Ha Lachma Anya - Shabbat HaGadol

 “Ha Lachma Anya! This is the bread of our affliction! This is the bread of affliction that our ancestors ate in the land of Egypt. All those who are hungry, let them enter and eat. All who are in need, let them come celebrate the Passover. Now we are here. Next year in the land of Israel. This year we are slaves. Next year we will be free!”

It’s a real invitation because in just a few haggadah sections we’ll literally break matzah and eat the festive meal, in theory, inviting others to join us in doing so.

The Association for Experiential Education understands experiential education as "a philosophy that informs many methodologies in which educators purposefully engage with learners in direct experience and focused reflection in order to increase knowledge, develop skills, clarify values, and develop people's capacity to contribute to their communities." The seder is certainly a Master Class in experiential education. 

Dr. Wendy Zierler, a professor at HUC also illuminates the impressive experiential pedagogy of the seder. The seder, according to Zierler, is an example of “liberatory education,” as opposed to “oppressive education.” It elicits questions and experiences by which one is opened up to learning. This is differentiated from a dogmatic lecture which deposits knowledge into a submissive learner. (https://www.thetorah.com/article/the-haggadah-toward-a-pedagogy-of-freedom)  

This is an important pedagogic choice by the sages on a holiday that celebrates freedom. It is notably democratic and inclusive. Zierler points out that in addition to this model, various Jewish texts also discourage distinction between the rich and poor at the seder table. It is their way of expressing that this story is not reserved for the elites. This is in contrast to the Greek symposia, a contemporary of the seder when it was being developed. The seder itself is the manifestation of the freedom we are celebrating.

But seder-as-experiential-education-tool is hardly a modern take. We do a lot of imagining during the Passover seder: imagine being a slave, imagine the cries of the mothers who lost their children, imagine poverty. All of this instills an empathetic heart that should move us to action in our own time.

When it comes to the instruction of “all who are hungry, come and eat,” Rashbam (writing in 12th century France) says: “The way of the poor is to split bread, the poor need to share it. This act puts us in touch with the experience of those who hunger, that we might work in our day to share the resources we have and feed all humanity.”

12th Century sage Maimonides sees the sharing similarly. In his opinion, this is the moment to acknowledge our privilege. We should use this moment to check our own arrogance and greedy tendency to hoard resources. This is more than inspiration, “ha lachma anya” is our first experience of acting altruistically.

The matzah is perhaps the most potent symbol of the seder, an element that has been relatively unchanged by time. It’s the matzah they ate coming out of Egypt, it’s the matzah they ate in the 12th century and it's the same matzah today. 

And yet from the beginning of the seder to the end, the symbolism behind the matzah transforms. It goes from the bread that represents affliction to the bread that represents freedom. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks expands on this: “Matza represents two things: it is the food of slaves, and also the bread eaten by the Israelites as they left Egypt in liberty.” How can a slice of flat bread make the leap from slavery to freedom? 

Rabbi Sacks continues: “What transforms the bread of oppression into the bread of freedom is the willingness to share it with others....Sharing food is the first act through which slaves become free human beings. One who fears tomorrow does not offer [their] bread to others. But one who is willing to divide his food with a stranger has already shown [themselves] to be capable of fellowship and faith, the two things from which hope is born. That is why we begin the seder by inviting others to join us. Bread shared is no longer the bread of oppression. Reaching out to others, giving help to the needy and companionship to those who are alone, we bring freedom into the world, and with freedom, God.” (https://rabbisacks.org/ceremony-celebration-family-edition/ha-lachma-anya-pesach-seder-guide/)

Tonight we will prepare for this act of empathy, this act of freedom, by working as a community to share our bread. Immediately after services, we invite you to take a cookie or two and then get to work making sandwiches for Open Arms Shelter in White Plains.

It is Shabbat HaGadol, the Sabbath before Passover, the Sabbath of Miracles. We start with a small act of redemption tonight, a springboard, we pray, to larger miracles, and bigger redemptions ahead.

Coney Island

Who has been to Coney Island?

But what an amazing living artifact of New York, right? And surprise, surprise, Jews were intimately connected to its development in the modern era. For example, Nathan of Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs was Jewish.

Nathan Handwerker was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who started his humble hot dog stand on Coney Island in 1916, helping to bring crowds to Coney Island’s shores.

Every generation of New Yorkers has memories of Coney Island. If your family goes back in New York far enough, chances are your great-grandparents, your grandparents, and your parents all have a story of “that time we visited Coney Island.” It’s a generational inheritance. A joyful one.

We also know that every generation inherits and experiences its own hardships. And, every generation develops the tools to live through and grow from those experiences.

We hear a lot these days about generational trauma, the wounds that are passed from generation to generation. But as a life coach Xavier Dagba said: “As you clear your generational trauma, don’t forget to claim your generational strengths. Your ancestors gave you more than wounds.”

He’s talking about survival tools and he’s talking about generational JOY.

You get handed those strengths as much as the traumas, and Coney Island gives us an incredible story of this.

In addition to hot dogs, the Wonderwheel and the Cyclone, Coney Island is famous for its carousel.

It is a work of art as much as it is a ride. The Coney Island carousel brought the art of European carousel horses to New York and represents the beauty of folk art. It is so historically significant, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Each horse is hand carved and painted in a special style brought over and developed by Charles Carmel and Marcus Charles Illions, two Jews from Eastern Europe who fled from antisemitism in Eastern Europe in the late 1880s.

I learned about this at the Jewish Museum, where two such horses were on display. According to the Jewish Museum: “Carmel was born in Russia and trained in wood carving as a young man. He was steeped in the Eastern European Jewish tradition of intricately carved wooden Torah arks, replete with lions, deer, eagles, and other symbolic animals. After immigrating to the United States in 1883, he settled in Brooklyn, and soon began applying his skills to the crafting of carousel horses at Charles Looff’s and William F. Mangels’s workshops. There, he met three other Eastern European Jewish master carvers — who, like himself, translated their artistic repertoire from the sacred realm of the synagogue for secular use in the amusement industry.”

Illion’s story was similar: “Born in Vilnius, Illions too became immersed in the Eastern European Jewish tradition of magnificent wooden Torah arks as a young apprentice at a carving shop…By 1888, he was in New York, where he soon established his first workshop, employing young apprentices who, like himself, carried on the Eastern European Jewish wood-carving tradition.”

Who knew the art of the Coney Island carousels is inspired by late 19th century synagogue Torah arks? Learning this, and gazing into the intricate, life-like eyes of the carousel horses, I felt a chill.

True, this story’s moral could be as simple as these men seeing an opportunity to apply their skills and make a living. And that would have been enough. But my sense is that they weren’t just looking to make a buck. There seems, to me, a meaningful tie between the Torah ark’s carved wooden doors and the art that would help Illions, Carmel and others escape persecution and find a footing in the new world.

It means something that the tradition of their ancestors was precisely the tool that would save them as they sought a new life of freedom in America.

Jonathan Swift is known for saying, “everything old is new again,” but I think we Jews give this tremendous meaning. We have a toolbox of generational strengths that help us no matter the circumstances we find ourselves in.

Look at this week’s Torah portion, for example.

Tazria: it’s all about skin afflictions and how to keep a communal outbreak to a minimum. This portion has always been dismissed as stuck in ancient days and ancient maladies, yet it became wildly relevant in Covid where it taught us how quarantining was a holy act.

Furthermore, Tazria insists over and over again on trying to find a way for an afflicted person to re-enter society. Our ancient medicinal practices have inspired the way we Jews insist on congregating and community, and has probably influenced the way in which we have extended our arms wide open to people of all faiths, welcoming in folks with compassion and love.

And above all, it teaches that even through plague and persecution, we have found ways to survive - physically and spiritually.

The carousel horses Carmel and Illions carved may be affixed to their carousels, but with their wind-swept manes, bejeweled eyes and hooves in flight, they represented pure freedom - the freedom that the US offered American Jews. And just like the painted ponies of the carousel go up and down and round and round, our sense of safety and opportunity as Jews has its trials, tribulations and cycles.

Carmel and Illions sought to escape anti-semitism, but anti-semitism is one of those things that always rotates back around in one way or another - the moment we’re living in being the latest.

And yet, like the wooden horses who were inspired by the fierce cherubim on the ark doors, we’ll continue to charge forward with gusto, energetically starting over again, as our ancestors have done for millenia. And just when we wonder if we’re making any progress or we're just going in circles, we feel the wind in our faces and the simple joy in living. We hang on tight and keep riding, knowing that we inherited the tools to live and find joy from our ancestors.

Back from Sabbatical

British Writer Douglas Adams tells a story about a time he was a bit early for the train in Cambridge. He went to get himself a newspaper to do the crossword, as well as a cup of coffee and a packet of cookies. He sat down at a table. A man wearing a business suit sat down opposite him. A few moments later, Adams noticed the business man lean across, pick up the packet of cookies, tear it open, take one out and eat it. 

Adams was astounded, but [being a respectable Brit and wanting to avoid confrontation] he didn’t say anything. He simply took a cookie out of the packet for himself. But a moment or two later the man did it again. He took another cookie.

“We went through the whole packet like this,” writes Adams. “When I say the whole packet, I mean there were only about eight cookies, but it felt like a lifetime. He took one, I took one, he took one, I took one. Finally, when we got to the end, he stood up and walked away. I breathed a sigh of relief and sat back. A moment or two later the train was coming in, so I tossed back the rest of my coffee, stood up, picked up the newspaper and underneath the newspaper were — my cookies.”

“The thing I like particularly about this story,” he continued, “is the sensation that somewhere in England there has been, wandering around for the last quarter-century, a perfectly ordinary guy who's had the same exact story, only he doesn't have the punch line.”

Adams told this story as a giggly example of just how “British” he is. Subsequent bards have understood it as a lesson in perspective. And that is how it hits me. It highlights how we are so entrenched in our own narratives that often we fail to see the forest for the trees, or the cookies for the newspaper…or something like that.

Returning from my sabbatical, this anecdote resonates. Before I left, I shared that I love the ever-evolving, immersive and intimate nature of rabbinic life; and I missed it in many ways. And yet, more than anything, clergy sabbaticals are important reality checks. Rabbinic life moves at an intense pace and consists of holding grief, joy, existential questions and calm all together all the time. I love it, and I understand, deeply, the need to step away and find perspective. Normal life does not consist of the intense highs and lows of a clergy day.

And this is not unique to the rabbinate. I know we all experience this, whether in our workplaces or our homes. We often grumble as we watch our cookies get eaten only to discover they were under the newspaper the whole time. With some time and distance, we can find ourselves less jaded, less quick to judge, less myopic in our perspective.

Early on in my time away, I realized that my sabbatical would be about perspective shifting and reconnecting with my spiritual self. It was time to take parts of myself out of the freezer, so to speak.

I began with becoming certified in a program called Prepare/Enrich, which enhances clergy’s ability to work with couples, including engaged couples. Its goal is to help strengthen their partnerships. I also spent a week immersed in our tradition’s texts at the Hadar Rabbinic Yeshiva Intensive - a pluralistic neo-traditional yeshiva-style learning program in NYC. I followed that up with a trip to Philadelphia for the CCAR conference - the gathering of over 400 Reform rabbis. Both of these conference experiences nourished me spiritually as I basked in the greatness of my colleagues and teachers and learned just for the sake of learning.

I also read a lot of books - non-fiction and fiction - and rediscovered the beauty of getting lost in the page. I had lost that joy as work and motherhood filled most of my waking hours.

Like cookie crumbs, I swept jadedness away by putting myself in the presence of people and ideas larger than me.

If we are connected on Instagram or Facebook, you also know that I visited, on average, a museum a week. I used practically every free Museum Pass from the Greenburgh Library. (As a side note, my appreciation for our public libraries is at an all time high - what treasures in our communities!)

From the Met, to the Jewish Museum, to the MoMA, to the NY Historical Society, Natural History, and the Guggenheim, a common experience started to strike me. I realized I felt most enriched by large-scale installations.

One powerful experience was at the MoMa. I visited Richard Serra’s “Equal,” which the museum describes as “eight forged steel boxes stacked in pairs. Each box measures five by five and a half by six feet and weighs 40 tons in a rectangular cube. To differentiate one stack from another, Serra has rotated the position of the shorter and longer sides of the boxes. Despite the varying orientation of the individual components, each stack measures 11 feet tall. This simple construction—one block sitting atop another—yields a variety of experiences; the massive sculpture may overwhelm the viewer and, in this sublimity, invite contemplation.”

“Overwhelming” in a “sublime” way. This was exactly how I felt. The room seemed to hum. Standing in this mini-Stonehenge, I felt peaceful. It felt good to feel small, to surrender to my surroundings and accept that I need not contemplate everything in the room, or even be able to see all of it. There was no need to control or understand. I could simply exist within it.

As the weeks went on, I realized that I was spending my time finding my place in the world…not in terms of role, per se. I feel quite confident in my role as rabbi, as mother, partner, etc. But I went looking for who I am in the overwhelming shadow of the gargantuan reality of the world’s violence and desperation. In the continued unraveling of October 7th’s horrors and the swelling devastation that has come in its wake, I, like all of you, have despaired in my feelings of helplessness and indignation.

I asked myself: what can I do, one person awash in pain? As I journeyed through museums, novels, forests and even Disney World, I came to a sublime, simple conclusion: I can control those things closest to me.

I can nurture and fortify my relationships. I can articulate the values our community holds dear and make sure we manifest those values in our immediate Rivertowns and Westchester community.

This became powerfully clear to me on March 8th, when I stood in the Ardsley town square and participated as a Jewish representative in the first-ever lighting of a large crescent moon sculpture in honor of Ramadan. I was there because of some hard, but honest conversations between neighbors after October 7. Amid the pain, we realized that our job as neighbors is to help one another feel seen and safe. This security and love was the gift we could give one another in a moment when it felt like current events were tearing us apart. This, I could control.

This is just one of the many ways I put myself in context and gained some important perspective. With this comes inner calm and fresh perspective.

In my travels, I came across a passage of the Talmud (Taanit 7a), that examines a contradiction in the prophecy of Isaiah. In Isaiah 21, it commands us to “bring water to the thirsty,” but in Isaiah 55, it reads, “if you are thirsty, come for water.” The rabbis wonder aloud: which is it? Should we seek out a thirsty person and serve them or should the thirsty come and ask for water? The rabbis interpret the “thirst” here to be the “thirst for knowledge.” Rabbi Hanina bar Pappa reconciles Isaiah’s contradiction by saying that if a student is ready to learn, then you should seek them out to teach them, knowing it is what they need. But if a student is not yet ready to learn, they must begin the journey and seek a teacher themself, discovering the need on their way.

Our sages understand there are times where we will see folks parched - whether by true thirst or some other sort of need. When we sense that need, we should provide it. At other times, there is value to a person beginning to journey towards nourishment, discovering their thirst along the way and then seeking out its resolution.

My sabbatical would seem to be both of these. Three years ago, you generously provided this time in my contract, knowing that one day it would be valuable. You anticipated that need and provided for it. And when it started, I found that my journeying into it was often the lesson itself. Throughout the three months, I was able to clear away some newspapers in my brain and find some parts of myself, or some interests, that I thought had been lost.

You too are on your own journeys. My return tonight coincides with Sacred Seasons, the time when we bring you a blessing. It is also a time when you set out in search of one.

I’d love you to come join me for this sacred season of return or venturing forth - whichever it is for you.

Trust

I feel like it’s a strange time to take a sabbatical. The Jewish community feels all at once activated and depleted and hurting. There are lifecycle events I’m sad to be missing.

These moments are significant to the people going through them and they feel very special and spiritual to me personally. There are no holier spaces than the ones where we gather to sing, cry, comfort and praise together. They are holy because we are together. It’s hard to step away from something so spiritually affirming.

But when I think about it, I guess any time would be a strange time to take a sabbatical. Given that we are a community of humans in human relationships, there will always be members of our community who are sick, loved ones to bury, and babies to name. And when it comes to this moment in time, these difficult days politically and culturally, there’s really no “stepping away,” even if you do mute the news updates.

It then becomes clear to me how essential a sabbatical is. Just like you, I am activated, depleted, and hurting. Oh, and remember how we weathered a pandemic together? I am so grateful, then, for this gift you have given me - the gift of time. Thank you for giving me space to learn, rest, reconnect, and foster my own spirituality so that I can continue to help you do the same.

All that said, while the last few years, and especially the last few months, have brought stress and turmoil, they have also brought growth. The importance and relevance of the synagogue in the 21st century has never been more clear for me.

Synagogues…our synagogue…is a spiritual meeting ground where we encourage, confront and comfort each other. It is where we endeavor to be forward-moving, moral, connected humans. When we achieve this, we not only access God, but we help one another and society to thrive.

Doing this, though, requires deep listening, cultivating our capacity to hold complexity, and trust.

We all know that operating in that way is sometimes easier said than done. It is in our nature to judge others, or misinterpret their intentions and words. Sometimes we are so driven by our own goals and anxieties that we forget to open our perspective up to others. We are often caught reading our own agenda into people’s words and actions.

When it comes to cultivating the capacity to really hear and appreciate one another’s intentions, the Chofitz Chayim, an early 20th century sage, told a parable:

“There was once a man who was visiting a small town in Europe. It was Shabbat morning, and he went to the local synagogue. Everything was just as you might expect, until unusual things started happening. There were well-dressed, obviously prosperous people seated near the front, but all the honors for the Torah-reading were given to scruffy men who stood clustered at the back of the room. When it came time for the rabbi to say a few words of wisdom, all he spoke about was the weather. After the prayers were finished, lovely food was spread on the table and nobody ate.

The man was flummoxed by all these incomprehensible goings-on. What kind of place was this? Was everyone here crazy? Finally, he pulled aside one of the locals and asked, "What's going on here? The men who got the Torah honors, the rabbi's talk, the uneaten food… nothing makes any sense!"

The man explained, "Those scruffy looking men had been unjustly imprisoned and the community worked long and hard to ransom them to freedom. Isn't it wonderful that they are now free to come to bless the Torah? The rabbi spoke only about the weather because there has been an unusual drought this season and the farmers have nothing on their minds but their crops, and the rabbi knew and cared for their concerns. Why didn't anyone eat? One Shabbat every month the community prepares its usual lunch but instead of eating it, the food is donated to the local home for the elderly."

How often do we make similar assumptions behind people’s personal decisions, or their political views? How often does this happen in our own synagogue, where we neglect to see the care, concern and thought that went into temple affairs?

The Hebrew word for trust is “bitachon.” It comes from the word “betach” which means not only to trust, but to secure, to have confidence in, to make one feel safe.

Our job, as citizens, as humans, is to make one another feel safe. I truly believe it is as simple as that. We do that by having open, honest conversations and not jumping to conclusions. We give people space when they need space and we do not make demands without room for discussion. Every human being is full of fear and worry, trying their best. Let’s assuage their fears, rather than add to them.

In this week’s Torah portion, Joseph brings his father to Egypt in order to escape the famine in Canaan. God senses Jacob’s concern. Not only is Jacob old, but he is concerned about leaving the land that was promised to him, that Abraham and Isaac toiled for. He doesn’t say any of this, but God understands it.

God comes to Jacob in a dream, saying, “Al tirah mehr-dah Mitzraymah - Fear not to go down to Egypt, for I will make you there into a great nation…I Myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I Myself will also bring you back.”

Jacob’s fears are not unfounded. Torah has made it clear that the Egyptians do not like the Hebrews. Also, why would Jacob willingly leave the Promised Land? God assures him that sometimes you have to go the circuitous route in order to get to where you really need to be. God assures Jacob: even in tough times, I am with you. You may suffer, but you will survive. That is the trust I represent and the trust you must have - that you will survive this.

Not only will our ancestors survive Egypt, but the Hebrews’ time there will be instrumental in cultivating the compassionate spirit towards others that we Jews are so proud of.

But just because we cultivated it once doesn’t mean we have to continue to find it within ourselves. Here in our own synagogue community, in our personal relationships and workplaces, in our towns and across the globe.

This is the simple message of our tradition: Be good to one another. The history of your ancestors has taught you to listen deeply. You are strong enough to hold emotional complexity. Trust in God, trust in one another.

Al tirah - don’t fear what comes your way, for you have one another.

Amen.

Civil Rights Journey Reflection 2023

When it comes to crying, I’m ok with letting it out. If there’s a poignant ending to a movie, or if someone has shared something that moves me, I’ll well up a little bit and wipe a tear or two from the corners of my eyes.

Other than that, I don’t do a lot of crying otherwise. Don’t get me wrong: I believe it is ok to cry, healthy to cry, and I think you should cry if you need to, as often as you need to.

Evidently, there was a moment on our trip where I needed to take this advice. I’m going to share with you a vulnerable moment, a moment that surprised me, really. It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

The scene: Montgomery Alabama. It was drizzling outside. We scarfed down a continental breakfast and drove to the Equal Justice Initiative’s National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It was my first time on the site, having been built between my last Civil Rights Journey and this one. The memorial is built into a hilltop overlooking Montgomery. More than 4,400 Black people killed between 1877 and 1950 are remembered there. Their names are engraved on more than 800 steel monuments—one for each county where a crime took place. It was beautiful and eery and heartbreaking all at the same time. I had a tear in my eye the whole time.

Wet with the morning’s mist, we went over to its sister site, the Legacy Museum. The museum is built on the site of a cotton warehouse where enslaved Black people were forced to labor in bondage. When visiting the museum, you travel through immersive exhibits that tell a comprehensive history of the destructive violence that shaped our nation, from the slave trade, to the era of Jim Crow, to our current mass incarceration crisis.

Our group entered the exhibit hall without me. I had to stay back and work on some logistical details with our tour guide. When we finished our conversation, he went off for some coffee, having visited the museum many times before. I hadn’t, so I decided to enter. Our teens had plowed forward and no other patrons were there at the time. I went in alone.

The first room evokes the terrifying and deadly Middle Passage. You’re surrounded by 4 walls of thundering water. You’re sinking into the depths of history. You’re drowning in the experience. I was flooded.

I slowly moved into the next room, still alone, except for a quiet docent stationed in a corner. The walls of waves continued, now joined by clay renderings of chained bodies, sinking in anguish. Bodies of men, women and children. Babies clinging to their parents. A voice began describing the forceful separation of families and the brutality of being taken captive. Standing in the center of this room, my body ceased to exist. I was enveloped by the waves, I became the rushing ocean and I began to sob.

At first I tried to stop myself. But realizing I was alone, realizing how filled to the brim I was, I allowed myself to put my head in my hands, bend my knees and sob, deeply, from my belly. The docent walked over quietly and gently handed me a small package of tissues, turned, and returned to her spot. I sobbed for a good five minutes.

I didn’t expect to react this way. I’ve been to heart-wrenching exhibits before. But once it started I did understand why I was crying. The sheer brutality of the subject matter was enough to take you under but I also knew I was releasing the salty tears that had been building in my body since October 7. They joined the ocean of whoa that I was now consumed in. My eyes could no longer act as a barrier between the two.

“It is all pain…tormented, violent, hateful pain,” I thought to myself. All I could think about was how our world is utterly corrupted by abduction, sexual assault, beheadings and bombings. All I could feel was the agony of the violence we do to one another.

I return to this moment all these weeks later, because the destruction - emotionally and physically - has only continued. I am still flooded by the loss of human life, the callousness to one another’s pain, the way we use human beings as pawns in a shameful game of domination.

That day in the museum, I could feel the tears of my ancestors seeping out of my own eyes. We know that every group, all persecuted people, carry the scarred DNA of their ancestors.

Then and now, I feel as if my ancestors are crying, “have we learned nothing at all?”

This week’s haftarah tells the famous story of King Solomon adjudicating a fight between two women. Each woman claims that a certain baby is theirs. In order to suss out the true mother, Solomon calls for a sword. “Cut the live child in two, and give half to one and half to the other…” “Give the baby to her!” one woman cries desperately. “Just don’t kill it!” “This one, the one who rather give up the baby to save its life, is the true mother,” Solomon decries.

We point to this story as evidence of Solomon’s cleverness and wisdom. But as I look at the story again this week, all I can see is how the children are the ones who suffer from our callousness toward one another and the political games we play. The sword is held above their heads everyday. When will all humanity have the decency to say, “This must end! Just don’t kill any more babies!”?

Tonight, these teens give me such hope. They have been handed a world full of racism, bigotry, and war. And yet they dare to dive in, learn the lessons and resolve to build something better. They even pick up a few Buc-ees pajama sets along the way.

Because it turns out they inherited more than trauma from their ancestors.

Xavier Dagba, a life coach, had a tweet go viral recently; it said: “As you clear your generational trauma, don’t forget to claim your generational strengths. Your ancestors gave you more than wounds.”

Our ancestors did give us more than just wounds. They gave us grit, resilience, and imagination. We do not need to accept the suffering we see. We can resolve to be better. We can be the generation that unites families, builds homes, and begets laughter.

I’ll leave you with the words of the poet Alberto Rios. I’ve read them before. I cling to this poem for hope, like a life-raft in an ocean of anguish. It speaks to our teens, it speaks to all of us:

A House Called Tomorrow

You are not fifteen, or twelve, or seventeen — You are a hundred wild centuries And fifteen,
bringing with you in every breath and in every step
Everyone who has come before you, all the yous that you have been,
The mothers of your mother, the fathers of your father.
If someone in your family tree was trouble, a hundred were not:
The bad do not win—not finally, no matter how loud they are.
We simply would not be here if that were so. You are made, fundamentally, from the good. With this knowledge, you never march alone.
You are the breaking news of the century. You are the good who has come forward
Through it all, even if so many days
Feel otherwise. But think: when you as a child learned to speak,
It’s not that you didn’t know words — It’s that, from the centuries, you knew so many,
And it’s hard to choose the words that will be your own.
From those centuries we human beings bring with us the simple solutions and songs, The river bridges and star charts and song harmonies all in service to a simple idea: That we can make a house called tomorrow. What we bring, finally, into the new day, every day, is ourselves. And that’s all we need to start. That’s everything we require to keep going.

Look back only for as long as you must, then go forward into the history you will make.
Be good, then better. Write books. Cure disease. Make us proud. Make yourself proud.
And those who came before you?
When you hear thunder, hear it as their applause.

Amen.

Hanukkah 5784

Our dear rabbinic intern, Lara, gave an exquisite recital at Hebrew Union College last Tuesday. In what I dubbed “suburban mom’s day in the city,” I headed in by train to meet up with Cantor Jenna and cheer Lara on.

I rarely have an hour of sedentary time by myself (that’s what a sabbatical is for?) so I didn’t have a great game plan for the train. So what did I do? I opened my NYTimes app and started to go down the Israel news rabbit hole.

I don’t have to describe it to you, because you can imagine my mood when I arrived down to HUC. As excited as I was for Lara, I sat down with a large knot in my stomach.

But then Lara began to sing. The program she had researched and prepared was called “Musical Expressions of Psalms of Longing.” It was the catharsis my heart needed.

There was one piece, one line, that got lodged in my heart and I’ve been thinking about since.

Psalm 130 begins: “From the depths I call You, Adonai. Adonai, listen to my voice, be attentive to the voice of my plea.”

Then it asks: “If You were to keep count of all our sins, God, who would endure? With you, there is forgiveness, and that is what makes you so great.”

“If You were to keep count of all our sins, who would endure?”

Otherwise put: if God kept count of all times we have failed or hurt one another, no one - no person, group or country - would emerge victorious in virtue. If God punished everyone who acted wrongly, not one human would be left on this earth.

It is as if the psalmist declares: all the tit-for-tat, the keeping count, the moral equivalents, it's a zero sum game. It is all pain. Pain abroad; pain in our own neighborhood and our hearts.

A war rages this Hanukkah - physically and spiritually - manifesting in each of us differently. 

And I was thinking about how Hanukkah is the story of war. But we don’t glorify war, do we? We don’t sit here and recount the gruesome details. Hanukkah’s message of triumph over tyranny, its insistence of hope in the face of despair - these are the messages that endure, the stories we tell.

There’s another question that we famously ask on Hanukkah, similar to the one Psalm 130 posed:

מי ימלל גבורות ישראל

אותן מי ימנה

“Mi Yimalel? Who can retell the things that befell us? Who can count them?”

It’s another uncountable rhetorical question: how many times have our people mourned a darkened world? How many times as suffering of our own people and of our neighbors tore at our hearts? To count them, to recount them, feels as if it could drive us crazy.

But then the song offers hope: 

הן בכל דור יקום הגיבור

גואל העם

In every age, a hero or sage came to our aid! 

And it continues: just like the Maccabees restored the Temple, tonight our people dream! We will arise, we will unite, and we will be redeemed!

We can’t begin to count the hardships, but we can publicize the miracle that we are here! We can sing with joy that we are strong enough to withstand the calamities and that through those songs of hope, we resolve to act for justice.

“In every age, a hero or sage came to our aid.” Look around…you are those heroes. Like the Maccabees, you may be battered and scared. And like the little cruse of holy oil left in the Temple, you may feel depleted. But even from the small spark of hope, there can be a candelabra of light. You can be a Maccabee, you can be a light, you can be the miracle this Hanukkah.

Compassion to the Wicked: Parshat Eikev

I wanted to avoid this week’s Torah portion all together - or at least concentrate on the pretty parts.

You see, Moses is continuing his farewell speech to the Israelites. And there are lovely parts to what he has to say: he describes the seven species of fruit and grain that the Israelites will enjoy in the bountiful harvest of Canaan. There is wonder at God’s greatness, celebration of how God cared for the Israelites in the desert: how their sandals never wore out and they had plenty of manna to eat.

And then Moses comes in with a doozy…telling the Israelites that when they head into the Land of Canaan they will have to annihilate people living there who are not believers in God. They are told to show no mercy, they’ll need to burn their idols to dust. “Your God יהוה will deliver them up to you, throwing them into utter panic until they are wiped out.”

It doesn’t sound so great to the modern ear.

Now trust me, I could use every apologetic in the book to turn this stark command around. I could place it in its historical and cultural context. I could translate it differently, or avoid it altogether. 

Yet there is wisdom even in the things that aren’t comfortable. So let’s provide some context, just so we can understand better. 

I don’t think this text is blood thirsty as much as I think it is trying to empower the Israelite people. God’s goal is not for Israelites to become fierce warriors, waging war around the region. Instead, God wants the Israelites to understand that their upcoming campaign has moral implications. 

Moses chooses to be very clear on this particular point. He says: “And when your God יהוה has thrust [your enemies] from your path, do not say to yourselves, “יהוה has enabled us to possess this land because of our virtues”; it is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that יהוה is dispossessing them before you.”

Don’t get haughty, he’s saying. This bloody military campaign isn’t to prove your virtuousness or superiority, it exists because those people are wicked.

Still problematic, I know. But the Torah is making an important point here, one we can relate to. There are bad actors in this world and their odious actions must be met with consequences. Commenting on this week’s verses, the 18th century commentator Or HaChaim leads us to Proverbs, where it says: “showing compassion to the wicked is cruelty.” I take this note to mean that some evil deserves to be punished and to let it stand would cause unnecessary harm to the victims and the moral fabric of our world.

You can imagine that this commentary hit me hard this week as the jury ordered the death penalty for the perpetrator of the Tree of Life shooting, the bloodiest anti-semitic attack on US soil. It rang in my ear: “Showing compassion to the wicked is cruelty.” You could say this modern sentencing finds weight in our tradition.

But does our tradition support the death penalty? In some places yes, and in some places no. 

For example, there is the famous story where Rabbi Meir was being harassed by some thugs in his neighborhood. He prays that they may die. His wife, Beruriah, rebukes him, saying, “are you basing your death wish on the verse from Psalms where it says “may sinners perish from the land and the wicked will be no more?” Read it again, she says, it says “may SINs perish from the land and then wickedness will be no more.” Pray that they may experience repentance, she says. You don’t want to end their lives, you want to eradicate the evil inclination.

In combining this week’s Torah portion and Beruriah’s wisdom, I am hoping to show that our tradition gives us permission to wrestle morally with this week’s verdict, as I know many of us are. 

The real question we should be asking, in my opinion, is not if Judaism accepts the death penalty. The real question is: what is justice?

I’ll throw a wrench into this difficult question, by pointing to one more section of this week’s Torah portion. As much as the parsha promotes violence, it also commands this:

“Do not stiffen your necks anymore…God is the great, mighty and feared God Who does not consider personal standing and accepts no bribe, but rather, a God who upholds the rights of the orphan and widow and stranger. You, too, shall love the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

Love. Who saw that coming? You shall love the stranger, uphold the rights of the vulnerable, regardless of class, race or religion.

This is the emotional paradox of our ancestors, who suffered so greatly and yet wanted to leave room in their hearts for compassion. We struggle with it too. We want to punish the guilty, we want to eradicate evil from our midst. And yet we want to be open-hearted and merciful to all humanity.

You may believe this week’s verdict was justice and I would see your point. You may be uneasy with it, or oppose it, and I would see your point as well.

I believe that as long as we struggle with the concept of justice and set it as an intention, we are living according to our tradition’s code. There isn’t an easy answer, just like this isn’t an easy parsha, but in struggling, we keep our hearts pliable and open, for the greater sin would be callousness.