Rabbi Ari LEv: Gifts from my nonna
Rosh Hashanah Day 1 5783
September 26, 2022
View the video here.
This Dvar Torah is dedicated to my namesake, my Nonna: Alice Batsheva Notrica.
I only have one picture of her holding me. It is one of my most precious possessions. I glance at it daily, nested amidst a collage of family photos on the wall that runs along the staircase in our house.
It is a relatively small, 3x5-inch photograph. Its faded sepia tones are proof that we were, for a brief moment, skin to skin in this lifetime. I try to imagine what she was thinking or feeling as she held me. What she might have said or wanted to say, had she not just suffered a stroke when my mother was eight months pregnant with me.
The photo is a portal into so many conversations my Nonna and I never had out loud. She died on January 3, 1983, when I was four months old. Surely in her wildest dreams she could not have imagined what that Kodak moment would come to mean to me. Or the life I would go on to live.
My Nonna, my father's mother, was born on March 19, 1916 on the Island of Rhodes, which was then part of Italy. According to the Sefardic custom of naming children for the living, my parents named me after her. Borrowing the A of Alice; the A which I have held onto like an amulet through every one of my name changes. I am quite familiar with the "A" section in my baby naming books.
There is a second photograph of my Nonna on our wall of family photos. It is an old black and white photograph that was shipped along with many other belongings to Antwerp, Belgium in early 1940 at the beginning of World War II, when Belgium was still neutral. It stayed hidden in the attic of my Nonna's uncle's factory.
When the war ended, the Nazis ransacked the factory but never discovered the treasures hidden in the attic. One of my family's friends shipped all of their belongings to New York. The shipping crate that contained the photograph arrived in New York and was returned to my Nonna in 1947. It was a memento of her childhood and the world she came from.
The photograph was taken on Purim circa 1930 on the eve of her 14th birthday. She is wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and a black tie, in what I can only describe as Purim drag. She is leaning back against a stair railing in the town square, with her arms crossed over her chest, smoking a cigarette, like she doesn't have a care in the world.
Despite my father's insistence that his mother was a rule follower, I remain convinced this picture captures her true subversive spirit. My suspicions were further confirmed when I learned that she was born on the holiday of Purim. Her parents would have named her Esther but her older sister had already been given that Hebrew name.
These are the things I know about my Nonna:
She was exceedingly loving. And very superstitious. In her honor, I have packed my pockets full of garlic to ward off the evil eye.
She was very devoted to her family.
Her mother Estrella was from Izmir, Turkey and her father Mazliah was from Rhodes.
She was the middle of three children. Her sister was her best friend. She spent most of her childhood surrounded by a large extended family with more than 20 first cousins whom she saw regularly.
She met my grandfather at an Italian-Jewish social club at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where my own parents would one day marry. Needless to say, they were a mixed marriage. My Nonna was Sefardic and my Nonno was Roman.
My Nonna spoke four languages: Growing up she spoke Italian, French, and Ladino. Later, when she came to the U.S., she learned English.
When my father describes the sounds of his childhood, he recounts how his parents spoke Italian to each other. He remembers how my Nonna spoke Ladino to her mother. And when they gathered with their extended family there would be Italian, French, English, and Ladino - they would shift between them all seemingly mid-sentence.
My father told me, "They tried to keep secrets from us by speaking in different languages, but we understood them all."
My Nonna loved to cook and bake. And she spent much of her adult life teaching language and cooking classes, often teaching people Italian cooking in Italian.
What I wouldn't give to taste her bizcocho. What I wouldn't give to hear her accent and recall her words. Staring at the photograph of her holding me, I imagine that my newborn self is learning her languages by osmosis.
Baruch sh'amar v'haya ha'olam. We are made in the image of the one who spoke and called the world into being.
We are the inheritors of a tradition that believes words create worlds. A tradition that considers words holy and powerful. But not only our words. The very letters that comprise them too. They are the building blocks of our world.
A story is told in the Zohar [1]:
Twenty-six generations before the creation of the world, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet descended from the crown of God where they were engraved with a pen of flaming fire. They gathered around the Holy One, and one after another spoke, explaining why the world should be created through them.
The first to step forward was the very last letter in the alphabet, Tav, exclaiming, "Holy One! Create the world with me...for I am the final letter of the word Truth - Emet. And that is why You are called Truth..." The Creator answered: "You are beautiful and sincere, but do not merit the world that I conceived to be created by your properties...you are also the seal of the word Death - Met, and because of this, you are not suitable for Me to create the world with you."
...The letters continued, one by one, in reverse alphabetical order. Each pleading why they might be a worthy doorway into creation. And for each one, the Holy One had a rebuttal bound up in the words these letters form, and the impact that would have on our world.
Even when the letter Vav entered, and pleaded before the Holy One, "Master of the Universe, may it please You to create the world with me because I am one of the letters of Your Name, Yud Hei VAV Hei." God replied: "Vav, you and the letter Hei should both be satisfied with being written in My Name. Because you appear in My Name, I shall therefore not create the world with you."
The letters go on and on. Until the letter Bet entered and said to the Holy Blessed One, "...May it please You to create the world with me, because I am the beginning of blessing - Baruch." The Holy One replied: "But, of course, I should have thought of that myself. I shall certainly create the world with you. If only My world would be for a blessing! You shall appear in the beginning of the Creation of the world."
And so the Torah begins, "Bereishit bara elohim et haShamayim v'et Ha'aretz."
"In the beginning, the Holy One began to create the heavens and the earth" by way of the letter Bet.
It is through letters, words, and language that we literally call ourselves into existence.
As a trans person, this truth is dear to me. I still remember the first time I heard the word trans at a public lecture with Leslie Feinberg. I was 20 years old. I felt a sense of home in every letter of the word. And still it took a few years to say that out loud, to call myself into existence.
The Midrash reminds us that letters themselves don't live in isolation. They form words whose meanings shape our lives.
When I graduated from rabbinical school, I was given a Master's Degree in Hebrew Letters. Which has, until now, always felt like a mysterious credential. Now I see how it points to the mystical truth that language, by way of letters, is a vital part of how culture and community are created.
The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage explains, "Through language, we pass down traditional knowledge and skills - the foundation for who we are and our shared futures. Languages are expressions of collective identity. They record and reveal how people understand and interact with each other and the world around them, and they serve as a tool for community and individual creative expression." [2]
While I love and appreciate the value of translation and interpretation, languages are not interchangeable. Try though we might, there are core Jewish concepts that simply cannot be fully captured in translation.
Oy gevalt
Shabbat Shalom
Ken Yehi Ratzon
Mal ojo
Baruch Hashem
Davenen
'Shkoyach
Hazak u'Varukh
Baruch Dayan HaEmet
Shiva
Teshuvah
To name a few phrases, in but a few Jewish languages!
The nuances of these words create aspects of Jewish culture that otherwise could not be expressed.
I know that for many of us the abundance of Hebrew words in a prayer service can be alienating and overwhelming. And yet, I am also aware that the English translation of ancient poetry tends to pervert the concepts.
Melech HaOlam means so much more in Hebrew than "King of the Universe" allows in English. Ribbono Shel Olam in Hebrew does not carry the racist overtones of "Master of the Universe".
But these words don't just express a feeling, they actually create ways of being in community and ways of understanding the world.
The understanding that ten people constitute a minyan draws people together.
The rhythmic pulse of the Mourner's Kaddish normalizes grief as a part of every gathering.
The impulse to say the Shehechianu to mark special moments ritualizes gratitude.
This is not unique to Judaism or even to religious life. This is true for queer culture and crip culture and Black culture, to name a few. Language is part of how we create intimacy with one another. A shared vocabulary is a shared reference point, a way of saying, "I see you. I know you. You are safe with me."
And yet language is not static.
I remember a few years ago, I was on a panel at an Open Hillel conference about trans* inclusion. At the time I must have been in my mid thirties. We began by introducing ourselves. Sharing our names and pronouns. The first person on the panel began by saying they identified as AFAB. Here I was on the panel and I had never heard that phrase before. It was obviously not the right moment to ask. I was, after all, invited to be an expert in trans community.
Afterwards I went home and Googled it. Assigned Female At Birth. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Despite my youthful countenance, I felt so old. But also so grateful. For all the new words that create new ways of being in the world.
Studies show that people who have secret languages with one another, or even pet names, have a heightened sense of connection and are more able to resolve conflict.
But it can certainly go the other way as well. Secret languages serve to exclude and alienate those who don't know them.
The challenge in Jewish community is not that new words and terms and ways of being are constantly being created. But rather that the words and language are ancient, and often unknown to many of us, including me.
I grew up feeling very Jewish. And yet as a young adult, I constantly found myself in contexts where I didn't know the words. I was not raised to say Yashar Koach, never mind 'shkoyach. I didn't know the proper greeting for the in-between days of Sukkot was Moadim L'simcha, never mind that the response was Hagim U'zmanim L'sasson.
I can only imagine how steep the learning curve must feel for the members of our community who were raised secular or converted to Judaism.
I can also imagine that it might be alienating for the members of our community who feel steeped in these phrases that capture and embody a core part of their Jewish identity. They too might feel like a fish out of water when the words that roll off their tongue don't land like a homecoming.
I still remember when Rachel Brodie, a beloved Jewish educator and teacher of mine, who passed away suddenly this past year, aleah shalom, taught me that when you learn that someone has died, the Jewish response is Baruch Dayan HaEmet. She gifted me these words like she was returning a long lost family heirloom to me.
I feel such tremendous grief that my Nonna died before she was able to teach me Ladino. The phrases and ways of being that are buried with her generation. I wonder if she opened her meals by saying Bendichas Manos or closed each meal with Mezas de Alegria.
My grief is not only personal. It is part of a larger cultural and political landscape. Nearly eighty percent of the world's languages are Indigenous, spoken by cultural minorities. Forces like urbanization, oppression, war, genocide, and climate change pressure these languages and cultures to migrate and assimilate.
The intentional deprivation of language is a violent strategy of white supremacy culture and colonization that has been deployed ubiquitously to Native American communities and indigenous communities around the world.
A few summers ago I was at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as Mass MoCA. They had an interactive exhibit in the children's section about Indigenous languages by Wendy Red Star called Apsáalooke: Children of the Large-Beaked Bird. As a multimedia artist and a member of the Crow tribe, Wendy Red Star offers accounts of American history that rectify the frequently flawed narratives about Native people.
What I remember most from the exhibit, and what is most relevant today, was its emphasis on language preservation.
Quoting from the exhibit, "The Apsáalooke (Up-saw-low-gah) language - spoken today by just 3-4,000 tribal members primarily living in Montana - is at risk of vanishing. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the U.S. government attempted to systematically eradicate the Crow language, requiring Crow children to learn and speak only English at the boarding schools they were required to attend. Since the Crow language is an oral tradition, removal of these children from their culture also contributed to the demise of the language." [3]
I remember sitting with my kids in the exhibit's ArtBar listening to the artist's father speak Crow words for animals and then trying to interpret and draw them. There is a difference between the English word crow and its native origin, which more accurately translates to "Children of the Large-Beaked Bird". And that difference is significant in terms of how we conceive of ourselves and the world.
Just as there is a significant difference between atonement and teshuvah.
Climate change is another factor accelerating language loss because biological diversity and linguistic diversity are linked.
"As Indigenous communities are forced to migrate due to rising sea levels and climatic changes that disrupt their agricultural and fishing industries, it inevitably becomes more difficult for small languages to remain viable as its speakers scatter around the globe and are forced to assimilate...
"Many indigenous communities look for cues in their environment to know when to plant, hunt, and harvest. When natural cycles are disrupted, so is the linguistic meaning and context built around them. One example: the shadbush, a small North American tree, is named such because shad, a type of fish, are often spawning in the rivers when the shadbush flowers. That is no longer the case because along with many other plants, it is flowering earlier in the year." [4]
And it works in reverse.
Language loss also accelerates environmental collapse. Caring for the earth and the environment are cultural practices transmitted from generation to generation through words, songs, and rituals.
Take for example one of the challenges facing the people of Tibet living under Chinese occupation.
Tibetan folk songs tell you how to cultivate rice fields or roof a house to avoid flooding. When the Chinese made it a war crime to speak Tibetan, not only were the songs lost, but so was the wisdom and practical instructions about how to cultivate the fields, which impacts how the land is cared for and how fires spread.
Without native languages, the whole body of cultural practices is disrupted, and this leads to many kinds of destruction.
Restrictions on cultural practices and language was also one strategy used against Jews and Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition.
"In Inquisition-era Spain - which lasted over 300 years - business contracts were legally required to be consummated over a meal of pork in order to ferret out and economically restrict crypto-Jews and -Muslims, whose families had been forced at swordpoint to convert to Christianity but still secretly attempted to maintain their ways.
"So people got creative! They made 'chuletas' - pork chops - out of a French toast-like creation that combines milk and bread to look just like a pork chop. And often without saying why to their own children, women separated meat and milk at home, out of stubborn love and memory for their family traditions." [5]
Language is how we understand ourselves. It is how we call ourselves into existence. Language is how we create a world together. Its preservation is part of how we survive.
One of the unique things about Jewish tradition was its creation of Lashon Hakodesh, a Holy Tongue. Hebrew. For almost the entirety of Jewish history, Hebrew was not a spoken vernacular. It was a language reserved for spiritual practice, prayer, and sacred study.
Much like today, people spoke the secular language of the place they lived, be it French, Polish, Arabic, Hindi, or Aramaic. And they also spoke the specifically Jewish dialects that became the binding agent of Jewish communities in Diaspora.
The Jews of Eastern Europe spoke Yiddish, a mixing of German and Hebrew. The Jews of Spanish descent spoke Ladino, a mixing of Spanish and Hebrew, or they spoke Judeo-Arabic. But when they gathered to pray or study, they did so in Hebrew. The creation of Hebrew as a shared sacred language unites communities across the Jewish Diaspora.
On the one hand it requires that everyone learn an additional language. But on the other hand, it means that Jews across the world have a shared language, a way to gather and connect across our many differences.
In 2020, Professor Sarah Bunin Benor launched the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.
She writes, "Wherever Jews have lived around the world, they have spoken and written in languages distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors - from Yiddish and Ladino to Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Malayalam.
"Because of migrations and other historical events, many of these languages are on the verge of extinction, and most Jews today are unaware of their existence. It is imperative that we document and raise awareness about these languages in the next decade - for the sake of the elderly Jews who are their last speakers and for the sake of Jewish children who would benefit from knowing about their multifaceted heritage." [6]
She explains that most long-standing Jewish language varieties are in danger as their speakers are almost all elderly. In the next 20-30 years, the last speakers will die. So now is the time to document the language varieties, cultures, and histories of Jewish communities around the world.
Take, for example, Dr. Nasser Baravarian, who is one of the last speakers of Judeo-Isfahani. Dr. Yona Sabar, one of the last speakers of Jewish neo-Aramaic. The memory of Sarah Cohen of Cochin, India, who passed away this year. She was one of the last speakers of Jewish-Malayalam.
Ladino is one of the many Jewish languages on the verge of extinction. And it happens to be the one my Nonna spoke.
To quote my friend and teacher, folklorist Selina Morales, "Language preservation is the beating heart of intergenerational indigenous practice."
I want to suggest today, on the birthday of the world, the world that was created by way of the letter Bet and its blessings, that it should be a priority for us as well.
This feels like a powerful and necessary way for us to lean into practices that will strengthen our sense of community and wellness, and more deeply root us in Jewish ways of knowing and learning.
This past June, after a year of reflection and conversation, Kol Tzedek adopted a new vision for ourselves that begins,
"We are transmitting an inclusive and liberatory Judaism for the next generation. Change takes generations. We are recovering and integrating Jewish traditions from across our history and diaspora."
As the Shmita year ends, and we move back into the realm of creation, let us not waste a moment to live into our vision for ourselves.
This year we are officially launching Sifatai Tiftach: The Diasporic Languages and Prayer Project. We will be focusing our Adult Education offerings on the languages of the Diaspora. For this year, we will be offering a series of classes in Ladino, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Classes begin this winter on Zoom. I hope you will learn with us! And we will continue to learn from our visiting teachers Laura Elkeslassy and Dr. Galeet Dardashti.
On this Rosh Hashanah, which we bless and call Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembering, there is one more memory I want to share with you.
When I was twenty years old I traveled to the island of Rhodes. I slept in a hostel and walked the cobblestone streets of the Jewish ghetto. I took a tour of the old synagogue where my ancestors had likely prayed in the round. But most of the time I was there, I was on a scavenger hunt looking for the place my Nonna grew up in.
My father had told me that the plot of land had been sold decades earlier and was now the site of a corporate hotel. But he remembered that there was a very big tree in her front yard that he hoped had not been demolished.
This was pre-cellphones and pre-Google Maps. But I had a few landmarks and managed to find the hotel. And there in the front yard, was a giant old oak tree. It must have been at least a few hundred years old. I ran to it and wrapped my arms around as far as I could reach. This was the same tree my Nonna might have hugged, though I kind of doubt that she was a tree-hugger. And there I snapped a photograph of myself - shaved head, ripped corduroys, and a backpack - hugging this ancestral tree.
Eitz Hayyim Hi l'machazikim bah
It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it...and oh did I cling to it.
While the Holy One may have chosen the letter bet to begin the Torah, this morning I want to invite you to begin your year with the letter Aleph. Aleph is the silent letter. It is the letter of possibility. As our liturgy declares, Hayom Harat Olam, today the world is full of possibility.
Aleph is the letter that begins the very first word of the Ten Commandments, Anochi, I am. It is the first letter of Avot, meaning ancestor. And the very first letter of the word Achot, meaning nurse, or sister.
There is a famous Sefardic Piyut called Achot Ketana, written by R. Abraham Hazan Girundi in 13th-century Spain. It is traditionally sung on Rosh Hashanah. And we hope to begin a tradition of singing it here at KT today.
Its title, Achot Ketana, means "the little sister," which is meant to be all of us, B'not Yisrael, Children of Israel.
In the song, the little sister prays for healing and blessing. The piyut has six verses, the first five of which end with the same refrain, "Let the year and its curses conclude!"
But, then, the final sixth verse closes with our deepest wish for all of you, brought to you by the letter Bet.
"Let the year and its blessings begin!"
As we enter 5783, may you draw close to a sense of possibility, for yourself and the world.
May we each connect to zocher hasdei avot - to the merit of our ancestors, however we define those lineages for ourselves. To their memories and their legacies. To remember, restore, and reclaim that which has been lost. That it may return to us like a long-lost family heirloom.
And may the year and its blessings begin!
Shanah Tovah.
Anyada buena, dulse i alegre.
[1] Zohar 1:2b.
[2] https://folklife.si.edu/language-vitality-initiative.
[3] https://massmoca.org/event/wendy-red-star/.
[4] https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/climate-change-language-death#:~:text=As%20these%20communities%20get%20displaced,to%20assimilate%20to%20local%20cultures.
[5] From Jonah Boyarin's "Yom Kippur Insert for Remembering Sepharad".
[6] https://www.jewishlanguages.org/jewish-language-project.
September 26, 2022
View the video here.
This Dvar Torah is dedicated to my namesake, my Nonna: Alice Batsheva Notrica.
I only have one picture of her holding me. It is one of my most precious possessions. I glance at it daily, nested amidst a collage of family photos on the wall that runs along the staircase in our house.
It is a relatively small, 3x5-inch photograph. Its faded sepia tones are proof that we were, for a brief moment, skin to skin in this lifetime. I try to imagine what she was thinking or feeling as she held me. What she might have said or wanted to say, had she not just suffered a stroke when my mother was eight months pregnant with me.
The photo is a portal into so many conversations my Nonna and I never had out loud. She died on January 3, 1983, when I was four months old. Surely in her wildest dreams she could not have imagined what that Kodak moment would come to mean to me. Or the life I would go on to live.
My Nonna, my father's mother, was born on March 19, 1916 on the Island of Rhodes, which was then part of Italy. According to the Sefardic custom of naming children for the living, my parents named me after her. Borrowing the A of Alice; the A which I have held onto like an amulet through every one of my name changes. I am quite familiar with the "A" section in my baby naming books.
There is a second photograph of my Nonna on our wall of family photos. It is an old black and white photograph that was shipped along with many other belongings to Antwerp, Belgium in early 1940 at the beginning of World War II, when Belgium was still neutral. It stayed hidden in the attic of my Nonna's uncle's factory.
When the war ended, the Nazis ransacked the factory but never discovered the treasures hidden in the attic. One of my family's friends shipped all of their belongings to New York. The shipping crate that contained the photograph arrived in New York and was returned to my Nonna in 1947. It was a memento of her childhood and the world she came from.
The photograph was taken on Purim circa 1930 on the eve of her 14th birthday. She is wearing black slacks, a white shirt, and a black tie, in what I can only describe as Purim drag. She is leaning back against a stair railing in the town square, with her arms crossed over her chest, smoking a cigarette, like she doesn't have a care in the world.
Despite my father's insistence that his mother was a rule follower, I remain convinced this picture captures her true subversive spirit. My suspicions were further confirmed when I learned that she was born on the holiday of Purim. Her parents would have named her Esther but her older sister had already been given that Hebrew name.
These are the things I know about my Nonna:
She was exceedingly loving. And very superstitious. In her honor, I have packed my pockets full of garlic to ward off the evil eye.
She was very devoted to her family.
Her mother Estrella was from Izmir, Turkey and her father Mazliah was from Rhodes.
She was the middle of three children. Her sister was her best friend. She spent most of her childhood surrounded by a large extended family with more than 20 first cousins whom she saw regularly.
She met my grandfather at an Italian-Jewish social club at the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where my own parents would one day marry. Needless to say, they were a mixed marriage. My Nonna was Sefardic and my Nonno was Roman.
My Nonna spoke four languages: Growing up she spoke Italian, French, and Ladino. Later, when she came to the U.S., she learned English.
When my father describes the sounds of his childhood, he recounts how his parents spoke Italian to each other. He remembers how my Nonna spoke Ladino to her mother. And when they gathered with their extended family there would be Italian, French, English, and Ladino - they would shift between them all seemingly mid-sentence.
My father told me, "They tried to keep secrets from us by speaking in different languages, but we understood them all."
My Nonna loved to cook and bake. And she spent much of her adult life teaching language and cooking classes, often teaching people Italian cooking in Italian.
What I wouldn't give to taste her bizcocho. What I wouldn't give to hear her accent and recall her words. Staring at the photograph of her holding me, I imagine that my newborn self is learning her languages by osmosis.
Baruch sh'amar v'haya ha'olam. We are made in the image of the one who spoke and called the world into being.
We are the inheritors of a tradition that believes words create worlds. A tradition that considers words holy and powerful. But not only our words. The very letters that comprise them too. They are the building blocks of our world.
A story is told in the Zohar [1]:
Twenty-six generations before the creation of the world, the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet descended from the crown of God where they were engraved with a pen of flaming fire. They gathered around the Holy One, and one after another spoke, explaining why the world should be created through them.
The first to step forward was the very last letter in the alphabet, Tav, exclaiming, "Holy One! Create the world with me...for I am the final letter of the word Truth - Emet. And that is why You are called Truth..." The Creator answered: "You are beautiful and sincere, but do not merit the world that I conceived to be created by your properties...you are also the seal of the word Death - Met, and because of this, you are not suitable for Me to create the world with you."
...The letters continued, one by one, in reverse alphabetical order. Each pleading why they might be a worthy doorway into creation. And for each one, the Holy One had a rebuttal bound up in the words these letters form, and the impact that would have on our world.
Even when the letter Vav entered, and pleaded before the Holy One, "Master of the Universe, may it please You to create the world with me because I am one of the letters of Your Name, Yud Hei VAV Hei." God replied: "Vav, you and the letter Hei should both be satisfied with being written in My Name. Because you appear in My Name, I shall therefore not create the world with you."
The letters go on and on. Until the letter Bet entered and said to the Holy Blessed One, "...May it please You to create the world with me, because I am the beginning of blessing - Baruch." The Holy One replied: "But, of course, I should have thought of that myself. I shall certainly create the world with you. If only My world would be for a blessing! You shall appear in the beginning of the Creation of the world."
And so the Torah begins, "Bereishit bara elohim et haShamayim v'et Ha'aretz."
"In the beginning, the Holy One began to create the heavens and the earth" by way of the letter Bet.
It is through letters, words, and language that we literally call ourselves into existence.
As a trans person, this truth is dear to me. I still remember the first time I heard the word trans at a public lecture with Leslie Feinberg. I was 20 years old. I felt a sense of home in every letter of the word. And still it took a few years to say that out loud, to call myself into existence.
The Midrash reminds us that letters themselves don't live in isolation. They form words whose meanings shape our lives.
When I graduated from rabbinical school, I was given a Master's Degree in Hebrew Letters. Which has, until now, always felt like a mysterious credential. Now I see how it points to the mystical truth that language, by way of letters, is a vital part of how culture and community are created.
The Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage explains, "Through language, we pass down traditional knowledge and skills - the foundation for who we are and our shared futures. Languages are expressions of collective identity. They record and reveal how people understand and interact with each other and the world around them, and they serve as a tool for community and individual creative expression." [2]
While I love and appreciate the value of translation and interpretation, languages are not interchangeable. Try though we might, there are core Jewish concepts that simply cannot be fully captured in translation.
Oy gevalt
Shabbat Shalom
Ken Yehi Ratzon
Mal ojo
Baruch Hashem
Davenen
'Shkoyach
Hazak u'Varukh
Baruch Dayan HaEmet
Shiva
Teshuvah
To name a few phrases, in but a few Jewish languages!
The nuances of these words create aspects of Jewish culture that otherwise could not be expressed.
I know that for many of us the abundance of Hebrew words in a prayer service can be alienating and overwhelming. And yet, I am also aware that the English translation of ancient poetry tends to pervert the concepts.
Melech HaOlam means so much more in Hebrew than "King of the Universe" allows in English. Ribbono Shel Olam in Hebrew does not carry the racist overtones of "Master of the Universe".
But these words don't just express a feeling, they actually create ways of being in community and ways of understanding the world.
The understanding that ten people constitute a minyan draws people together.
The rhythmic pulse of the Mourner's Kaddish normalizes grief as a part of every gathering.
The impulse to say the Shehechianu to mark special moments ritualizes gratitude.
This is not unique to Judaism or even to religious life. This is true for queer culture and crip culture and Black culture, to name a few. Language is part of how we create intimacy with one another. A shared vocabulary is a shared reference point, a way of saying, "I see you. I know you. You are safe with me."
And yet language is not static.
I remember a few years ago, I was on a panel at an Open Hillel conference about trans* inclusion. At the time I must have been in my mid thirties. We began by introducing ourselves. Sharing our names and pronouns. The first person on the panel began by saying they identified as AFAB. Here I was on the panel and I had never heard that phrase before. It was obviously not the right moment to ask. I was, after all, invited to be an expert in trans community.
Afterwards I went home and Googled it. Assigned Female At Birth. I couldn't help but laugh at myself. Despite my youthful countenance, I felt so old. But also so grateful. For all the new words that create new ways of being in the world.
Studies show that people who have secret languages with one another, or even pet names, have a heightened sense of connection and are more able to resolve conflict.
But it can certainly go the other way as well. Secret languages serve to exclude and alienate those who don't know them.
The challenge in Jewish community is not that new words and terms and ways of being are constantly being created. But rather that the words and language are ancient, and often unknown to many of us, including me.
I grew up feeling very Jewish. And yet as a young adult, I constantly found myself in contexts where I didn't know the words. I was not raised to say Yashar Koach, never mind 'shkoyach. I didn't know the proper greeting for the in-between days of Sukkot was Moadim L'simcha, never mind that the response was Hagim U'zmanim L'sasson.
I can only imagine how steep the learning curve must feel for the members of our community who were raised secular or converted to Judaism.
I can also imagine that it might be alienating for the members of our community who feel steeped in these phrases that capture and embody a core part of their Jewish identity. They too might feel like a fish out of water when the words that roll off their tongue don't land like a homecoming.
I still remember when Rachel Brodie, a beloved Jewish educator and teacher of mine, who passed away suddenly this past year, aleah shalom, taught me that when you learn that someone has died, the Jewish response is Baruch Dayan HaEmet. She gifted me these words like she was returning a long lost family heirloom to me.
I feel such tremendous grief that my Nonna died before she was able to teach me Ladino. The phrases and ways of being that are buried with her generation. I wonder if she opened her meals by saying Bendichas Manos or closed each meal with Mezas de Alegria.
My grief is not only personal. It is part of a larger cultural and political landscape. Nearly eighty percent of the world's languages are Indigenous, spoken by cultural minorities. Forces like urbanization, oppression, war, genocide, and climate change pressure these languages and cultures to migrate and assimilate.
The intentional deprivation of language is a violent strategy of white supremacy culture and colonization that has been deployed ubiquitously to Native American communities and indigenous communities around the world.
A few summers ago I was at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, also known as Mass MoCA. They had an interactive exhibit in the children's section about Indigenous languages by Wendy Red Star called Apsáalooke: Children of the Large-Beaked Bird. As a multimedia artist and a member of the Crow tribe, Wendy Red Star offers accounts of American history that rectify the frequently flawed narratives about Native people.
What I remember most from the exhibit, and what is most relevant today, was its emphasis on language preservation.
Quoting from the exhibit, "The Apsáalooke (Up-saw-low-gah) language - spoken today by just 3-4,000 tribal members primarily living in Montana - is at risk of vanishing. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the U.S. government attempted to systematically eradicate the Crow language, requiring Crow children to learn and speak only English at the boarding schools they were required to attend. Since the Crow language is an oral tradition, removal of these children from their culture also contributed to the demise of the language." [3]
I remember sitting with my kids in the exhibit's ArtBar listening to the artist's father speak Crow words for animals and then trying to interpret and draw them. There is a difference between the English word crow and its native origin, which more accurately translates to "Children of the Large-Beaked Bird". And that difference is significant in terms of how we conceive of ourselves and the world.
Just as there is a significant difference between atonement and teshuvah.
Climate change is another factor accelerating language loss because biological diversity and linguistic diversity are linked.
"As Indigenous communities are forced to migrate due to rising sea levels and climatic changes that disrupt their agricultural and fishing industries, it inevitably becomes more difficult for small languages to remain viable as its speakers scatter around the globe and are forced to assimilate...
"Many indigenous communities look for cues in their environment to know when to plant, hunt, and harvest. When natural cycles are disrupted, so is the linguistic meaning and context built around them. One example: the shadbush, a small North American tree, is named such because shad, a type of fish, are often spawning in the rivers when the shadbush flowers. That is no longer the case because along with many other plants, it is flowering earlier in the year." [4]
And it works in reverse.
Language loss also accelerates environmental collapse. Caring for the earth and the environment are cultural practices transmitted from generation to generation through words, songs, and rituals.
Take for example one of the challenges facing the people of Tibet living under Chinese occupation.
Tibetan folk songs tell you how to cultivate rice fields or roof a house to avoid flooding. When the Chinese made it a war crime to speak Tibetan, not only were the songs lost, but so was the wisdom and practical instructions about how to cultivate the fields, which impacts how the land is cared for and how fires spread.
Without native languages, the whole body of cultural practices is disrupted, and this leads to many kinds of destruction.
Restrictions on cultural practices and language was also one strategy used against Jews and Muslims during the Spanish Inquisition.
"In Inquisition-era Spain - which lasted over 300 years - business contracts were legally required to be consummated over a meal of pork in order to ferret out and economically restrict crypto-Jews and -Muslims, whose families had been forced at swordpoint to convert to Christianity but still secretly attempted to maintain their ways.
"So people got creative! They made 'chuletas' - pork chops - out of a French toast-like creation that combines milk and bread to look just like a pork chop. And often without saying why to their own children, women separated meat and milk at home, out of stubborn love and memory for their family traditions." [5]
Language is how we understand ourselves. It is how we call ourselves into existence. Language is how we create a world together. Its preservation is part of how we survive.
One of the unique things about Jewish tradition was its creation of Lashon Hakodesh, a Holy Tongue. Hebrew. For almost the entirety of Jewish history, Hebrew was not a spoken vernacular. It was a language reserved for spiritual practice, prayer, and sacred study.
Much like today, people spoke the secular language of the place they lived, be it French, Polish, Arabic, Hindi, or Aramaic. And they also spoke the specifically Jewish dialects that became the binding agent of Jewish communities in Diaspora.
The Jews of Eastern Europe spoke Yiddish, a mixing of German and Hebrew. The Jews of Spanish descent spoke Ladino, a mixing of Spanish and Hebrew, or they spoke Judeo-Arabic. But when they gathered to pray or study, they did so in Hebrew. The creation of Hebrew as a shared sacred language unites communities across the Jewish Diaspora.
On the one hand it requires that everyone learn an additional language. But on the other hand, it means that Jews across the world have a shared language, a way to gather and connect across our many differences.
In 2020, Professor Sarah Bunin Benor launched the Jewish Language Project at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.
She writes, "Wherever Jews have lived around the world, they have spoken and written in languages distinct from their non-Jewish neighbors - from Yiddish and Ladino to Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Malayalam.
"Because of migrations and other historical events, many of these languages are on the verge of extinction, and most Jews today are unaware of their existence. It is imperative that we document and raise awareness about these languages in the next decade - for the sake of the elderly Jews who are their last speakers and for the sake of Jewish children who would benefit from knowing about their multifaceted heritage." [6]
She explains that most long-standing Jewish language varieties are in danger as their speakers are almost all elderly. In the next 20-30 years, the last speakers will die. So now is the time to document the language varieties, cultures, and histories of Jewish communities around the world.
Take, for example, Dr. Nasser Baravarian, who is one of the last speakers of Judeo-Isfahani. Dr. Yona Sabar, one of the last speakers of Jewish neo-Aramaic. The memory of Sarah Cohen of Cochin, India, who passed away this year. She was one of the last speakers of Jewish-Malayalam.
Ladino is one of the many Jewish languages on the verge of extinction. And it happens to be the one my Nonna spoke.
To quote my friend and teacher, folklorist Selina Morales, "Language preservation is the beating heart of intergenerational indigenous practice."
I want to suggest today, on the birthday of the world, the world that was created by way of the letter Bet and its blessings, that it should be a priority for us as well.
This feels like a powerful and necessary way for us to lean into practices that will strengthen our sense of community and wellness, and more deeply root us in Jewish ways of knowing and learning.
This past June, after a year of reflection and conversation, Kol Tzedek adopted a new vision for ourselves that begins,
"We are transmitting an inclusive and liberatory Judaism for the next generation. Change takes generations. We are recovering and integrating Jewish traditions from across our history and diaspora."
As the Shmita year ends, and we move back into the realm of creation, let us not waste a moment to live into our vision for ourselves.
This year we are officially launching Sifatai Tiftach: The Diasporic Languages and Prayer Project. We will be focusing our Adult Education offerings on the languages of the Diaspora. For this year, we will be offering a series of classes in Ladino, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Classes begin this winter on Zoom. I hope you will learn with us! And we will continue to learn from our visiting teachers Laura Elkeslassy and Dr. Galeet Dardashti.
On this Rosh Hashanah, which we bless and call Yom HaZikaron, the Day of Remembering, there is one more memory I want to share with you.
When I was twenty years old I traveled to the island of Rhodes. I slept in a hostel and walked the cobblestone streets of the Jewish ghetto. I took a tour of the old synagogue where my ancestors had likely prayed in the round. But most of the time I was there, I was on a scavenger hunt looking for the place my Nonna grew up in.
My father had told me that the plot of land had been sold decades earlier and was now the site of a corporate hotel. But he remembered that there was a very big tree in her front yard that he hoped had not been demolished.
This was pre-cellphones and pre-Google Maps. But I had a few landmarks and managed to find the hotel. And there in the front yard, was a giant old oak tree. It must have been at least a few hundred years old. I ran to it and wrapped my arms around as far as I could reach. This was the same tree my Nonna might have hugged, though I kind of doubt that she was a tree-hugger. And there I snapped a photograph of myself - shaved head, ripped corduroys, and a backpack - hugging this ancestral tree.
Eitz Hayyim Hi l'machazikim bah
It is a tree of life to those who hold fast to it...and oh did I cling to it.
While the Holy One may have chosen the letter bet to begin the Torah, this morning I want to invite you to begin your year with the letter Aleph. Aleph is the silent letter. It is the letter of possibility. As our liturgy declares, Hayom Harat Olam, today the world is full of possibility.
Aleph is the letter that begins the very first word of the Ten Commandments, Anochi, I am. It is the first letter of Avot, meaning ancestor. And the very first letter of the word Achot, meaning nurse, or sister.
There is a famous Sefardic Piyut called Achot Ketana, written by R. Abraham Hazan Girundi in 13th-century Spain. It is traditionally sung on Rosh Hashanah. And we hope to begin a tradition of singing it here at KT today.
Its title, Achot Ketana, means "the little sister," which is meant to be all of us, B'not Yisrael, Children of Israel.
In the song, the little sister prays for healing and blessing. The piyut has six verses, the first five of which end with the same refrain, "Let the year and its curses conclude!"
But, then, the final sixth verse closes with our deepest wish for all of you, brought to you by the letter Bet.
"Let the year and its blessings begin!"
As we enter 5783, may you draw close to a sense of possibility, for yourself and the world.
May we each connect to zocher hasdei avot - to the merit of our ancestors, however we define those lineages for ourselves. To their memories and their legacies. To remember, restore, and reclaim that which has been lost. That it may return to us like a long-lost family heirloom.
And may the year and its blessings begin!
Shanah Tovah.
Anyada buena, dulse i alegre.
[1] Zohar 1:2b.
[2] https://folklife.si.edu/language-vitality-initiative.
[3] https://massmoca.org/event/wendy-red-star/.
[4] https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/climate-change-language-death#:~:text=As%20these%20communities%20get%20displaced,to%20assimilate%20to%20local%20cultures.
[5] From Jonah Boyarin's "Yom Kippur Insert for Remembering Sepharad".
[6] https://www.jewishlanguages.org/jewish-language-project.