Rabbi Ari Lev: Agudat Achat: Community as a Spiritual Practice
Kol Nidre 5780
October 9, 2019
I still remember the first piece of Talmud I ever learned. It was a text about rabbis who disagree. And not just a small disagreement. It was about rabbis who disagree and cannot on their own reach a resolution. And not just rabbis. But entire schools of thought. It was about the teachings of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, the academies of two different primary teachers in ancient Jewish history. They disagreed so fervently, so persistently and so consistently, that the only way to resolve the tension was for a Divine voice to descend from the heavens and settle the argument. To which the Divine resolution is, Eilu v'Eilu Divrei Elohim Hayyim - these and those are the words of the ever living God.[1] There is more than one truth in every argument.
There have been moments this year when I have called on the spirit of this text to guide me as as the rabbi of this community. Over the past few months, I have sat with so many members of our community, each one trusting me with their heart, as they share with me the ways they feel they don't belong in our community, why Kol Tzedek no longer feels like their home or maybe never did. So much so, that it has led some of our community members to question the authenticity of my own words of welcome. Do I really mean it when I say you are welcome here just as you are?
So let me begin by making it 100% clear. Yes, I mean it. Every time. No matter your sexual, political, or spiritual orientation, you really are welcome here in your fullness. Not just welcome, we need you here in your fullness.
Ours is a tradition that teaches in every possible moment that difference, disagreement, and dissent are not only welcome, but are essential, are necessary components to creating a vital community, to bringing about a world that is whole and just. One of my teachers, Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, used to say that if the Talmud was trying to be a manual for how to live a Jewish life, it wouldn't resolve its arguments over this question or that question with "Teku" - which is Aramaic for, "Let the disagreement stand." But only after this year do I really understand that, in fact, the Talmud is trying to be a manual for how to live a Jewish life. Except the question is not really whether or not your chicken is kosher or what time to light candles on Rosh Hashanah when it begins on a Saturday night following Shabbat. The process of studying Talmud, which sensitizes us to paradox and irresolvable conflict, illuminates a larger question: How do we live in a world full of difference and disagreement, how do we build community in any given city and neighborhood, when each one of us contains multitudes? And when put in intimate relationship, each community contains multitudes of conflicting values, priorities, and life experiences. How then do we come to know a place as a home, come to feel we belong?
The Torah teaches, "לא תתגודדו (lo titgodedu)"[2] - literally meaning, "Do not cut or gash yourselves." Which the rabbis understand through metaphor to mean,
[לא תעשו אגודות [אגודות,
Do not cut yourselves off from each other - do not fracture your community, do not make yourselves in factions.
אלא (ela) היו כלכם אגודה אחת.
Rather, be as one singular spiritual unit, agudah achat.[3]
Which, as it turns out, is the prerequisite for the recitation of our Selichot prayers tonight. The ritual of Selichot is first mentioned in an obscure compilation of medieval Midrash, the teachings of Eliyahu Zuta.
According to this teaching, King David, the builder of the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple, knew that the Temple would be destroyed in the future and that the practice of sacrificing animals would need to be replaced with something other unifying practice. David was troubled, thinking, "How will B'nei Yisrael make atonement then?" So the Holy One said to David, "When troubles come upon Israel let them do the following:
And how did the Holy One reveal these services to B'nei Yisrael (aka the Jewish people)?
God came down like a shaliach tzibur, a prayer leader, wrapped in a tallit, and revealed to Moses the order of the service of forgiveness.
"There are many things about this rabbinic legend that strike a deep chord, but the first arresting image is the one of all Israel standing before the Holy One ba'agudat achat - as a single spiritual unit." I always feel this sense acutely on Kol Nidre, when we squeeze ourselves into this ancient prayer hall, the magnetic pull of this evening, gathering up the fringes of our community, calling us back to our potential, tethering us to tradition and reminding us that we are part of something so much larger, so much older, so much more mysterious.
Take a moment to really imagine what is being described here.
To imagine our community rising in body and spirit, wrapped in the light of our tallitot, clothed in white, praying in near unison with every other Jewish community in West Philly, in the greater Philadelphia area, all along the eastern seaboard, across the country, throughout North America, literally Jews and their beloveds around the world, throughout the diaspora, across time zones and generations, spanning lifetimes, all gathered, tonight, ba'agudat achat - as a single spiritual unit. Yearning and mournful and hopeful. As one.
This one night is itself also a time capsule, invoking our most ancient prayers and their most ancient of melodies. Connecting to the pervasive truth that we are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. That we are bound together through an ever-resilient tradition. That we are klal yisrael - one whole entire yearning people.
And yet, it is so hard to imagine ourselves really connected across such stratospheres of difference. Let's be honest, it is hard to stay connected and contain the differences present within our own -- growing, but still relatively tiny -- corner of the Jewish world.
It is precisely this tension that we are called to pay attention to as a prerequisite for our Selichot prayers. And the tension and difference exists within our community, within our hearts and souls, and also within our tradition. We are and have always been an erev rav, a mixed multitude.
In the book of Exodus we are told that when the Israelites went out from Mitzrayim, an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב went out with them, a mixed multitude.[5]
It’s not clear exactly who this עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב, this mixed multitude, was. It might have included Pharaoh's daughter, who openly defied him by saving baby Moshe. Or Tziporah, the daughter of the Middianite Priest, who marries Moshe. Perhaps it was Egyptians[6] oppressed by Pharaoh within their own empire, also seeking to escape from the narrow place. Perhaps it was people from other tribes who had married into the Israelite community,[7] or maybe, as one source suggests,[8] it was Pharaoh's elite magicians, who had their own experience with Divinity that led them to leave the palace and head into the desert. Whoever it was -- and whatever their reasons -- a mix of different peoples came together to leave the narrow place of Mitzrayim and head out into the desert.
I have learned from Jewish leaders of colors like Yavilah McCoy,[9] Rabbi Capers Funnye,[10] MaNishtana[11] and others who have lifted up our origin as an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב in recent years to tell the truth about who we are as a community -- and who we have always been. To understand b'nei yisrael is to understand that we have always been widely different from one another. Being an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב means that our community is -- and always has been! -- made up of Jews by choice, by those who were born into Judaism, those with mixed heritage, and those reclaiming their Jewish ancestors, recovering and returning to what was lost. It means that we are -- and have always been -- Jewish and not Jewish, of other faiths or no faith. We are Jews of color and white Jews. It means we are atheists and mystics, agnostics and seekers. It means we are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and more. Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, communists, poor, working class, and owning class, queer and straight, trans and cis. It means there is no such thing as a good Jew or a bad Jew. There is no purity, there is no assumed shared Jewish experience. We are עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב, a mixed multitude, a diasporic people.[12]
In her vision of a new diasporism, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz explains, "Diasporism places at the center our memory of strangeness and our desire to welcome strangers. Diasporism means, given the multicultural nature of the Jewish community, inside 'the' Jewish community we should expect to experience the simultaneity of home and strangeness. If we are at an event that claims to be for the whole Jewish community, at any given moment something must feel unfamiliar to someone, it just shouldn't be the same people [every time]."[13]
And all the more so, we are challenged and charged to find a way to speak in the We, as we are about to recite in the prayers of confession:
"Al chet shechatanu lefanecha, For the wrong WE have done before you..."
We are challenged and charged to affirm that even in our distinct and divergent practices, beliefs, and lived experiences, we are responsible for one another -- Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. This phrase, famously from Pirkei Avot, a collection of rabbinic teachings, is often translated as "all of Yisrael is responsible for one another."[14] But take note, this word arevim, comes from the very same root -- ayin bet reish-- as erev, as in erev rav. And it has so many layers of meaning. At its core, the dictionary definition of this root means to mix, to weave, to vouch for. And you might recognize it from other places. This same root is what constitutes the word ma'ariv, as in the evening prayer which we just recited. It is the root of the word eruv, the magic string that surrounds a neighborhood "to create a symbolic community of residence or continuity of action."[15]
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael is interwoven, braided together.
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael is symbolically bound together.
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael vouches for one another.
In the words of one early commentator, "Even though the commandments are placed upon each individual, all Jews are guarantors for one another."[16] And on Yom Kippur we are summoned ba'agudat achat, as a single body, prepared to repay each other's debts.
But the truth is, the urgency of this political moment has taught me that holding fast to each other as a unified Jewish community is not merely a prerequisite for reciting the Selichot prayers, but an essential tactic for fighting antisemitism in the age of Trump.
In the words of Representative Ilhan Omar, "[Trump] would love nothing more than to divide our country based on race, religion, gender, orientation, or immigration status because this is the only way he knows how to prevent the solidarity of us working together across all our lines of difference."[17]
Some of you may remember back in February when I got a phone call from NPR. It was very unexpected. I was about to teach a class on prayer and they just had a quick request: Would I be willing to appear on-air in the morning to comment on the recent political controversy with Representative Ilhan Omar's tweets? And then the producer continued, more specifically, that they wanted to invite another "more centrist" rabbi onto the show so that we could publicly debate our views about Zionism. It did not take long for me to realize this was not a good idea. Not because there isn't nuance and difference of opinion in the Jewish world. And not because I don't believe in giving voice to that nuance and finding ways to constructively disagree, even in public. For me, this didn't feel like a good idea because I felt it was playing directly into the strategy of the Right. It is my sense that the alt-right is trying to divide us from each other, target women of color, and define the public discourse on antisemitism. In this case, Representative Ilhan Omar was criticizing the influence of AIPAC.[18] Regardless of our views on Israel, I imagine we are all able to see the negative impact of lobbyists on government and her inherent right to voice criticism as free speech. This kind of censorship is very scary to me, because it infringes upon free speech and uses the rhetoric of antisemitism as a tool to silence women of color in leadership.
The request from NPR also scared me because pitting two rabbis against one another in public debate on this most controversial issue directly does the work of antisemitism for the Right, and has us fighting against each other as opposed to actually fighting the forces of true antisemitism in our world.
In the wake of Pittsburgh, Poway, and Charlottesville, we are raw. We know in our bones that antisemitism is real and dangerous. The call from the producer at NPR was startling, because it pointed to a wound in the Jewish psyche that is becoming a deep chasm in the Jewish community. How do we come together as one, flawed and vulnerable, and seeking forgiveness, given our differences, and given the way our differences are weaponized against us? And how do we come to believe that each of us truly belongs here?
This work begins within our own community. To reach across our relatively tiny aisles, to extend beyond our comfort zones, to vouch for each other across our differences. Not from a place of moral relativism. Not because you don't each have hard-won and firmly held beliefs. But because that does not change the fact that we do need each other, that we are more powerful when we are deeply connected to each other, and because even though we are wildly different, we are still ultimately one, agudat achat.
25 years after it was first published, Mab Segrest reissued an updated version of "Memoir of a Race Traitor," a book that has been deeply influential in my own political awakening. At her book release a few weeks ago in Durham, North Carolina, she was asked about the danger of working against the Klan in the 1980s. She responded, "The safest thing was the organizing. The safest thing was being in community."
Being in and building community is a spiritual practice and a strategy for survival. All year long, we are different from one another in so many ways and we lift up our differences. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, we reconnect to our oneness, we vouch for each other's imperfections, we take responsibility for one another's actions. Once a year we need to be able to imagine ourselves as one, so that we know we can be whole.
And I know we can be whole because I have felt it in my bones. I feel our unity most in times of joy and grief, and certainly in song. I felt it deeply on Rosh Hashanah. I felt it the Friday night after Pittsburgh. I feel it dancing in the streets on Simchat Torah. I feel it in the beit midrash, every time we learn a text together. In our overflowing meal-trains and at every shiva minyan. I feel it so deeply when we are singing together, which is why I am utterly grateful to have Rabbi Mó here. This High Holiday season is a booster shot for our community to reconnect to our wholeness. Call it oneness, call it God, call it holiness, call it Presence. It is precious and it is possible.
Perhaps the only Jewish spiritual practice that rivals Yom Kippur in its visceral, embodied nature is that of wrapping tefillin. Literally binding one's body in a set of leather straps attached to little boxes that contain a scroll of parchment, with words of Torah scribed upon them. Inside of the little boxes are the words of the Shema, affirming God's unity. And of course, the ancient rabbis, who invented tefillin, imagined that God, too, prays as we pray, and wraps tefillin as we do.
And so logically, the rabbis asked, if the aspiration of God's oneness is in our tefillin, what is in God's tefillin?
To which Rav Hiyya bar Avin replied, God's tefillin contains the aspiration that the people of Yisrael will be echad, will be one.[19]
וְיַחֵד לְבָבֵנוּ לְאַהֲבָה וּלְיִרְאָה אֶת שְׁמֶךָ. לְמַעַן לֹא נֵבושׁ וְלֹא נִכָּלֵם וְלֹא נִכָּשֵׁל לָעוֹלָם וָעֶד.
Holy one, unify our hearts.
Keep us from shame,
from humiliation,
and from stumbling, today and always.[20]
Holy One,
Help us to hold on to one another,
braid[21] us together,
and thus, keep us safe.
We rise in body or spirit for the Selichot service.[22]
[1] Babylonian Talmud Masechet Eruvin 13b.
[2] Deuteronomy 14:1.
[3] Sifrei Devarim 96.
[4] Lew, Alan. This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 94-95.
[5] Exodus 12:38.
[6] Ibn Ezra on Exodus 12:38.
[7] Similar but different than Rashi on Exodus 12:38, who suggests that the עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב is a mixture of other nations who have become proselytes.
[8] Zohar 2:191a.6.
[9] See, for example: https://jewishcamp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Allyship-as-a-Practice.pdf, "Purim 2015: As Esther Fades to Black."
[10] "Judaism has never been a race; it has always been an admixture of a variety of ethnicities," from an essay by Rabbi Funnye in The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. p. 159.
[11] See MaNishtana's interview on Judaism Unbound: https://www.judaismunbound.com/podcast/episode-162-manishtana.
[12] These two paragraphs on erev rav were adapted from a sermon that Rabbi Joseph Berman gave on Rosh Hashanah 5780 at New Synagogue Project in Washington, D.C.
[13] The Colors of Jews, p. 221.
[14] Pirkei Avot 1:15.
[15] Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, p. 1110.
[16]
[17] "Creep of the Week: Donald Trump" by D'Anne Witkowski. Philadelphia Gay News, July 26, 2019, p. 10.
[18] For more on why criticism of Israel is not antisemitism: https://youtu.be/zi_Mu_781KU.
[19] אמר ליה רב נחמן בר יצחק לרב חייא בר אבין הני תפילין דמרי עלמא מה כתיב בהו. אמר ליה ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד בארץ (Babylonian Talmud, 6a).
[20] Siddur Sefard, Shabbat morning services, Shema and its Blessings.
[21] The word צום, as in have an easy fast (צום קל), actually means to braid. See notes in the Soleveitchik Machzor.
[22] With gratitude to my teachers and hevrutas, Rabbis Avi Killip, Joseph Berman, Mónica Gomery, Dasi Fruchter, Jonah Steinberg, and Benay Lappe, and Danille Feris, Shosh Ruskin, and Dove Kent.
October 9, 2019
I still remember the first piece of Talmud I ever learned. It was a text about rabbis who disagree. And not just a small disagreement. It was about rabbis who disagree and cannot on their own reach a resolution. And not just rabbis. But entire schools of thought. It was about the teachings of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel, the academies of two different primary teachers in ancient Jewish history. They disagreed so fervently, so persistently and so consistently, that the only way to resolve the tension was for a Divine voice to descend from the heavens and settle the argument. To which the Divine resolution is, Eilu v'Eilu Divrei Elohim Hayyim - these and those are the words of the ever living God.[1] There is more than one truth in every argument.
There have been moments this year when I have called on the spirit of this text to guide me as as the rabbi of this community. Over the past few months, I have sat with so many members of our community, each one trusting me with their heart, as they share with me the ways they feel they don't belong in our community, why Kol Tzedek no longer feels like their home or maybe never did. So much so, that it has led some of our community members to question the authenticity of my own words of welcome. Do I really mean it when I say you are welcome here just as you are?
So let me begin by making it 100% clear. Yes, I mean it. Every time. No matter your sexual, political, or spiritual orientation, you really are welcome here in your fullness. Not just welcome, we need you here in your fullness.
Ours is a tradition that teaches in every possible moment that difference, disagreement, and dissent are not only welcome, but are essential, are necessary components to creating a vital community, to bringing about a world that is whole and just. One of my teachers, Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, used to say that if the Talmud was trying to be a manual for how to live a Jewish life, it wouldn't resolve its arguments over this question or that question with "Teku" - which is Aramaic for, "Let the disagreement stand." But only after this year do I really understand that, in fact, the Talmud is trying to be a manual for how to live a Jewish life. Except the question is not really whether or not your chicken is kosher or what time to light candles on Rosh Hashanah when it begins on a Saturday night following Shabbat. The process of studying Talmud, which sensitizes us to paradox and irresolvable conflict, illuminates a larger question: How do we live in a world full of difference and disagreement, how do we build community in any given city and neighborhood, when each one of us contains multitudes? And when put in intimate relationship, each community contains multitudes of conflicting values, priorities, and life experiences. How then do we come to know a place as a home, come to feel we belong?
The Torah teaches, "לא תתגודדו (lo titgodedu)"[2] - literally meaning, "Do not cut or gash yourselves." Which the rabbis understand through metaphor to mean,
[לא תעשו אגודות [אגודות,
Do not cut yourselves off from each other - do not fracture your community, do not make yourselves in factions.
אלא (ela) היו כלכם אגודה אחת.
Rather, be as one singular spiritual unit, agudah achat.[3]
Which, as it turns out, is the prerequisite for the recitation of our Selichot prayers tonight. The ritual of Selichot is first mentioned in an obscure compilation of medieval Midrash, the teachings of Eliyahu Zuta.
According to this teaching, King David, the builder of the Beit Hamikdash, the Holy Temple, knew that the Temple would be destroyed in the future and that the practice of sacrificing animals would need to be replaced with something other unifying practice. David was troubled, thinking, "How will B'nei Yisrael make atonement then?" So the Holy One said to David, "When troubles come upon Israel let them do the following:
- Stand before Me together as a single unit - ba'agudat achat.
- And make confessions before Me.
- And say the Selichot (forgiveness) service before Me and I will answer them."
And how did the Holy One reveal these services to B'nei Yisrael (aka the Jewish people)?
God came down like a shaliach tzibur, a prayer leader, wrapped in a tallit, and revealed to Moses the order of the service of forgiveness.
"There are many things about this rabbinic legend that strike a deep chord, but the first arresting image is the one of all Israel standing before the Holy One ba'agudat achat - as a single spiritual unit." I always feel this sense acutely on Kol Nidre, when we squeeze ourselves into this ancient prayer hall, the magnetic pull of this evening, gathering up the fringes of our community, calling us back to our potential, tethering us to tradition and reminding us that we are part of something so much larger, so much older, so much more mysterious.
Take a moment to really imagine what is being described here.
To imagine our community rising in body and spirit, wrapped in the light of our tallitot, clothed in white, praying in near unison with every other Jewish community in West Philly, in the greater Philadelphia area, all along the eastern seaboard, across the country, throughout North America, literally Jews and their beloveds around the world, throughout the diaspora, across time zones and generations, spanning lifetimes, all gathered, tonight, ba'agudat achat - as a single spiritual unit. Yearning and mournful and hopeful. As one.
This one night is itself also a time capsule, invoking our most ancient prayers and their most ancient of melodies. Connecting to the pervasive truth that we are part of something so much bigger than ourselves. That we are bound together through an ever-resilient tradition. That we are klal yisrael - one whole entire yearning people.
And yet, it is so hard to imagine ourselves really connected across such stratospheres of difference. Let's be honest, it is hard to stay connected and contain the differences present within our own -- growing, but still relatively tiny -- corner of the Jewish world.
It is precisely this tension that we are called to pay attention to as a prerequisite for our Selichot prayers. And the tension and difference exists within our community, within our hearts and souls, and also within our tradition. We are and have always been an erev rav, a mixed multitude.
In the book of Exodus we are told that when the Israelites went out from Mitzrayim, an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב went out with them, a mixed multitude.[5]
It’s not clear exactly who this עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב, this mixed multitude, was. It might have included Pharaoh's daughter, who openly defied him by saving baby Moshe. Or Tziporah, the daughter of the Middianite Priest, who marries Moshe. Perhaps it was Egyptians[6] oppressed by Pharaoh within their own empire, also seeking to escape from the narrow place. Perhaps it was people from other tribes who had married into the Israelite community,[7] or maybe, as one source suggests,[8] it was Pharaoh's elite magicians, who had their own experience with Divinity that led them to leave the palace and head into the desert. Whoever it was -- and whatever their reasons -- a mix of different peoples came together to leave the narrow place of Mitzrayim and head out into the desert.
I have learned from Jewish leaders of colors like Yavilah McCoy,[9] Rabbi Capers Funnye,[10] MaNishtana[11] and others who have lifted up our origin as an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב in recent years to tell the truth about who we are as a community -- and who we have always been. To understand b'nei yisrael is to understand that we have always been widely different from one another. Being an עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב means that our community is -- and always has been! -- made up of Jews by choice, by those who were born into Judaism, those with mixed heritage, and those reclaiming their Jewish ancestors, recovering and returning to what was lost. It means that we are -- and have always been -- Jewish and not Jewish, of other faiths or no faith. We are Jews of color and white Jews. It means we are atheists and mystics, agnostics and seekers. It means we are Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Mizrahi, and more. Zionists, anti-Zionists, socialists, communists, poor, working class, and owning class, queer and straight, trans and cis. It means there is no such thing as a good Jew or a bad Jew. There is no purity, there is no assumed shared Jewish experience. We are עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב, a mixed multitude, a diasporic people.[12]
In her vision of a new diasporism, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz explains, "Diasporism places at the center our memory of strangeness and our desire to welcome strangers. Diasporism means, given the multicultural nature of the Jewish community, inside 'the' Jewish community we should expect to experience the simultaneity of home and strangeness. If we are at an event that claims to be for the whole Jewish community, at any given moment something must feel unfamiliar to someone, it just shouldn't be the same people [every time]."[13]
And all the more so, we are challenged and charged to find a way to speak in the We, as we are about to recite in the prayers of confession:
"Al chet shechatanu lefanecha, For the wrong WE have done before you..."
We are challenged and charged to affirm that even in our distinct and divergent practices, beliefs, and lived experiences, we are responsible for one another -- Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh. This phrase, famously from Pirkei Avot, a collection of rabbinic teachings, is often translated as "all of Yisrael is responsible for one another."[14] But take note, this word arevim, comes from the very same root -- ayin bet reish-- as erev, as in erev rav. And it has so many layers of meaning. At its core, the dictionary definition of this root means to mix, to weave, to vouch for. And you might recognize it from other places. This same root is what constitutes the word ma'ariv, as in the evening prayer which we just recited. It is the root of the word eruv, the magic string that surrounds a neighborhood "to create a symbolic community of residence or continuity of action."[15]
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael is interwoven, braided together.
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael is symbolically bound together.
Kol arevim zeh bazeh - all of Yisrael vouches for one another.
In the words of one early commentator, "Even though the commandments are placed upon each individual, all Jews are guarantors for one another."[16] And on Yom Kippur we are summoned ba'agudat achat, as a single body, prepared to repay each other's debts.
But the truth is, the urgency of this political moment has taught me that holding fast to each other as a unified Jewish community is not merely a prerequisite for reciting the Selichot prayers, but an essential tactic for fighting antisemitism in the age of Trump.
In the words of Representative Ilhan Omar, "[Trump] would love nothing more than to divide our country based on race, religion, gender, orientation, or immigration status because this is the only way he knows how to prevent the solidarity of us working together across all our lines of difference."[17]
Some of you may remember back in February when I got a phone call from NPR. It was very unexpected. I was about to teach a class on prayer and they just had a quick request: Would I be willing to appear on-air in the morning to comment on the recent political controversy with Representative Ilhan Omar's tweets? And then the producer continued, more specifically, that they wanted to invite another "more centrist" rabbi onto the show so that we could publicly debate our views about Zionism. It did not take long for me to realize this was not a good idea. Not because there isn't nuance and difference of opinion in the Jewish world. And not because I don't believe in giving voice to that nuance and finding ways to constructively disagree, even in public. For me, this didn't feel like a good idea because I felt it was playing directly into the strategy of the Right. It is my sense that the alt-right is trying to divide us from each other, target women of color, and define the public discourse on antisemitism. In this case, Representative Ilhan Omar was criticizing the influence of AIPAC.[18] Regardless of our views on Israel, I imagine we are all able to see the negative impact of lobbyists on government and her inherent right to voice criticism as free speech. This kind of censorship is very scary to me, because it infringes upon free speech and uses the rhetoric of antisemitism as a tool to silence women of color in leadership.
The request from NPR also scared me because pitting two rabbis against one another in public debate on this most controversial issue directly does the work of antisemitism for the Right, and has us fighting against each other as opposed to actually fighting the forces of true antisemitism in our world.
In the wake of Pittsburgh, Poway, and Charlottesville, we are raw. We know in our bones that antisemitism is real and dangerous. The call from the producer at NPR was startling, because it pointed to a wound in the Jewish psyche that is becoming a deep chasm in the Jewish community. How do we come together as one, flawed and vulnerable, and seeking forgiveness, given our differences, and given the way our differences are weaponized against us? And how do we come to believe that each of us truly belongs here?
This work begins within our own community. To reach across our relatively tiny aisles, to extend beyond our comfort zones, to vouch for each other across our differences. Not from a place of moral relativism. Not because you don't each have hard-won and firmly held beliefs. But because that does not change the fact that we do need each other, that we are more powerful when we are deeply connected to each other, and because even though we are wildly different, we are still ultimately one, agudat achat.
25 years after it was first published, Mab Segrest reissued an updated version of "Memoir of a Race Traitor," a book that has been deeply influential in my own political awakening. At her book release a few weeks ago in Durham, North Carolina, she was asked about the danger of working against the Klan in the 1980s. She responded, "The safest thing was the organizing. The safest thing was being in community."
Being in and building community is a spiritual practice and a strategy for survival. All year long, we are different from one another in so many ways and we lift up our differences. Once a year, on Yom Kippur, we reconnect to our oneness, we vouch for each other's imperfections, we take responsibility for one another's actions. Once a year we need to be able to imagine ourselves as one, so that we know we can be whole.
And I know we can be whole because I have felt it in my bones. I feel our unity most in times of joy and grief, and certainly in song. I felt it deeply on Rosh Hashanah. I felt it the Friday night after Pittsburgh. I feel it dancing in the streets on Simchat Torah. I feel it in the beit midrash, every time we learn a text together. In our overflowing meal-trains and at every shiva minyan. I feel it so deeply when we are singing together, which is why I am utterly grateful to have Rabbi Mó here. This High Holiday season is a booster shot for our community to reconnect to our wholeness. Call it oneness, call it God, call it holiness, call it Presence. It is precious and it is possible.
Perhaps the only Jewish spiritual practice that rivals Yom Kippur in its visceral, embodied nature is that of wrapping tefillin. Literally binding one's body in a set of leather straps attached to little boxes that contain a scroll of parchment, with words of Torah scribed upon them. Inside of the little boxes are the words of the Shema, affirming God's unity. And of course, the ancient rabbis, who invented tefillin, imagined that God, too, prays as we pray, and wraps tefillin as we do.
And so logically, the rabbis asked, if the aspiration of God's oneness is in our tefillin, what is in God's tefillin?
To which Rav Hiyya bar Avin replied, God's tefillin contains the aspiration that the people of Yisrael will be echad, will be one.[19]
וְיַחֵד לְבָבֵנוּ לְאַהֲבָה וּלְיִרְאָה אֶת שְׁמֶךָ. לְמַעַן לֹא נֵבושׁ וְלֹא נִכָּלֵם וְלֹא נִכָּשֵׁל לָעוֹלָם וָעֶד.
Holy one, unify our hearts.
Keep us from shame,
from humiliation,
and from stumbling, today and always.[20]
Holy One,
Help us to hold on to one another,
braid[21] us together,
and thus, keep us safe.
We rise in body or spirit for the Selichot service.[22]
[1] Babylonian Talmud Masechet Eruvin 13b.
[2] Deuteronomy 14:1.
[3] Sifrei Devarim 96.
[4] Lew, Alan. This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared, p. 94-95.
[5] Exodus 12:38.
[6] Ibn Ezra on Exodus 12:38.
[7] Similar but different than Rashi on Exodus 12:38, who suggests that the עֵ֥רֶב רַ֖ב is a mixture of other nations who have become proselytes.
[8] Zohar 2:191a.6.
[9] See, for example: https://jewishcamp.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Allyship-as-a-Practice.pdf, "Purim 2015: As Esther Fades to Black."
[10] "Judaism has never been a race; it has always been an admixture of a variety of ethnicities," from an essay by Rabbi Funnye in The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism by Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. p. 159.
[11] See MaNishtana's interview on Judaism Unbound: https://www.judaismunbound.com/podcast/episode-162-manishtana.
[12] These two paragraphs on erev rav were adapted from a sermon that Rabbi Joseph Berman gave on Rosh Hashanah 5780 at New Synagogue Project in Washington, D.C.
[13] The Colors of Jews, p. 221.
[14] Pirkei Avot 1:15.
[15] Jastrow, Marcus. A Dictionary of the Targumim, the Talmud Bavli and Yushalmi, and the Midrashic Literature, p. 1110.
[16]
[17] "Creep of the Week: Donald Trump" by D'Anne Witkowski. Philadelphia Gay News, July 26, 2019, p. 10.
[18] For more on why criticism of Israel is not antisemitism: https://youtu.be/zi_Mu_781KU.
[19] אמר ליה רב נחמן בר יצחק לרב חייא בר אבין הני תפילין דמרי עלמא מה כתיב בהו. אמר ליה ומי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד בארץ (Babylonian Talmud, 6a).
[20] Siddur Sefard, Shabbat morning services, Shema and its Blessings.
[21] The word צום, as in have an easy fast (צום קל), actually means to braid. See notes in the Soleveitchik Machzor.
[22] With gratitude to my teachers and hevrutas, Rabbis Avi Killip, Joseph Berman, Mónica Gomery, Dasi Fruchter, Jonah Steinberg, and Benay Lappe, and Danille Feris, Shosh Ruskin, and Dove Kent.