Rabbi Michelle: Erev Rosh Hashanah 5782
Erev Rosh Hashanah 5782
September 6, 2021
View the video here.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that the world is filled with love notes. Not romantic love, but tokens and words of love and appreciation. I don't think this is new, but I have begun to notice more. The pink glove carefully left on a branch in the woods this winter so that its owner could find it. The tiny yellow flower my niece placed in my hand on our walk home from school one day this fall. The dog treats my walking companion carefully doled out recently to every dog she met in the woods. And I have a vivid image of the Stark-Jordans' sun porch and living room filled with donations when Kol Tzedek welcomed the Centento-Delgados, a family of asylum seekers, two years ago. Each sheet, each hat, each toy, was a love note to a family none of us had met yet.
Our liturgy also reminds us of the love that surrounds us.
אהבה רבה אהבתנו יי אלהינו חמלה גדולה ויתרה חמלת עלינו
Ahavah rabbah ahavtanu Adonai eloheinu chemlah gedloah viy'tera chamalta aleinu
You, Adonai our God, have loved us with a great love, with overflowing compassion you have had compassion upon us.
In the morning prayers, right before the Shema, we have an opportunity to acknowledge the divine love that fills the world. God loves us with an abundant love. In the evening, instead of calling this love Ahava rabbah, a great love, we refer to this love as Ahavat Olam, a world-filling love, or never-ending love. And in these prayers, God's love note to us is the Torah, not just the physical Torah, or the written text, but the learning and teaching that are part of our tradition.
While I don't personally feel comfortable ascribing a human emotion or a human experience to the divine, there is something beautiful here about imagining a created world that is overflowing with divine love and compassion, a world where there is extra love to go around, enough to know that it will never end. And even though I don't necessarily believe in a God who can love individual humans, I do take comfort in the idea that the love is part of something bigger than me, something bigger than any specific relationships I have. There is a power, one we may not be able to understand or even name, that sees us as we are, our most unmasked selves, and loves us.
I hope this model of divine love is one that we can claim, too, as humans who reflect the divine in the world.
One of my favorite midrashim, one that I have shared many times before, is a midrash in which the ancient rabbis begin to acknowledge that the responsibility for divine action is in each of us. The rabbis start by contrasting two Torah verses. One verse says, "You should walk in God's path and cling to God," which the ancient rabbis suggest might literally mean following behind God as closely as possible. The other verse reads, "God is a devouring fire." These two verses, the rabbis say, can't possibly both be literally true. If God is a devouring fire, then you can't literally walk behind God and stay as close as possible! You would be devoured by the fire! They allow for a moment of metaphoric interpretation. It's not, they say, that you need to literally walk in God's path. Instead, you should be like God. God is merciful, so you, too, should be merciful. God clothes the naked, so you, too should clothe the naked.
By extension, here, coming back to our prayers, when the rabbis are imagining a God capable of unearned, non-transactional love that goes on forever, you, too, should at least strive to be capable of a love that goes on forever.
When asked to define love during a talk on the "Centrality of Love in the Pursuit of Justice," Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg said that it is "about being given full permission for this moment, for this person, for myself to exist in this moment, fully seen, fully accepted... Liking is finding something pleasant, but love is about a willingness to be in a difficult moment."
To have a love that is as ideal as the divine love of our liturgy, we need to not only give another person full permission to exist in this moment fully seen and fully accepted. But perhaps as important and also, I find, more challenging, we need to give the same to ourselves. We need to be with each other in difficult moments, but we also need to be with ourselves in these difficult moments.
A year ago, I was sick. The combination of lyme disease and side effects from the antibiotics to treat it left me sick and fatigued for months. In a moment when everybody was trying to stay at home anyway and when most of my work interactions were happening online, I was able to adjust my schedule to stop and rest, and I mostly hid the fatigue that was so frustrating to me and felt so counter to my hyperactive nature. At some point, when I was slowly healing but still low on energy, I joined two close friends for a picnic. I was grateful to see them but I was so frustrated with my own body and so worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with their usual speed. As we began the walk from our cars to the picnic spot, before I really said anything else to them, I said, "I need to move kind of slowly these days." They just nodded and slowed down to match my pace. For the whole walk to our picnic, and then for the whole walk back, they didn't speed up. That act of love, that slowing down to be with me in a difficult moment was so profound that I was able to let go of some of my own frustration and love myself a bit more.
bel hooks, a buddhist teacher, pointed out in the article "Towards a Worldwide Culture of Love," "Any time we do the work of love, we end the work of domination...love and domination cannot coexist."
So any time we do the work of loving ourselves, we end the work of domination. In a world full of white supremacy, ableism, sexism, and so many other systems of oppression that just demand domination, the act of being exactly who you are and loving yourself is directly fighting against domination. It's fighting against the outside forces that for years have said that you are not deserving of love.
And any time we do the work of loving others, we end the work of domination. Somedays, it seems the work of domination is all that fills the world. We read about a struggle in Afghanistan, where the work of domination is driving people from their homes. We see the attempts of lawmakers in Texas to gain domination over the choices people make with their own bodies. We know that corporations working to dominate the planet contribute to the climate crisis. And sometimes these things add up and it feels like the forces that drive the world around me are anything but loving.
So I'm going to try to remember in this year that when we do the work of love, we end the work of domination. I think many of us saw this after the election in November. When angry protesters gathered outside of the convention center trying to stop the vote count, we did not bring anger to counter their anger. Instead we brought food, musical instruments, Gritty costumes, and joy. We showed up with love for each other, love for the people counting the votes, love for voters, and we let that work of love prevent the work of domination.
Of course, I don't mean to say that we can choose not to actively fight the acts of domination we see around us. Love doesn't mean that we can opt out of an active fight against white supremacy, that we can choose not to reclaim streets taken over by police in riot gear. But love is a tool for justice that we cannot be without.
And, with this, I see so many other tokens of love around us. The location descriptions written by our Accessibility Committee are tokens of love, ending the domination that prevents disabled people from being part of our community. The requests for help for Afghan refugees on our listserv--requests for Ikea bags and rubbermaid bins-- are a token of love, seeing our community as the loving community that will share the resources we have with those running away from forces of domination. Showing up for minyan is a love note, as is recording a Torah reading.
I invite you to join me this year in looking for the love notes around you, signs of divine love, signs of human love, and signs of love that could be either or both of those. And I wish you a year filled with love, filled with knowing that you are loved by an eternal love that you can extend to yourself and to those around you.
L'shanah tovah.
September 6, 2021
View the video here.
I'm becoming more and more convinced that the world is filled with love notes. Not romantic love, but tokens and words of love and appreciation. I don't think this is new, but I have begun to notice more. The pink glove carefully left on a branch in the woods this winter so that its owner could find it. The tiny yellow flower my niece placed in my hand on our walk home from school one day this fall. The dog treats my walking companion carefully doled out recently to every dog she met in the woods. And I have a vivid image of the Stark-Jordans' sun porch and living room filled with donations when Kol Tzedek welcomed the Centento-Delgados, a family of asylum seekers, two years ago. Each sheet, each hat, each toy, was a love note to a family none of us had met yet.
Our liturgy also reminds us of the love that surrounds us.
אהבה רבה אהבתנו יי אלהינו חמלה גדולה ויתרה חמלת עלינו
Ahavah rabbah ahavtanu Adonai eloheinu chemlah gedloah viy'tera chamalta aleinu
You, Adonai our God, have loved us with a great love, with overflowing compassion you have had compassion upon us.
In the morning prayers, right before the Shema, we have an opportunity to acknowledge the divine love that fills the world. God loves us with an abundant love. In the evening, instead of calling this love Ahava rabbah, a great love, we refer to this love as Ahavat Olam, a world-filling love, or never-ending love. And in these prayers, God's love note to us is the Torah, not just the physical Torah, or the written text, but the learning and teaching that are part of our tradition.
While I don't personally feel comfortable ascribing a human emotion or a human experience to the divine, there is something beautiful here about imagining a created world that is overflowing with divine love and compassion, a world where there is extra love to go around, enough to know that it will never end. And even though I don't necessarily believe in a God who can love individual humans, I do take comfort in the idea that the love is part of something bigger than me, something bigger than any specific relationships I have. There is a power, one we may not be able to understand or even name, that sees us as we are, our most unmasked selves, and loves us.
I hope this model of divine love is one that we can claim, too, as humans who reflect the divine in the world.
One of my favorite midrashim, one that I have shared many times before, is a midrash in which the ancient rabbis begin to acknowledge that the responsibility for divine action is in each of us. The rabbis start by contrasting two Torah verses. One verse says, "You should walk in God's path and cling to God," which the ancient rabbis suggest might literally mean following behind God as closely as possible. The other verse reads, "God is a devouring fire." These two verses, the rabbis say, can't possibly both be literally true. If God is a devouring fire, then you can't literally walk behind God and stay as close as possible! You would be devoured by the fire! They allow for a moment of metaphoric interpretation. It's not, they say, that you need to literally walk in God's path. Instead, you should be like God. God is merciful, so you, too, should be merciful. God clothes the naked, so you, too should clothe the naked.
By extension, here, coming back to our prayers, when the rabbis are imagining a God capable of unearned, non-transactional love that goes on forever, you, too, should at least strive to be capable of a love that goes on forever.
When asked to define love during a talk on the "Centrality of Love in the Pursuit of Justice," Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg said that it is "about being given full permission for this moment, for this person, for myself to exist in this moment, fully seen, fully accepted... Liking is finding something pleasant, but love is about a willingness to be in a difficult moment."
To have a love that is as ideal as the divine love of our liturgy, we need to not only give another person full permission to exist in this moment fully seen and fully accepted. But perhaps as important and also, I find, more challenging, we need to give the same to ourselves. We need to be with each other in difficult moments, but we also need to be with ourselves in these difficult moments.
A year ago, I was sick. The combination of lyme disease and side effects from the antibiotics to treat it left me sick and fatigued for months. In a moment when everybody was trying to stay at home anyway and when most of my work interactions were happening online, I was able to adjust my schedule to stop and rest, and I mostly hid the fatigue that was so frustrating to me and felt so counter to my hyperactive nature. At some point, when I was slowly healing but still low on energy, I joined two close friends for a picnic. I was grateful to see them but I was so frustrated with my own body and so worried I wouldn't be able to keep up with their usual speed. As we began the walk from our cars to the picnic spot, before I really said anything else to them, I said, "I need to move kind of slowly these days." They just nodded and slowed down to match my pace. For the whole walk to our picnic, and then for the whole walk back, they didn't speed up. That act of love, that slowing down to be with me in a difficult moment was so profound that I was able to let go of some of my own frustration and love myself a bit more.
bel hooks, a buddhist teacher, pointed out in the article "Towards a Worldwide Culture of Love," "Any time we do the work of love, we end the work of domination...love and domination cannot coexist."
So any time we do the work of loving ourselves, we end the work of domination. In a world full of white supremacy, ableism, sexism, and so many other systems of oppression that just demand domination, the act of being exactly who you are and loving yourself is directly fighting against domination. It's fighting against the outside forces that for years have said that you are not deserving of love.
And any time we do the work of loving others, we end the work of domination. Somedays, it seems the work of domination is all that fills the world. We read about a struggle in Afghanistan, where the work of domination is driving people from their homes. We see the attempts of lawmakers in Texas to gain domination over the choices people make with their own bodies. We know that corporations working to dominate the planet contribute to the climate crisis. And sometimes these things add up and it feels like the forces that drive the world around me are anything but loving.
So I'm going to try to remember in this year that when we do the work of love, we end the work of domination. I think many of us saw this after the election in November. When angry protesters gathered outside of the convention center trying to stop the vote count, we did not bring anger to counter their anger. Instead we brought food, musical instruments, Gritty costumes, and joy. We showed up with love for each other, love for the people counting the votes, love for voters, and we let that work of love prevent the work of domination.
Of course, I don't mean to say that we can choose not to actively fight the acts of domination we see around us. Love doesn't mean that we can opt out of an active fight against white supremacy, that we can choose not to reclaim streets taken over by police in riot gear. But love is a tool for justice that we cannot be without.
And, with this, I see so many other tokens of love around us. The location descriptions written by our Accessibility Committee are tokens of love, ending the domination that prevents disabled people from being part of our community. The requests for help for Afghan refugees on our listserv--requests for Ikea bags and rubbermaid bins-- are a token of love, seeing our community as the loving community that will share the resources we have with those running away from forces of domination. Showing up for minyan is a love note, as is recording a Torah reading.
I invite you to join me this year in looking for the love notes around you, signs of divine love, signs of human love, and signs of love that could be either or both of those. And I wish you a year filled with love, filled with knowing that you are loved by an eternal love that you can extend to yourself and to those around you.
L'shanah tovah.