Joseph, Monsey and The Jewish Now - Vayigash 5780 / 2020

Vayigash 5780 / 2020

Joseph, Monsey and The Jewish Now

This week, in Torah, we have the biggest reveal.

(Bigger even than the 15 foot, shell encrusted Menorah and matching giant, shell encrusted dreidel I saw this week in Miami, but I digress)

You see

After Judah and his brothers throw their brother, Joseph into a pit

After they sell him into slavery

And tell their father that he is dead

And keep that secret for the rest of their lives

For decades, up until this moment

The biggest reveal is when

This very brother Joseph, against unthinkable odds

Not only has survived but has somehow become one of the most powerful people in Egypt

So that when the aforementioned brothers need to come and beg for food to survive world wide famine

And when Joseph recognizes them but they do not recognize him 

And when one of the older brothers, Judah, not knowing he is addressing his own brother Joseph that he hurt so badly

When Judah pleads and begs for the protection of the littlest brother, and out of love for his father, admitting specifically in this moment to his life’s great mistakes, including hurting Joseph

saying he, Judah cannot, under any circumstances, repeat them

Saying all this to what he thinks is a total stranger

The biggest reveal is when this stranger

Reveals himself to be

None other than Joseph.

It takes chapters and chapters for this revelation to settle

It takes chapters and chapters for the present, that is,

The idea that they are reunited safely and things can be, are different now

To overcome the pull of the past

Especially what was a largely unarticulated, taboo past

A past that included unthinkable pain and destruction, violence of mythic proportion, and erasure.

The rabbis

Never one to skip a good dark mood or subversive read

In midrash / commentary highlight and interject moments when the fear of the brothers

-- Namely, that Joseph will seek revenge --

when that fear arises, comes to the surface.

Even if those of us in this room have never actually thrown a family member into a pit and / or sold a relative into slavery

Not hard to imagine some residual guilt playing out

Not hard to imagine, like the rabbis, that the brothers always sorted of waited for the other show to drop

But I think Joseph, too, is uneasy after the reunion

Right? Because even Joseph was the victim, he was not blameless

Even though he seems to grow as we follow his story

He does not seem what we would call “resolved”

Remember Joseph not only recognizes his brothers way before they recognize him

He creates that elaborate set up where they literally have to choose again -- between themselves and one little brother

And then when all is revealed

Joseph makes this grand speech

Seemingly, in my read, one he has practiced more than a few times

“Don’t worry, or be too hard on yourselves…you thought you meant to harm me but God meant it for good, to save us all from the famine…”

“Go home and get Dad, tell him I sent for him….”

“We will provide for everything you need”

Which is why, after the big reveal and Joseph’s rather sanctimonious speech and while the music is swelling and the caravans are packed

And the brothers are leaving and as he sends them off to get Jacob, their father

It is so excellent and telling that

Joseph says one last thing:

Oh, by the way, “Al tirgezu baderech”

“Don’t, you know, get into any trouble on the way….

Bye!”

Strange verb, that ragaz, doesn’t really have happy connotations

Based on the root in Tanakh could mean something like:

Don’t be quarrelsome on the way, don’t fight

Don’t agitate each other

Don’t stir everything up (Isaiah 28:21, Isaiah 14:9)

Don’t infuriate each other (Ezekiel 16:43)

Don’t be disturbed (I Sam. 28:15)

Don’t provoke (Job 12:6)

In fact, it is a verb often associated with earthquakes, tremors (I Sam. 14:15)

Like an involuntary physical response based in fear (Joel 2:1, Hab. 3:16)

Joseph suggests to his brothers, “Don’t be agitated.”

How can I say it?

It’s not really like Joseph is saying, “Have a good trip.”

Not quite as obvious as, “Try not to throw anyone in a pit on the way home”

But still

“Al tirgezu baderech” / “Don’t agitate each other on the way”

is just passive aggressive enough

The timing just so

It seems to betray that Joseph, for all his fancy speeches,

also may not be fully done with the past

Or, perhaps it is just that

Maybe even in a kind of solidarity of sorts

Joseph knows precisely how hard it is to not let the past dictate the present

And he feels that this holy errand to tell their father that he is still alive

It is too important to be overshadowed by what has happened long ago

Even by something as profound and traumatic as what has happened

Either way the past has a way of staying live, it is close

And as you might imagine

Our rabbis also have a few thoughts on just what Joseph means with this ominous send off:

But before we look

I want to offer that in this moment in our country

After the tragedy in Monsey and the attack on Rabbi Chaim Rottenberg and his family and guests in his own house with the Hanukkah candles still burning

That we Jews, all of us who do Jewish together, we too, in this moment, we have lived through a great deal

As part of the Jewish community in this time

It is not that we are to blame as Joseph’s brothers certainly were

But like Joseph and his brothers, we, too, we understand that the past is very close to us, some of it is also, if not taboo, unresolved

After the shoah and so much else, trying to be a minority here, how could it be?

Like in Torah

The past is very close, always with us, and, if we are not careful, it takes the place of the present

See, especially with the heartbreaking and violent attack in Monsey

especially in this latest case –

Against chasidim, we can picture them, the Hanukkah lights, a powerful symbol

Because it was a knife and not a gun (and I am thankful at least there was no gun and so we are not grieving the death of dozens)

But because of these things,

Almost immediately, the attack takes on a mythic quality in our minds, it sounds like something we have heard about from another time, that we know from a story, a fragment of something, a tale from long ago

A man with a knife in the rabbi’s house on Hanukkah

As if the past is coming back

A resurfacing of our mythic past

A mythic anti-Semitism rearing its head

Even if it is not quite real, it has a pull

And we, like Joseph’s brothers, can be in danger of our unconsciously replacing the present with the past

We can be in danger of forgetting the now.

We can de-contextualize

For example, in regards to the recent incidents,

as Donniel Hartman correctly notes – these are not systemic, government sponsored attacks, these are one-offs, perpetrated by often mentally ill, rogue operators that the government (maybe not in all the ways we would like, but still) works to combat. We are not alone as we were in other times in our history, rather we are surrounded by allies. (see Times of Israel Op-Ed from week of 1.3)

But if we are not careful, in our fear 

We can forget it is not the past, we can forget we are on a holy mission, like Joseph’s brothers,

We can forget we have work to do in the Jewish now.

And it turns out,

Through the interpretations of the rabbis

Joseph’s strange admonition to his brothers,

“Al tirgezu baderech” / “Don’t get caught up on the way”

May be of help to us in this moment, too.

One interpretation is from Talmud, Ta’anit (10b)

Where the rabbis teach Joseph is really giving his brothers… travel advice,

That is, “Al tirgizu baderech” / “Don’t get caught up on the way” means,

Get to your destination before the sun has set

Don’t travel in the dark.

Don’t be so anxious to move ahead that you endanger yourself.

Some of us are so weary from the current events of our day,

the road seems so steep

It can be easy to think there is nothing in the world but a repetition of the past

It can be easy to fall into despair

To not care if we travel in the night

But, it is important, this Talmud offers that if darkness is coming

Even the darkness as strong as the darkest chapters in our history

We never submit ourselves to that darkness,

Walking in circles, repeating what was

Rather, when it is dark, we stop and find a place to rest

Why? Because we know the way is longer still

And the present is not set, it has not yet been determined, we have to find it    

We have to rest because we need to be able to see where we are going

Dafka because where we are going is NOT where we have been

We have to be able to travel by day, to see, precisely because we are in the process of going somewhere new.

Another interpretation is from Menachem Mendel of Kotzk

He teaches that Joseph means,

Not, “Don’t be disturbed ON the way” but “Don’t be disturbed BY the way”

In other words,

Accept the way just as it is

Accept that this is what happened then and that this is what is happening now

And accept that we cannot control where we were, we can only decide where we are now

Because if we fight where we are now

If we pretend to be somewhere else,

Somewhere in the past where all is known

or an imagined future where we can have no real responsibility 

We will never be able to take the necessary steps to get where we need to go

Finally, there is one last interpretation

And it is the most obvious, “Al tirgizu baderech”means, “Don’t blame each other for what happened.” (Radak to 45:24)

Ha’emek Davar (to 45:24) teaches that

Joseph uses the word “baderekh” / “on the way” because Joseph is speaking about the way of wisdom

And there is nothing on the way of wisdom, NOTHING that requires the constant agitation, disturbance, shaking, and provocation of reliving what is already done and past. Not even in the case of Joseph’s brothers.

There comes a time to put it down. Not to forget but to know: It is done, it is past.

This is also what I want to say to us:

The Jewish past is not the Jewish now

We must remember this in our personal lives, for the sake of t’shuvah and forgiveness

And we must also remember this in our collective Jewish life:

The Jewish past is not the Jewish now

So that IF anti-semitism dares to come again out of the corners, as it might

Enabled, we must admit, by the torn safety nets in the society we have built and inhabited

When a moment in our time seems like déjà vu, as if the past is rising to grab each of us by the collar

We must remember

We are on our way to somewhere else

We are in the Jewish now

and that Jewish now includes babies and Jews of color and people who are Jew curious and lovers of Jews and Jews of all genders and sexual orientations and the Jews I just saw in Miami with big gold Jewish stars on their bare chests, and the Persian L.A. Jews like from R. Tarlan’s family and the Upper West Side Jews who come like pilgrims to visit R. Jessica and the Jews who love Israel and Jews who are distressed by Israel and Jews who don’t care about Israel and Jews who are religious but don’t believe in God and Jewish spiritual junkies who hate organized religion and Sephardim and observant Jews and tentative Jews and old Jews, poor Jews, rich and tasteful Jews and rich and tacky Jews, intellectual Jews and simple Jews, environmental Jews, activist Jews, corrupt Jews

You get my point

The Jewish now is right here, look around

You know it, you’ve seen it, we and many, many others are building it

And so this shabbat I give you t’fillat ha-derekh / (on your handout sheets)

The prayer for traveling, the prayer for the way

Because the rabbis say we should say that prayer when we understand we are going somewhere, when we are going on our way

So we can ask for protection from robbers and all we can already imagine

And so we can ask for protection from being ambushed, all the things we cannot yet imagine

So that our steps are led to peace, guided in peace

So we can find grace, kindness and compassion in the eyes of our creator and in the eyes of all who see us.

I cannot think of a better time for this prayer, this is our prayer

Because make no mistake:

On this Shabbat in San Francisco, in the year 2020

We are traveling through the Jewish now.

My Tzaddikim Are Always Building / My Tzaddikim ARE the Building - Kol Nidrei 5780

Rabbi Noa Kushner

1. Tree of Life is Closed

I read about it in the newspaper.

Maybe you knew, it was just the anniversary of the Pittsburgh shooting and so a reporter went to Squirrel Hill, where the anti-semitic violence of last year took place.

He reported that the synagogue, Tree of Life is closed, locked. Only a single caretaker goes in and out these days. A chain link fence blocks the doors.

Jerry Rabinowitz, z”l, The Ba’al tekiah, / the man who blew the shofar,

the wake up call,

is gone, he was killed in the rampage.

Now they have to find someone else to blow shofar.

Never in my life did I think I would be describing this scene in modern America.

But somehow, this past year, against the backdrop of increasing frenetic noise

New versions of good old, classic anti-semitism

Wound their way in, made themselves comfortable

And presented themselves, unashamed, right in the light of day

Or who knows, maybe anti-Semitism was just part of a general revival,

the resurgence of stronger-than-ever, back-with-a-vengeance, intolerance

Either way, when combined with the gun violence epidemic,

We now personally feel the effects of that hate

Slowly encroaching,

Now reaching inside our orbit,

Until what was once unthinkable

A synagogue massacre

Is now somehow not only plausible, but a historical fact.   

And so we describe the reality

but internally, the words seem to make no sense: The tree of life is closed. The Ba’al tekiah, / the man who blew shofar, our wake up call, is silent.

Because he was killed for being a Jew.

2.  Flavors of Nihilism

Sometimes, maybe it is the same for you, I cannot hold pretend to hold even a piece of this world together a second longer  

And this year especially, we might be tempted to just sit here in silence /

To just remain in grief for all we have lost

Why try to say anything in a world that seems broken beyond repair?

Or, maybe we’re tempted to re-engage our Jewish Trauma Button

You know the one,

That little voice that says, “This is just like before the Holocaust,

The world is out to get us, maybe it’s 1942, or maybe this is like the Spanish inquisition, Rome…”

We already have the liturgy that mourns those historic and mythic losses, we already have the text reminding us how our enemies devoured us again and again, we have everything all ready to go

We can just add these new names as if our destruction was, is inevitable, and ongoing

Because, after all, the world has always hated us.

Or, maybe we should just argue about which group hates us more and which hatred is worse, what hatred is surely the most dangerous.

Is it the insidious, maybe-even-un-self-aware,

just-how-I-was-raised,

you-just happen-to-care-about-the-wrong-things-hate,

or the conspiracy theory,

sit-down-because-you’ll-need-a-good-thirty-minutes-to-understand-this

do you have access to my charts hate?

When was it that we started having these conversations about who hates us more all the time?

And Just remind me, why do I have to fight to stop one kind and not worry about the other kind again? Sorry, I got lost in the thread.

Or, maybe we should just forget the whole thing. Literally.

Whether it is about anti-semitism or gun violence or both

Maybe it’s not even a conscious decision

Time passes, we acclimate:

Another shooting, another day. So sad. But I still have to get to work.

Once we were scandalized, but now many of us are worn down, resigned.

If you had told us in the early nineties that

There would be 22 Church related shootings from 1999 to now with a total of 91 congregants dead, 99 if you count the gunmen, I don’t think we could have even generated a coherent response. The shock would have been too much.

And of course that is just the shootings in some holy sanctuaries.

We didn’t talk about any of the other places

See our country is at war with itself, the battlefields now

in what were once considered the safest places 

Hospitals filled with the wounded

Newspapers following the stories of the fallen, the unlikely heros

Except the enemy is, somehow, unthinkably, us

As if we began a war with our very insides but now

no longer notice.

There’s a story about the Ba’al Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism

One day he forgets everything.

“I know nothing anymore. Everything has been taken from me,” he says.[1]

Drained of koach / strength; this too is how we feel, we seem to have forgotten everything we once knew

In the story, the Ba’al Shem begs his student to remember something, anything he once taught

to try and help him recover but

We are feeble, remembering how we used to be takes so much out of us

No one seems to remember anymore anyway

So we pretend it was more or less always like this

And, acclimating, we begin to talk about preparing ourselves for unspeakable things

Scenarios I cannot even bring myself to say out loud

3. Exile

I don’t want to talk about any of this

I am so angry that evil seems to get whatever it wants so easily, without so much as a struggle, without seeming to exert any effort.

I am so angry that the impossible now nests comfortably within the realm of reality

But as angry as I am

Our responses – all the varieties of regression, blame, resignation –

I know these might temporarily help stave off the pain but they won’t really help us grow

You could say, if we keep to our current course, the tree of life will remain under lock and key.

After the the Holocaust

R. Abraham Joshua Heschel

A scholar and activist, someone who lost many members of his family in the Shoah

Sympathized with the widespread heartbreak after the war

But he still taught relentlessly about the danger of skepticism and despondency 

He taught that our alienation from the very possibility of redemption --

our feeling that the world was irretrievably broken –

That this was the most dangerous of all

Because from there, nothing can grow. 

Not only that, Heschel taught that this very common, even unremarkable disposition

(Who really believes in anything anymore?)

This cynicism meant we were not only exiled from our own dreams of justice and righteousness

But God was exiled in equal measure, God was banished

God’s self was not at home in the universe

And the universe itself is not at home.”[2]

4. God goes with us

But there is another related teaching

That when we are deep in exile,

distanced from even the possibility of redemption, the possibility of faith

It is not that God is exiled separately, away from us, but instead, God goes into exile with us.

Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai says: Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are before the holy one. Every place [we] were exiled, the divine presence went with us.

When we were exiled to Egypt, the divine presence went with us…

when we went to Babylonia, the divine presence went with us,

and in the future, we will be redeemed and the divine presence will be redeemed with us.

[Now] Torah doesn’t say …God will bring us back or God will cause us to return, rather, Torah says the Holy One will return – that is, when we come back from exile, God will also return, with us, from exile.”[3] 

So when we dare to end our unexamined dependency on cynicism, skepticism

When we dare to return from exile and admit that our longing for righteousness is deep, severe

Even if this brings us anguish

God returns with us

In fact, this is the only way for God to return.

And for the universe to be at home once again

5. Are you hiding?

When we first started The Kitchen

The number one question people asked was

Whether or not we were going to have a building.

At the time, I thought, and I said publically, “The fact that this is the first question, this is bad for the Jews”

They are not asking about our prayer or our relationship to Israel or Torah, if we have a position on any number of issues?

Why does everyone act as if we’re a real estate company?”

But after this year, I now understand the question differently

(and no, this is not a build up to a capital campaign, I thought we knew each other)

Now, after Tree of Life, I understand the question differently

Maybe after tragedy all questions are understood differently

I think when they asked about a building they were trying to gage the seriousness of our intent

They wanted to hear if we are willing to commit and to express ourselves in ways that could be easily seen, identified, and yes, marked.

They wanted to know if we planned visible, demonstrable actions to match our lofty language and aspirations.

They didn’t say it in so many words, but they wanted to know if we were “out.” If we were for real, serious.

6. Come Closer

I wonder

Is building a building the only way to express seriousness of our intent?

Is building a building the only way to demonstrate our Jewish self-respect to the larger world?

You know, according to Talmud, if you’re a guest, you’re supposed to do whatever your host says, except if your host tells you to leave. If your host tells you to leave, you are not allowed to go. It is the one case where you override the wishes of your host.[4]

This may explain why some of us overstay our welcome at parties.

But in seriousness, the Hasidim taught that the host in this text is none other than God. None other than the universe.

“And, no matter what the world may seem to say to us, “Give up, leave, go away.” we are not allowed to leave.[5] We have to find a way to stay, even to come closer.

What if the choices were not leaving, going into one exile or another 

Or, building another building?

What if there was a third choice? A third way to stay and come closer?

What if we dafka took our shock at the violence, inequality and oppression in our time

And used it to try to find another way to build serious Jewish life?

After all, since we’re shaking our heads every day at the news, holding our hearts

After all, since the impossible has somehow become possible, even expected

Maybe then, our impossible dreams,

our battered, barely there, yet still somehow surviving dreams

of redemption, and of righteousness

Maybe those can somehow become possible again, too.

What if we built our lives around this possibility?

6. Make me a ‘sanctuary’

In Torah, after we have built the ultimate idol

Golden calf

from a mixture of despair, fear, a lack of trust in ourselves and in God

An idol literally made of gold (waaaaaay before Trump tower)

We were ashamed, afraid

Absorbing the shock waves of what it was we had done

And it was right then tradition says that God asks us to build a sanctuary

Why? Because God knows that in order for us to find our way back,

We needed to do something (!)

we needed to build something together that could be a conduit for righteousness

We had to act our way into believing again

But see, God has to convince us, we are so afraid, so ashamed in that moment to return, to come back and try again

So, according to the midrash, God says to us:

“C’mon…How long shall I wander outside homeless?

‘Asu li mikdash’ / ‘Make me a sanctuary’ so I (don’t have to sleep out on the streets).[6]

It’s not that God needs an air b and b.  

God is helping us get back in the game.

And the command is so literal (‘Build me a sanctuary’) it’s understandable that we get confused.

Sure seems like we’re supposed to build a building!

Now, that is one good interpretation! Don’t get me wrong. I have enough enemies. Buildings can be transcendent.

It is just not the only interpretation, it is not the only way.

Another way to read the same midrash, The Kitchen way is:

God is saying,

“…How long shall I wander outside homeless?

‘Asu li mikdash’ / ‘Make me a sanctuary’ so I (don’t have to sleep in the streets).[7]

What if, instead of building a sanctuary, we considered each person who is sleeping on the street right now as one of the faces of God?

No matter how difficult that information might be to assimilate,

No matter how ashamed it might make us feel when we consider the conditions of each and every person

Maybe the Kitchen way to be Jewish and accountable and visible

Is to work against the systemic desecration of human life,

To make sanctuaries for all the faces of God.

Now that is what I call a capital campaign

That is path towards righteousness, pretty direct path, I don’t have to spin it

That is our way of re-claiming our place in the tree of life,

That is worth a generation of energy

That is how I want us to be remembered when we’re gone:   

“They were the ones who built the homes for the many.”

It was a kiddush ha-shem / a sanctification of the Name.

7. Three Directions:

But if we’re going to build our metaphorical sanctuary, we’re going to need three metaphorical things: Windows, Tables, and an Ark.

(1). WINDOWS

We’re not allowed to pray in a room without windows. Because what we’re doing inside and what we’re doing outside needs to be connected.[8]

And if we look out the window, any window

We know that the homeless

What Toni Morrison z”l called, the unhoused –

this population is growing in San Francisco

.

Josh Bamburger, Kitchen-ite and Associate Director of UCSF Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative told me that

Up until about five years ago, San Francisco was adding 150 new units a year of permanent supportive housing to keep up with demand,

but in the last five years, there’s been almost no increase.

Add this to the fact that, for almost fifty years, our federal government, unlike governments in Western European countries, has not prioritized social services or provided aid in this arena, and add that to the fact that the recent “improving” economy

has priced out many, many people who could once make a life here –

so that twice as many more people now head to the shelters than even a few years ago

And we’re not even talking about the lack of affordable housing

But I don’t need to tell you any of this

You see the people, they are amongst us, in every neighborhood

You see the tent cities blooming,

the sleeping bags in the doorways,

the make shift tarps over wheelchairs,

the strained looks on the faces of God,

the requests for help

I know you see them when you go out, and tonight I want you to also see it, to feel it from right here. 

Many of you know

Kitchen has a growing partnership with GLIDE,

GLIDE provides meals, clean needles, programs in literacy, anti-violence education, health services, a legal clinic, medical care

This is not cosmetic. We are building relationships, we’re starting to know the people who work there, the clients and congregants and they are starting to know us.  

About 50 Kitchen-ites are there helping or connecting in one way or another a week

Dozens of people meet for services, classes, our teens learn there for Freedom City,

We’re there for Freedom School and Shabbat mornings throughout the year, many more things I can tell you

It is a strong beginning but this is Kol Nidrei

I need to tell you

It is not enough

Not when the face of God sleeps on the pavement night after night

More of us must do more

If we were building a building and making a permanent mark on this city, this would be a beautiful start but not enough to break ground

If this were a capital campaign we would’ve hired someone to knock on every door

We would pressure you all into 100% participation, you know how it works

So for those in this room who are waiting to be called, to be tapped

I’m telling you

You can volunteer, fill shifts to cook, to prepare, to teach

You can get involved with the people who are already on the ground investing in increasing health services, getting shelters built

Or / and you can join a new Kitchen group that will advocate for a huge expansion in affordable housing in San Francisco.

Consider yourself called

Consider yourself tapped

(2). TABLES

Talmud teaches that since the Temple was destroyed, whereas the alter used to atone for us, that’s where we brought our sacrifices, 

now we atone at the table.

Because instead of guilt offerings, sin offerings, now we resolve our guilt, aveiras, sins, through conversations, apologies, learning, singing and even arguments at our tables.[9]

And the essence of what happens at our tables at The Kitchen is decidedly not based on titles or accolades but instead on things like

how her face looked when she was telling us about her mother who died last year,

Or the way he smiled when his husband said the b’rakhot / blessings for the first time,

Or the way they met over studying great Torah,

Or how their parents from Jersey reacted to our West Coast Purim,

Or how we all wept after Parkland,

Or how her baby used to laugh whenever we would light the candles on shabbat.

And it turns out, you spend enough time singing and talking and celebrating at the table

You can begin to counteract the infatuation San Francisco has with exceptionalism,

we can begin realize we are wholly dependent on one another

That these rituals that we did not invent bring the highs higher and allow us to feel the depth of the lows

Together, we can begin to counteract the lie that we were created to be self-sufficient.

We remember that we’re here only because of the efforts of those who came before us

Just as we have a responsibility to those who will come after us.

In other cities they call this collection of experiences and ideas ‘organized religion.’ Here, you may call it whatever you want, as long as you show up, as long as we can count on you to make a minyan, to set the table and help clean up.

(3.) ARK 

A story:  When we were building the sanctuary, and everyone was bringing and bringing and Moses says to stop, there’s enough

There’s a famous line in Torah,

Hamlacha hayta di-yam / The[ir] work was enough,

 l’khol hamlacha la’asot otah /

to get the job done

…v’hoteir and it was… extra, more than enough, too much.

It was “sufficient and too much.”[10]

And there’s a Hasidic tradition, that it was precisely with that “too much,” that “extra”

What we might even call “left over”

This “too much” is exactly what God told Moses to use to make the ark,

the most intimate, holiest part of the whole endeavor.

If we’re in a mindset of necessity, we just recycle the “too much”

But this “too much,” see, this is what drew God closer to us,

This “too much” is what engaged heaven

Because God could see that we were not building something out of fear, it was not even out of solidarity with an important cause,

but rather out of overflowing dedication, we were giving beyond what was necessary, it was beyond necessity

The kind of dedication and commitment stems only from love

The kind that keeps you up all night because you cannot bear to end the conversation

The kind that makes you drop everything and show up

The kind that makes you stay in the hospital and then again the next day and the next

The kind that makes you fly across the world just to see a person’s face, just to make sure she is okay

This is what God wanted most.

‘The overflow of the innermost heart of Israel.’[11]

Those who remain after the party is over and the guests have gone,

Those who come out of hiding, even with the world as broken as it is, because we refuse to stop trying  

This is what makes us precious to God,

What is left over in the bottom of the heart and cannot even be expressed in words.[12]

And so we learn that, somehow, in the holy of holies itself

The holiest things in the holy of holies

The cruvim / the angels, the people, none of this is included in the measurements of the ark given in Torah

And, in fact, if we included all these things in the measurements, we know it would not all fit, we would not fit, nothing would fit and yet, we know, even when everyone was bowing, there was more than enough room.

Because it is only when we begin with this kind of generous love that we are able make an infinite amount of room, with space for everyone.[13]

If we are to break any kind of religious ground

If we are to exemplify what it means to be a serious Jewish community in these times

If we are going to build a modern vision of a sanctuary that spans the city

We cannot start with what is necessary,

We cannot ever start with what’s wrong because then we’ll never get there

We must instead start with that which is immeasurable

We must start with what is overflowing, “Too much.”

7. The Tree of Life is not closed

In the book, The Oldest Living Things in the World

I learned about

A Pando (which is also called a “Quaking Aspen”).

It is a single organism that is 80,000 years old.

It looks like a colony 

But because of its massive root system

47,000 trees in Utah

it is actually a 106 acre being

Water can get from tree to tree and

The colony as a whole can migrate, albeit slowly, over time

It made me think:

Maybe the tree of life is not entirely closed – locked with a chain.

Because maybe the Tree of life isn’t a tree at all. Maybe it is an enormous forest.

And you and I, we’re a part of it.

[1] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, “A Halt is Called,” Vol.1, p. 78.

[2] Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, p. 148-9.

[3] BT Megillah 29a:4

[4] BT Pesachim 86b

[5] My paraphrase, Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, “The Heavenly Voice,” Vol. 2, p. 293)

[6] Shemot Rabbah 33:3

[7] Shemot Rabbah 33:3

[8] BT Berakhot 31a:18

[9] BT Menchot 97a

[10] Ex. 36:7

[11] Buber, Tales of the Hasidim, “The Dwelling,” Vol. 2, p. 296-7.

[12] Edward K. Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, p. 60.

[13] BT Bava Batra 99a:2, Genesis Rabbah 5:7.

The Sense of Danger Must Not Disappear: Yom Kippur 5780

Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer

A girl stands on the ledge of a window.  She looks down. She’s terrified. She grips the window frame tightly.

The girl on the ledge knows she must jump, It’s time to fly.  But she looks down and recoils from the edge.

I should probably tell you now..the window wasn’t a real window. It was a stage set window.  And the harrowing drop? It was 4 feet... maybe.

The girl wore a proper harness attached to a rope that stretched over the rafters and into the grip of 2 strong high school techies.  The fact that they were hs students aside, let’s assume that she was safe, and the risk of making the leap out of the window was...so minimal.  She was supposed to be Peter Pan after all.

But she felt sheer terror, and had no faith in harness,  rope, or techie. She wouldn’t budge. The next half hour involved many tactics of persuasion, promises, assurances, bribes.  Until finally, one of the directors, growled: “Enough. Enough coddling. Just jump!”   

A verse by the poet W.H. Auden comes to mind, perhaps you know it

The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

This verse reminds me of another timid leaper--our Biblical ancestor Jacob, who ran away from home after stealing his brother’s blessing.  After the first day wandering on his own, he laid down to sleep on a rocky mountain top. This was years before he had a family, years before he fought an angel and received a new name.

As he lay there with a rock for his pillow, God revealed a ladder to him in a dream.  Its legs rooted in the earth, and the top reaching the heavens. It was awesome. Angels sprinted up and down the ladder as Jacob lay there dumbfounded.   (I imagine him still lying down, taking in the enormity of it all)...God appeared, at the top, and gave Jacob the guarantee of a lifetime, one we all long to hear:  וְהִנֵּ֨ה אָנֹכִ֜י עִמָּ֗ךְ׃

“I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go...I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you..” 

We interpret this dream as a transformative moment for Jacob.  He woke up and realized God is in this place and he did not know it!  

But In the midrashic compilation, Vayikra Rabbah, the rabbis say:  Jacob missed the central message of the dream. When God shows you a ladder...CLIMB.  Get on it.   The ladder wasn’t Divine architectural whimsy, a set decoration, this was God inviting Jacob to leap.  To stop gazing from a comfortable distance, and to get off his tuches and leap onto the ladder.

Jacob, until this time was known for sitting in tents like a Biblical couch potato, and deceiving his family members. God says: “Jacob!  You are at an inflection point. You have left home. Are you going to keep on as you were, or are you going to change? Jacob, leap onto the ladder!  You can climb up and reach for something bigger than yourself, something ineffable. You can climb down, and amend your actions in the world…Both directions will work on this ladder.  But first you need to leap.”

Jacob was terrified;  of heights, of falling down.  He lacked faith--maybe in God, or in his own balance, or in his own ability to change... לא האמין ולא עלה.   

Remember, this was the sturdiest, most charmed  ladder you’ve ever seen. Legs firmly planted in the ground, arms reaching to the heavens.  No flimsy, folding, rickety step-ladder. And God  promised him--I will protect you!  The rabbis say God even coddled him a little: ואתה אל תירא עבדי יעקב “And you, don’t be afraid, my servant Jacob.” 

Even with all of this assurance, Jacob  couldn’t overcome his fear. He looked, but he refused to leap.  The morning arrived, the ladder disappeared, and he had not moved.

Our rabbis weren’t impressed. As much as they love Jacob, he received a demerit for this one. I imagine this is why we don’t read about Jacob on the High Holy Days. We read about his grandparents, his great-aunt Hagar, and his father Isaac, but not Jacob.  Today we read about Aaron’s sons, who leapt a little too quickly. But we don’t read about Jacob. The High Holy Days are not time to sit back and watch from a safe distance. It’s a time to leap. And perhaps this is the real reason why Jacob’s name יעקב comes from the word ‘heel’.  He dug in his heels when he should have lept.

The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.  Our tradition doesn’t say leap without looking, doesn’t encourage impulsivity.  It says take time to look--take the whole month of Elul for introspection, to practice חשבון הנפש/soul accounting.  And then the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur--we assess and confess where we have come up short of who we want to be. In our relationships with those we love and with those we struggle to love, in personal and civic responsibility.  This process takes time. Teshuva is not a hasty enterprise. We acknowledge where we’ve failed to ourselves, we apologize to those we’ve wronged, and we identify how to change our behavior. This isn’t quick.

But then we arrive at Yom Kippur, the climactic day of this whole teshuva process.  we afflict ourselves with fasting, and abstaining from bodily pleasures. We communally and publicly confess our wrongs.  We squeeze our bodies and our souls -- so that we leap. 

It’s not a foregone conclusion that we will leap.  We can spend years in synagogue (or not) on Yom Kippur, fasting and abstaining on this day..,in order to check a box.  It’s much easier to coast through a ritual without letting it work its magic on us.. Much more challenging to go inside.  

The ultimate prayer we pray together today is neila.  Trust us, you don’t want to miss it. Neila, the only prayer service of it’s kind all year round.  The word ‘neila’ means: the locking. It refers symbolically to the locking of the gates--of prayer, of compassion, of change.  As the sun sets, we imagine the heavenly doors beginning to close, (because we all need deadlines), and as they close we realize  If we’re going to leap. The time is now.
-----

Our ancestor Jacob did not leap, and when the morning came, the ladder was gone. The gate to heaven and to his unconscious, had closed.  

If Jacob, who had a sturdy ladder, with assurance from the Eibishter, from God Herself couldn’t leap, what hope is there for us schleppers?    Do we even know what we’re leaping towards? And if we do leap, do we know what the next step after looks like?  Maybe once upon a time we had a vision of our own life’s ladder, a clear sturdy ladder, and in the last few years, that vision took a beating--(maybe through loss, or divorce, attacks on our democracy, by acknowledging the reality of climate change).  Maybe now we don’t even know that there is a next rung up or down.

-----

The Kotsker Rebbe tells a story that I heard about from Rabbi Kushner, who heard it from her father, Rabbi Kushner.  

In every generation, souls are born into this world by descending from heaven to earth via a cosmic ladder.  In our generation, as soon as we landed in the world. God pulled the ladder, hid it. Like one of those retractable attic ladders.  We looked this way and that, but it was gone. Some people just gave up, and didn’t try, saying: ‘how can i climb without a ladder?’ Others tried a few times to leap up, and they fell on their tucheser.  After a few attempts and falls, they stopped leaping.  But there were a few wise ones. They knew that there was no way up, but nevertheless, they persisted and said to themselves: ‘there’s no choice but to leap.  We will do our part and put in the effort.  And if God wants, She will lift us the rest of the way,  For these, God’s compassion ignited, and She lifted them.  They leapt, and she restored their ladder.

These leapers did what the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr, ע׳ה described when he said: “Faith is taking the first step even when you can't see the whole staircase.”

Sometimes we’re the generation with no visible ladder, and our only hope is to leap, as ridiculous as it feels.  And sometimes we’re Jacob, gobsmacked by the beauty of a ladder, but in our privilege, we think we have the luxury of not getting on the ladder.

-----

Jacob waited 20+ years before he got a second chance, a second vision. This time--he leaped.   He wrestled with a force stronger than himself and he won. Real transformation took place. He received a new name--no longer the one who grabs another’s heel or digs in his own, he is now the one who wrestles with the Divine and human, (both ends of the ladder), and succeeds.    

And that girl in the window? And in case it wasn’t painfully obvious…’that little girl--is me’

The director growled: “Enough coddling.  just jump!”

And she did.  I did.  It was terrifying.  All off balance, limbs flailing.  I shrieked and the expression on my face was one of horror with a hint of delight. I only remember that expression because it was captured in that split second by a photographer for the local paper.  I see that photo, and I remember what it looks like to leap.  

Here we stand on Yom Kippur, our bodies strained, our voices lifted.  

We’re pushing ourselves to the edge.  Will we leap?

Listen to the words of the poet, W. H. Auden

------

The sense of danger must not disappear:

The way is certainly both short and steep,

However gradual it looks from here;

Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep

And break the by-laws any fool can keep;

It is not the convention but the fear

That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,

The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer

Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;

Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear

Will not be either sensible or cheap,

So long as we consent to live like sheep

And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savior-faire,

But to rejoice when no one else is there

Is even harder than it is to weep;

No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep

Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear:

Although I love you, you will have to leap;

Our dream of safety has to/disappear.

-- W. H. Auden

Rosh Hashana Day 5780 / 2019

America is Not Lost, She is Changed: “God sets bounds (“ketz” קץ) for the darkness”

(Job 28:3, Midrash Tanhuma Buber to 41:1 / #2 / Miketz)

*Draft version, footnotes forthcoming

1. “Missing Woman Mystery Solved”

The following story was reported in a local paper in Iceland:

‘A group of tourists spent hours on Saturday night looking for a missing woman near an Icelandic canyon, only to find her among the search party.

The group was traveling through Iceland on a tour bus and stopped near a volcanic canyon. Soon there was word of a missing passenger. The woman, who had changed clothes, didn’t recognize the description of herself, and joined in the search.

But the search was called off at about 3 A.M., when it became clear the missing woman, was, in fact, accounted for and searching for herself.’

 I’ve never heard high holidays described so well or so succinctly. We can go home now.

Actually, seriously, often we are not so much lost as changed.

Maybe, even our country, our America, which seems so broken

is not so much lost as changing, changed.

Maybe, if we want to fix our current trajectory as a nation

We’ll have to stop the search party long enough to make sure we’re looking for the right things.

2. Status Quo (Powers that be, the problems of our day) feed off of our fatigue

Remember Joseph?

Beautiful, talented, Joseph who liked to tattle on his brothers

Joseph who was his father’s favorite – remember how his father gave him that special coat of many colors?

Joseph was born dreaming, and he would have these repeated dreams where all his brothers and parents were bowing down to him as if he were the king and they were his adoring subjects

And he knew what those dreams meant

And still he repeatedly shared renditions of those dreams with his brothers

Until they hated him

I mean they really hated him. Like, for example, they threw him in a dark pit while they decided whether or not to kill him

More or less opting in the end to “just” sell him into slavery and tell their father he was dead.

And there is a lot to say about this

But if you are feeling inadequate this time of year about relationships with members of your family, your siblings

Perhaps looking at this families in Torah can offer us some perspective

As bad as it is, surely its not that bad.

But what I want to focus on

is that throughout this entire sequence of events

And Torah doesn’t spare any words in describing the hatred of Joseph’s brothers

Or the despair and grief of their father

Throughout this sequence

Joseph doesn’t seem to have a single reaction, not a single emotion

Not when his father favors him

Not when he’s describing his king dreams  

Not when he’s thrown in the pit

Not when he’s sold away into slavery

Not one reaction on his beautiful face. Nada.

Even a few chapters later, when, as a servant he is falsely accused by his master and thrown away into another kind of pit, a prison

Torah does not record any sadness, frustration, anger.

In fact, years later, the rabbis say ten years,

when Joseph explains to a cell mate how he got in the prison,

he speaks in the passive, as if he had nothing to do with anything

They kidnapped me, “V’gam po, lo asiti m’euma.”

“And also, here,”

lo asiti m’euma / “I haven’t done anything that they should put me in this prison”

lo asiti m’euma / “I haven’t done anything.” (Genesis 40:15)

All this innocence is enough to make us want to ask:  

“Nothing? Nothing Joseph?

Not saying you deserved to end up in an Egyptian jail

But you did tell your brothers those obnoxious dreams over and over

You know you vogue-d around in that coat Joseph, 

clueless about the suffering your arrogance caused again and again

If you’re so blameless, Joseph, how come there’s no one come and pay bail? How come no one seems to know you’re gone?

Could it be, is it possible that your need to be blameless is part of the problem?”

And Joseph is not the only one who wants to pretend he’s blameless.

4. Fake problems / Blameless / “The age of spectacle” (Morrison, p. 97-8)

I don’t even want to talk about fake news but there are surely fake problems today.

By that I mean contrived issues fabricated, knowingly or unknowingly

Orchestrated to inflame divisions between us

What were once called “Wedge issues,”

now thrown onto the fiery grill of social media

And with a fake problem there’s always only two sides, the “good” one and the “bad” one.

Why does this matter?

It matters because this is a time of a great many real and complicated problems in our world:

Environmental crises, entrenched racism, questions around immigration, wealth inequality, rampant gun violence, to name a few

And if we put our energies towards taking sides on the latest fake flare up

We can start to get confused and think these provocations are the real thing

For example we can get confused and think the supposed threat of BDS / Boycott and Divestment Movement of Israel --

What Israeli columnist Anshel Pfeffer calls a “Phantom menace”

“A harmless nuisance manufactured by a few Western keyboard warriors”

A boycott that has not changed Israel’s GDP nor its standing in the world

But still takes up main stage, and a disproportionate amount of attention in US Jewish conversations –

With all the attention given

We can get confused between the anxiety around BDS and solving for the Occupation,

Or finding a lasting chapter or relationship that would further the security and dignity of Israelis and Palestinians.

We can get so worked up at making sure someone is anti-BDS that we don’t put our energy into seriously discussing what Zionism is and could be.

And with everyone on the defensive

The number of phantoms growing in size and number

It is no wonder we fell compelled to weigh in, take a side

We don’t ask if the choices offered are good ones or even the right ones

We just put on armor that doesn’t fit, simply because everyone else seems to have a sword.

But if we start investing in fake problems

Our heartbeats racing at every provocation 

A second danger is that we start to get confused and think the defeat of the other side, the other, no matter how infuriating or provocative their position

We can start to think that the humiliation of the other is the prize.

Listen, especially with things being as bad as they are,

with all the attention a good put-down receives, I get it!

Hating “the man” offers such an immediate rush!

But I don’t need to tell you that this is not the prize 

Not only will it not help us redefine our lost America

Not only will it not draw us closer to trying solutions or to learning from each other

Humiliation of the other is not a prize at all, it is the cost of being in a disorganized mob,

A host to a virus

It is beneath us

Not to mention

When we accept this kind of public humiliation as commonplace

The importance of staying with our “team,” and our “side” starts to override any other considerations, or doubts we might have

Perhaps without meaning to

We create restrictive brands for ourselves, brands that allow us to be blameless and consistent and indignant

but that prohibit us from forming a larger coalition with someone who has some views we might find problematic

Or listening to such a person

Or changing our minds, god forbid, in public.

But we know from Torah

That we’re forbidden to make static idols of ourselves or each other

We can’t make idols of the people we love the most, and not of those who we barely know

We know from Torah: We are each infinite, we are not brands

And the opportunity to change, t’shuvah, is one of the most powerful tools we’ve been given

No, the prize cannot be choosing to be on the right side of the faux problem, even the real problem (!) in these times, this is not enough

The problems of the world are too serious for us to prioritize our being blameless and consistent

The solutions we need now may require to change our minds, to expose our failings, to get off our pedestals in service of a greater good, a greater whole.

5. Well-Heeled Rooms / Blameless / Faux Solutions

And yet, simply resisting the mob or if you prefer, the bubble, also cannot be our prize nor our goal

In fact, as tempting as it can be to join the mob

It can be just as seductive to be someone who

“Stays away from the fray”

Who “rises above,”

Whose stand seems to be postponing taking a stand

Or embracing all the stands

There sure are a lot of calls for civility and listening these days

But if the result of that listening seems to more or less keeping things as they are

If the prize is peace and order and dignity for all, as long as you got your invitation into the room

Invitation only dignity

If it feels like a club

If it is a well funded opportunity to hear the same things that have been said and heard millions of times

We must ask ourselves,

Who gets to extend the invitations? And at what communal cost?  (Morrison, p. 163, who gets to determine what is in the canon and how can that be separated from political motivations? + why are some view points “political” and others “normal”? p. 169) 

We need to ask ourselves: With all the fires burning outside, with all the serious problems that require our response, is this really the prize? Is this the best we can do?  

See in these are times when democracy is in jeopardy, when racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, sexism have all come roaring back, all seemingly intertwined

If a proposed solution or cohort, if it is real, then we must demand that it articulate a piece of a dream or prod the world along in some way,

because if no one is risking or sacrificing or admitting anything or changing at all

If it is the usual suspects saying the same vague things on yet another day while the world stays the same

As well intentioned as it all might be

– it is hard for me to imagine this is anything more than a kind of denial, an opportunity to kick the can down status road, a faux solution.

And the world is just too broken for us to participate in faux solutions, this too, cannot be our prize.

6. Joseph Risks / Joseph Dreams Pharaoh’s Dream   

I imagine Joseph in the prison.

I imagine he has said, “Lo asiti me’uma” / “I didn’t do anything” over and over for years.

He said it to anyone who would listen. He has said it to himself.

But I imagine that even during the days when Joseph was telling whoever would listen that he didn’t do anything

Every night, I imagine Joseph had the same nightmare about his brothers:

Every night they threw him in that pit and every night he tried to explain in vain that they were wrong, only to be thrown in again the next night.

And I wonder

How dark and lonely and monotonous and quiet did it have to get

How many nights of the same dream

before Joseph considered his role in his own life?

Maybe, slowly, slowly he began to reconsider:

“Lo asiti me’uma” / “I didn’t do anything”

“I didn’t do… anything?!”

“They were all so angry and I didn’t do anything? I never tried to talk with them. I kept fanning the flames.”

And at last Joseph understands that maybe he is not blameless.

Chasidic teacher / Mei Hashiloach offers

Joseph was in prison for two extra years because God was waiting for Joseph to have the capacity to hold a greater prize, to hold a greater redemption (aleph to Gen. 41:1)

See, God wanted more for Joseph than blamelessness, than being right or being secure

God wanted Joseph to see that a greater redemption

A redemption for the many, 

A redemption in which you might admittedly probably make wrong moves at times

In which your flaws would be exposed,  

but you could be part of something greater --

This is the only prize worth having

And God knew, in order for Joseph to reach this stage

Joseph would have to see

the prize was neither in his innocence nor his guilt

but in taking everything that had happened to him in his life and still making something with it.

And the Mei Hashiloach says that

When Joseph finally reached this understanding

Joseph, still in his prison, cried a great and tremendous cry.

One of what would be many breakdowns, seven times he cries after this, all recorded in Torah, as if making up for lost time

And it was right when he cried, says our teacher, at that exact moment

the King Pharaoh dreamed a dream he needed to understand

and the King Pharaoh was beyond himself, he needed to know what it meant

and immediately he found out there was a dream interpreter in the prison and right away Joseph was called up into the light and brought into the palace to help.

And you know the rabbis say the very day that Joseph was released from prison, it was today, it was Rosh Hashana (B. RH 30b., others). A day when we consider what has happened to us and what we might yet do with all of it.

OR, says the Tur, it is also possible that after years in prison

Finally, one night

One night Joseph the dreamer dreamed someone else’s dream,

he dreamed King Pharaoh’s dream,

and it didn’t matter that it wasn’t even a good dream,

It didn’t matter that it was a dream representing the oncoming famine –

And it didn’t matter that it was King Pharoah, hardly a likely ally

Because as soon as Joseph dreamed the Pharaoh’s dream and he knew what it meant

Cause Joseph always knew what the dreams meant

Then he knew that the dreaming and interpreting that had shaped his whole life

was not just a strange quirk, it was not only a source of confusion and pain

It was something that he could now try to use for good. He could try to stop the reach of the famine with all these dreams and interpretations.

(commenting on Gen. 41:1).

“Vayehi miketz” / And after two years, it all came to an end and Joseph was released from prison / or maybe he released himself

Or maybe God helped to release him

As it says in Job:

“God sets bounds (“ketz” קץ) even for darkness.”

(Job 28:3, Midrash Tanhuma Buber to 41:1 / #2 / Miketz)

7.  The reason we cannot find America is not because she is lost

The reason we cannot find America is not because she is lost. It is because we’re searching for an America that’s now changed.  

It would be like looking for Joseph back in the prison,

he’s no longer there.

We might not have the words yet and we might not have the symbols or the new offices but make no mistake, America is not lost, she has changed.

8. With all the fires, both literal and metaphoric, the suffocating cycles of crisis after crisis, not to mention the naked self-interest that ruled the news this year,

We should remember this was also a time of rumblings and protests, There were journalists and activists and voices heard like shots around the world.

Those who did not accept faux problems and who risked to offer real solutions in earnest, no matter the outcomes

Christine Blasey-Ford is but one example.

a person who took on enormous risk, unrelenting pressure at great personal cost

Fighting shame, retaliation, public humiliation

Threats to her family, her job security, her safety

In her testimony, one year old this week, she said,

“I am here today not because I want to be. I am terrified.”

“…I had a sense of urgency to relay the information (of my attack) to the Senate and the President as soon as possible before a nominee was selected. …I stated (anonymously) that Mr. Kavanaugh had assaulted me in the 1980s in Maryland.

This was an extremely hard thing for me to do,

but I felt I couldn’t NOT do it.

I felt I couldn’t NOT do it.

She couldn’t NOT do it

Because the idea of a world where truths of that magnitude

would remain under wraps, rendered useless or off limits

the idea of that world was worse than whatever consequences she would surely suffer.

I couldn’t NOT do it.  I couldn’t NOT talk about it.

She said “…I agonized daily with this decision,” for months but she concluded,

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/09/26/christine-blasey-ford-opening-statement-senate-845080

My responsibility is to tell the truth.

And just like that

Building on the courage of Anita Hill, of course the #MeToo movement, the moral courage of so many 

Blasey-Ford described the layers of a chilling oppression, and by giving that abuse its name

By putting words to what happened so long ago

Memories she could have just continued to stomach

By saying the words out loud

Blasey-Ford placed that once taboo oppression right on our country’s doorstep, she made us look, she helped us understand 

She helped us to see she represented tens of thousands of people,

Americans harassed, assaulted, attacked, humiliated, exposed

Blasey-Ford’s sacrifice and the #MeToo stories of so many have helped to disassemble systemic oppression in arenas of philanthropy, Jewish life, business, academia, government, entertainment, religion, science, too many more to name

Oppressive systems that were once allowed to stand unchallenged,

a given, an unfortunate side effect of power,

now collapsing under the pressure of so many testimonies, their corruption plain for all to see.

Just one of many ways America is changing, unrecognizable from who she once was.

Now Blasey-Ford and Joseph don’t seem to have too much in common.

For starters, as I said, Joseph carries some of the responsibility in the disastrous relationship with his brothers

Blasey-Ford, was innocent, a victim.

Joseph was powerless, nothing to lose when he risked it all

Blasey-Ford a respected academic with much to lose

But, in one way, they make the same significant choice, the same move

Blasey-Ford came to understand, after much deliberation, that this unwieldy and painful thing that happened

This chapter she had wrestled with for so long 

Even this could be used to stop oppression.

She came to understand that her act of coming forward would go beyond whether she was believed or dismissed,

perceived as innocent or guilty,

it would be about reaching for a greater redemption, a true prize.

Like Joseph anticipating the famine, she imagined people she had never met

People who had

yet to convene

Yet to know their story was related to hers --

and she still felt a responsibility to them, to us.

As it says in Isaiah

V’haya terem yikra’u / v’ani eh-eh-neh.

“Before they can even call out, I will answer;

9. Where is America?

America will never be found or recreated or renamed so long as we think of ourselves as separate focus groups or population segments, demographics or generations 

 But where you find freedom, there you will find America.

 Where is America?

She is among us but she has changed. She is in the acts of Blasey-Ford, Jamal Khashoggi, the 52 journalists killed in the last year alone, she is in Brooklyn where our ultra orthodox brothers and sisters, trying to serve god in their daily lives are physically attacked with astonishing regularity for the way they look and live, she is in Megan Rapinoe’s demand for equal pay, she is in the conscience of the whistleblower, and in the hearts of the many new government representatives of all stripes, lawyers at the Equal Justice Initiative who are walking into Alabama courtrooms demanding justice, pulling innocent black men off of death row, she is in the bent knee of Kapernick, she is among those risking arrest behalf of immigrants in detention camps on our borders, and she is in the thousands upon thousands of others who have refused to submit to oppression in its many forms, who have risked for a greater freedom.

Who understand we are each far more than a brand

 Who insist, not on being blameless or tearing town the enemy but rather on being implicated, encumbered, and responsible to the many

 Who, when invited in status-y rooms where nothing happens, politely excuse ourselves

Who understand that our past, no matter how mottled or confusing, can sometimes make up the basis, not only for personal redemption, but also for a greater redemption, a worthwhile prize 

Who listen in the silences for the voices not yet able to speak,

 Who dream one another’s dreams, even the bad ones

And who dare to try to limit the darkness.

 This is where our America is found. She is not lost, she is right here, among us, in us, changed and ready and waiting for the time when each of us will play our necessary part in the raising up of freedom, in her ongoing redemption.  

My teacher Avivah Zornberg tells the story of

Reb. Arye Levine who was once asked,

“Are you one of the thirty-six righteous people, the ones hidden in every generation?”

He looked around and answered,

“From time to time.”

(Zornberg, Bewilderments, p. 30).

Erev Rosh Hashanah 5780

Bridging the Distance

As I was preparing for Rosh Hashanah this week, I was thinking about my own childhood memories of the holiday. Not only because the High Holy Days bring back so many memories for all of us— in general, of going to synagogue with loved ones, of the prayers, and specific High Holy Day melodies that are so familiar to us this time of year. But also because I have realized how different the High Holy Days are now for me, today, from when I was growing up.

Most of my family moved to the United States, after the Iranian Revolution hit, in the late 1970s. And there was a rush of Persian immigrants that came to various parts of the US. But—and up until today, Los Angeles is home to the largest Persian population in the world, outside of Iran.

But when these immigrants first arrived, my parents, and grandparents, and extended family, they had no synagogue to belong to. My great-uncle once shared that he showed up his first year, at a prominent synagogue in Beverly Hills, and they asked him for his High Holy Day tickets.

 'Tickets?'— he said confused

'Tickets for what?'

 'Sir are you a member?'

 'A member?!' he repeated. 'A member of what?'

This was a new concept for him.

But as time went on, more and more Persians came to LA fleeing their home country of Iran and in eminent need of a synagogue to go to and pray in time for the High Holy Days. My great-uncle, tells that he even approached several synagogues, to see if he could rent out their parking lot, to setup tents there to pray— in Persian melodies and language, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

But— they were told—that the parking lots were needed "for parking cars."

 "Never-mind anyways," my great-uncle says as he continues telling the story. "It was over 90 degrees in LA in September. God didn't want us fasting in the scorching heat." 

That was his humor, and in a moment of great loss being distanced from his homeland for the first time, and now having to face a new country and reality, all the while trying to find a place for his community to pray in. So a few people got together and decided to reshift their focus and to work hard on finding a place—in time for Rosh Hashanah.

 What would they do? They would rent huge ballrooms, the various hotels in the LA area and all the Persians would gather there, together.

 And so, when I think back to my own childhood memories of the High Holy Days, they were spent in a hotel ballroom.  

I was born only a few years after, the end of the Revolution, and these memories, of massive amounts of Persians, all over the hotel rooms and lobby, filled with familiar faces: aunts and uncles, cousins, 3rd cousins —4th cousins twice removed. These are my memories.

 But as time went on, and cousins grew up, and some grandparents passed away, and people moved to different parts of LA, and of the country, we became distanced.

That is we don't see each other anymore and even when we do come together on occasion, like a wedding, it is rarely all of us together—at the same time, like those sweet days….

 And I bring this up because in so many ways the High Holy Days in general—are about closeness and distance.

 That is repairing the distance, and attempting at—closing the gap that often comes between us within our relationships; the relationships we share with other people. As well as our relationship with God, and ourselves.

 In the time of the Torah, repairing relationships mainly had to do with our relationship with God, and it was achieved through animal sacrifice. On Yom Kippur, for example the day is refferred to as Kippurim—which in English refers to the process "by which guilt or impurity—is canceled out."

 And in the Torah portion on Yom Kippur, we read, of the sacrificial rites: of the bull of sin offering, and of the goat of sin offering—not only commanded for the High Priest’s to make on account of their own reparations—but also for the entire people of Israel.

And though— it might be difficult for us to understand today,

and imagine the life of our ancestors in the ancient world

and the emotion of an ancient Israelite in offering sacrifices. It is important to note that animals were rarely slaughtered. A person might have owned only one or two—certainly just a few. Therefore, the offering was truly an economic sacrifice

 In fact, even the Hebrew word for sacrifices: korban and comes from the root karov which means—to draw close. And so, by offering some of their most prized possessions: an unblemished goat, a perfect bull, our ancestors were exercising true sacrifice—giving up something precious for the sake of getting closer to God. 

After all, that is the English meaning of the word atonement—which comes from the words "at one." Yom Kippur is the day in which an estranged person, through atonement, becomes at one with God again.

And, by the time of the prophets they insisted that sacrifices alone would not reconcile and bring us closer to God. And that sins are only forgiven if the person who sins experiences a change of heart, leading to a change of ways.

And sin in Judaism is an important concept to understand.

 According to Rabbi Lawrence Hoffman, the word “sin” is the application of religious terminology to the negative side effects of ordinary human behavior.

 But he argues, that the word “sin” seems to go so much deeper than that.

 He writes:

"People make mistakes, do wrong, commit errors, and so on—but they are not, on that account, “mistakers”, “wrongers” and “errorers” the way people who sin are suddenly— “sinners.”

 In other words, the way that term is extended suddenly implies ownership of the sin by the sinner as if the sin were part of the sinner's very begin. And in these terms, the word sin has some kind of moralistic judgement on a person's character. 

But that is not Judaism's definition of sin. Or as Rabbi Hoffman puts: "Judaism does not want  human beings to be thought of as “sinners.” He continues that rather, in Judaism there is the understanding that even though we sin, we can also do good. And that in Judaism sin is elemental—that it is an element of human character—and that we are not inherently sinful

And this is true. We believe that we are born with a yetzer hatov and a yetzer harah the inclination to do good  and to do bad. And that human beings have a choice. We have agency. We decide our path. And because we decide our path, we are held accountable for our choices.

At the same time, the way we approach repairing our sins, has changed since the time of the Torah. Even by the time of the prophets they argued that sacrifices were not enough but that we have to take action to turn away from evil conduct and to return —shuv—to God.

And this idea, of returning and changing our ways, lead to the rabbinic doctrine of teshuvah, the act of repentance, the steps that we traditionally follow today.

 By the time we get to Yom Kippur, according to Mishnah Yoma we are repenting for sins against God. But—the sins that we have committed against another human being—those are not forgiven on that day, until we have taken the steps, to try and make amends, and to ask those that we have wronged for forgiveness.

And in simplified form, Rabbi Maggie Wenig explains, these are those steps: "The offending party is obliged to make restitution, to confess, and ask for forgiveness as part of the process of teshuvah (repentance). And once those steps have been taken, the offended party is obliged to grant m'chilah (forgiveness)."[1]

 All the while, our tradition recognizes how difficult it is to make these repairs.

 Rabbi Maggie Wenig—in explaining teshuvah—points out how vulnerable the act of confessing our sins and asking another for forgiveness—can make us feel. Because, she explains, in doing so, we are acknowledging that someone else—the person we have offended has a power over us.

And the challenge— goes both ways because the person who is granting the forgiveness is also being asked to surrender the power they have over the person—who has offended them. Therefore, according Rabbi Wenig, when someone is unwilling to forgive you, they are actually unwilling to surrender the power they have over you.

Nevertheless, our tradition urges us to take a step words mending the distance, instead of holding the pain inside.

 One rabbi even says, that grudges are akin to a person who drinks poison and expects that the other person, dies from it.

And another midrash explains beautiful the task at hand in the days before we reach Yom Kippur.

The midrash portrays God as a King, a King who in the month preceding the High Holy Days, decides to visit all of the cities and villages in His Kingdom.

As He passes through, parading through each of His towns, a person might be able to approach Him, and greet Him, and maybe even invite Him, over to their house for a meal. But by the time Yom Kippur comes, the King is already back in the palace. Of course, you can still visit. But it will be that much harder, for you to travel all the way to the palace, and even when you get there, to pass through all of the King's guards, and find a way to meet with him.

In other words, it is easier to understand Rosh Hashanah in the face of Yom Kippur. To understand that on Yom Kippur, we are dealing with sins against God, we are trying to fix our own stuff. The stuff that is preventing us from being our true selves and is keeping us at a distance from God. But with the shofar blasts, in the month of Elul, and on the days of Rosh Hashanah we are being called on—to make other repairs first.

 Tonight it is Rosh Hashanah, and on Rosh Hashanah we celebrate the birthday of the world.

When I was a student in Hebrew school, our teachers would give us some birthday cake, put a hat on our heads and we would sing Yom Huledet Sameach— the Hebrew happy birthday song for the birthday of the world.

But Rosh Hashanah is so much more than that. Today is not the day God created the world but actually it is the 6th day of creation—the day that God created Adam and Eve. Tonight, we begin celebrating the fact that something, somehow, some entity bigger than we can ever comprehend created humanity. God created human beings and put us on this earth.

And we are being called on, to celebrate and to honor our creator, and our world, and our universe, through acts of kindness in repairing the pain that is causing distance between us—within our relationships, down here on earth. We are being asked to have compassion, to make sacrifices, compromises to at least attempt to bridge the distance and to make our time on earth more meaningful more beautiful. Because life is better when we are all together. When we are all enjoying moments such as these—right now right here as one people.

Perhaps that's why we recite our sins in the plural, even on Yom Kippur—because even though we make decisions individually we are in this— together. And—our tradition also understands that sometimes it is difficult—or nearly impossible to bridge the distance in some relationships. Sometimes we try, and we are not forgiven. Sometimes, the person who has hurt us doesn't take the step, to make repairs to become close to us again. And sometimes, some relationships are better kept, from a distance. But as long as we have made an effort to meet God halfway to make all of the changes we can make to do all that we can that is within our control to make—then by the time Yom Kippur comes we can ask that God help us in resolving all of those things that are not in our control.

As the gates of heaven close during Neilah on Yom Kippur, we read in the liturgy Atah noten Yad— 

            You reach out your hand.

            You extend your right hand

            to receive us back in love.

            We are not far above beasts.

            For you singled out humankind from the beginning,

            and You gave us the power to turn…

 In the meantime, let us make our own Rosh Hashanah memories this year, let us make the efforts and take the steps towards teshuvah so that when the final days comes we can honestly say, to God and to ourselves that we have tried to make a mends, we may or may not have succeeded in restoring those broken relationships—in our lives. But we've walked a few steps towards goodness, and righteousness—towards God. And now—as the gates of repentance are about to close, God reaches out to us with a helping hand to say: you tried and—you are not alone in My world.

[1] We have sinned, 235

My Tzaddikim are Always Building; My Tzaddikim are the Building

There’s a strange scene in the middle of the desert

See, according to the rabbis we get everything we need in the wilderness -- Famously, manna, a food that tasted like whatever you wanted it to taste like

Fell from the sky so that we were never hungry --

Okay, so maybe we didn’t have it all figured out in the desert

Maybe we didn’t have a lot to our name, just sandals, a walking stick

But at least, with God’s help, we had the basics

This is why it is so strange that when we get to the moment

A few chapters ago

When God asks us to build a holy meeting place

The location of holiness

And God tells us that the key part of this holy meeting place

Is a cedar slab that is 32 cubits long, which is about 48 feet give or take

The center beam of the holy place

Not something you could slip in your pocket

Or even strap to the top of a station wagon

A giant wooden beam that is longer than this room, I think

It is astounding, a miracle

That although this beam was never mentioned before in Torah

No accounting of it when we left Egypt 

We don’t go a find a tree or several trees to somehow fashion it

And we don’t pray or panic for one

Because somehow that beam was already with us, it was found on us

(v’chol asher nimtza ito eitzei shittim! / and everyone for whom it was found with them, the cedar trees, Ex. 35:24)

It was “found,” not, “we went to find.”

Somehow, in one of a series of miracles

We already had what we needed.

Maybe this is the first lesson we can apply to our parasha, Kedoshim

A parasha that asks us to make a world of holy places through our actions

Perhaps this is the first lesson

No matter what is asked of us for the sake of building holiness

No matter how impossible it may seem

We will have what we need.

I need to back up

Because you know the rabbis well enough to know

That just like they do not miss the verb tense (v’chol asher nimtza ito  / and everyone for whom it was found with them Ex. 35:24)

They are also not satisfied with the idea that this giant piece of lumber is just, you know, lying around, or that it appeared out of nowhere.

And so they teach that when in Torah, when Abraham aveinu

Abraham our great great great great grandfather plants a tamarisk in Be’er Sheva, way back in Genesis,

he was actually preparing for this moment in the wilderness, and had actually planted a cedar for this very beam.

And they teach that, when generations later, Jacob, Abraham’s grandson, hears that his beloved son Joseph is still alive – and strangely, rather than running to Egypt to claim his estranged son

Instead, in Torah Jacob goes to Be’er Sheva to pray

The rabbis say that Jacob goes to Be’er Sheva because Jacob has a master plan, he is going to harvest those same cedar trees, knowing God will ask his descendents for a beam from them one day.

That’s why he detours to be’er sheva!

Jacob tells his children, “Someday, long after we leave Egypt, God is gonna say to you, ‘Make a holy place where I can meet with you.’ And when that day comes, You better have everything you need right in your hands! So take this! Because you had best be ready.” (See Shmot Rabbah 33:8)

I can only imagine the looks on the faces of Jacob’s sons

Already insecure about their past, understandably

I can only imagine their lack of enthusiasm in taking along the most conspicuous, 32 cubit plank into their new lives in response to the possibility of a future vague request from a God they barely know at a time yet to be determined

I imagine their strained responses

As they consider storage costs in Egypt

The upper body strength that will be required

And try to imagine what this giant plank will do to their hopes that they would somehow blend in.

For anyone who has had a parent who told them to wear something or take something that they did not want to wear or take to school, to camp, to college, to a new home

Let your mind linger on the 48 foot cedar beam that Jacob insisted they carry.

Sometimes we have these unwieldy things, traits, traditions, dispositions, ideas, emotions

We get them from our parents

Or our grandparents

They are giant, practically beyond description

Maybe we know why we have them, maybe no one told us

Maybe we know why we are supposed to have them but have not figured out why that matters or what to do with them

Or maybe we don’t even know where we got them

We don’t remember anyone giving them to us

And at first glance, these giant, unwieldy features don’t seem to do us much good

They stick out, they are embarrassing

They are the equivalent of the seemingly useless 32 cubit cedar planks we carry around

We feel like Jacob’s sons --

“Baggage.”

But while we consider this, let us also think of Abraham and Jacob

Who were completely unintimidated by their present circumstances

And so sure of the inevitability of holiness manifesting in the world

That they invest aggressively, and outlandishly in the future 

Paying no mind to appearances

Imagining only the “grand commission,” the holy meeting place that would surely, without a doubt, someday be built

Consider Abraham and Jacob who do all they can to make sure we will be ready, “Have what you need at hand!”

Still,

It might give parents in the room some small comfort to know

That even the most careful and emphatic plans of the patriarchs themselves are not foul proof (Shmot Rabba 33:8)

The tradition says that when the time came

And God asked us for the materials for the holy meeting place

Just like Jacob had said would happen,

“The plank! It’s time!”

Some of us had made all kinds of arrangements

And others of us…. forgot.

Somewhere the message got lost

And just had to give whatever we found on us

[Could you work with a “Pony tail holder?” “I have some gum?”]

And still, it turns out

That, ready or not, everyone still miraculously had what was required,

Everyone had something “found” on them, something to give

See, the seeds of those cedars had been planted long before

Cut down, passed from generation to generation

And all this happened without our knowledge or permission

So that whether we knew we had it or not, whether we were ready or not

When the time came,

There was nothing we had to go and find, it was found on us.

Finally, as the beam is put into place

The rabbis say something wonderful and alternative universe-y and certainly midrashic happened:

I imagine it was like when two wires create an electrical circuit

And there is a hum

Or maybe it is like when two people meet, people who are besheret (destined) in some way and they cannot stop crying for joy at your shabbat table or under the chuppah

Not that I am talking about anyone in this room (!)

No matter, sometimes, things or people come into just the right place and everyone feels it, it is undeniable

And so the rabbis say just this, and they describe it this way

that the center beam, when it was finally in its place, that it sang.

Az yeranenu kol azei ya’ar lifnei adonai/ all the trees will sing with joy before God / Ps. 96:12

From our kabbalat Shabbat

And the rabbis say this psalm is describing the moment when the cedar beams, in their place, sang out.

Sometimes components can make up an entirely different category of whole

They transcend their parts, we transcend ourselves

Maybe this kind of transcendence is what God means by holiness, this is what parashat Kedoshim wants us to have

This is why we are asked to consider the whole in our smallest of actions

So we could have the experience of being part of a greater whole

But, with all this talk of transcendence, we must take care.

Because if holiness were a matter of transcendence only, our parasha would be a lot shorter. We could hang onto the part about keeping Shabbat,

and skip the parts about sharing the corners of our fields

(or our bonuses or stock options)

We could skip the parts about not placing stumbling blocks before the blind

(and not consider how we use access to information to undermine those who are “kept in the dark”).

See, if we are considering our parasha, it is clearly incomplete to talk about holiness as if it were another dimension, a world apart from the way we are in society and with each other.

See, sometimes holiness is about beams, runners, connectors, going from here to there. (Exodus 26:28)

And sometimes holiness is about enough of us standing still, standing upright, so that the very roof of a society can hold, so there can be space for the many.

So the midwives, you remember

After King Pharaoh makes his paranoid decree to drown all the baby boys in the Nile

They quietly refuse

Because they have yirat hashem / a fear of God, meaning they fear the kind of world where it is possible that midwives would throw babies in the river Nile

Because they understand: Standing up for these babies, this is a great deal of what it means to be holy.

There is no speech, there is no, “Let my people live.”

(Even while society reels back and forth) They just stand in place, they just keep doing what they had always done and so, ensure that babies can still live

And God rewards them, it says in Torah,

God “made them houses”

We are not sure what it means

But in midrash it says that because God saw the midwives were tzaddikim, righteous, prophets

God hid them

God hid the midwives by turning them into the upright columns of the houses. God hid them in the standing architecture of the houses

God “made them houses” means --

They would never have to face Pharaoh or his soldiers again, true

But more than this, God wanted to honor the midwives who had already become pillars of society

The kind of still and upright pillars that guarantee shelter for everyone else.

The midwives became the houses.

(Midrash HaGadol Shmot 1:21, Rosen source)

Sometimes we carry the beams, sometimes are the beams.

Sometimes we support the pillars, sometimes we must summon the courage to be the pillars.

In the case of the 32 cubit beam that was carried for generation after generation

Sometimes treasured, sometimes resented, sometimes forgotten altogether

As far as I know, it’s still around here somewhere

And as for the pillars, let’s just say, I’ve met them, some are hiding in this room, in plain sight.

So, Minna, it almost goes without saying

There are times the building process is obvious, we know where the piece goes

We know where we go

But other times we have to re-imagine the edges, and we never know if we are right

Sometimes we wait for years to be asked and no request comes

Sometimes we get more requests than we think it is possible for us to ever hold

There are no guarantees

But if you accept your role in this commission

The only thing I can promise you

Is that you might earn the opportunity to get a glimpse or two of the grand architect’s plans

And you and I -- we might earn the honor of listening for the voice of one of our oldest relatives speaking to us through the text:

“Be ready,” whispers Jacob. “I know this looks like a lot. I admit it’s unwieldy. But, trust me, someday, you or who knows, your children, they will need all this, someday we will be asked again. Just promise me you’ll remember: You already have everything you need.”

Jonah in the Hold: San Diego, Guns and Us

Noa Kushner

May 3, 2019

Sometimes the hardest thing is to speak plainly.

We always want to domesticate a hard truth, to gloss it over so that it does not hurt so much

But our job tonight is to try and see clearly.

Because if we don’t look, really look, nothing will change,

and we will become unwitting accessories to the crimes of our day

Let’s be plain:

A rabbi was shot, and a woman, Lori Gilbert Kaye, praying for her mother on Yizkor in a shul, is dead. An eight year old girl got shrapnel in her leg.

And this was not the first synagogue shooting this year.

If we insist nothing can be done or that we must come up with the solution now, or that our small donation, effort, or gesture is meaningless,

If we do nothing,

Then we will be bystanders to the proliferation of these crimes, crimes that are now, without a doubt,

In our own schools, our restaurants, our houses of worship,

In the houses of worship of many of our fellow Americans

Against the Jewish people and anyone who prays with us.

So let’s skip the infighting.

Let’s skip the feeling puffed up, emboldened, because we were right, this latest violence only proves our version of the world feeling.

Let’s skip the part where we argue about which has become worse --

The anti-semitism on the right or on the left.

Let’s skip the part where we throw up our hands and go back to a glass of Rose, or watching Game of Thrones or whatever your preferred form of denial is these days.

Let’s admit it:

Now we too will worry about security.

Yes, even in San Francisco,

Yes, even at the progressive Kitchen,

Yes, even though we don’t own a building, Jewish or otherwise,

Even though we have a plan, and we’ve talked to security people,

And thank god, this school is well designed, safe --

But now I will worry about my hands,

And now I will worry about each and every one of you,

And now we will be talking about things I never thought we would ever talk about.

Many rabbis, my colleagues, will come to the conclusion that we must build a giant fence to protect ourselves, lock the gates,

Mourn for our own

Maybe, in some cases, to continue to build a religion around this heady combination fear and grieving

To return to the very real traumas in our history and just stay there. Put up camp.

We are being plain, so I’ll just say it:

Trauma, no matter how legitimate, no matter its source, is not going to create a future for Jewish life,

Holocaust museums are not going to be able to narrate the next chapter of our story,

And vigils, you will forgive me, this borrowed ritual, will not light our path.  

Only a living Judaism – only living Torah

With moral demands

And intellectual engagement

With commandments for how we drink and eat and talk and approach the world, with a thousand prompts and gestures and responsibilities that remind us that we did not create the world nor is it owed to us, nor do we have the right to oppress because we were strangers

Only living Torah, only what is happening in this room and of course, many other places, only Shabbat, only this living Torah can be an appropriate response to senseless destruction

Not only because these rituals and ways of life are just that, ways of life for the living

But because these commandments help us protect the parts of us no fence can secure. 

The sfat emet teaches that we are commanded to “remember” two things:

“Zachor Amelek and Zachor Shabbat”[1]

We remember Amelek, the villain who takes a new shape in every generation, who looks to destroy us, who goes after the weak.

Much as we would prefer to forget him altogether

We are commanded to remember to blot out his name.

To stay vigilant, to stay smart, to protect ourselves

Thus, the security systems in all their forms, yes. “Never forget.”

But there is also Remember / Zachor Shabbat.

Remember Shabbat and keep it holy.

The command is not to just remember not to break the rules of Shabbat

(That is like worrying about the proper way to set the table but forgetting to have people over and to eat.)

The command is not simply a warning against rule breaking,

The command is that we must protect the infinite space within us,

We must protect what makes us uniquely human and dignified and special to our God, blessed be the holy name. 

We must protect our memories of a time when there were no mass murders of civilians by gun violence in our restaurants and hospitals and schools and concerts and places of worship in this country, it was not that long ago.

See “Remembering Shabbat” is having the discipline to see that what is, is not what must be.

Remembering Shabbat means there is not only security in the form of guards, there is security in the form of exchanged prayers, of the way we treat one another with kindness and gentleness

Of the possibility of holding the world accountable to the standards of heaven

Yes, even now, especially now.

This is why the Rabbi who was shot, while he was still bleeding,

Before he allowed himself to be carried to the hospital,

Insisted on speaking words of Torah, of teaching words of Torah

He wanted to remember Shabbat no matter what.

Can you imagine that we are part of such a brave and beautiful and valiant tradition?

Don’t get me wrong: Six days of the week we need to be out there in the world.

I want us to help Moms against Gun Violence, and the Parkland heros and heroines, I want to give money and energy to anyone who is going to fight the NRA.

This is not brain surgery people, give $18, give $180, write a letter.

Don’t convince yourself that you cannot do enough, and do nothing.

We are commanded to do.

I want us to give to anyone who is smart and thoughtful out there fighting anti-semitism in all its crazy mutations.

But in all that remembering of the Ameleks we must also Zachor / Remember Shabbat

Remember to protect the possibility of a whole world in us, a world of peace and everything we dream about

The work of keeping this interior dream world intact -- this is just as serious, this is also a matter of our lives.

Which leads me to another worry still, (I realize this is very Jewish)

Even though I don’t think vigils are the solution, as I said,

I also worry that the fact that there were no vigils.

(There were about 40 last time in SF alone)

No vigils, not even mention of vigils.

And I worry that this reflects a kind of settling into this new anti-semitic, violent reality where a synagogue shooting no longer has the power to stop us in our tracks.

I don’t care that his gun jammed and he didn’t get as many victims as he wanted  – we went back to “business as usual” in my opinion way too fast.

And now I think we are at the heart of the matter.

I am worried we have started to see this reality as inevitable. 

And if you think I am making too much of this, I ask you, just, in your heads

Can you name the last ten public shootings in this country?

Then ask yourself: Could the idea of ten public shootings have even been conceivable to you even a couple decades ago?

We have surely acclimated.

And I want to tell you on this Shabbat, seeing this violent reality as inevitable is asur / it is forbidden.

We would then become like Jonah, the prophet who was so bad at his job that he makes all the other morally dubious biblical characters look great by comparison.

In case you don’t remember,

When God asks Jonah to go and tell the people of Nineveh to repent, to change their ways so they could be saved,

pretty much dead center in the prophet job description,

not a stretch --

Jonah not only denies God, he literally runs in the other direction.

He runs onto a ship and, even though God sends a violent storm,

Jonah goes down the hold of the ship and falls fast, fast asleep, deep asleep (“vayeradim”).[2]

Closing off possibility, taking himself out of the equation.

The rabbis teach: Jonah thought he already “knew” everything, he even prays in the past tense, as if what he is asking for already happened,[3]

His eyes are closed, he is closed.

It is quiet in the hold of the ship

He convinces himself he has nothing to do with it, nothing to do with anything

His view is so close to a kind of death

No wonder he falls asleep in the storm.

Suddenly the captain wakes him up and yells,

“We are standing between life and death and you are asleep?! Get up! Call out to your God! Do something!”[4]

What is wrong with Jonah?

My teacher Avivah Zornberg offers that Jonah’s knowingness, his know-it-all-ness, his commitment to “what is”

without any room for possibility,

without personal responsibility, (all that lets him sleep in the storm)

This a camouflage for his deep fear.[5]

I wonder, maybe Jonah is really afraid of how desperate the world has become. Maybe he is really afraid that nothing he will do will matter.

We live in the time of Jonah.

We too are frightened that the world is beyond repair

so we have acclimated, and convinced ourselves that things are what they are, and they will not change anytime soon.

We tell ourselves all sorts of lies.

We too, have to shake ourselves out of our stupor.

This country is not going to magically become decent and whole,

This country is not going to magically fix itself.

And I cannot bring back the high school students and the doctors and the business people and the children and the mothers and the government officials and teachers and Jews in prayer who have been killed

I cannot make R. Yisroel Goldstein’s hand whole again

This country will not magically give up guns

But if we wake ourselves up

If we have courage and try to tell each other the truth and we don’t pretend we know how the story will end

We might help to make a new end

An end we can offer to our children  

Or at least we can teach them about how we tried.

And it turns out

At the end of the Jonah story

In comparison to all the other prophets who prophesize for books on end and get nowhere,

Jonah says one line, one measly line,

And all of Nineveh repents instantly and is saved

And the rabbis, one of my favorite turns of all

They say that King of Nineveh was none other than the Pharaoh himself.[6]

Yes, the very Pharaoh, the worst of the worst, somehow made it through the splitting of the sea

And became king of Nineveh

And he of all people, makes t’shuvah, repents and lives a decent life

As if the rabbis are saying,

“You never know”

as if the rabbis are shaking us by the shoulders and saying

“You never know”

As if they are saying to us, “wake up sleepers!

Don’t you dare sleep

We are standing between life and death here

The story has not been written

Wake up

Call out to your God

Do Something.

Get. up.”

[1] I am grateful to my friend R. Tamar Elad-Applebaum of Kehillat Zion for offering this teaching to me last week.

[2] Judith Klitsner, Subversive Sequels in the Bible, (Maggid Books: Jerusalem, 2011) p. 84 where she is quoting a lecture by Nehama Leibowitz on the Book of Jonah.

[3] See Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Murmuring Deep, (Shocken Books: NY, 2009) p. 91-3.

[4] See Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, 10. Also Zornberg, ibid., p. 84.

[5] Zornberg, ibid., pp. 89-90.

[6] Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer, 43:8.  

B’shallach / Zeh Eli / Seeing God

1.

There’s a story (I think) from the ba’al shem tov, definitely from the hasidim

He was on a scholar in residence praying with a group of people in another community

He came home and his wife asked him how it went.

He said, “Well, the poor people were no problem, they didn’t take up much room at all. But the rich and important people? There were so many plaques everywhere and VIP seats and big egos,

The rich people took up so much room there was no room for God

And so the shechina, the divine presence could not rest with us.”

Ours is not a tradition where we try to see God, is it?

We don’t really allow holy images

Lest we get seduced or confused by those images

And start thinking that God is somehow more in those images

than in the frame around them or the wall on which the image rests

Or the eye that beholds the image.

In fact, Heschel once famously said (is there anything Heschel said that isn’t famous?)

We’re not allowed to have images because then we would then forget we are each and everyone of us made in the image of God.

Even Moshe

Who in a moment of “mission drift”

Asks to see the face of God

(right after the golden calf debacle, btw)

Isn’t allowed to see God’s “face”

But can only see the “back” of God,

Which the rabbis understand to mean

That even Moshe, Moshe rabeinu

Can’t really see pure holiness right when it is happening

But can only see it after.

This makes a line in this week’s Torah that much more astounding

We are in one of the most eventful parshiot / portions in Torah

It is literally the crossing of the sea

It is so resonant I don’t even need to describe it or remind you about it

Many of you know it intimately --

The story from Passover, leaving Egypt

The sea open and right in the middle of the sea

We sing a song (a piece of which becomes mi chamocha, the prayer we just offered) and in the middle of that song we said:

“Zeh Eli!”

“THIS, this is my God”

And I want to talk about just that kind of moment this shabbat

A moment of recognition of the holy one, of presence of God

A recognition of righteousness

(And this is the part of a Kitchen drash where I tell you that if the word God, an insufficient word if there ever was one, or even the idea of God makes you break out in hives, please stay, and say “holiness” or “ultimate meaning” or “righteousness”)

I want to talk tonight about this moment

Because I want to understand,

How do we know when we are in the presence of righteousness?

Not recognizing righteousness afterwards, not in a museum exhibit about a righteous time or a documentary or in a family story but right here in real time

Right now, how do we know?

We know that in our story they saw God in real time because the text says that the people all said, “Zeh eli!” This is my God!

Not, that WAS my God (like in the case of Moshe)

This is, right now.

And also notice that every single person recognized God or righteousness in that moment  

It was personal for all of us.

Eli! My God!

Not only that, but it was embedded in what I’ll call

a heavily political moment.

Yes, there are miracles too happening, big miracles, no doubt (sea splitting, plagues)

But those miracles still does not negate the fact that a whole people, our people

And everyone who understood Pharaoh as a dictator and his system as oppressive

Everyone – not just Israelites, this is important to me --

No one was checking IDs at the sea

Everyone who was willing to go was included --

To join us illegals, and to risk their lives with ours

As we became emerging political revolutionaries

Our platform was simple: It was our refusal to accept slavery as inevitable

Our refusal to accept that when a person (a brother or sister) was systemically suffering at the hands of the powerful few

That our only choice was to look away

Instead, we were the people of Ulai / Perhaps

Yes, it is this way it is now but Ulai / Maybe it could still be yet another way.

Back to our story, it is in this

personal / communal / political moment that we see God

And the rabbis decide teach that seeing God was completely democratic

In fact, they take pains to teach that the lowliest person who crossed the sea

(Which they intermittently describe as a hand maiden or kitchen maid

Which doesn’t make sense because the whole story is that we were all slaves

Anyway)

The kitchen maid

according the rabbis

…beheld at the Red Sea what even the prophets never saw (Mekhilta d'Rabbi Yishmael 15:2:2).

What does this mean?

Maybe they are teaching us, that no matter our station, that when it is our own personal redemption we see things more clearly

Prophets, powerful as they are, are still intermediaries, after all.

Maybe when it is our very lives on the line

and the lives of those we love

and we understand it is our future that depends on a successful crossing of this sea

It is not academic any more, it is not up for debate

The crossing of the sea itself is a giant risk

And so easily becomes a giant prayer, as in, “Please God. Help me cross safely.”

Maybe if it were our kids, our relatives, our friend’s kids getting shot by police, in rough neighborhoods, in terrible schools, dying with remarkable consistency and without national alarm

If it were our families on the border, sleeping night after night on the streets

Maybe if we were convinced it was our daughters in danger, systemically and permanently victimized

Maybe if our last name was Blasey-Ford

Maybe then, were we to take the risk to cross all together, to march, to stand for our own lives and the lives of our loved ones, for the future, sure, but really for right now

For safety and dignity right now

We too would feel the fleeting but unmistakable presence of God, we too would see holiness for ourselves, just as we once did crossing the sea.

I admit in this private Jewish space what I will not say in the world

I worry that our relative power and privilege distances us from everything revolutionary, including and especially God

I worry we have become so afraid of losing what we have that risking for a greater good seems out of reach, and entirely impossible

I worry we can’t remember what it was like to be slaves, to really have our lives and our kids’ lives always on the line.

It is not that we don’t have worries as a Jewish community.

I, too, am rattled and a little afraid, and in pain after the events of recent months from the aggression in all forms against my religion and the Jews I love – not to mention our homeland -- aggression seemingly without any shame.

And so, I, maybe like you, am looking for strength – And so

I try to think of how those Jews I am so proud to have read about, to have learned about  

Who participated in the Civil Rights struggle

Who entered rooms to try to begin to change America, some unfriendly rooms

Only twenty years after the shoah / holocaust, less!

Israel still a fledgling state

I want to know what gave them the courage to join in that time, what gave them the koach to see their part through.

And I wonder if it was because they were already vulnerable enough

That is, more vulnerable than we are today, even in these dark times

Or maybe they were just tzaddikim –

Regardless, whether that vulnerability was circumstantial or cultivated.

I wonder if it was that vulnerability that allowed them to risk yet more.

See they didn’t have too much to lose

And it hadn’t been too long since they knew what it was like to be really afraid

And I wonder if somehow, the wake up calls of anti-semitic behavior now might

Rather than cause us to shut our doors

Instead help us see that there is no such thing as just a few of us being safe

One group, a few groups being safe, while others suffer

I wonder if somehow, the wake up calls of anti-semitic behavior now might, in the same way as it once did

Help us see we are only safe if we involve ourselves in the greater good in this country, proud and vocal and super Jewish and in for the long haul.

2.

In a second read of the same moment at the sea, it is not everyone including the Kitchen maids who see God

It is just…. the women and the babies.

Not what you expected, right?

And here’s what’s really something.

According to the rabbis, the women and babies are not seeing God for the first time

No, they recognized God, as in they were meeting again, as in they remembered God!

You see the rabbis determine that back in slavery, in Pharaoh’s Egypt

When Pharaoh said that all boy babies would be thrown in the rivers

And slavery seeped through every aspect of life

Many of the men decided to stop sleeping with their wives

And let’s expand this beyond gender categories and just say

Couples were not together any longer

But, say the rabbis, there were some women

And I am sure there were visionary people of all genders, too

Rabbis say these few, had faith, vision

They refused to accept a world where new children were an impossibility.

So, when their partners were working in the fields

They would go down and seduce them

And get pregnant, continuing life and hope.

And then of course, eventually, they had to deliver those contraband babies in secret

So some say it was the angels

And some say it was GOD – god’s very self – who came to be the midwife for those deliveries

To clean up the babies and tend to the mothers.

I am not making this up, this is Talmudic

See, Torah is teaching us that when there are tremendous risks, when we put ourselves on the line for hope, for the future, when we take a personal stance against oppression

God shows up.

This is why, according to the Talmud,

when we crossed the sea

These women and babies saw God first (Ein Yaakov, Sotah 1:35)

Because they knew what God looked like!

They saw the same God who had helped them before!

“That’s her!” That’s my God!” “Zeh (Zot) Eli!” “I know that midwife! She helped me when I risked my life one other time, a long time ago.”

This is why we risk. So that we know what God looks like. So that we will recognize her next time.

3.  

The rabbis suggest that just like in the creation story when God separated the waters and land emerged

Thus, “creating” land

As in, possibly, probably that land had been there all along,

So too, in the crossing of the sea

They say it was the same

The land was there all along, under the sea of course,

The possibility of safety, of crossing, of passage

Of a completely new way of being in the world

It was there the whole time

But it took this moment and these people to get God to bring it into being.

Just as God god’s self was there all along

And it took this moment and these people

To risk enough of themselves

To make enough room for one another

To understand that the stakes are too high to hide

To remember the risks they once took, before, long ago, or maybe it was their grandparents, great grandparents who risked

Which in turn allowed all of them to look up and see

What no prophet has seen before or since

Righteousness all around,

And God, right there, in all her messy glory.

(Mechilta, shir ha shirim rabba 3:9)

(Sotah 30b-31a)

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Don't Delay Me

R. Noa Kushner // Chayyei Sarah 5779

First, we just grieve.

It is one thing to cry alone, and it is one thing to cry in public,

But it is another thing still to cry on Shabbat in a Jewish space. 

Tonight we are not out in the world.

Tonight I want you to feel like when you come home at the end of an unimaginable day, when only those who really know you can see, and you cry.

First, I just want everyone in this room to have permission to cry.

I want to cry for the two brothers, David and Cecil Rosenthal, who as far as I can tell were the purest of neshamot, the sweetest of human beings, developmentally disabled. 

David who just went around town shaking everyone’s hands. 

The brothers who were always first to get to shul to greet everyone who came in, who knew the details of everyone’s life. They knew who was sick, whose grandmother had died. 

If they were not malachim, angels, messengers from the one on high,

I am not sure who is more qualified.

And I am not sure we were smart enough to hear their message of sweetness and protecting each other, because we did not build a country where they could be protected. 

And I want to cry for Doctor Jerry Rabinowitz who, when no one would treat AIDS patients, before there was even effective treatment for fighting HIV, let alone public education, Dr. Rabinowitz was the only one who would see AIDS patients. He would hold their hands, it is important to note, without rubber gloves. He would hug everyone as they left the office, unheard of practices at that time. 

If he was not a malach, a divine messenger of healing, I am not sure who is.  

And there are so many more, I could talk about each one.  

And let us also cry that now the phrase, “Eitz Chayyim” / “The Tree of Life,” a phrase we used to use to refer solely to the Torah,

Torah is an Eitz Chayyim / a Tree of Life,

Let’s cry over the fact that now --

“Tree of Life,” will, for most of us, also connote violence and death. 

Let’s just cry that we can’t even say, “Tree of Life” anymore, 

That so much was irretrievably broken last Shabbat. 

So we need to first just be sad

For all of this and so much more.

And I am tempted to leave it at that.

To have a whole night of hearing stories that break us open and allow us to cry together.

And then I am tempted to cry a different kind of tears, tears of relief -

Because of the outpouring of love and affection we have received from so many.

Far different from other times in our history when we would be attacked and the world would turn away, or worse, participate in our destruction,

The amount of leaders and journalists and everyday people who have reached out to the Jewish community is surely unprecedented.

Our pain and loss is national news, international news. 

And right in our neighborhood, Rev. Cecil Williams and Janice Mirikitani wrote us immediately and are here along with members of GLIDE to just pray with us tonight.

And I can tell you that last Sunday at GLIDE, when Rabbi Michael Lezak asked the room of 1500 if they would show up for the Jewish community, the whole room shook with applause, the whole room stood.

And, did you know that up in Marin, there is a Jewish campus with JCC and Brandeis school and a synagogue?

And this week one thousand kids left their public school to physically make a human chain of school children around that Jewish campus as if to symbolize their protection of our community.

And I’m sure you heard about the Muslim community in Pittsburgh that raised so much support -- 

Or you probably didn’t hear about the pastor in Texas who I met only once who gathered 50 people in a coffee shop and sent me a video of them all singing a Jewish Hebrew song (olam chesed yibaneh).

And I am tempted to just stop here 

With the outpouring of chesed, loving kindness that is not required but goes over and above,

I am tempted to just quietly place these acts of chesed before you, to wipe away our tears, to remind you and I that the world is still filled with good people.

It seems like that should be enough.

But with serious times comes serious responsibility.

And our grief tonight is not the kind of grief that follows, god forbid, a natural disaster,

Our grief and confusion is also because we understand that now is a time of danger.

And I don’t just mean anti-Semitism. 

I also mean the way this story is being told and will be told --

I want you to know there is a danger and there is also an opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong --

I am worried about anti-semitism for the first time in a long time. 

I used to think worrying about anti-semitism was about as likely as worrying about the reemergence of the bubonic plague.

But now, with the shattering of the illusion of safety in Squirrel Hill

I can no longer say anti-semitism is only in our past, only in our history.

But to be honest

More than anti Semitism I am afraid of the stories and the assumptions I am hearing from both the right and the left. 

How the events are being used. 

I fear the damage these stories will cause is more permanent and far reaching.

On the right, we have a narrative that we are a haunted people, that anti-Semitism is a unique hatred, the greatest hatred, a hatred that can only be met, with the greatest -- in lock step with the current Israeli government – policy,

As well as healthy contributions to the Trump campaign.

It will not surprise you that I am uncomfortable with this for many reasons.

First, sadly, a hatred of us, a hatred of Jews is not that special.

I hear many groups are hated now.

And I think we can safely say that being on the receiving end of hatred, this is not a unique Jewish problem.

Not to mention that we know,

When there is a vacuum of leadership, a consistent stream of winks and coded language from our president to the alt-right, just enough double entendres,

This vacuum enables hatred and all its siblings and cousins -- 

violence and vile language and prejudice -- they all come out careening into the daylight, 

A parade of living, full color hatred for all to see while trying not to absorb.

And so we mustn’t let those with narrow agendas 

Use our understandable fear in this moment 

To drive wedges between us and the Jewish ideas like welcoming the stranger, like the pursuit of righteousness

The ideas we hold most dear. 

We have to be vigilant, yes, but not succumb wholesale to dark predictions, not give in to those who ask us to abruptly change our moral positions as the entrance fee.

But beyond a knee jerk swing to the right as a response to anti-semitism,

I have another fear.

Frankly, a greater fear for us in this room,

This one comes more from the left. 

I am afraid that we will start to claim our victim status with too much attachment.

I am afraid we will again get really comfortable being victims -- 

Not because the Jewish hysterics are right and we are hated --

No, I am afraid we’ll claim our victim status with attachment 

Because in this political climate where everyone is a victim it is a way of fitting in,

A way of being a little less davka precisely Jewish. 

It requires less explanation to the outside world than say, a bris or even keeping Shabbat.

And I am worried we will claim our victim status with special attachment -- 

in order to downplay our unique powers and places in the world

To cover up the privilege many of us enjoy.

Because no one is threatened by victims,

Everyone has compassion for victims, 

And maybe we prefer to be victims and be loved without question, than to inhabit our power and cause the waves. 

Don’t get me wrong – something serious and terrible happened -- 

We deserve time to heal.

But I am worried that in America today it is easier for us to stay Jewish victims, 

Than to try and figure out how to be Jewish heroes, 

Than to figure out how to serve our God and make Torah live in the streets.

But if we prize our victimhood but neglect Jewish life, 

If we are more comfortable at a holocaust museum or vigil than in any living Jewish place,

If we only show up when anti-semitism knocks but not when we’re invited to the wedding, let alone the channukah party, the study table, or the shabbos lunch --

Not only is that not a Jewish life, not only is that taxidermy Judaism, a Judaism that only exists in museums and sad sad books, 

It also lets us off the hook for what we are here to do

In this country and this time 

As Jews, as those who do Jewish seriously

As the Jewish community on this very day. 

I love a story that R. David Hartman, z”l used to tell:

He lived in Jerusalem and he would get invited as an Israeli scholar to come and give a talk at Yad V’shem / the Holocaust Education center. 

And he would tell the group who invited him that he would teach them, but not at Yad V’Shem, he would only teach them if they met him in the birth ward of Hadassah hospital up the road. 

He knew: being a victim is a tempting place to stay,

But it cannot be the end of our story, there is too much to say, there is too much to do. 

There is a small piece in this week’s Torah

Chayyei Sarah 

That you might have missed.

In this week, Abraham sends his unnamed servant to find a wife for his son Isaac.

(This is after a long and winding romantic comedy like story, actually so long that the rabbis themselves remark on how long it is. And these are the same rabbis who wrote the Talmud and have a very high tolerance for digressions so that is indeed saying something, and of course, happy to tell you the whole story over dinner). 

After this story of a test and a well and camels and finding the right kind of woman for Isaac,

The servant is successful (!)

And he runs to Rebecca’s family to get permission for the marriage.

The family even asks Rebecca for her acceptance, which is pretty good for the Torah. 

And then the servant, excited, wanting to return back to Abraham to tell him the news, to complete his mission,

He says to the family, 

“Shalchuni l’adoni”  / “Send me back to my master.”

But Rebecca’s family says something like, “Not so fast, (this is a good idea but) give us some time.”

The family says, “Give us 10 – and the text kind of trails off,”and the rabbis note

Could be 10 days, could be 10 months, could be a year. [1]

And you feel the tension building,

And so the servant says, again,  

“Al t’acharu oti!” / “Don’t hold me back! Don’t delay me!” 

“V’adonai hitzliach oti!” / “Don’t you see? God made me successful! I found her! Against all odds I was successful! This is what I was sent to do and I found her! Let me go! I am on the holy errand of my life!”

“Shalchuni v’eilcha l’adoni” / “Send me and I will go back to my master. My mission is not complete yet.” [2]

I think as American Jews 

This dark and sad week

If we can have the courage to look at our time here in America,

We are maybe like this unnamed servant. 

We have been sent on a wild and unwieldy and holy errand to secure not only our personal future,

But to help grow a new branch of a great vision that deserves to live, a Jewish way to live, a Torah vision that can take root here in this country in unique ways,

That is a tremendous asset to this country.

It is a branch from none other than the tree of life.

We are the servants, we are the messengers.

And we have, against all odds, been successful!

We passed many tests, we have flourished and thrived here.

But as Ha-emek Davar writes on just this verse, 

The shaliach, the messenger, is not a success until the end of the mission.

Because, as he says, “Who knows what waits for this servant on the road?”

And Abraham, he says, the one who sent him, will not stop worrying until the mission is complete. [3]

And I would say, our mission, too, is not yet complete.

We have been sent and we have been successful but we are not done.

And God, just like Abraham, more so this week than others, 

God who sent us,

God also worries about what who we will meet on the road.

God worries we will stay where we are and not try to go further.

That we will give up on what it is we and only we are uniquely capable of doing as a Jewish community.

That we will give up on fighting for justice,

Supporting refugees,

Fighting for prison reform,

Enforcing tax laws,

Healing the sick,

Clothing the naked,

Feeding the hungry,

Keeping Shabbat,

God worries we will give up on raising chuppot / wedding canopies! God loves a good chuppah.

God worries we will stop saying kaddish, 

Or that we will give up on our idea of l’shon kodesh / Knowing that the words we say have massive implications for creation and destruction,

God worries we will give up on telling the story of leaving Egypt,

Or wandering in the desert,

That we will give up studying our infinite sources and 

Praying, that we will give up our beautiful praying,

God worries we will give up the practice of giving away money until it hurts,

And so many other Jewish demonstrative acts that only we do in just our way.

It is not that God thinks we are the only ones who care about how we are in the world, or who consider justice, or who study.

Of course many people do these things, some better than us.

It is rather 

that just as God loves all peoples,

God also loves our way of doing things

Our very particular way.

The tragedy of Squirrel Hill is yes, of course, another massacre in a holy place, a public place.

Yes, of course, anti-semitism.

Yes, sadly, what our nation has become.

But tonight I want to offer that the tragedy for us this Shabbat, 

is the eleven lost neshamot, the Jewish souls who can no longer sing

Their prayers that were left unfinished.

And I want to suggest that it is our work to pick up where their mission came to an unthinkable end.

We will pick up their mission not in their exact way but in our 

San Francisco 2018 Jewish way.

I want to suggest that we think of ourselves as literally sent on their behalf,

That we understand our collective mission, theirs and ours in this country, is to grow an eitz chayyim, a tree of life here.

That we understand this mission is not yet complete,

So we must do everything in our power to rise beyond this horrible moment,

In order to make our presence in this country mean something.

So that one day

In a generation,

When we meet the baby who --

While the slaughter was taking place

The baby who was being entered into the covenant,

The baby who had his bris at the same time, in the same building, on the same Shabbat morning

So one day when we meet him as an adult,

We can tell him,

“Look! This covenant you entered --

Look what it means!

Look who we are!

Look at our mission!

It is maybe not yet complete,

But taking part in it is our greatest honor.”

---

Joyce Fienberg

Richard Gottfried

Rose Mallinger

Jerry Rabinowitz 

Cecil Rosenthal 

David Rosenthal 

Bernice Simon

Sylvan Simon

Daniel Stein 

Melvin Wax

Irving Younger

---

Notes:

[1] See Rashi to Gen. 24:55, also B. Ketubot 57b

[2] All from Gen. 24: 54-56

[3] See Ha-emek Davar to Gen. 24:56

Take Yourself Out

R. Noa Kushner // Lech Lecha, 5779

The beginning of this parasha is very popular with the bar mitzvah crowd.

Abraham is called by God to “Lech Lecha”

To go out, to take himself out

To leave everything behind, to be a blessing

We remember the midrash of Abraham smashing all the idols in his father’s shop

Leaving for good

Such a clean break, so brave.

But it seems to me that real leaving

The real learning when one becomes a blessing

Is very rarely the moment when the ship leaves the proverbial harbor

But rather more when we are so far out at sea we cannot turn back.

Right? Because that is when the challenge and the messiness of trying to leave or figuring what it means to be a blessing kicks in.

Pretty much anyone can be a blessing for the thirty minutes of an airport goodbye

But what happens much later, after we’ve left, when doubts creep in

When our intentions are challenged not once, but many times

When there is no proof of a new destination in sight?

Or how about even before we leave, when we don’t even know if we are supposed to leave or not?

Maybe some of us are in this very situation tonight.

And it turns out that Hagar, a few verses later in our same parasha, finds herself in just such a position

That is: She has to leave but no one tells her to go.

See Hagar is a slave, a maid-servant, a concubine

Who is able to conceive with her master Abraham when his wife Sarah cannot for many years

And this upending of the order of the house

Hagar instantly gaining in status

With Hagar’s pregnancy

Everything turns.

Hagar becomes a threat

And in retaliation, she is mistreated by her masters.

Usually, in readings of this Torah, Sarah, the matriarch of the house gets all the blame.

There are lots of texts about competition between women, written of course by all men.

Sarah vs. Hagar, Hagar vs. Sarah

But let’s be honest,

Vacant Abraham tells jealous Sarah to do whatever she wants to Hagar

So the oppression comes from every source, every direction.

This is important.

It is important to understand that everyone is in on Hagar’s affliction

It is not that she has some enemies and some friends, some allies and some who can’t be trusted  

Rather, everyone takes part in her degradation

There is simply no safe place for Hagar to rest.

And I was thinking of this text because I think there are many of us now

Who for many reasons

also feel we are fighting forces of oppression from many more directions, there are fewer places to rest.

I was drawn to Hagar who just runs away

Later in Torah she will become a matriarch herself

But now, she doesn’t know that

She just knows she is powerless and maligned

And so she runs away, pregnant, into the wilderness

Now remember, at the beginning of the parasha, I told you, Abraham runs away too.

God says to him: “Lech lecha / Take yourself out, away from everything you know”

But, unlike Hagar, he is seen as a hero

Because, see, he has an invitation from God

He doesn’t know where he is going and believe me,

you don’t have to look deep in the text to see he has his own lapses of confidence and moments of fear

But I have to think that at least in those moments he can go into his pockets and pull out the “lech lecha” / “take yourself out,” that divine invitation,

And I imagine how comforting that command must be in those destabilizing moments,

I imagine him saying to himself, “God said, ‘Go to a place I will show you!’

‘Be a blessing!’”

That must be comforting, right?

Or maybe Abraham can even count on God reaching out, that happens a lot for Abraham

But notice, even with all that scaffolding and support, Abraham our father is still paralyzed with fear.

He has moments that are close to full on patriarchal trantrums!

And we don’t blame him

Because we know: Even if you have God checking in on you directly, leaving everything and smashing idols is still not easy.

Now imagine Hagar

Slave girl Hagar

Pregnant slave girl Hagar

She has no invitation from God

She has no invitation from anyone

She has no command

She has no opening scene to remember, no journal entry to re-read, no dream to recall, no angels in disguise walking towards her from a distant horizon, no ladder, no rainbow --

She just has oppression

She just has the intimate oppression of living in a house or a place

Where your lack of worth is not only assumed

Every look from another person reaffirms your lack of worth

Where your affliction takes place without recourse, without justice, without even awareness

Where the injustice is part of a closed, seemingly impenetrable, inevitable system,

That is what Hagar has.

See, Hagar has to write her own invitation

She has to command herself

Like Abraham, she also doesn’t know where she is going, that will be explicit in a moment

She also doesn’t know where she is going, that’s a given

But that’s the least of her worries

Not only does she not have any one to show her where to go

She also has no one to tell her to leave

And in this moment

When I consider Abraham and Hagar, two stories that mirror each other in many other ways, it could be a whole class

I want us to consider this week the courage of Hagar

The courage it takes to leave without an invitation

To upset things indefinitely

In order to answer to a God that is not calling you

Or maybe it is just you are unsure if it is God who is calling you or not.

In this moment in our country’s history, in the history of the world

When I consider the courage of Dr. Blasey Ford that will inspire me the rest of my days

Or the stalwart strength of activists in #Blacklivesmatter who refuse to accept the inevitable destruction of black and brown people

Or the resolute stance of members of the Israeli Soldiers of Breaking the Silence who speak out about the effects of the Israeli Occupation

Or the ultimate risk of Saudi journalist Khashoggi, his memory is our blessing, who was murdered this week

When I consider the courage of those who tell the truth in all kinds of ways

Who risk their reputations and even their lives to bring justice for the many

I am thinking also now about Hagar

And how she had to invite herself to go

That everything began to change but only once she ran away.

I think Hagar is our heroine for this moment

Because we live in a time without divine invitation or direction or reward

We have to create our own invitations

We have to know what the real rewards are.

We have to be clear what the real rewards are first because, let’s face it,

Hagar’s running away could be, would be perceived at that time or ours as selfish or ungrateful or overly controversial or unnecessarily combative or attention seeking or needlessly provocative

(Just as so many other activists are slandered and maligned and silenced and even killed in their moment

Just for insisting

With their words or actions

Just for highlighting in one way or another

that systemic and unending abuse is not what God wants

Not for one person

Not for a group

Not for a place)

And we have to be clear what the real rewards are second because running away or making change takes unbelievable mettle (faith!).

In fact, in considering Hagar and her courage

I think about how her lack of status must have made the very idea of inviting herself into a divine mission laughable, practically inconceivable --

And a painful thought crosses my mind: How it never occurs to Hagar that God is on her side

Because there is nothing in the facts of her life that would lead her to this conclusion.

She had to find the strength to leave seemingly within herself.

And yet, we know, God is indeed waiting for Hagar

And we must not only remember that God waited for Hagar, we must know

That even if there seems to be evidence to the contrary

God waits for us in this very moment.

Because as soon as Hagar runs away, immediately (!) the very next words

“Vayimtza-ah malach adonai”

An angel finds her

And this angel does not call to her or approach her or use any of the typical Torah verbs angels use when addressing people

No -- the angel finds her

Which reinforces this idea that in the house of Abraham and Sarah it was as if she did not exist

Because the house of Abraham and Sarah, that place we know, it was like angel central (!)

Angels all over the place (!!)

No lack of angels

But somehow, as long as Hagar was in that place, that house,

She could not be truly found by the angels

So it is for us

Only when we command ourselves out can we be truly found by God who waits for us.

And once Hagar is “found” – now a spiritual inventory can take place

One angel asks Hagar where she has been and where she is going.

The spiritual implications of these questions are almost too obvious to point out.

Do we really think the angel, who knows exactly who Hagar is, does not know where she has been?

No, to paraphrase Rashi: “Where have you been?” means,

“What is your spiritual autobiography so far?”

And, “Where are you going?” means:

“What will be the story of your life?”

Hagar is understandably, overwhelmed by these questions in this moment.

She answers the first one, she knows she’s running away from affliction

But she does not, or can not answer the second question, “Where are you going?”

Maybe it is that she does not know.

Maybe, having had to summon herself, command herself away

Maybe even the admission that no God told officially her to go, “to a place I will show you”

Maybe it is all too much

So she doesn’t answer this question of where she is going, not yet --

And maybe in this confusing moment it is another mark of her heroism

She doesn’t know and we don’t always have to know where we are going either, after all, Abraham didn’t know either

Sometimes knowing that we are leaving is enough

Who knows how long those angels looked at her

Fluttering their angel wings

Waiting for her to say what she would do next

Maybe it was three days and three nights like it was for Esther before she listened to Mordechai and decided to go into King Ahasverus’ chambers

But Hagar doesn’t even have a Mordechai

So she is quiet on the subject of the future

She will become a matriarch, she will learn to answer these questions, but not yet, not today

And so now, this Shabbat, like Hagar

We imagine that these angels that surround us

They ask us the same questions

And we realize that the future and our role in it is not set

We realize there are many answers to these questions of where we have been and where we might go

We realize that people like Dr. Blasey Ford and the Saudi journalist Khashoggi did not see the world’s trajectory as written, refused to see the story of the world as already sealed, they had just these same holy questions in mind and this allowed them to do what they did

That there are risks we might also take

Finally, at last last

Something extraordinary and singular happens

Even for Genesis

Even for this angel convention.

After the angels talk with Hagar

Hagar gives God a name

I don’t believe there is another moment in all of Tanakh where someone names God directly

It is almost inconceivable

Abraham names a place after a test that happens there, refers to God

Everyone thinks that is a very big deal

Moses asks for God’s name and everyone thinks that is a super big deal

But anyone giving God a name? Unheard of.

“V’tikra shem adonai hadover eileha -- 

And she called the name of God who spoke to her,

“Atah El Ra-i.”

‘You are the God of seeing.’

Why the “God of seeing?”

Because the rabbis teach Hagar realized that even when she was sure she was invisible in her humiliation and affliction, God still saw her. (Rashi to 16:13, Genesis Rabbah 45:10)

And there is no one God does not see.

And some say she prayed right then and there (Sforno to Gen. 16:13)

Because she finally understood that God was not limited to the house of Abraham and Sarah, and the strange rules there

But that God was in the wilderness, too, in her, too, and that this was her God

“Atah El Ra-i / YOU are (my) God of seeing.”

So perhaps there was an invitation after all, maybe there was a command from God to leave, to go out.

But Hagar could only see it and understand it once she had extended it to herself

Maybe, like Moses, she needed some time in order to hear

Maybe some invitations come in the beginning of chapters

in short bursts of commanding phrases, super clear

But other times God has us call them out for ourselves in the words and actions and names that only we can understand.

Hear the Silence

R. Jessica Kate Meyer // October 5, 2018

Lost / Zigzagging

R. Noa Kushner // Yom Kippur, 5779 

1. The Lost Treasury  

It was in Eastern Europe, in the late 18th century, on Yom Kippur, in our small shtetl synagogue, that my community was having an astounding problem. You see, our Rabbi was leading services when he learned that the entire treasury of the shul, including all the money that had been donated until that very day, every single ruble had been stolen. Everything was completely gone.  

And so the rabbi addressed us, the congregation. Who could do such a thing?  To steal from the community! Who could do such a thing?  And on Yom Kippur, yet! How could this happen?  

Now the Rabbi in our community sometimes had good ideas. And this was one of those times. He proposed a solution. He said, “If the temptation to steal on Yom Kippur was strong enough for one of us, it could be strong enough for any of us. It could be strong enough for you, it could be strong enough for me. What we should do is this: We should all make T’shuvah (turn, repent) as a community, we should all consider ourselves guilty of the crime. And so as each one leaves the synagogue after services, each one will empty out their pockets. This way we will recover the money.”

There was a stir in the room as everyone whispered to one another his or her appreciation for this idea. And so, at the end of the day, eager to break the fast, we all lined up to file out of the sanctuary, and as each person walked out the door, we each emptied out our pockets. In a gesture, we each proclaimed our innocence as we crossed the synagogue threshold to the world outside. That is each of us but Yitzchak. For some reason, Yitzchak was holding us the line. He didn’t want to empty his pockets. He was insistent. His face grew white. We were restless, hungry. We wanted to get home.  

Now, I have to explain Yitzchak to you. He wasn’t born in our shtetl. It was only when the tailor, the richest man in town needed a husband for his daughter that Yitzchak came to our community. Now the tailor had searched high and wide for a proper groom, and when he finally settled on Yitzchak, we all heard about it. In fact, we had to go and see for ourselves if it was true. And it was. He knew at least 1000 pages of Talmud. Not only that, he was a master of all the texts, knew quotes from every source. And the secular studies. Mathematics, Astronomy, these he also knew. He also looked nice, like many of the scholars of that time, with brown hair, glasses. Everyone was talking about him.  

I don’t remember when it happened, but we also decided, after he had lived in our community for a while that he was a little too intelligent, a little too nice. Did he have to remember every single person’s name on the street?  

So you can imagine our silent delight when we saw Yitzchak clearly upset with the prospect of emptying his pockets. He started to feebly protest and we protested back. “We all emptied our pockets,” we chimed, “now you empty yours.” Yitzchak was trembling. “Please,” he whispered. “Please, anything but this.  Stone me, drown me, but don’t make me empty my pockets.” His voice got weaker and weaker as he begged. But it was no use, we were impatient, greedy, hungry to break the fast. We held him down on the floor and forcibly emptied his pockets. 

And you know what we found? A couple of plum pits and some chicken bones.  He was ashamed to be caught eating on Yom Kippur.  

Amazed, we all walked home laughing amongst ourselves, chattering about the events of the day. All of us that is except the rabbi. He walked by himself, his eyes sunk with despair, his shoulders weighted with shame.  

You might ask, “But what about the money? The stolen treasury?” And I can only give you the answer that was given to me when I heard the story told. The money doesn’t matter.    

You see, Real life, real T’shuvah, (a real turning from where we have gone wrong, a real personal change) means not being able to dictate what the outcome will be. Not for us and certainly not for another person. To do so would be to defeat the point. Because at the essence of T’shuvah is trust. Once we start, we cannot know how it will go or where we will end. The things that we thought were our worst sins often simply fall away. The relationships that we were sure were beyond repair take on a new form. And where we end up is often in completely untested territory, places unheard of. 

2. Zigzagging 

A few years ago, when the girls were smaller we went to Israel. However, we went completely on frequent flier miles and as a result were on nine different flights as part of our trip. I have kind of repressed it now but some point we were in Calvary, Canada on our way to the Middle East. We definitely doubled back at least at one juncture, maybe more.  

This reminded me of a section in the Torah which gives us in great detail every single place we stopped in our travels through the desert for forty years. 40 verses of detail. Naming each and every place. And here’s the thing: unlike a lot of places in Torah, regarding most of these places, we have no idea where they are. If you look in the JPS, it notes: Location uncertain. Location Unidentified. Location, uncertain.

It seems the rabbis, too, are drawn to this list of unknown places. If every word has a purpose and a meaning in Torah, this is a whole of detail for places that seem to have no significance. Why not just say: “and the people traveled for 40 years?” What could possibly be the reason for naming all those little towns in the desert? Dopkah? Alush, Rephidim, and on and on. 

The Rambam teaches that by listing this long and detailed journey, God emphasizes that everywhere we went, we lacked absolutely nothing, not one thing lacking at any station along the way. That even though we were in all these small and unknown places, we still were not attacked by desert storms or scorpions. In other words, it was a long 40 years but God did not leave us to fend for ourselves and the journey was not without its miracles of survival. 

Rashi says the long list of names is to show us that while we went from place to place, in some places, we stayed a long time, we even rested. 

We weren’t running around aimlessly. 

But the Rambam adds that we were given this lengthy itinerary in Torah to contradict the opinion…that we did not know where to go; that we were in a state of confusion,  “entangled in the land.”

You see? Without the listing of the places and the detail, while we certainly don’t walk away with the impression that the Israelites have a great sense of direction, while we don’t come across as an especially efficient group, we were not lost, either. There was an evolving plan. 

Maimonides even goes so far as to say, “The Torah clearly states that the route was near, known, and in good condition…They were not lost. The zigzagging and stopping were deliberate…(for which the Torah states the real cause.)” 

I’m thinking it was like our family trip. There were a lot of what would seem like unnecessary stops (Calgary? Seriously) but we were not lost. We were headed somewhere. 

So what is the difference between being lost and zigzagging versus stopping in dozens of unidentifiable locations for a generation’s worth of time but still being the way somewhere? To the outside observer the two paths might even look the same. 

To the outside observer, “lost” might even look preferable. 

Because as we know a Torah mandated life of zigzagging does not guarantee efficiency or ease. It just means the journey is deliberate. 

When we were traveling, we got to see some art. I was in one instillation that took place in an elevator. Once the operator closed the elevator door, we all moved up in complete and total darkness until we reached our destination. The walls and the floor of the elevator were heavily carpeted so the small traveling room even felt dark. Even the few seconds was disarming, until my daughter, then five, started to talk. In the darkness, we were not lost but we had no idea where we were. We just knew that we were moving somewhere. Zigzagging. 

In another exhibit, another place, we waited in a long line to enter a large room with a small group of people. Once in the room, it was so filled with soft colored lights and a kind of mist, that we literally could not see where we were. We felt weightless. We had no idea how big or small the room was, where the walls were or even which way to go. Again, there was no way to describe the location of where we were, we only intuited that there was a way to move through the room. There was a door on the other side, if only we could find it. Zigzagging. 

When I thought about it, in both rooms, really the only way of orienting ourselves at all was through the people we came in with. You could reach out your hand to hold the arm of the one next to you so you did not bump into each other. Or you could say something. In both rooms, you could hear people calling out into the darkness, into the light. Nervous laughter. “Are you there?” “I think I am kind of scared.” “Isn’t this wonderful?” 

One room of complete darkness and one full of light. We didn’t know where we were in either room. But we never felt utterly lost. 

And they set out from Mount Hor and encamped at Zalmonah. They set out from Zalmonah and encamped at Punon. 

We are told in Torah that a cloud or a series of clouds also protected us through the wilderness. Which is the kind of protection that, frankly, makes me anxious. It makes me think about driving in the fog. But maybe, as we went from place to place, not only did we not really know where we were, we also couldn’t see properly. Maybe that was the point. To learn the difference between not knowing where we were going and being lost. 

They set out from Zalmonah and encamped at Punon. They set out from Punon and encamped at Oboth. 

I heard a story from some Kitchen-ites.

They were lucky enough to have a house in Napa in the wilderness and wanted to build a path for any hikers who came through. 

Sounded easy enough but their first attempt was a disaster.

They tried to do it themselves and came back hours later covered in bruises and scratches, having had a close call with an illegal marijuana farm and some pretty shady characters. Not hikers at all. 

The second time wasn’t much better, they paid someone who then pretty much just put down a beginning mark and an end mark and essentially drew a line from one mark to the other, disregarding that the “path” went over a cliff, among other non-negotiable hazards

Finally, they asked around and did some research and found a person I will call “the path whisperer.” 

And when I heard this story a few years ago I could not believe it, it sounded so Chasidic. And to this day I am convinced that the path whisperer is the prophet Elijah who always comes to us in disguise.

And here is what I heard he said:

“I will build you a path but you have to trust me and you will have to come with me and we will do this together. Not only that, I won’t be able to tell you at the beginning where it will end. I can just help you get from station to station, without knowing in advance how long the path will be, or where exactly in what directions it will go.” 

And this was the way the path was built, without a master plan, one station at a time. I thought: zigzagging. 

Sometimes the zigzagging of life brings you into light, so much light that we are disoriented. I have seen this many times at weddings I officiate and I remember our own wedding. Michael, as you know, is also a rabbi so even twenty years ago we knew our way around a chuppah. And yet, at the end of our own wedding, we were so disoriented, so surrounded by light, we forgot everything we knew. After Michael stepped on the glass we looked at our rabbi with blank, quizzical faces. “Kiss!” He told us. So we did. Then we stared at him again. “Go!” He said. “It’s over!” We held on for dear life and tried to make our way through that light to the next door. To the next town we had never heard of and probably would never be able to find again. 

They set out from Iyim and encamped at Divion-gad. They set out from Divion-gad and encamped at Almon-Divlatayma. 

And sometimes the zigzagging of life brings you into so much darkness, darkness like we have never known. A set of coordinates on the map of darkness. A death. A loss. Something that seems irretrievable, irreparable. We are down for the count, the wind knocked clean out of us. 

And here too, we don’t quite know where we are. We look around but our eyes don’t tell us what we need to know. In these moments where we are bereft, empty, confused, and the only way to know where we are is to hold on to each other, to listen to the voices of the people we love around us as we walk through. To follow the words of Torah, of the tradition, not because those words protect us, they can’t, but because when something like this happens, they tell us what do to. “Gather!” “Sing!” “Don’t let go of my voice.” “Look for the door on the other side of the room, the one with the light underneath.” 

“Don’t despair. There is another town up ahead. It’s not that far away. I can’t actually see it and I don’t know anything about it but it’s on the way to the land that has been promised to us. You are not lost. We are not lost. We are zigzagging.” 

They set out from Divion-gad and encamped at Almon-Divlatayma. They set out from Almon-Divlatayma and camped in hills of Avarim…

At the end, what’s the difference between being lost and zigzagging? Maybe it comes down to remembering who we are with, listening for the sound of their voices or for God’s voice. Knowing we are moving somewhere else, somewhere named. Maybe this is also the essence of T’shuvah. Knowing we are not lost. Knowing to listen for the sound of the voices around us, listening for God’s voice. Knowing that even though we don’t know how it will turn out, or even how we will turn out, we are moving somewhere else, somewhere named. 

Whom Shall I Fear?

R. Noa Kushner // Kol Nidrei, 5779

1. The Decay of Symbols 

The Kitchen went last summer on a trip to Israel, an incredible learning trip, we met scholars and activists and artists and more scholars.

It was just like Birthright except it was nothing like Birthright.  

One day we went with Breaking the Silence to Hevron.

Breaking the Silence is “an organization of veteran combatants who have served in the Israeli military. […]”

As they say it:  

“We have taken it upon ourselves to expose the Israeli public to the reality of everyday life in the Occupied Territories. We endeavor to stimulate public debate about the price paid for a reality in which young soldiers …are engaged in the [military] control of another population’s every day life. Our work aims to bring an end to the occupation.” [1]

When you consider that almost every Israeli serves in the Israeli Army, and keeping its secrets are, understandably, part of the fabric of Israeli society, the amount of conviction and courage required to be associated with this group is considerable. 

The group is controversial. In fact, Netanyahu regularly goes after Breaking the Silence, mischaracterizing their work, targeting their revelations, claiming their words, not the occupation itself, is the reason for international condemnation of Israel’s policies. [2]

But our guide did not seem like he was the problem. He just kept telling us the truth. Shai was a gentle and personable young man who was raised on a diet of mainstream Nationalism who only joined Breaking the Silence because he couldn’t stand what Israel was doing any longer. “I had to do things to families that I would not want done to my own family,” he said. 

Shai took us to downtown Hevron, what I can only describe as a shuttered ghost town. He told us that 3-400,000 thousand Palestinians still lived all around where we were standing and used to live in this city center, until Jewish extremists moved in, displacing the Palestinians. 

Thus the empty streets.

Soldiers who looked like the ages of my daughters’ high school friends were stationed in pairs on every block but they seemed to be guarding literally no one. 

In one kilometer there are no fewer than eighteen checkpoints.

We ourselves had to cross three just to be on the walking tour. With only a few hundred Jews living here, this is clearly not for the security of Israel, so who are these soldiers guarding? 

We find out soon enough.

We pass a house, an empty house, boarded up, like many of the houses. But this one has Jewish extremists actively occupying the house. They are out front, in a make shift tent. We learn they are new there, essentially squatting, and through their presence and tactics, they are claiming yet another house. 

There is a giant Israeli flag on top of the house and a sign expressing why the house belongs to them. Something having to due with biblical references that I can comprehend, I recognize the verses, but cannot for the life of me understand. 

Soon, Shai tells us, if they live there long enough, the Israeli army will expand its jurisdiction to include that house, to protect the Jews inside it. After all, this is the Israeli army’s job, to protect Israeli Jews. One house at a time, the occupation grows. 

We go to a park.

I should say it is the carcass of a park.

In the middle of it is one of the strangest and saddest sights I have ever seen.

Surrounded by weeds and brambles, the grave of Baruch Goldstein, a memorial. You remember Goldstein, fanatic and terrorist, was a Jew who, in his kippah, tzittzit, and army uniform, went into the grave of our ancestors, and slayed 29 Muslims while they were in prayer.

A person whose life can only be described as a dark cautionary tale, a source of our great shame.

And if that grave is not enough

It is inconceivable but I saw it with my own eyes, 

What I can only imagine as a Jewish extremist couple,

Has put an invitation to their upcoming wedding on top of his grave. 

It is hot outside. Very hot. 

Time stops as I try to take this in.

A Jewish wedding invitation for a dead Jewish terrorist in a ghost town filled with Israeli flags.

And at this moment, everything crystallizes for me: The hijacking of Jewish symbols, the decay of Jewish life, a hostile takeover.

These ideas and people are not just squatting in one apartment, they are inhabiting my Torah. 

They are residing in symbols that should represent hope, that must in these times represent hope, symbols that should represent the flourishing of justice, of miracles.

What is more hopeful than a wedding?

What generates more respect than a grave?

What is more honorable than a nation’s flag?

Except my symbols, our symbols, are being corrupted, degraded, whether we like it or not. 

With symbolism like this,

With the hijacking of symbols, the decay of symbols,

The use of symbols to bolster what I can only call the perversion of justice, the inversion of justice,

Why would you or I want them? Who needs it?

Maybe it is, as you say, better to leave Israel alone.

Leave the ugly Judaism to them.

Go back to a loose, ad hoc spiritual system that revolves around me and a few friends not hurting anybody. Very popular here. 

Leave God to those who would use zealotry and literally everything in their power in order to reside in those symbols -- 

Until there is no distinction anymore between 

their zealotry and Torah, 

zealotry and Israel, 

zealotry and God, 

zealotry and Graves. 

zealotry and Weddings. 

But I wonder, if we give all these things up, what’s left?

If we declare our allegiance only to what the extremists leave behind, we will find ourselves with an ersatz religion that has no moral claims.

After all, if we are decidedly uninvolved, if we are not willing to even speak or be informed, if we give over all the symbols to the extremists and zealots, 

We have then essentially cut ourselves out of the discussion

And thus have no claim, no stake in Israel or Israel / Palestine, 

Or by extension, the future of Jewish life. 

And make no mistake, if we give all this up, we will watch the decay spread, from Hevron to other places, it already has, to other occupied homes, soon to be occupied towns, the ideas of ethnic dominance and abuse of power taking root right here in the good old Jewish community of America. Tell me you haven’t already seen a few domestic warning signs. Tell me you are not cringing when Jewish philanthropy cozies up to Trump and his supporters. No, Hevron is an extreme but it is on a continuum that has a lot to do with you and I and our future.  

“Rabbi Nehunia ben Hakkeneh would pray when he entered the House of Study, ‘May no harm come from my teaching, may I not falter in matters of giving legal advice.’ 

[because] failure… is [always]’ a possibility. 

[In fact we learn] …all paths should be presumed to carry danger. 

There is no path forward that is not without crookedness or ambushes. [3]

We’ve been selling easy Judaism for so long in this country we’re somehow surprised when this all becomes life threatening, complicated, implicating. But, there is no [real] path forward that is not without crookedness or ambushes. 

[The text continues] Some say, ‘What do I need this trouble for? I will watch my step and not sin, and I will have saved my soul.” But the sages teach that the ones who [blaze a path] light lamps in public, they are the ones who receive yeshuah / they are the ones who bring salvation. [4] [This refers to] the ones who light the lamps.” [5]

Not only that, I can’t get Shai’s face out of my head. 

As much as it is an incredibly hot day and I recoil from almost everything I am seeing, from the reality that this is my problem

His courage is keeping us steady

And in the end I cannot bear the thought of leaving him to do this alone. 

2. New Coordinates 

Many people know: Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel famously marched with Dr. Martin Luther King, z”l, their memories should be a blessing, in Selma, for civil rights.

Not as many people know that even before that day Heschel had been placed on an FBI list of citizens to track for his growing reputation as a troublemaker. [6] Many don’t remember that only weeks before this march, John Lewis had led six hundred activists across the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama river to fight Alabama’s resistance against black voting. Later named, “Bloody Sunday,” that march was met with officers who used tear gas, attack dogs and bully clubs, beating the nonviolent protestors. Fifty people were hospitalized. [7]

This may be why Heschel’s wife and daughter feared for his safety and when he left, as they said goodbye, I have been told they were not at all sure they would see him again. 

There was a service before the march. 

They prayed with their mouths. 

Heschel opened that service by reading a part of Psalm 27. [8]

The Lord is my light and my help, whom shall I fear? [9]

See, Heschel could not have gone on this march without fear.

Protesters were being attacked, some killed. And while the march was protected by some 1,800 members of the National Guard, nothing in that time was certain. 

See, Heschel could not have gone on this march without fear. But notice what Heschel, a Talmud prodigy, poet, textual virtuoso

chose to offer as his prayer:

Adonai ori v’yeeshi / mimi ira? 

The Lord is my light and my help, whom should I fear?

Heschel looks at the situation in the country, the grave injustices,

And recognizes that to be afraid of the billy clubs or of being on the FBI watch list, to be afraid of the Jewish Southern Establishment, which did not appreciate his views and activism, or to be afraid of harming his career – because none of this was playing particularly well at the seminary where he taught and worked - to be afraid of these would be to be afraid of the wrong things. 

In fact, with this Psalm Heschel taught, 

Yes, the plain reading of the Psalm – “God is my light and strength, I don’t need to fear because God is with me.” 

But remember this is a person who lost almost his entire family, his entire young adult community, his teachers, his peers in the shoah.

He knows death, he knows risk, and although he loves God with all his heart, he also knows the limits of divine protection. He does not believe in divine guarantees, he does not believe in divine insurance --

So the reason Heschel chooses this psalm is not to teach that God will protect us no matter what. No, the reason he chooses, “What should I fear?” is because he wants us to know that the real thing to fear is a world where righteousness is absent.

A world where there is no justice.

What should I fear? A world where righteousness is in exile. A country where the symbols and systems of the country: the flag, the vote, the police are no longer markers for justice and equality but instead inverted to protect the powerful, to protect the ruling class. 

Does this sound familiar?

What should I fear? The opposite of righteousness, righteousness in exile. 

The reality of this injustice frightens Heschel so much, he leaves his wife and daughter and gets on a plane. 

This Kol Nidrei, “What shall I fear?” also becomes our critical question, our life-guiding question. 

Because asking it may help us understand just what is at stake now: 

Whether we will move towards the possibility of righteousness or succumb to the forces of oppression. 

3. Galileo / New Map  

In a chapter so famous in history it has taken on mythic status, (not to mention an Indigo Girls reference), Galileo publishes his (Starry Messenger) in 1610, describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. 

With these observations he promoted the heliocentric theory of Copernicus, and claimed that the earth is not at the center of the universe, rather, that our planet rotates around the sun. 

As you probably remember, Galileo's initial discoveries were met with opposition within the Catholic Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared heliocentrism to be formally heretical, and eventually Galileo was put under house arrest for the remainder of his life. [10]

But, here’s the thing:

Not only was Galileo astronomically right, I think (ironically) he was religiously right, spiritually right. 

In fact, I think our current religious maps have not even caught up with even the sophistication of those old medieval astrological maps.

Let me explain: Just as many people assumed in the 1600’s that our planet was in the center and the sun revolved around us, I think that many of us today, maybe by default, assume we are at the center of our spiritual universes, with others who orbit around us.

Plus maybe a friendly God concept floating around, sort of “Break glass in case of emergency” kind of thing,

A two-dimensional God we engage a few times a year when we need a parking space or something. 

But just like that astronomical map with us in the center wasn’t right hundreds of years ago, 

This religious map isn’t right for us now.

For one, it is literally self-centered, inhibiting our ability to see, disorienting us.

Not only does it cut us off from each other,

If we are each our own suns, it follows that we are the ultimate reason for our own spiritual activity,

after all, everything revolves around us,

And this makes us spiritually thin, anemic.

Because if we are the beginning and end of the picture, we by necessity short-circuit any possibility of real sacrifice or connection to something greater than us.

And so great risk out of the question,

Because those risks have to first align with our own needs, our current perception of things,

And great risks rarely align with our own needs, they rarely fit into our existing perception of things.   

In fact, the idea we should each make up our own commandments, frame the problems and solve them as suits each of us seems kind of childish, too trivial a response for what faces us collectively now on many fronts, the planet, politics, to many to name.

And it may be that our societies will not begin to heal until we understand our proper place on the map.

What I suggest tonight, in keeping with Torah (I definitely did not make this up) is nothing less than a different set of coordinates, a rearranging of our spiritual solar system. [11]

Perhaps we are not at the center after all, not even of our personal, religious maps.

Perhaps God is at the center.

And if the idea of God at the center of your spiritual religious world makes you want to run screaming from the room – we can also name this center “the call + demand for a righteous world.”

I personally find it is hard to cozy up to an abstract idea when I am confused about what to do or in pain, but it’s Kol Nidrei, so for once I’ll be flexible. 

So God / Call to Righteousness is at the center, and there is only one planet that’s orbiting, a planet marked “Us.” 

“Us.” 

You see, immediately, this model changes two things, it helps in two ways:

(1) Us 

First, each of us is not solely responsible for fixing the world nor for creating global solutions singlehandedly. Silicon Valley, are you listening? 

Heschel did not start his own civil rights march nor project, nor did he self publish a magazine, he joined the people who were already working and did what they told him to do. 

In fact, the enduring test is not regarding each of us at all but whether we can understand that whatever we do, we have been and will be stuck together. 

Not only that, this shared responsibility for the world is also shared over time. This means that we are the recipients of the efforts of the people who came before us. And this means we might not see the fruits of our labor in our lifetimes. This means we think in generational terms, we rotate in generational orbits. 

(2) God is the Sun   

The second difference is that rather than “Me” in the center, the beginning and end of every story, Now God / the call to righteousness is literally what holds us together, this is the gravitational pull, this is what we turn ourselves towards, personally and communally.

So now we make decisions -- not on what suits us or even what makes us feel brave or worthy or known -- but simply on whether or not our next act can sufficiently respond to the call for righteousness. 

Case Study: Egypt

So, for example, on our way out of Egypt, away from Pharaoh and oppression, when we were crossing the sea, 

The rabbis teach that we said the very same line from the psalms 

that Heschel prayed in services before he marched with King. [12]

Adonai ori v’yeeshi / mimi ira? 

The Lord is my light and my help, who should I fear?

Why do the rabbis put this same Psalm in our mouths as we cross the sea? 

I think it is because the question of, “Who / what should I fear?” helps us to get real clear, real fast about what’s at stake in the different maps, different ways of seeing the world:

See if I am in the center, my needs, if my life is ultimate

And I am crossing the sea and I only get one fear 

Maybe I choose the fear of Pharaoh, 

In this system (where I am in the middle) this is understandable, even laudable! 

After all, Pharaoh has a lot of weapons and soldiers I don’t want to die. 

Maybe I even turn around and volunteer to go back to Egypt.

But if we imagine that we are in the kind of religious solar system I am advancing tonight, 

We understand that we never cross the sea only for ourselves, and not even for all those who cross with us 

Instead, we cross so that possibility of righteousness can remain in the world.

We cross to refract more divine light.

We cross so that our lives can be evidence of the existence of that great light. [13]

The rabbis teach: There is no [real] path forward that is not without crookedness or ambushes. 

Some say, ‘What do I need this trouble for? I will watch my step and not sin, and I will have saved my soul.” But the sages teach that the ones who [blaze a path] light lamps for the multitudes, they are the ones who receive yeshuah / they are the ones who bring salvation. [14] [This refers to] the ones who light the lamps.” [15]

4. Repair of Symbols / Light the Lights 

I am sorry to say that last summer, a few days after we were in Israel, 

The leaders of Breaking the Silence were detained while giving a tour in Hebron, they were questioned by the border police. Harassed. Their tour was shut down for some time. [16]

One light extinguished.

Then, a local gallery that had operated out of a municipal building for 13 years hosted Breaking the Silence, was brought to court and as a result lost its lease. Mayor Nir Barkat did not conceal his politics: “We will not allow city property to be invaded and used to insult Israeli soldiers and the state.” 

A second light out. 

Around the same time Education Minister Naftali Bennett used his authority and the Knesset passed a law aimed at keeping the stories and people of Breaking the Silence out of Israeli schools. [17]

A third light, extinguished.

Then Yehuda Shaul, co-founder of Breaking the Silence suffered physical assault while giving a tour in Hevron, he is punched in the mouth, his face bloodied by a Jewish right wing extremist. [18]

A fourth light, out. 

And in this week’s news another home in the occupied territories has been claimed, leveled, the village of Khan Al-Ahmar destroyed. [19]

A fifth light. 

The lights are extinguished, one by one by one.

And we are Heschel deciding whether or not to get on the plane.

And we are in the sea deciding to go back to Egypt or to try to cross.

If we get involved, we see it so clearly, the suffering that awaits us.

The personal repercussions, 

The invariably messy consequences, 

The possibility of being publically disparaged, slighted, dismissed,    

The despair of knowing we probably won’t even win this round or anytime soon.

But tonight, while we list of all these real fears, 

Let us also remember we have a greater fear, our most valuable fear,

It is our inheritance, it is our prize, it is who we are. 

We fear oppression in the world, especially, in our Israel, in our gates.

We shudder to think that our symbols and our language and our inheritance and our stories and our loved ones are increasingly intertwined with oppression.  

We fear more and more lights going out all around us.

We mustn’t lose this fear nor its corollary, an unrelenting commitment to doing what is just, no matter the cost.  

Perhaps this great fear will grant us the conviction and courage of some of our Israeli activist counterparts to turn towards righteousness,

To risk what is necessary to ensure this oppression does not continue to grow,

And maybe we can draw courage from each other and the holy one, the center of all the maps, the very source of righteousness 

The one who gives us life, who sustains us, and who commands us 

To make sure the lights don’t go out,

To light the lights,

To keep lighting the lights. 

---

[1] See https://www.breakingthesilence.org.il/about/organization

[2] Chemi Shalev, “To Whitewash Occupation, Netanyahu Crew Casts Breaking the Silence Whistle-blower as Bogeyman,” Haaretz, November 21, 2017.

[3] See note 5.

[4] Ps. 50:23.

[5] This is taken from Abraham Joshua Heschel’s treatment of these verses in Heavenly Torah. Gordon Tucker, Trans., Ed. (Continuum, New York, London, 2005), p.718-9. See also BT Berakhot 28 b, Leviticus Rabbah 9:2.

[6] Edward Kaplan, Spiritual Radical: Abraham Joshua Heschel in America, (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2007), p. 221.

[7] See: Blackpast.org. http://www.blackpast.org/aah/bloody-sunday-selma-alabama-march-7-1965.

[8] Op. cit., p. 222-3. Note that Heschel was originally going to read a different Psalm but changed his mind when he got there, see Note 22, p. 434.

[9] Psalm 27:1.

[10] See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galileo_affair

[11] This is a traditional theology and one Heschel translates again and again in his work. I have been heavily influenced by the biographies of Heschel by Edward Kaplan (see above) where emphasizes Heschel’s insistence on a living God, as well as his belief that, “Maybe ideas can help us now.”

[12] Midrash Tanchuma, Tezaveh, 4:4.

[13] Heschel points out how in BT Hagigah 16a God gave the multitude a sign by which God could be recognized (See Heavenly Torah, p. 284). But I was thinking that if we needed a sign, this meant God could not be instantly recognized. I think the “sign” is actually our willingness to cross, to have faith that our actions are connected to a greater light.  

[14] Psalm 50:23.

[15] Op. cit., Heavenly Torah, p. 719.

[16] These and the next two examples from Haaretz Editorial, “Defend Breaking the Silence,” September 2, 2018. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/defend-breaking-the-silence-1.6434494

[17] Haaretz Editorial, “Defend Breaking the Silence,” September 2, 2018. https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/editorial/defend-breaking-the-silence-1.6434494

[18] Times of Israel, “Right Wing Activist arrested for punching Breaking the Silence Guide in Hebron.” Jacob Magid, July 29, 2018.

[19] The Forward, “Soon I Will Watch Israel Destroy My Home,” Eid Khamis, September 14, 2018. https://forward.com/opinion/410311/soon-i-will-watch-israel-destroy-my-home/

Life, Re-inscribed

*re-recorded due to tech issue

R. Jessica Kate Meyer // Rosh Hashanah, 5779

We stand tonight on the cusp of the New Year.

The sound of the shofar, the taste of honey on fresh baked challah. The day of Remembrance--Yom HaZikaron.

Do you remember where you were this time last year?  Take a moment. How are you different? How are you not different?  Who has arrived in your life this past year. And who is no longer here?

On New Years around the world, we drink and dance until we forget.  But on Rosh Hashanah, we’re here to remember. To remember the melodies in our bones.  To remember the words many of us have forgotten. To remember the soul behind all of the distraction.  To remember our mortality. And we take an unflinching look at who we have been this past year. Where we have shown up, and where we have stumbled.  We pray: ‘Inscribe us for life.’

We imagine a book of life, a giant ledger of names and we ask—please, may ours find its way inside.  But what’s really going on when we pray ‘Inscribe us for life’? 19th century Hasidic Rebbe, the Sefat Emet, says that each one of us has a Divine point, a nekudah kedusha inside.  And on this point—is inscribed the word ‘life’. Like the 10 commandments etched on the luhot--the tablets, you and me, we have LIFE written here.  During the year, as we mess up, we don’t fess up, we make excuses for ourselves, we hurt each other--and this inscription on our heart, this beautiful, beaming life gets covered up with detritus -- like a buildup of plaque in our arteries or on our teeth. Our ‘life’ gets clogged. When we arrive in our seat here tonight at the JCC, our inscriptions are faded.  And our job over the next 10 days is to lift our tools--chisel and stone, voice, heart, prayer, to re-etch, to scrape out the plaque, and re-emblazon life, bold and insistent, into our hearts. It’s not Inscribe us for life, but Inscribe life in us.   

This New Year, there is more darkness than usual casting shadows over life.  Fear for our country; Fear of a deeply unstable government, of checks and balances checked out and out of balance; the future of our highest court of law hanging in the balance.  

In a year like this, we need to call up our strongest tools, the big guns.  I’m talking about our nigunim, melody, poetry, prayer, stories, questions...this is the most potent stuff we have to fortify ourselves — and to face this new year with courage, hope, and life.  Right now, I’m thinking about one prayer in particular.

My great grandmother Jenny for whom I was named, never went to shul, didn’t speak a lick of Hebrew, but you better believe she was there for Avinu Malkeinu in the women’s section on the High Holy Days.  The rhythmic, pleading language and haunting melody have become, for many Jews, the symbol of the Yamim Nora'im.

The first line of the melody hovers within four notes of the scale, repeating over and over [sing nigun].  This repetition creates a space intimate enough to address G-d as אבינו, as a loving parent. We then demand of God עשה עמנו, Be loving to us, and the nigun opens up, reaching to the sixth of the scale.  When davvened through a whole community, this creates a sonic grandeur fit for God as Malkeinu, our King. As we plead for צדקה וחסד one final time— we climb a little higher—reaching toward God [nigun], and then we crawl back down the scale [nigun], returning to the intimacy of אבינו. Through this nigun, the soul of the prayer is illuminated.  

But where does Avinu Malkeinu come from?  Who wrote it? It just so happens, that the origin of this prayer is recorded in the Babylonian Talmud tractate Taanit.  

In the time of R. Eliezer, a devastating drought tore through the land.  Plants withered on the vine. Sheep dropped in the flock. Hundreds died from thirst.  It was a national state of emergency.

“Teshuva!” commanded R. Eliezer—“only complete, full teshuva will awaken Divine compassion!  And Divine compassion will bring the rain from heaven. R. Eliezer instated a week-long fast so that each and every Jew would make vidui, confess her sins, and return in full teshuva to her creator.

Every Jew abstained a full week from food and drink.  To be honest, there wasn’t much to eat or drink anyway…but truly, everyone followed R. Eliezer’s command to a ‘t’.

After a full 7 days without food, without drink, without bathing, we lifted our eyes expectantly to the heavens…but only the cruel, unblinking sun stared back.

It was time for more desperate measures.  The fast didn’t work. We needed a different mode of action.

“Tefilah!  Prayer!” commanded R. Eliezer—“only prayer will awaken God’s mercy in heaven, and God’s mercy in heaven will bring the rain from heaven!”  

So R. Eliezer convened everyone for an emergency outdoor mid-day prayer service. Thousands of Jews, hungry, grumpy, and sweaty, packed together under the glaring sun.  

R. Eliezer ben Hurkanus hushed the crowd.  He descended with measured steps to face the aron hakodesh—the holy ark.  With much gravitas, he raised his voice, and began to pray…

We stood almost noiselessly while R. Eliezer recited the special 24 verse amidah of a fast day.  Why the extra 6 verses of the amidah? So that every Jew might turn in teshuva, the teshuva that will awaken God’s compassion, the teshuva that will bring the rain.

As R. Eliezer uttered the final word of the final beracha of the 24 blessings, an expectant silence.  Everyone lifted their eyes toward the heavens…but not one cloud in the sky. Only sun, and heat, and death.

Suddenly, from amidst the crowd, R. Akiva, student of R. Eliezer burst through, ran down and threw himself before the ark.  From the depths of his despair he cries out: Avinu Malkeinu!

Rain, rain pours down, rain from the heavens, wet, and good, quenches the dry people, feeds the cracked earth, and soaks R. Akiva, who stands trembling before the ark.

This beloved prayer, which is such an institutionalized part of the High Holy Day services, burst out of R Akiva as a cry from the most broken place.  He teaches us how to pray these hagim, he teaches us what it is to daven together in a time of crisis. Yes--There are prescribed prayers (including Avinu Malkeinu).  These are crucial. But the rain won’t come until we open our hearts and let it out.

For centuries after R’ Akiva uttered these words, Jewish communities around the world added their own pleas, unique to their community, generation, time.  So there was a living chain from R Akiva to each subsequent generation. What Avinu Malkeinus will we add from San Francisco in 2018?

The story of R Akiva and the rain ends with a curious coda:  It’s a few weeks later, the fields have turned from brown to green again.  And the rabbis sit around a table in the beit midrash, completely stumped: why did God respond to R Akiva and not to R Eliezer?  What made one more successful at intervening than the other? Amazingly, they get a communique! A bat kol, an echo of the Divine Voice says: It’s not that Rabbi Akiva is greater than R Eliezer. It’s that R Akiva ma’avir al midotav.  This phrase is a bit tricky to accurately translate.  Rashi interprets it as: ‘Rabbi Akiva has a forgiving nature, while R Eliezer does not.’  In other words, the skies opened with compassion for the one who carries compassion for others.  

A more literal translation of ma’avir al midotav might be:   one who surpasses his attributes, or rather goes beyond his limits  It rained for the one who transcended himself. In a time of crisis, the one who brought rain, was the one who went beyond his understanding of himself.  He stepped out of comfort zone.

For many of us, particularly those born in the US after WWII, born after the Vietnam War, we are facing in real time something we have never seen, and are not prepared for.

As we leave 5778, and step into the current of 5779, are we prepared to go beyond what we have been in the past, beyond our definitions of self?

At its core, RH, and the 10 days are a time of possibility--Hayom Harat Olam, on this day, our world is created, conceived.  We are the ones planting seeds.

I want to bless us to take our tools in hand and in heart over the days of Awe.  To remember why we’re here. To chisel away at what is concealing the life inscribed within us.  To go beyond ourselves, and to make the rain fall.

You are My Strangers / Market Forces

R. Noa Kushner // Rosh Hashanah, 5779

The Busy Man’s Prayer 

The Baal Shem Tov said:

“Imagine a man whose business hounds him through many streets and across the market-place the live long day. He almost forgets that there is a Maker of the world. Only when the time for the Afternoon prayer comes, does he remember: ‘I must pray.’ And then, from the bottom of his heart, he heaves a sigh of regret that he has spent the day on vain and idle matters, and runs into a by-street and stands there, and prays. God holds him dear, very dear and his prayer pierces the heavens. 

And he doesn’t feel so strange any longer.

Strangers

The command to take care of, even love the stranger / גר famously is all over  Torah: Love the stranger because you were a stranger, protect the stranger. Torah takes this seriously enough to repeat it again and again. 

And we learn we should love the stranger because we were strangers in Egypt. And this love is defined and redefined in specific, legal terms: You cannot cheat the stranger. You must act justly in business, regarding weights and measures, and in the courts.

Not only that, the treatment of the stranger is defined in ritual terms: The stranger keeps Shabbat just like us. The stranger sits in our sukkah and eats at our Passover table.

The stranger even listens to our same teachings. By the end of it, the stranger does not seem so strange any longer, more like family. 

It’s as if the tradition knows that someone who is different, living amongst the majority, immediately sets up a vulnerability, an instability. If there are problems in the society it’s not hard to figure out who could get penalized first. So the system works to correct for that by being overly explicit. We are not to exploit those vulnerabilities, we are to honor them as one of us. Otherwise, the whole society starts to fall apart. 

Lavan’s House  

So I was interested to find one of only places in Torah where a person uses this same root גר / stranger but not in a communal, categorical sense, 

But rather in a personal sense, in a story, hidden in a verb. 

Let me set this up. Jacob, grandson of Abraham and Sarah, son of Rebecca and Isaac, is describing his time living in his father-in-law Lavan’s house and says, Im Lavan garti v’echar ad atah / Some translations will say, “I sojourned with Lavan, and stayed there until now.”

But if you hear the word גרתי (gar-ti) / it has the same root as גר (ger) “stranger.” 

I was an outsider with my father-in-law.

I wasn’t home. 

I did not have say, original rights. 

I strangered there.

Maybe even: I was estranged. 

Why does Jacob use this unusual word to describe the twenty years he spent with his own father-in-law? How does he get there to begin with? 

I’m glad you asked.

Back in Jacob’s early life, Jacob has run from his older twin, Esau. Why? Because Jacob stole Esau’s birthright and now his blessing so Esau is furious, and threatens Jacob. So (remember?) Jacob flees for his life and goes to live his uncle Lavan.

On the way there, Jacob meets Lavan’s daughter, Rachel, and falls instantly in love. He kisses her and weeps. So far so good.

But, according to the rabbis, a peculiar thing happens as Jacob enters the house of Lavan. By the way, Lavan in English means, “White.” So we could also easily call the house of Lavan, the “White House.” Just something to keep in mind.  

An odd thing happens as Jacob enters the house of Lavan. Rather than greeting Jacob warmly, or expressing joy over a future son-in-law, or an expanding family, the rabbis teach that Lavan first and foremost, only looked for Jacob’s money.

“He looked for other camels or riches, then, when they wasn’t there, he thought there must be gold coins in Jacob’s saddlebags. When those were missing, when the two men kissed hello, Lavan searched for pearls in Jacob’s mouth.” 

When nothing is found (!), according to the rabbis Lavan says, “Really, there’s no reason for me to take you in, since you didn’t bring me anything. But since we’re family, you can stay a few weeks.” (and a bit later on) “Better you than an outsider.”

Immediately, one rule of this White House becomes clear: If you are wealthy, if you have something material and obvious to offer, all well and good. But if you are just a person, just a human being, even a future son-in-law, you have no inherent worth. You are valueless until proven otherwise. 

After the few weeks are over, they make an arrangement. Since he has no bride price, Jacob will work for Lavan for seven years, then marry Rachel. 

But, as many of you know, after the seven years, although Lavan throws a big communal wedding feast for Jacob, at the last minute, on the wedding night, Lavan blows out all the candles and puts his firstborn daughter Leah in place of her younger sister Rachel.

The callousness boggles the mind. 

What kind of a father does this to his daughters? To his future son-in-law?

How could Rachel agree to this?

How could Leah?

In fact we don’t see any reaction at all from the sisters. And this could be Torah being, well, patriarchal (wouldn’t be the first time). But there are places where women speak up in Torah and I think this is a clue to something else. 

I suggest the silence of Rachel and Leah is because the culture in the white house is like a closed circuit of anxiety, a place where one’s worth is constantly in question, where an existential mistrust in each other is normal, where power and status are the only things that matter, where basic rules of ethical and social behavior are twisted in order to accommodate Lavan and his need for power. And so they are quiet, afraid to acknowledge the depravity of the situation lest Lavan shame them further, lest they lose even more status.  

In this White House, it seems everyone is a commodity, nothing more. 

And notice, when Jacob confronts Lavan, saying, 

“What have you done to me?! Why did you lie to me?!” Lavan doesn’t even flinch. He only answers: “In our community, we honor the firstborn.”

First of all, you’d think in seven years, he coulda found a way to bring that up, hm? Second, we see how Lavan manipulates Jacob with this remark, hinting at how Jacob, earlier in his life, stole the honor from his older brother. As if bringing up Jacob’s past mistakes -- whether or not they are relevant to the moment at hand -- evens the score, notice the bully tactics.

Notice also, how by saying, “In our community, we honor the firstborn,” that Lavan also deflects any personal responsibility (a theme) while emphasizing Jacob’s difference. “You didn’t know? Everyone knows these rules…” Lavan hides behind the “we” -- making no apologies, not even acknowledging anyone else’s pain. 

See, in Lavan’s house, in the white house, what I think of as a house of mirrors, no one ever has enough security to be at rest, no one can rely on being treated with dignity. This is why, the description of Jacob’s time there is filled with constant competitions, a vying for status – Rachel and Leah over Jacob, over the number of sons they can deliver, Jacob and Lavan trying to outwit each other over sheep. You can practically feel the anxiety in every verse. 

Because if you are only as good as what you produced that day, or whether you won or lost the latest power struggle, if the rules change all the time, much of life becomes about avoiding shame.  

This goes on for twenty years. 

Estranged  

Now we understand why Jacob uses this word, גרתי / I was an alien, I was not at home, even for a place where he lived for so long and did so much.

It is as if he is saying, I saw and I got sucked into and I participated, willingly and unwillingly, in dealings that were not mine, and in treating myself and people like things and worst of all, no one said it was wrong. I was estranged from myself.  

Now we understand, we see how dangerous it is, we feel the spiritual implications of living in this kind of place. 

Now we understand, we see, the crux of what Torah means when it says, 

be careful of how you treat the stranger, 

don’t ever again create a society like in the house of Lavan, 

like it was in Pharaoh’s Egypt, 

where people are things, 

where status and production is idolized, 

and everything else -- morality, honesty -- is twisted in its service, 

where the strong are given free reign to be abusive and the weak are invisible, 

where it seems there is no other choice but to participate, 

where everyone is one step away from being proven worthless, 

or proving each other as worthless. 

Now we understand Torah’s obsession with making sure it never gets that bad again. God forbid, says Torah, that you would be a part of helping such a system to thrive ever again. 

Masters of our House

But here we are. And, what can I say, what we have now is not so different from what I just described, the very thing Torah warns us against over and over. 

And, as much as it might feel good, and as much as Trump has, in an unprecedented way, accelerated a culture of shame and mistrust -- 

As much as Trump has used the equivalent of verbal gasoline to whip up fires of fear and hatred, each one seeming to blaze in 1000 different directions —

We can’t just blame Trump for our current situation. We can’t just blame Trump. For, if we all live in this house of mirrors, feeling not unlike those in Lavan’s white house, wondering what happened to our country’s dignity and morality and values, we also have to admit we have helped to build this house, this system.

It’s our house after all. And we could not be where we are as a country without our tacit approval along the way. 

You see, just like Jacob, who ran from his brother, ran from what he stole,

-- rather than return it or stick around to try and fix things -- those of us with privilege and power in this country, many of us in this room, have stolen some things. Anyone who was with us in Montgomery and went to the Legacy Museum: From Slavery to Mass Incarceration knows what I am talking about. 

Those of us with privilege and power in this country have also run from some things. We, too, forgot to notice that what we’ve been doing is wrong, that some of our success has come on the backs of others. 

Now we find, that the fantasy that we could be completely moral and upright, 

That we could claim we are doing the right thing while abdicating our communal responsibilities, 

while being largely absent in the election of politicians and local agendas, while neglecting to hold our portion of civic weight, 

while quietly and steadily refusing to share what we have beyond our own families -- let alone work to shine the light or try to change systemic inequalities, 

or even tell ourselves the truth about how unequal it has become, 

how our daily choices, our schools, our neighborhoods, our legal system, the way we spend,

how it is our choices that contribute to and bolster that inequality --

Now we find, as we assess the state of our country, among many things, that particular fantasy that we could be moral while absent has come crashing down.

Commodification

And, beyond our complacency or even our complicity, there’s another reason we find ourselves in this moment.

The second reason we’re in this White House is that in ways large and small

we have reinforced the narrative of Lavan. Namely, that power and economic status is God, and everything else, all resources -- moral, emotional, social -- can and should be subservient, to that God, to that ultimate status. We might be upset with where someone is on the economic ladder, how someone is treated, but we rarely talk about using a different ladder, another measure altogether. 

No matter how many radical T-shirts we wear, many of us work as if personal economic failure is almost tantamount to self-destruction. We work as if economic status is the sole determinant of whether a person belongs and how they are treated by others, as if people who are poor simply do not exist. I am not making it up. Go and spend a day at GLIDE, take the tour of the Tenderloin, walking distance from here, and go see for yourself. Then go up the street to the areas where you usually go to, witness the contrast, and you tell me with a straight face that everyone is created equal, everyone deserves to be treated with respect and dignity and we as a city or a country (one of the richest in any time, any place) are at all serious about making that justice a priority. 

Because I am not seeing it.

And it has been like this a long time, long before the current president. 

Because if this is our house, we must realize that, no matter what we’ve been telling ourselves, the actual way we live in the world set the stage for such a house, such a leader. Because before he ever showed up, we had already conveniently replaced real activism and sacrifice with laps for status, and buzz words and told ourselves it was the same thing.  

So if we now live in the white house, the house of mirrors, every room filled with refracted narcissism and existential insecurity, we realize, at least on this point, Torah is right. It is impossible to classify another group as strangers, to live as if poorer people deserve different rights, a different life altogether, and then still expect to remain at home with ourselves. 

Money

[R. Abraham Joshua] Heschel quotes the social and economic historian, R. H. Tawney, an authority on the close relationship between religious ideologies and economic growth in the 1920’s. He wrote:

“…Society will not solve the particular problems of industry which afflicts it, until that poison is expelled, and it has learned to see industry in the right perspective. If it is to do that, it must rearrange its scale of values. It must regard economic interests as one element in life, not as the whole of life.” 

We exist in a moment in this country where everything is commodified -- people, time, art, weddings, nature, relationships, self awareness – many things that could never be measured at all, let alone in terms of financial gains or losses. No matter how ineffable or complex or profound, everything is forced through the same mental sieve. And this is so common, so American, we don’t even notice it. 

“That is a beautiful idea, but does it scale?” “Good thought to accept those folks, but what is the bottom line?” No matter if it is medicine or religion or art, we lean on money to quickly demonstrate or assess whether something is worth our attention or effort. 

But, many aspects of life, certainly religious experiences and ideas, cannot be understood through an economic lens, only misunderstood. It would be like looking at a poem under a microscope. It doesn’t matter how pure our intent is -- we just won’t get it. And the minute we try, we’ve already lost. 

Immigration

For an example, in a purely economic reality, making sure there are no strangers who come into the United States, foreigners who might deplete our resources, going after people who somehow manage to sneak in --

from a purely economic perspective – this still may be something worth arguing against (we are a country built on waves of immigrants, after all), but still, in the context of this conversation, the deporting of immigrants is a reasonable perspective to maintain. 

But when you leave the realm of economics, of measurable gains and losses, and consider the second grade girl who slept with a backpack on for six months because her father was deported in the middle of the night, and she was terrified they would come for her mother, and she did not want to be alone, we realize how seeing everything through a lens of money makes us blind to other worlds, other truths. 

We realize that the pain of this family cannot be measured in economic terms. We not only realize that the soul of this girl is infinite, but that her love of her father and mother is infinite, and the level of her estrangement, her now broken trust in the world is infinite. And we see just how limiting our economic blinders can be. 

Or maybe we should listen to the El Salvadorian woman who stayed with her six year old this year in a detention center. She wrote, “I was forced to flee my country because of violence and threats of violence against me and my family. 

…But after we crossed the border, we found no relief. Instead, we were held for two months in a family immigration detention center in Artesia, N.M., run by a for-profit company.

…When our children were sick, we waited days for medical attention. When one mother whose daughter had asthma informed the officers that her child needed medical care, she was told that she should have thought about that before she came to the United States. Another mother asked for medical assistance for her son but it never came. She was deported, and her son died just a few months later.”

Her son died in the United States this year -- not on a boat coming over in 1918, in a for-profit detention center in New Mexico, 2018. And we know now of other stories, children molested, hurt, and of course, the many separated from their parents.  

In fact, we could listen to fragments of letters from those very mothers separated from their children, this one for her seven year old son:

“When we’re together again, I will spoil you like always. I will cook your meals and we will go on walks and I’ll lie next to you until you fall asleep. I love you, my prince. I hope to God and the Virgin Mary, my child, that we will soon be together and we’ll never be separated again.” 

How do we measure the torment in that letter in dollars? How do we begin to measure the love? We cannot. These letters are like prayers. To classify them, to monetize them is to render them mute. And in insisting that this and all problems are disproportionately financial questions, we deny the truth in these letters, we deny a great many truths, and we are in danger of making strangers of us all, compromising our great country. 

In the house of mirrors we think that if we say “No,” or exhibit moral courage in our individual spheres, if we move away from the constant upkeep necessary to acquire status or make money, we worry -- like Jacob, Rachel and Leah caught in their destructive and competitive web for years and years -- we worry we will find ourselves alone, powerless, and irrelevant. 

So we climb and climb and try not to look too much at those beneath us, all the strangers, and tell ourselves that this is normal. But children who are ill and dying on our borders in for profit institutions should shake us all to our very core. Those we now know personally in the Tenderloin who cannot get a place to sleep night after night, year after year, should keep us up at night. Because This is not normal. This is not inevitable. There is another way. And allowing that very thought -- that it doesn’t have to be this way -- and returning to that thought again and again, refusing to rationalize our way out of it, this may allow us to be of real help.  

כאלו / As If

Many of you know the story of baby Moses. When Pharaoh has commanded all the boy babies be thrown into the Nile, Torah records no newspaper article, no demonstration. I believe that silence is one of the loudest, most painful sounds in our tradition. 

All Hebrew parents are commanded to drown their babies. Moshe’s mother, a stranger in a strange land, in an attempt to save him, puts him in a basket. Pharaoh’s daughter, Batya the princess, the epitome of power and privilege, 

Is out one day, bathing in the Nile. She sees the basket and opening it, hears the cry of the boy. And then the most unlikely thing happens: From the heart of Pharaoh’s palace, Batya decides she will raise this slave child (the rabbis say) כאלו / as if he were her own .

It is not a perfect act. I can already imagine Batya’s twitter feed: forced adoption of a helpless baby, why didn’t she save more than one baby, couldn’t she have done more to lobby Pharaoh, all true. 

And yet, the rabbis teach that she would kiss and hug and adore Moses כאלו / as if he were her own son.

I don’t know what the opposite is of treating someone like a stranger, but it seems to me that demonstrating this compassion and love must be a part of it. 

Seems to me this living כאלו / as if the world is a just place, where no children die in rivers or schools or for-profit jails for-profit detention centers must be a part of it. 

And it turns out, Torah teaches, this decision is enough. Just treating someone else as if he were part of her own family, 

just loving one stranger as if he were family, 

this stops one cycle of estrangement upon estrangement long enough 

to allow the possibility of freedom to live in the world again. 

---

*To get involved now, contact these Kitchen-ites:

• Sue Reinhold, Board Member, Bend the Arc (house party this Sunday!), sue@wisdomhead.com

• Abigail Trillin, Executive Director, Legal Services for Children, liaison to Faith in Action, abigailtrillin@gmail.com

• Jodi Jahic, Board Member, Defy Ventures, program that creates opportunities for formerly incarcerated people, jodijahic@gmail.com

• Jo Stein, Full Circle Fund, connects volunteers from all walks to Bay Area community organizations, johannabstein@gmail.com

Notes on speaking about Israel

R. Noa Kushner
Presented at JEN conference, Los Angeles
June 2018

I keep two ideas in my head when approaching talking about Israel / Palestine.

On the one hand, I have the words of (my father’s teacher and R. Lizzi’s rabbi) Arnold Jacob Wolf z”l: The worst thing someone can say to you after your teaching / drash is: “Nice teaching Rabbi.”

He would have preferred someone would be furious or at the very least, in disagreement – it would show they were considering an idea in a new way. He was a master truth teller and agitator.

On the other hand, I learned something from one of my rabbis, Les Bronstein. He was the rabbi at our wedding and was giving Michael and I pre-wedding counseling, general advice. He said, “There are two kinds of arguments: the kind that goes in circles, goes nowhere, and the kind that is l’shem shamayim / for the sake of heaven. It is good to learn how to identify which is which. Try to make the majority of your arguments l’shem shamayim.

In other words, from Rabbi Wolf: Don’t play for laughs. The Torah, certainly Israel, these are too serious and they deserves our most sincere efforts to try to say something serious, nuanced and real. His approach is the opposite of trying to be popular.

And then there’s Bronstein: Try to know which arguments you get sucked into for the sake of your ego, arguments that are almost guaranteed to go nowhere, versus those times when it is truly necessary to get in there and argue for a greater good, for the sake of heaven.  

We started The Kitchen 7 years ago this Shabbat. When I started, one of the realities I experienced was that most of the people I was trying to reach were not on different sides of a radical Israel divide, fighting about BDS or the UN resolutions.
Rather, they were not talking about Israel at all.
That is, they were confused and ashamed by what they read in the paper, they were largely illiterate when it came to the situation in Israel, the people whom they encountered on the topic seemed overly extreme, so they avoided the topic altogether.
It didn’t come up.
They were absent from the room.

Frankly, what frightens me the most is that I think had I refrained from bringing Israel up at The Kitchen, I think few to no one would have complained, and most would have been secretly relieved. Even now, there are people who ask me, “Why talk about Israel in shul? Let’s focus on the spiritual.” And while I understand that inclination, and I think it is an understandable position, I think in this time and place, I just can’t abide by it. There’s too much at stake. So I try to chose when and how to address Israel with care but we do talk about it.

In fact, I actually think shul is the best place to talk about Israel because even if we disagree, if the community is working, we are stuck with each other, and we can talk about the issues of the day in the context of Torah, we can argue about things over time. And if we know each other from a larger context, from Shabbat and being together at a shiva and celebrating Purim I think we have a chance at being decent with one another when we disagree.

In San Francisco, I knew that no amount of pro-Israel talking points would get more unconnected people connected. I had to start with offering an exposure to what I felt was the unvarnished truth and hope that the truth would at least help the people to understand that this was not a sell job, that Israel mattered so much to me that I was willing to make us all extremely uncomfortable in service of not just connecting them to Israel but engaging them in a larger role – the role of helping to shape the future of Israel and the larger Israeli – American conversation. I wanted them to understand: there is something real here, something real and worthwhile and, yes, difficult, and it has everything to do with you and your life.

So we brought the smartest, most compelling scholars and journalists, too many to list.

And I spoke, on Shabbat, from things I learned in Torah, I spoke in stark terms about the limiting danger of a survivalism that supersedes moral responsibility, I spoke about the occupation and the obligation of building a social democracy in our Jewish home. I spoke about this a lot, and each time I would sweat it out.

I did not mince words and we lost some nice people along the way, people who did not like hearing about Israel in shul. Or, they did not like hearing what I was saying.

At one point, we sent out a Kitchen email and a funder told us that if we used a certain word in our email again, we would lose $50K.

I am so out of it I thought the bad word was, “Palestine.” Turns out it is “Occupation.”

But you know, I have and will think very hard about using that word in an email again, that is how censorship works. These are the things I weigh: Is that word in that next email necessary for the sake of heaven? Or will it just be another log on the proverbial fire?

And: What good is money if we can’t tell the truth?

Overall, I think what we have done is working.
That is, first, we have Kitchen-ites who now regularly talk about Israel / Palestine, they come and hear the scholars and lectures, we went on a profound trip, we met a wide range of activists, artists, scholars. It was not a subsidized trip, and this time and money that the participants offered, this is a big deal, a big commitment. And these are people who I think really, truly would have not shown up in this conversation were it not for us bringing it up all the time in ways they could respect.

In the next seven years I think it is time to bring in more controversial views, which, for The Kitchen will mean a few speakers from the right.
After all, heaven demands more than one point of view.
And I am working to create a group of emerging leaders, here and in Israel, people who will apply and pay to learn in an intensive program concerning America and Israel with the aim of rising into leadership, and committing to work on a problem together.

Heaven demands, the ideas and problems are so serious they demand, our sincere efforts to try and know one another, here and in Israel, as we argue this one out.

And None Shall Be Afraid

Achrei Mot // Kedoshim 2018
Noa Kushner

I was in Alabama just two days ago, standing at the National Center for Peace and Justice
A memorial dedicated to the victims of white supremacy. 
We were just a few blocks away is The Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.

I was there with Michael and my three daughters and 85 people from The Kitchen and GLIDE, all of us in this holy, difficult, intensely painful place.

There is a lot to say, trust me, you will be hearing about this visit for a long time, 
And for those of you in The Kitchen, actually, why stop there, for anyone here, 
If I have anything to do with it, you will be going yourselves. 
But this Shabbat I wanted to share one small vantage point
This week when we read the portion of Kedoshim / holiness. 

I can’t really explain how brokenhearted we were by what we saw, read, learned, owned, relearned, and witnessed. 
And at the same time, even though there are parts of our country’s history that bring me deep shame
I still felt proud to be there among the people of many colors, many of us dressed for the occasion, thousands and thousands of pilgrims descending on Montgomery, 
Each of us looking at each other in the eye and greeting one another on the street as if to say, THIS moment marks the birth of the next chapter of the real America, we are building the future of this country right now. 

See there was an understanding among us that
If we started by acknowledging together what has happened, 
what still happens
If we started with truth
The truth could set us free, 
The truth would give us a quality of freedom we have never known.  

I kept thinking of the piece of the verse from Micah (4:3-4)

V’lo yilmadu od milchama / They will not learn war any more
V’yashvu eish tachat gafno / v’tachat t’einato
Each will sit under his vine and under her fig tree
V’ain machrid / And none shall be afraid

I realized there on the streets of Alabama
How corrosive and toxic racism is in almost every interaction we have
How we have been making each other afraid
How we tell one another we are colorblind here in San Francisco
While underneath, everyone one of us is sick with a kind of fear
Those with the privilege, sick with fear
And those targeted by racism, the people with heavy burdens, sick with fear
Those of us who pass but only with the constant concern we will be found out for who we are, sick with fear
Those of us who have no choice but to wear our race on our faces, sick with fear
We are sick from swimming in a river of mistrust and lies
We are sick from walking so carefully on this manicured lawn that we know is filled with pits and traps

We are uneasy and on guard the way a family that keeps a great and tragic secret is uneasy and on guard
We cannot fully exhale, we cannot stand tall.

I realized all this
Because when I walked on the streets of Montgomery
I saw in the people around me
And I felt in myself
Maybe for the first time in my life in America
No one, no one, was afraid 

V’ain machrid / Ain! None! And none shall make them afraid
V’ain machrid / And none shall be afraid
And I’m telling you, the air felt different.

Not because we were only with those just like us
Not because some were left out of the conversation
In our group alone we had a vast range of experiences and classes and backgrounds
As different on paper as different could be
But we were bound together easily with truth

We were bound together with our willingness to confront the truth, no matter how unspeakable it was or is:
The truth of 12 million slaves
The truth of 2 million who died in passage
The truth of hundreds and hundreds of years of families torn apart, legalized abuse
The truth of Emancipation without the tools for survival, without land to own
The truth of asking people to pick themselves up by their bootstraps when they don’t have boots
The truth of decades of Segregation / 
The truth of Jim Crow and the racial terror of almost 5,000 public lynchings
The truth of our current justice system that claims it is impartial but rewards or penalizes people for the color of one’s skin
The truth of Mass incarceration / of the 2.3 million incarcerated
The truth of an America that holds more prisoners than any other country in the world 

It was that truth and heartbreak upon heartbreak that bound us together
And yes, I am positive that people of color had wholly different experiences than I, 
I tried to take up just my amount of space and no more.

But I can tell you because I witnessed it in the eyes of everyone I met, 
Even the most cutting truths did not make us afraid
V’ain machrid / No one was making us afraid
We were not making each other afraid
We were not afraid of each other
We were not afraid

That is the power of telling a story, Lucy
That is power of telling the truth.
It allows us to leave at least one kind of fear behind.

You live in times of great choices, Lucy
Great and important things are being decided in our time
The story of our country is being rewritten
And different forces are all trying to grab the pen that will write it

So since I know you understand the power of words
The power of stories
I hope you will help to write the truth
I hope you will use your power and imagination and chesed / lovingkindness
(Oy, I never have a met such a pure chesed as the one that shines in you)
You must use that compassion and kindness to help us write the new story.
That is my blessing for you

And I want to leave you with a last image
Because you talked about putting a stumbling block before the blind
How our tradition and the rabbis see that command, 
How they teach that putting a stumbling block before the blind means a prohibition against any act that conceals or misinforms someone who would be hurt by that concealment.

And what I want to leave you with is that sometimes we put those blocks in front of our own eyes, don’t we?
Sometimes we don’t allow ourselves to see
That is what our trip to Alabama was about
An effort to remove those blocks, to peel away the blinders, to try and see

And the image I want to give you see is that
We, hundreds of faith leaders and believers were standing in the memorial
Early in the morning for an opening service

And that memorial remember, it is a place that remembers the many innocent who were victims of organized racial terror, lynchings
And there, there are these six foot, steel monuments, all boxes, hundreds of them, rows of rectangles which are inscribed with names of the victims, at least the names we know, and they are at eye level when you come in
But deeper inside, the ground slopes down so that those monuments are now hanging a few feet above our heads

With all the monuments, the deeper you go, 
there is not a lot of light, it is quiet and mostly dark in the center
So early in the morning there we were all pressed together in center there to hear clergy offer words
And prayers
And one leader spread out four powerful singers throughout the group
And they led us in Amazing Grace

Amazing Grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost
But now am found
Was blind but now I see

We sang it over and over
In this condensed group of people
I once was lost but now am found
I was blind but now I see
Over and over we sang, like angels, like a heavenly choir
I closed my eyes and felt the presence of the many
So that when the prayer ended and I opened my eyes again
The monuments still hung, the many names were still above my head
Names now permanently recorded in history and in my heart

And along with the names, between those names, I now also saw the slivers of sky
I also saw the eyes of the living, shining faces of the people around me as if for the first time
I took it all in and thought: I was blind but now I see. 

Standing From a Distance

Noa Kushner//Parashat Terumah 5778

I hate when it just so happens that the bar / bat mitzvah kids get the torah portion with the curses, the section in Torah where God warns us what it will be like when our society falls apart.
First of all the curses are graphic and theologically fraught.
It’s hard to explain a loving God in the face of all these horrible images.
And no serious religious person that I know believes in a God who would punish in these ways,
Or, frankly do I know anyone who believes that God that would dole out rewards like an animal trainer.
God just doesn’t work like that.
Just, it is not easy to explain all these layers to a 13 year old.
But I was thinking exactly of the curses this week after our shooting in Florida.
Not because I think God is cursing us, no, but because I think there have been so many shootings for so long,
that it is not a curse God sent us,
but one, I’m afraid, we are bringing on ourselves.

In devarim it says in this list of curses:
“Your sons and daughters will be given to another people
And your eyes will look and search everywhere for them all your days… (28:32).”

I think this is how many of us feel this Shabbat --
Another group of lost young people, “Our eyes will search for them all our days.”
But what turns it from a once-in-a-generational tragedy, to a curse that must be broken, is that we know
That this moment, this moment of sorrow and agony, will pass as it has before,
It will come and go, come and go, we’ve seen this many, many times now
And we will become consumed with the next thing.

And we realize,
It is hazy but we start to realize,
We’ve recovered from so many shootings in the schools and the offices and the movie theaters and the restaurants and parks and concerts and the schools, again the schools…

We realize not only how many times we’ve recovered, we realize just how we’ve recovered – namely, we’ve recovered by going back to business as usual
We have a well documented national pattern now of retreating into denial
It’s a chart on social media, it’s a meme.

So we begin to understand that as the violence happens again and again,
This week in a school, slain high school students
That we are not completely innocent, how can we be?
We realize that we have not done enough since the last time
since there is a this time
We realize that our children’s lives are being wasted
“Our eyes will search for them all our days.”

And, maybe it is just me but it seems that each time
The tragedy comes closer and closer to us.
Like a storm circling
Now it is someone’s cousin, now a girl from camp
Now a nice Jewish girl, now four nice Jewish kids
Could be one of ours, is close to being one of ours.

And I am afraid
I don’t want to be alive on the day when it touches us directly.
I don’t want to have to stand in front of you and speak knowing we could have done something more.
It is hard enough to live through the tragedies that were unavoidable, the accidents.
I don’t think I can live through it, I don’t want to do that funeral.
And the fear that I might have to is what causes me to speak so plainly tonight.

Maybe this moment in our country is what God was talking about in Torah in this section of curses that we read only in hushed whispers.
Maybe Torah is trying to teach us that society is fragile, a web, a delicate multilayered multifaceted ecosystem of creation
And without our vigilance and effort and constant building, without our work, without our faith in each other and our purpose here, it easily falls apart.

This is what I try to teach our bar / bat mitzvah students on this sections of Torah.
The underlying idea, the teaching of the section of curses
The reason it is in our Torah
Is to offer to us that what happens to us in our society is not predetermined,
See the curses are side by side with the blessings of safety, security, sanctuary and joy.
So while we do not get to decide everything in the world, far from it, 
It is up to us whether we take care of just ourselves or also each other. Torah is saying by articulating the very worst that the stakes are that high,
Things can get this bad or we can turn towards the best, towards light, see, we are not victims of circumstance, so much is up to us.

II. Miriam

In Torah, Miriam is one of the few who is called a Neviah / a prophet
And so the rabbis point out moments where Miriam surely demonstrated her prophetic prowess.
For example, they teach that when all the married couples refused to be together, refused to make new babies – because, with Pharaoh killing the babies, what was the point? --
Miriam, little Miriam, is said to have yelled at her parents that they were worse than Pharaoh. That they were doing Pharaoh’s job for him, that they needed to have faith and to make new life.
Precocious Miriam.

Then, not much later, according to the rabbis, Miriam prophesies that Moshe will be born and will redeem everyone. So when Moshe is indeed born and the whole house is filled with light and it is clear that Moshe will be extraordinary, Miriam’s father comes to kiss her on the head saying, “Your prophecy has been fulfilled.”
Miriam haneviah / Miriam the prophet.

But then, in the same midrash, only a lines later, we find Moshe’s mother, Yocheved, has to put her precious Moshe in a basket in the river Nile, risking his life. She’s worried Moshe won’t survive, of course she’s furious. And so the rabbis say that right before Yocheved puts Moshe in the Nile, she comes over to Miriam and hits her on the head, saying, “Where’s your prophecy now?” (Shemot Rabba 1:22)

I think about poor, vulnerable Miriam in that moment.
She got to bask in the glow of her optimism for months, her stubborn and fierce optimism
But now, in this moment, not knowing what will happen, she stands alone on the edge of the Nile
Watching as her brother floats away
The evidence is mounting
Her large role in what looks to be an inevitable tragedy is now undeniable
The sting of the smack from her mother on her head
She stands alone at the edge of the Nile.
She stands far off
VaTetatzav achoto me’rachok / she (his sister) stationed herself at a distance.
L’deah mah ye’aseh lo. / To know what would happen to him, to her brother.

We want to say in that moment to Miriam: “It looks horrible right now but what you have done, the risk, it is not for nothing. Don’t stand so far away. It’s not over yet.”

And then the rabbis suggest, they interpret, it is not only Miriam standing there but God.
That is, God is Miriam, stationed at a distance in that moment,
For if Miriam is feeling remorse and fear about her optimism and frightened by the depths of her vulnerability and the price of her prophecy,
If Miriam is feeling helpless and scared for trying
God, too, is at a distance,
Maybe also wondering if the price of trying for freedom in the world is too high
God is also, if not helpless, then is still, at a distance, not able to force a just outcome.

For in case it is not obvious yet, God is dependent on us.
If babies are thrown away it is up to us to save them, in Torah and now.
God can make the miracles in the world but cannot save us from each other.
So God herself waits by the river’s edge, is stationed there, from a distance, to hope and pray and see what we will do.

III.

Maybe like Miriam we cannot fathom how it came to be this way.
We remember a time, seems so recent, when the proverbial house was filled with light.
When it seemed the arc was bending towards moral justice.
When the idea of someone slaughtering others in a peaceful public space was inconceivable.
We are struck and confused, much like Miriam, wondering: How did we get so lost? How did this come to be?
Our head stings from the latest slap.
“Where is our prophecy now?”

But we cannot afford to stay locked and transfixed, we cannot afford to lose faith.
In our story, Miriam gets over her shock, actively waits to see who else might be there to help, she works with Pharaoh’s daughter, the most unlikely partner and is right there in the precise right moment to arrange for Moshe’s needs. To make sure he thrives and we become free. Now this is a prophet. Because a Jewish prophet is someone who makes her prophesy come true. Who shakes off her fear and wills her redemptive prophecy into being with sheer courage.

IV.

I don’t know if Miriam was waiting by the banks of the Nile in order to help all the other babies who were thrown in. (Maybe this is what makes the midwives so extraordinary, why they receive houses in their name, they helped even those they did not know.) But it seems that Miriam, like most of us, stood apart until it meant the life of her own brother.

Maybe what will help us to wake ourselves up, to overcome our self-imposed distance, is to think of these latest kids as ours.
Maybe we need to spend time knowing the seventeen students who were killed; maybe we need to carry them around on our backs, on our shoulders, as if we are their pallbearers.

Maybe we need to get closer to the details of their lives, until they become like our brothers and sisters, like our children. Maybe we need to know just for starters that Alyssa, was a champion debater, and an amazing soccer player. Can you picture her? Maybe we need to know that Nicholas was on a major upswing in his short life, just having been recruited by the University of Indianapolis for swimming. Imagine his butterfly. Maybe we need to inscribe on our hearts that Joaquin Oliver was a poet who filled up notebooks. What was his handwriting like? That Meadow Pollack was unstoppable and worked at her boyfriend’s family’s motorcycle repair business. Her grit. That Alex Schachter, who lost his mother at five, played the trombone in the marching band. What was his father’s face like when he heard the news? Maybe if we remember them as our brothers and sisters we will find the strength to wake ourselves up. To shake ourselves out of our stupor. We don’t have to live at a distance like this. Like Miriam, we can create a new prophecy. We don’t have to live cursed like this, this is a curse of only our time, it wasn’t always this way and through our voting and lobbying and demonstrating and fundraising, and giving, and refusing to stop until we make some progress, we can choose blessing instead.

V.

I sat next to a tzaddik at an event for Janice Mirikatani, one of the founders of GLIDE. For once, I am not being hyperbolic. This woman, GLIDE macher, Jewish by the way, raised nine immigrant children who were in danger of being deported, starting in the 1960’s. Her husband, across the table, held up nine shaky fingers to emphasize the number of their kids to me. They gave them education and health care, love and a way into this country. She now counts 53 grandchildren. Like most feisty Jewish grandmothers she was very matter of fact about the whole thing. I kept asking her, was there a role model, a source, a narrative, what was it that allowed her to live with such righteousness? She was emphatic that there was nothing that drove her, rather, she could not imagine living any other way. “What else would I do with my life?” She asked me, “They were in danger. So I brought them into my house and made them my children.”

I told her she was a tzaddik but she could’ve cared less. She had already built her life around the truth of helping other people and the truth of that was way more gratifying than of my admiration. Rather than stand at a distance, she had gone in the river, not to save everyone but to save enough souls so that she looked half her age, her smile came easily, and even when she was raising her voice, which was actually during the entire conversation, she didn’t seem angry. Because she had seen the curses of the world and instead chosen to be a blessing.

She is the living embodiment of what Torah means when it says in this week’s parasha, and I’ll end here:
V’asu li mikdash
“Build me a sanctuary that I might live among you.”

This is not about a building fund.
This is not even about a building.
This is about creating a sanctuary in our hearts, in our homes and in our society where God and righteousness can dwell, can thrive, where people can be safe.

V’asu li mikdash is about claiming more brothers, sisters, children as our own.
A safe society: That is a real mikdash / a real collective sanctuary,
The country as a mikdash / a sanctuary for all.
That is a prophecy worthy of Miriam the neviah,
The kind of prophecy worth us risking to realize.
The kind of blessing worth having,
And our wanting it, it is not futile, it is not hopeless, we mustn’t despair, building this sanctuary, this kind of a society, it is not beyond us, it is closer than we realize, it is actually within our reach.

​​​​​​What are you waiting for?

Noa Kushner // Mishpatim 2018

Sometimes we’re just waiting and it is… agonizing.
We are so aware we are waiting for whatever it is, whoever
It’s excruciating, all this waiting

Now the iphones / or ipharaohs as I like to call them
Have actually changed our perception of waiting
Because we can almost always be entertained or “connected”
We can forget that we are waiting.

But still
Maybe you can remember a time when there was nothing on the whole world wide internet that could provide enough distraction
We can conjure up how it was
Maybe we were in the doctor’s office, somewhere waiting
Waiting for test results
Waiting to see if this time it would work out
Waiting for the plane to take off
Waiting for our beloved to return
For the letter to come from your daughter at summer camp
For the call from the potential employer
For the call back from the one whom you offended and apologized
And now you are waiting for the call back
Waiting for the day to end
For the sun to come up
Or maybe waiting for something even bigger than all these
Sometimes we don’t even realize we are waiting, we have gotten so used to the weight of it for so long

I was thinking about waiting rooms
And I was feeling the certain relief of a waiting room
Because, even if we don’t know the outcome in the waiting room
The waiting, has been defined, hasn’t it?
It is between four walls
even if the doctor is very late this waiting has an endpoint.

Yehuda Amichai has a poem where he talks about the waiting room of Torah and all the people inside
Job hunkering down waiting for more bad news
The waiting room of Moses in the desert
Where he paces back and forth and doesn’t sit still for an instant.
Amicha ends the poem with the line:

And all of us
Wait with them
in a rustle of wings
And a flutter of newspapers
And coughs and sighs and whispered conversations—
We wait for the door to be opened by the angel in white
And behind that angel the blinding white light.

As if to say, life is a waiting room and when the waiting ends, life itself ends.
As if to say, there is no time when we are not waiting for something, many things, there is no time when we are not anticipating something else is coming
There is no time when don’t somewhere know, somewhere in us, that we don’t get to live forever
And so we are always waiting for or at least anticipating one thing, whether we are aware of it or not.

So the question becomes, the question that weaves in and out of our lives
The answers changing:
What are we waiting for? How are we waiting?

How can we learn to wait for something truly new, to imagine something on another level, so that we don’t just wait for the same things over and over?

How can we understand all this waiting
as an active waiting
As in, I am not only waiting, waiting is what you see on the outside, I may seem as if I am perfectly still, I may be indistinguishable from the person next to me
But inside,
something is growing, something is going on
And this waiting is the beginning of growth.

I am thinking about waiting because in Torah this week and the upcoming weeks we have two kinds of waiting going on simultaneously
One very different from the other.

See in this week’s parasha, Mishpatim
Moshe will goes up on Sinai receiving the aseret hadibrot, the ten commandments
Fourty days and fourty nights
He is not waiting, he is receiving or writing or creating moral DNA or coding the universe or whatever we think happened there
But everyone else is, as you might remember, at the bottom of the mountain, a ways away.
And there’s a midrash that we were waiting for Moshe to come back
But the thing is, we were ONLY waiting
In fact,
We were desperate for Moshe to come back
See, according to tradition, even though we had witnessed all these full scale miracles, the ones that got us out of Egypt
Maybe because of these miracles,
Even though, because either way
we were used to either a totalitarian dictator, Pharaoh, or a high octane, high presence God – represented of course by Moshe and only Moshe
The rabbis say that we were not free yet
Rather in leaving Egypt we had just traded our round the clock Pharaoh boss for Moshe
Someone we believed was as all controlling as Pharoah, just with more power.
We hadn’t really found God say the rabbis
Or ourselves
So that when, in the parasha in a few weeks, Moshe is late coming down
Some say he was six months late
Some say he was six days late
Some say he was only six seconds late
We were so undone, so strung out from the waiting
Waiting without any understanding of the possibility of our growth,

That when (according to midrash) Moshe did not come back right when we expected
The feeling of waiting and anxiety was so severe
We collapsedWe could not wait any longer
And out of desperation
We made a Golden Calf / a Moshe – Pharaoh substitute right on the spot
We prayed to it and danced around it in a trance saying, “This is God.”

See, when you are waiting that intensely without understanding that the waiting can be a precursor to growth
Everything, even a golden calf statue, could quickly and easily become your God. 
 

See, we thought, mistakenly, that if we had a golden calf
We could stave off the excruciating feeling of waiting and not being filled
We thought, mistakenly, that Moshe’s absence was the whole problem
And the lack of security that seemed to go with it
We had not yet learned that we are always waiting
That being free is getting used to the waiting, learning what to do with it, Maybe learning how to plant something in that waiting
Learning how to transform that waiting into growing.

There is a second image of waiting, this one in our parasha
I had never noticed it until now, maybe you didn’t either

In fact, this second kind of waiting is only hinted at -- when Moshe is getting ready to ascend Sinai at last.
And Torah says:
Va yakam Moshe v’ Yehoshua m’sharto /
And Moses rose with Joshua his servant

V’ya’al Moshe el har ha-elohim /
And Moses went up to the mountain of God

So all we know from this is two things:
(1) Joshua (Moses’ close student) gets up with Moshe at a key moment, and (2) then Moshe goes up Sinai alone. 

And we also know that when Moshe is coming back down from Sinai, 
In the middle of what will be the golden calf fiasco
Right before Moshe sees what is going on and in bitter disappointment and anger breaks the tablets  
Moshe first sees and talks with Joshua who seems to be right where Moshe left him, Joshua’s been waiting by himself at the foot of the mountain. 

So, in other words, now we understand, while Moshe was on Sinai and Israelites were losing their minds and building idols, Joshua is by himself, also waiting the whole time but just quietly and loyally. 

Which makes the rabbis wonder: How did Joshua survive all alone? What did he eat? 

And it makes me wonder, 
how is it that Joshua, who (according to Rashi) just a few chapters ago was so worried about the idea of Moshe dying he could even tolerate hearing the words spoken out loud – 

How is it that Joshua, here, all alone, not only survives the prolonged absence of his teacher

He has the emotional presence to greet Moshe, right when Moshe comes off the mountain, Joshua doesn’t even ask for anything, only tries to help. 

We want to know: What is the nature of this kind of waiting, what keeps Joshua whole?

I have two answers:
First, Rashi (our 11th century supercommentator) says: 
I do not know what Joshua’s role is here. 
But I think he was escorting the master until the place where the limits of the mountain were set.
(Meaning, everyone knew only Moshe could go up Sinai and so Joshua took Moshe as far as he could go.)

What keeps Joshua whole? I think maybe it is because Joshua has a role to play, he has a role to accompany Moshe as far as he can possibly go and then no further. Maybe Moshe should have given all of Israel this explicit role. To help send Moshe off and receive him again. 

Because when we have this role, when we accompany someone we love as far as we can possibly go and no further, even if we cannot go with them, we realize our importance
To them, to us
We are not empty, far from it
We might, a piece of us, wish we could go completely with them
But we are not empty 

Like a parent accompanying a bride before she reaches the chuppah
Like going with someone to the hospital – this far but not into surgery
Like watching someone you love soar from peering in her classroom window, from the front row
Like leviat hamet / like accompanying our dead to the grave
We walk as close to those we love as we possibly can, we carry them, and then there is a line we cannot cross
Because as much as we love them, we can’t go with them
We stay where we are and we are important from where we stand, to them and to us.

This sending off and receiving someone back, sometimes in a different way (even though death) is one of the great tasks of life and Joshua has discovered it. By giving himself this role, by waiting in this way, casting and receiving, loving and releasing, he is able to stay grounded in his waiting. 

“Moshe is coming back,” He thinks to himself. “And I will be here to greet him.” 

And I want to suggest a second answer for why Joshua stays whole:
That maybe during these 40 days and 40 nights
Joshua sees that even all alone, even without Moshe present, he still exists.
He sees hIs life is not a yawning gap waiting to be filled
And he begins to understand that waiting can also be the beginning of something
A beginning of growing into someone else

Maybe Joshua doesn’t see this on the first day
Maybe the first few nights even are lonely and frightening
But I imagine that he starts to understand, as the hours pass

That even if he cannot fully realize it now
The reality that Moshe will die
And one day Joshua will take the place of Moshe
He understands on a deep level this reality

Maybe not to be realized today but one day
He starts to hear it
He starts to see that he has something within himself
He sees that (ah ha!) even without Moshe, he can keep some of Moshe in him
That there are many ways to keep someone’s presence very close
And so the waiting becomes growing
He opens up to who he might be
And the waiting strengthens his faith. 

Finally, you know there’s a tradition that when Moshe dies much later, Joshua will write the last eight lines of the Torah – the lines that describe the death of Moshe and ready us to enter the promised land
Joshua will lead us there
And his book, the book of Joshua, will follow and describe it

And so, given everything, I am convinced it is during these moments in the desert
When Moshe is receiving the Torah
That quietly, at the very same time, 
Just as Moshe receives most of our Torah on high, on the mountain topIn opening his eyes to what might be, to who he might be, 
In understanding that he is not just waiting, there is something growing at this very moment
Joshua is receiving his first eight lines down below.  

Parashat Shemot

R. Noa Kushner // Parashat Shemot 5778

So I am teaching Torah Love, which is what we call the bar / bat mitzvah class
with kids and parents.
You know why we call it that?
Because I know they will have their beautiful b’nai mitzvah, but we want them to
know why, we want them to love Torah.
So I am teaching them, happens to be this week’s parasha, parashat shmot, and
Moshe is at the burning bush/
And I ask the class what questions they have about the story.
(The whole class, the whole secret to loving Torah is finding great questions.)
And, one by one, each kid asks some version of, “Why was Moses chosen?”
“What makes Moses special?”
“What makes Moses, Moses?”
And so on.

And I have admit that I was worried, like why were all the kids so focused on
what made Moshe extraordinary? Didn’t they have a single question about God
or the burning bush or slavery or what it would take to free the Israelites?

Were we all now hopelessly doomed to think only about ourselves and our own
qualities and what makes us special so we could all promote ourselves?
Was this somehow Trump’s fault?

I went home a little defeated.
But then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized the rabbis had the same
question.
The rabbis also wanted to know, “Why Moshe?”

Because, when you read the story, you can’t help but think, whether you are
Rashi in the 11 th century or a 7 th grader in Kitchen’s Kitchen Torah love class:

What could God possibly see in this guy?

Let’s look at Moshe together.
He’s wandering in the midbar / in the wilderness, with only the sheep, having
imaginary conversations with all people whom he despises --
(You think you have parent issues, Moshe’s step dad was PHARAOH)
-- Moshe is out there having imaginary conversations with his enemies, that they
deserve his fury doesn’t matter, because Moshe hasn’t done anything except
hate them.

Okay, we should give Moses at least some credit for leaving the palace, the
place of security and wealth. And Moses was willing to cut ties with those around
him who think slavery is just the way it has to be.
But still, he is all negation and no plan, he does not risk anything in himself in
order to build something.

And so the rabbis search for the answers:
Why Moshe?
Maybe he has, as my father R. Lawrence Kushner has taught, the patience to
see the slow miracle, that the bush was on fire but not consumed. If you have
ever watched a fire you know it takes some time, shows persistence.

Or maybe, as my friend R. David Kasher taught from Exodus Rabbah taught this
week, by turning to look, Moshe demonstrated he can see an inkling of a
something, he can see what is not yet there.

Or maybe, as I have taught, it is not only that Moshe stops, he asks maduah /
why? “Why is it that the bush does not burn up?”
It is because he asks “Why,” the question that opens the possibility that maybe,
there is another way – this is why he is chosen. Because Moshe knows that
things don’t have to be as they are.

But, actually, after thinking about it this year, I think the exact point is that Moshe
was...not much overall.

Let’s put it this way: If Moses was indeed destined from the beginning, even if he
had something innate, then so far he wasn’t capable of demonstrating it with any
particular aplomb.

He’s kind of a mess, actually.
We could say he is a recluse, still running from something that happened
decades ago.

In fact, in this less charitable reading, Moses is operating on such a basic level
that God has to resort to Vegas style pyrotechnics to even get the conversation
started.

Remember God doesn’t have to make any miracles to get the attention of
anyone else who is important. So far, God just sort of calls out to them and they
talk back, ready. In fact, the midwives don’t need any word from God at all.
And the miracle itself, not to be disrespectful, but it is kind of starter level – not
exactly seas splitting, you know?

Just a lowly bush that is burning, and even the rabbis have wondered – why
didn’t the miracle happen in something a little more dignified? A nice palm tree?
(Shir Hashirim Rabba 3:10).

Not to mention, famously, God has to keep asking Moshe to get involved,
promising him divine protection, all kinds of tricks and proofs, over and over and
over. It gets to the point where God becomes furious in the face of Moshe’s
repeated refusals and self-negation, his abdication of responsibility, God gets
furious that Moshe can’t begin to play the role, let alone own it.

Moshe seems at the very least, an unlikely partner.

Not to mention, as Dena Weiss taught this week (Machon Hadar weekly Torah
on Shemot), Moshe is not the only one in this scene who is at a low point in his
career. Up until now, God has only been playing in the local theaters, if you know
what mean.

This next chapter is about to be God’s national tour with world changing
consequences. So all conditions point to God need to pick the most eager, able
partner.

Which only makes the scene more confusing, more confounding: If Moshe is so
recalcitrant, why Moshe at all?

I mean, okay, I’ll grant that obviously Torah seems to have Moshe in mind from
the start, we follow Moshe’s story closely from the time he was born all the way
through his early life.

But I still think there is something significant in the fact that at this moment the
whole thing could go either way. It could be a story about a baby who was born,
hidden in a basket in the Nile, raised in the palace and who ran away. God says
To Moshe: “Tell Pharoah, ‘Let my people go,’ and Moshe says, “No.” God picks a
more willing partner, the end.

So why does God stick with Moshe? Why is it important that the hero be
underwhelming at the start?

Because Moshe is like most of us.
We, too are born in conditions we did not choose.
We, too are raised in places and countries and contexts where the values seem
obviously, hopelessly, endlessly corrupt.
We, too, handle things inconsistently.
We, too, can feel like we are wandering in the wilderness, having accomplished
almost nothing.

We, too, in response to the calls of suffering, can still catch ourselves saying, “Mi
Anochi?” / “Who am I to try and fix it?” And, “What if they don’t believe me?” We
too, can hear ourselves staying, just like Moshe, “I just don’t have the tools. I
don’t even have the beginning of the beginning of what I might need.”

We, too, can imagine ourselves saying,
“Send someone else. Make it someone else. Please. Anyone else.”

Because we too, have not always figured out how to move from the outsider or
the critic to the active protagonist in our own stories, let alone the stories of our
communities, and our time.

So the question for us this Shabbat, in this moment in our country’s history, is
not, will we hear the call, for those calls to step up and wake up and stay awake
and be agitated and angry are now ricocheting around the globe it seems from
each and every corner at a rapid fire pace, unlike the subtle burning bush, the
calls now are unavoidable, they are like a hailstorm, and I dare say there is not
one of us who has not heard at least a few.

No, the question is not about hearing the call,
The question is Moshe’s question: Will we step forward?
Will we, intentionally or begrudgingly, Judaism doesn’t much care, will we
generate the modicum of necessary continual strength to step in the ring and
stay?
Will we have the discipline to respond?

Will the story of the Exodus, the facing down of oppressors and freeing of the
oppressed, end with one insecure, uncomfortably relatable shepherd who says
no again and again?
Or can he, can we, put whatever it is aside and realize all our neuroticism and
grand planning and ego gymnastics cannot take the place of one regular and
serious commitment?

And for those of us who don’t know what the action should be, I am here to tell
you that agonizing about the best way to act is just a higher level of
procrastinating.
Talking about it, even sermonizing about it, just isn’t enough.

You, I, we each have to do one thing with regularity. Sincerity is appreciated, but
if we wait until we are sincere we may never do it, so the tradition says, go ahead
and do it, don’t wait for angels to sing.

And if we are at a loss for where to start we can, like 120 Kitchen-ites are doing,
start going to Glide (in fact 15 Kitchen-ites were there this morning serving
breakfast), we can join up with a group like Bend the Arc that is organizing for
criminal justice reform in California, we could work to figure out how to win the
next election (find Kitchen-ite Robert Fram, he has a plan). There’s no shortage
of ways to donate the amount of time or money equivalent to the corners of our
fields, and we can help you, this is what it means to do Jewish, to be part of the
larger camaraderie of the decent.

You see it is not only Moses who is standing and listening, we are standing.
And the calls are nonstop, the evidence is mounting, the Pharoah is not getting
any weaker by our absence, and God is losing patience.

So, really, the question is only if will we have the discipline to sacrifice our
comfort or convenience or relationships or status or security in order to do what’s
needed with regularity in order to bring about a world in which we want to live.

You see, after all this divine arguing and negotiating, it’s funny, Moses never
says, “Yes.” Never says, “Okay, God, you win.” Instead, Moses only starts the
work of making arrangements: He asks his father in law for permission to go to
Egypt, he gets on the road, he tells his brother what they are about to do, they
begin.

Moses never says, “Yes,” I think, because he never feels ready.
Rather, it is only once Moshe starts acting the part can he grow into being
sometimes, mostly ready.

R. Arnold Jacob Wolf, z”l wrote: “Freud meant us when he said that words do not
express so much as suppress, that only acts can dissipate ambivalence.” (Arnold
Jacob Wolf, Unfinished Rabbi, p. 87).

So in the end, Moses, against all his better instincts, never says “Yes,” never
says anything to end that conversation with God, but instead, puts on his sandals
again and goes back to the palace where it all started, he goes to the very place
he does not want to go and is not welcome.

But something about the fact that he gets out of his head and out of the
wilderness,
something about the fact that in spite of all of it he goes,
something about that act is so powerful it reverberates around the world and
back again.

And because of those acts for once, the oppressors do not automatically win.
And because of those acts for once, brute force does not automatically rule the
day.

The changes don’t happen quickly or efficiently, the leaving of Egypt and the
beginning of freedom is messy, messier, more costly than anyone could’ve ever
imagined.

But make no mistake, the moment when Moses drags himself begrudgingly onto
the scene and into action, he makes just enough room for God and justice to
enter the world once again.