would like us to do that. Maybe next year.   On the other hand, traditional interpretations hew more closely to the theme of caring for the less fortunate in your family: not being embarrassed by your poor relations, not shunning them and giving them a helping hand. My uncle, for example, made sure all his grandchildren had college funds, and opened his home to me to stay rent free each week of seminary. I know some of you can share similar stories of support from family or to family.   Isaiah is urging us on: Be human. Let your fast show your humanity. While you are experiencing gnawing discomfort, assess how you might relieve the suffering of others. Show your compassion. Remember what Bryan Stevenson said: that we have the choice of sharing embracing our brokenness or of walling ourselves off: Isaiah wants us to open ourselves up and have compassion for ourselves so we can have compassion for others.   And finally, the last thing Isaiah exhorts us to do in this prophecy is to keep Shabbat. Recognize that we all benefit from a day of rest from labors, from making money or thinking about making money, or acquiring toys. Rest in what is. Be present with all that is just, and good, and real, and beautiful, remembering that wholeness makes everything blemish-free. We might imagine unplugging for the day, taking walks in beauty, reading books, coming together with friends and loved ones. Being good to ourselves and others.   Recognize, he suggests, that, without our turning it, the earth will spin, and we all need time—time—to recharge.    These are the tasks Isaiah charts for us, and that the Rabbis thought were important enough to include on the holiness day of the year.    They are, in the end, all about compassion and kindness—deeply political—even radical, but maybe, just maybe, if we bring ourselves closer—panim al panim—face-to-face with the Other, whoever they might be—we will see they are just like us… We will be living the life Isaiah urges us to live. And we will be Jews who are loyal to the ideals of our people’s history and values. I want to conclude this with a quote from Edmond Fleg, who witnessed the Dreyfus trial. It made him question what it meant to him to be a Jew—and I thank Rabbi Rachel Timoner for pointing this out to me. He wrote,    “I am a Jew because…”    I am a Jew because born of Israel and having lost it, I feel it revive within me more alive than I am myself. I am a Jew because born of Israel and having found it again, I would have it live after me even more alive than it is within me. I am a Jew because the faith of Israel demands no abdication of my mind. I am a Jew because the faith of Israel requires all the devotion of my heart. I am a Jew because in every place where suffering weeps, the Jew weeps. I am a Jew because at every time when despair cries out, the Jew hopes.   I invite you to spend some time thinking about why you are a Jew. Later this afternoon, we will have a chance to look at an article that also reflects on this question. [1] ROBERT F. KENNEDY, attorney general, remarks before the Joint Defense Appeal of the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League of the B’nai B’rith, Chicago, Illinois, June 21, 1961.—A New Day: Robert F. Kennedy, ed. Bill Adler, p. 26 (1968).

Last month, I had what felt like an earth shattering experience with a friend—a dear friend— of 40 years. Let’s call him Jack. We were having our usual hands free conversation on my way home from work about a political/spiritual issue, when suddenly—seemingly out of nowhere to me, he began to berate me. Despite my tepid attempts to stop him—“That’s a little harsh,” I repeated a few times, he continued, as I drove across the Richmond Bridge through Marin until the Narrows. To no avail. He kept going. Until I said I needed to get off the phone. 

Shaken, I called another friend, whose first question was, “Why did you stay on the phone?” 

She told me, “That was abuse.” She was right. It was. And I still can’t come up with a better reason than my brain froze—rather than flight or fight, I freeze when confronted with such a situation. 

Jack’s and my relationship—40 years of regular contact—emotional intimacy (at least on my part)—hangs in the balance. He told me a few days later that while he was sorry he’d berated me, he hadn’t meant to do it—as though that makes a difference to the reality of what he did. His excuse was that I had said something hurtful to him… 18 months before. 

He had held on to something for 18 months, without coming to me and working it through. Had I been wrong to think we had an intimate friendship? 

And then, when he told me what I had done…I have absolutely no recollection of the conversation, and indeed could barely remember the people he says I invoked, let alone the situations—people we knew over 35 years ago. 

As someone who strives to take responsibility for my mistakes, for the ways I hurt people I care about and how I am in the world, I don’t know how to take responsibility for this. I have no memory of it, not because I’m embarrassed, but because it either wasn’t that important to me and I have trouble remembering what I said two days ago—or it didn’t happen how he remembers it. The best I can do—have done—is to express sadness for the pain my words triggered in him. 

This is a situation completely outside Maimonides’ template for repentance: acknowledge what I’ve done wrong—I can’t because I have no memory of this. Resolve never to do it again—again, how? Fix what I can fix: I’ve apologized for the pain, but since all it seems he wants is for me to own it, I’m stuck there as well. And then when I’m in the same situation again, don’t do it. Again, how?

I wonder whether I am the cause of his pain, or whether it comes from a deeper place and I am either the easiest target or the current trigger. 

Early on, while I was still hurting, broken, feeling unsafe after that long harangue, I didn’t care. But I kept witnessing the pain he was expressing, and didn’t want to be the person who walked away from a friend in pain, or especially be a rabbi who walked away from a person in pain. But I also didn’t want to be a person who took verbal or emotional abuse, which was still spewing from his mouth.

I have asked myself whether I went somewhere I shouldn’t have gone in a conversation that was so unimportant to me it doesn’t register.

Which got me to thinking—when we are talking to other people—certainly, when I am talking with other people—how careful am I to weigh my words, to think carefully about whether something is true, kind and necessary? Whether my words, easily said, inflict unintentional pain? Do I sit with them before they come out of my mouth, or do they just fly? Even when I’m working as a chaplain, when I am careful, I have moments when I cringe at my less than model skills. How much more so, when I’m sharing a casual conversation with an old friend?

Just as Jack and I were beginning this process, my Mussar group of sister rabbis had started to look at the middah or trait of brokenness, shevirah. 

First, a short aside about the word, brokenness… I’ve noticed that people have very different reactions to the word, “broken.” As in broken-hearted… Is there a person in this room who has not been broken-hearted at some point? Or broken spirited? For a while? And yet, some people I love dearly flat out refuse to apply the term ‘broken’ to themselves—bent maybe, blemished possibly, hurt certainly, but broken can be an injury too far…

But back to the Mussar sisters: In our study, we read two passages that were exactly the words I needed to hear. I recognize that the first one might seem off center, but give it a minute…

In Leviticus, we are told that the priests who make the offerings at the Temple must be blemish-free. I have always thought—what kind of able-ism or looks-ism is this? As someone with genetic problems healing skin eruptions—cuts, even paper cuts can take months to heal, this has always felt horrible. But Rabbi Ted Falcon offered me a new way to look at it—and to look at my life—and I hope, your lives. He wrote:

A blemish is something that we know to be wrong with us, whether it is revealed or hidden. When we are engaged in finding fault with others or ourselves, focusing on outer and inner blemishes, we are not available for more inclusive dimensions of consciousness.

When we are judging, we are cut off from being open to others’ pain….He continues, by claiming that

“The archetype of priest is activated through unconditional acceptance … Priestly consciousness is a love consciousness, and in love consciousness, blemish is never hidden, never denied. It is accepted and embraced. That acceptance allows the transcendence of blemish, and the transcendence of blemish is the doorway to holiness. 

“It is true that a blemished priest cannot approach the holiness of the ancient tabernacle, because in that authentic approach, there is no longer blemish. “

This was a Wow moment. When we can hold our blemishes—those sides of ourselves we judge as unworthy—in love, then they dissolve into our wholeness—our inner beauty shines through. He continues,

“Our inner and our outer blemishes yearn to be met, acknowledged, and accepted. The less we pretend to be without blemish, the more available we are for engaging in loving relationships in our world.”

That’s what worked for me—stop wasting my energy trying to pretend or deny my blemishes. Then maybe I’ll be more emotionally available. Unless we can hold ourselves in compassion, complete with all our flaws, we will remain walled off—from ourselves and from others. But once we do, then we are ready to spread compassion, to let it ripple out into the world.

I’ve thought about this a lot—because we know people—we may be the people—who are much kinder to others than to ourselves. I spoke to a woman the other day who told me that she can’t forgive herself for how she treated her mother, whom she didn’t treat as badly as she perceived (according to her own narrative). I asked her what her mother would say to her now, and she told me her mother would tell her she loved her and she did the best she could. When my daughter has sometimes condemned herself for something she’s done, I’ll ask her what she would say to a friend who did the same thing, and she too will be much gentler with the friend.

But I think that’s Rabbi Falcon’s point: until we can see ourselves in a loving, accepting way, we are not whole, and we don’t have the energy to engage. We might help others, care for others, but not truly engage with them. We might be conflict avoidant, or nurse our grievances out of fear of rejection, as I think Jack did, and so we don’t achieve that intimacy we crave.

In the Mussar sisters’ same reading, I came across a teaching from one of my teachers, R’ David Jaffe, who quoted Bryan Stevenson, who wrote the book Just Mercy, about his work with death row inmates. He wrote,

“We are all broken by something.  We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent…The ways in which I have been hurt – and have hurt others – are different from the ways Jimmy Dill [a man with mental illness who murdered] suffered and caused suffering.  But our shared brokenness connected us… We have a choice.  We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing.  Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity.” (p. 289)

Taking in these words, my world opened. As a companion to R’ Falcon, I felt a light shine through—that we are all broken somehow, we hurt and we are hurt. But by embracing our own humanity entirely, we can become whole and help others do the same.

Since reading these fragments, I have tried to follow the advice—love all of myself, even the parts that need help, embrace my shadows, my behaviors that cause pain, and nurture them into something else. 

And to be clear, I am not saying—love my faults, accept them and move on. No need to improve. 

Not at all.

I am saying that when we can give compassion to ourselves, we can give it to others. Our spiritual journey, to me, is always about being the best version of ourselves. 

It’s just that I know, after the tirade from Jack, and similar experiences, that I have an easier time working with what I want to grow out of or into when I do it from love, from compassion. Being made to feel ashamed rarely works, because we will do anything to deny shame. On the other hand, guilt can work… The type that scratches our conscience, makes us uncomfortable and comes from that place that forces us to ask ourselves, “How could I, someone of a certain spiritual level, or with good values, have done this?” It’s that sentence some parents use: “I’m disappointed in your behavior.” And we can feel their love and their embrace of our whole selves.

Sylvia Boorstein offers a lovely way to nurture ourselves through this. When we are feeling the pain of brokenness, we can repeat her teaching, “Sweetheart, I see you are in pain. Relax, breathe, let’s pay attention to what is happening, then we’ll figure out what to do.” Talk to ourselves with love, “Sweetheart.” Acknowledge the pain. Then, breathe. Then take some time to what is really going on, and only once we’ve done that, can we figure out what to do. If we use this enough, we can eventually just say, “Sweetheart…” and it will lead to breathing, paying attention enough to calm ourselves to figure out next steps.

So our work for these next 24 hours or so could be to look at our mistakes, our sins as it were—sins being those behaviors that keep us separated from our best, our true selves, and from our loved ones, from the Divine. Let’s look at these behaviors as a part of ourselves, to love ourselves anyway—not in spite of but just because—we are all unique—made in the image of God, a spark of the divine, with breath that feeds the universe. Acknowledge every part of you, hold it up to the light, so you can really see the cracks, and remember—the cracks are how the light gets in.

THE UNBROKEN by Rashani Rea

There is a brokenness 

out of which comes the unbroken, 

a shatteredness out of which blooms 

the unshatterable. 

There is a sorrow 

beyond all grief which leads to joy; 

and a fragility

out of whose depths emerges strength… 

There is a hollow space 

too vast for words 

through which we pass with each loss,

out of whose darkness 

we are sanctioned into being. 

There is a cry deeper than all sound 

whose serrated edges cut the heart 

as we break open to the place inside

which is unbreakable and whole,

while learning to sing.

Isaac was born to older parents—indeed Abraham was 100 and Sarah was 90 or 91 when he finally came along. Imagine the childhood he must have had—being so doted on. Big party for his bris, big party when he was weaned. He was the golden boy of the family. 

At the same time, it seemed his mother was worried about was some problem with Ishmael, and Sarah ordered Ishmael and his mother away from him. Rumor—or midrash—has it that it might have been bullying, it might have been abuse, it could have been teasing. 

And there was a healthy dose of jealousy on his mother’s part toward Hagar, Ishmael’s mother. I imagine Isaac and Ishmael (14 years apart) were not the only children in the camp—but we don’t hear about the others. Did he have any playmates among the camp? Once Ishmael was gone, was he virtually an only child among a community of adults? He was certainly Abraham’s successor, with a lot of expectations piled upon him. And his mother paid close attention to him. How much freedom did he have?

And then one day, his father, without warning, woke him up early, urged him to get ready quietly, so as not to disturb Ima/mom/Sarah from her sleep, and meet him outside to begin a 3-day hike, with two servants and a donkey carrying wood and provisions. 

Imagine Isaac’s joy of taking a trip just him and Abba, with the servants—I imagine acting as sherpas—making sure they were comfortable and cared for. The donkey was laden with firewood, provisions, cooking utensils, including a big knife. They set out for what Isaac hoped would be some “Abba and Me time”.

Abba seemed both distracted and focused on a goal or vision or problem that Isaac couldn’t see. Isaac was used to this from his dad—often engaged with God, amassing his fortune, solving problems, greeting guests and being the kind and welcoming host. Trips for just him and Abba were pretty rare. So Isaac skipped along next to his father, reveling in the changing scenery, the rocks, the clouds, basking in the joy of his father’s presence. 

Each night at the camp site, Abba told stories—of battles with kings, of Sodom and Gomorrah and arguing with God, and of his own father’s land, the land he had left at God’s behest—the family there, the idols he destroyed. Lots of stories, some never told before.

On the third day, when everyone was dusty and tired, Isaac followed Abba’s gaze as he scanned the mountains. Then he listened as Abba told the two young men to stay put with the donkey, while Abba and Isaac proceeded on foot to pray to God. Abba put the firewood on Isaac’s back, while Abba kept the knife and the fire. Hand in hand—hand in hand!—father and son walked on together, in silence. Eventually, Isaac asked, “Avi—my father?” 

“Hineini, b’ni—I am here,” he replied. It was a term of endearment, when Abba said “hineini”—it meant that he had his father’s full attention.

Isaac, curious. “Father of mine, I see the firewood and the flint for the fire and the knife, but where’s the sheep for the offering?”

“God will see to the offering, my son,” was the response. Another cryptic message. God would take care of it. I wonder if Isaac was feeling dread, some foreboding. What was he thinking now? God would take care of it? Really? How?

They reached the mountaintop—a clearing surrounded by some thicket. It had been a hard slog through the bramble to the clearing. Abba took the firewood off Isaac’s back and instructed him to help build the altar. They piled stone on stone in silence. Once they finished, Abba placed the firewood on top. Then he told Isaac to get on top.

Isaac did as he was told. 

Isaac did as he was told.

How? What was he thinking? Was he thinking, “If this is what God wants, I guess I’m in” or “This is insane” or “I’m the heir to all Abba has, how can he do this?” or was he just so shocked he wasn’t thinking?

Was he feeling shock, fear, hatred, numbness,  betrayal, faith? Some combination?

I can’t even begin to imagine—and the narrator leaves that part out. But maybe we do have to think about Isaac, because he wasn’t just a minor character—he was the much beloved son of our patriarch and matriarch. He was a full human being, with feelings and a divine spark. He was likely attached to his father—as well as to the God of his father. They had walked for so long—not as far as from Guatemala to Texas, but still, a 3-day trek. This kind of shock to his system must have done some serious psychic damage.

But still, he lay on top of the firewood—already uncomfortable. Just on a physical level. No fire yet, but lying on twigs and logs—not comfortable.

But he did as he was told, because that’s who he was.

Then he looked up and saw his father with the big knife.

Ready to slaughter him—is THIS how God was seeing to it?

Did he scream at his father? Was he able to utter a sound?

Was there terror?

Was there acceptance?

Was there confusion?

All of this and more?

How long that moment must have lasted—it must have felt like an eternity. Isaac’s entire world changed in that eternity—or was it an instant?

However long it lasted, Abraham finally put the knife down. Then he looked around and found a sheep, its horns caught in the thicket. Isaac jumped down as Abraham placed the sheep on the wood, slaughtered it and offered it to God. 

Not another word was spoken. Abraham went down the mountain alone.

Where did Isaac go? 

How long was he gone from the camp?

We know he never attained the eminence or success of either his father or his son. When he was threatened by their neighbors, he would shuffle on to the next well. He was conflict avoidant, and indeed was even silent as his father sent his servant out to find him a wife. 

Did Isaac experience what we would call PTSD the rest of his life? Was that adverse childhood exposure to stress a life changing event for him?

We might ask what kind of God asks this of anyone—to order their father to sacrifice them? We know of it as a test of Abraham—indeed, that’s how the story opens. So was Isaac just an after thought? Was the cruelty to him just a byproduct, was he merely collateral damage? How did God consider the humanity of this boy?

Like the children of the deported poultry factory workers in Mississippi in August, left alone in the streets, school, homes, was Isaac the victim of a punishing God or a punishing person or system? Like the children kept in cages on the border, was Isaac an afterthought or part of a larger scheme of cruelty feeding an ideology?

Or was he the victim of a parent who believed something so strongly he would have been able to follow through with slaughtering his son? Or was his father afraid that if he didn’t go through with it, something terrible would happen to him? Was his father too afraid of his own mortality to consider the damage he was inflicting on his own son—as he had done with Isaac’s mother, at the hands of the Pharaoh and the king?

The pain and cruelty we inflict on our loved ones and our neighbors through our own fears, pain, unexamined behavior can be vast. Whether it’s on a personal parent-to-child level or partner level or extended family level or community or region or national level—unexamined, unresolved pain and thinking can lead to disaster, to unmitigated cruelty to others—whether our own children or partners or those in our power.

We come back to this story today—every year on Rosh Hashanah—almost as though this is the Jewish original sin, to look at it freshly, in light of what is happening in our individual psyches and hearts and what is happening around us.

Isaac was barely mentioned in this compact story, as though he were just a prop, like the donkey or the firewood or the knife. This year, in this time, in this place, he leapt into the foreground for me. As I thought about the kids in cages or the children crying in Mississippi, and my heart broke and keeps breaking, I think of Isaac, the boy or young man whose father held a knife over him, ready to kill him for either an inexplicable reason or because their God was testing him, forgetting the effect on Isaac, a real live boy.

To me, this is almost the ultimate challenge—while we are standing in our own stuff—pain or certainty of belief or mindlessness—can we remember that we are in community? Large or small? Can we feel what we do to others? Can we feel their pain? Can we stop ourselves, put a space between the match and the flame and breathe and stop? Can we see others in their full humanity, with their tzelem Elohim, their spark of the divine, and recognize our kinship? Our connection—spark to spark?

May we in this year to come do all we can to see the people close to us as full human beings, really see them, and may we see those who are not so close—at the border, or other refugees, as equal to us and as deserving of the rights we feel are endowed upon us. May we stand, like the messenger of God, who stopped Abraham from killing his son, his beloved son, Isaac, and stop slaughter, or death by a thousand indignities or life that is traumatized as Isaac’s was. May we be messengers of hope.