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Despite the unyielding flow of terrible news, I do hope that you are starting the year with connection, comfort, love, and hope. A community member started an email to me this week (inspired by a friend who started her emails that way) and it felt like the only reasonable way to begin my Friday email today.
We are at a turning point, both in Torah and in the world. Let’s begin with the world. The past few weeks we have lived through a U.S. backed coup in Venezuela, Israel’s continued devastation in Gaza, the obscene murder of Renee Good in ICE-occupied Minneapolis, the threat of anti-immigrant abductions in Philly, violent repression in Iran, ongoing bloodshed in Congo and Sudan, the supreme court prepare to bar trans athletes, I won’t go on. The news is relentlessly devastating. The world is aching. And I imagine we are each earnestly asking, what can we do? Is this moment the seed of defeat or redemption? So too in Torah. After 400 years of slavery, the Israelites have reached their breaking point. The hard labor has whittled their spirits. They call out, desperate. And finally the Holy One hears them. Exodus 6:5 reads, וְגַ֣ם ׀ אֲנִ֣י שָׁמַ֗עְתִּי אֶֽת־נַאֲקַת֙ בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֲשֶׁ֥ר מִצְרַ֖יִם מַעֲבִדִ֣ים אֹתָ֑ם וָאֶזְכֹּ֖ר אֶת־בְּרִיתִֽי׃ “I have heard the cries of the Israelites enslaved in Egypt and I will remember my covenant.” This is the moment when the story turns, the seeds of liberation are planted. The internal will of the people prepares to rise up. But not without trepidation. Moses in particular feels both called and afraid, in part due to the weariness of the Israelites, who are “mikotzer ruach u’meivodah kashah” (Ex: 6:9). "מִקֹּ֣צֶר ר֔וּחַ וּמֵעֲבֹדָ֖ה קָשָֽׁה׃” Nearly impossible to translate, this refrain captures this Israelites feeling of inadequacy, both physical and spiritual. They have shortness of breath from the hard labor. And they are short on spirit from the difficulties of slavery. Moses and the Israelites are unsure they can muster the strength and courage required. I imagine many of us can relate. After so much time on high alert, our spirits are also prone to be weary. At the end of a week like this, I too feel kotzer ruach - short of breath. And yet the legacy of the Exodus story is alive within us and it could not be more timely to read it this week. On Tuesday night 125 people filled the KT sanctuary to prepare to keep ICE out of our neighborhoods. This is precisely what we need to be doing. (So much gratitude to Rabbi Lizzie for organizing this! And stay tuned for another training). The most important media I have consumed this week is this episode of adrienne maree brown’s podcast How to Survive the End of the World (thank you Rabbi Mó). Her guest, Autumn Brown, a single mom and resident activist in Minneapolis described her experience as “Intense, Frightening, Surreal and Inspiring." I imagine we are more connected to fear and intensity. I find myself returning to the last time Minneapolis was rising up and the final words of George Floyd, z”l, who literally could not breath. As we enter Shabbat, let this be an invitation to take a deep breath, to literally lengthen our breathing. To turn our attention to community and relationships, to that which sustains and inspires each of us. I encourage you to support organizations in Minneapolis like https://defend612.com/ and https://unidos-mn.org/, as well as ICE OUT efforts here in Philly led by the New Sanctuary Movement, Juntos and others. To organize hyper locally, block by block, in our neighborhoods and schools. To call our elected officials. To wear a whistle. To avail ourselves of any action within our capacity! And also to exhale. To breathe and sing, lest we underestimate our own power. Let this week be the seed of redemption! Dear KT! In response to the survey feedback I received in the Spring, I am beginning a practice of inviting other members of the KT clergy team to write Friday emails. You can expect to hear from one of them roughly monthly. We begin 2026 with some words from Rabbi Mónica. I always want to hear from you, and you are welcome to direct your responses to her directly at [email protected]. - Rabbi Ari Lev
As a person with deep ties to Venezuela, it's been a particularly dizzying week. I imagine not everyone knows that both of my parents grew up in Caracas, a place I visited regularly throughout my childhood and adolescence, a city that this week the U.S. bombed and attacked. My cousin and my aunt are in Caracas, living in the house that my aunt and mom were raised in, and recently mourning the loss of my uncle. Other family friends are still in Caracas, and many have left the country over the last decade, living in exile from the place they call home. We are not a politically monolithic family or community– we hold different positions and perspectives concerning everything from capitalism and socialism to Trump to Israel-Palestine. And also, we love each other. In my efforts this week to disentangle the different narratives about what Trump’s actions in Venezuela mean, talking to family and trusted friends living in this period of great uncertainty about Venezuela’s future, I’ve noticed the desire, among Western media sources and social media, among social justice movements opposing Trump's actions, and opposition movements to Maduro, to oversimplify, to ask: Who is the bad guy here, and who is the good guy? What a human instinct, to want to know which side we are on. But this week, I fear that it’s not the right question. This week I am holding the hope that members of my family feel after so many years under a repressive regime, alongside the foreboding awareness that a president who is systematically unraveling and gutting a democracy at home will not bring democracy to another nation. A Venezuelan family friend posted: “You can contain multitudes. You can be against an authoritarian government in Venezuela, and also, you can be outraged about the idea that the United States would rule Venezuela.” Jewishly we might say, elu v’elu, these and these are both true, more than one thing can be true at once, and the world we long for, a place of freedom, safety, sovereignty and human rights for all people is not a zero sum game. I’m holding the contradictions: that Maduro is gone but Venezuelans continue to live under the authoritarian government; that Trump has deported Venezuelans from the US en masse over the past year and will not offer them asylum, but now claims to be their liberator; that Amnesty International has flagged both the human rights abuses of the Maduro government and human rights concerns now that the United States has ousted him; that Maduro will be tried in a court of law, not for the things he did to the Venezuelan people but rather for charges shaped by US interests. Though we want to understand a complex situation in simple terms, tzarich iyun, it requires deeper engagement. In the early verses of Parshat Shemot, this week’s Torah portion, we read: וַיָּקם מֶלֶךְ־חָדָשׁ עַל־מִצְרָיִם אֲשֶׁר לֹא־יָדַע אֶת־יוֹסֵף A new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.” (Exodus 1:8) This is the beginning of the unraveling. The Israelites, having migrated to Egypt at the end of the book of Genesis, have lived there now for generations. They arrived to this foreign land in good standing with its Pharaoh, thanks to Joseph’s political savvy. But time has passed, and a new Pharaoh takes the mantle, one who does not find himself accountable to Joseph or his people. We know this Pharaoh well. He is the one who forces the Israelites into enslavement, the one who ruthlessly oppresses them. When they prevail and multiply, he is the one who issues a decree of infanticide, demanding that the Hebrew male babies be thrown into the Nile. And more than just that. This Pharaoh, this human king, is an archetype in Jewish tradition. Someone we come back to again and again, our ultimate shorthand for tyranny. This week, as I read the news and listened to reporting day in and day out about Venezuela, I found myself reflecting on the history of my family, whose origins trace back to Romania and Czechoslovakia, countries that collaborated with Nazi Germany in the 1930s and 40s, surrendering them to labor camps and concentration camps, then sending the survivors into exile in other countries, including Israel and Venezuela, and eventually the United States, all countries that I believe are now under the authority of Pharaohs. If my own family’s history teaches me anything about kings and kingdoms, it is, as our sages say in Pirkei Avot, to be wary, not just of kings, but of governments: Pirkei Avot 2:3 הֱווּ זְהִירִין בָּרָשׁוּת, שֶׁאֵין מְקָרְבִין לוֹ לָאָדָם אֶלָּא לְצֹרֶךְ עַצְמָן. Be wary of the government, as they draw close to a person only when they need him for some purpose. נִרְאִין כְּאוֹהֲבִין בִּשְׁעַת הֲנָאָתָן, וְאֵין עוֹמְדִין לוֹ לָאָדָם בִּשְׁעַת דָּחְקוֹ. They seem like good friends in good times, but they do not stand for a person in his time of trouble. Such was the fate of the Israelites, migrants to the land of Mitzrayim, where with the change of the regime and the rise of a new king, state power turned on them. The archetype of a human king, a melech basar vadam, is developed in contrast to Melech Haolam, or melech malchei hamelachim, the King of all Kings, the Heavenly Sovereign. My favorite line of liturgy is אין לנו מלך אלא אתה, we have no king but You. We sing it on the high holidays– Avinu Malkeinu, eyn lanu melech ela ata– but also in softer, less dramatic moments, like Nishmat Kol Chai on Shabbat morning. It is basically the ancient analog of the slogan “No Kings”– the name of the sweeping protests that took place across the United States, and around the world, in June and October of 2025, decrying authoritarianism. More than five million people participated in these protests, chanting “No Kings!” Which to me means no human kings– not Trump, not Maduro, not Netanyahu, not Putin, not any of them. Instead, this liturgy declares that we place our faith in a source above and beyond power-hungry human despots who exploit our lives and loved ones, our planet and our future. As the powers of this world tighten their grip, let us be wary of governments and draw on ol malchut shamayim in our prayer, in our activism, in our showing up for one another. These may seem like radical ideas, but they are ancient and deeply Jewish, embedded in the lived experiences and wisdom of our ancestors. May they be resources for us in the days to come, for survival and resistance. There was a moment this week, when I was biking in the bitter cold trying not to wipe out on the ice, my ears stinging from the wind, when I realized I was singing to myself. The little hum in my heart had become audible. “This joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me. The world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.”
Thanks to Rabbi Mó, the beautiful song This Joy written by the resistance revival chorus and produced by Righteous Babe Records, has become a KT Hanukkah anthem of sorts. This week, the actual darkest week of the year, punctured by numerous acts of heinous violence, the song emerged like a warm light from my frozen, frightened, grieving subconscious. Given the explicit spiritual instruction to light the menorah in public, to take pride and radiate the joy and light, the attack at Bondi Beach was violating and destabilizing. I am grateful to Jewish Currents for translating my heartfelt experience into words: “It was devastating to wake up Sunday morning to the news of a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. News like this is doubly distressing: First and foremost there is the reckoning with the loss of human life—among the dead were a girl of 10 and a Holocaust survivor—a reckoning that is particularly difficult amid nonstop news of massacres and gun violence. Then there is also the exhaustion of knowing that there will be no time to grieve or to collect our thoughts before we on the Jewish left go on defense, as we try to parry brazen attempts by the Israeli government, Jewish communal organizations, and pro-Israel actors to claim victims of antisemitic violence in the diaspora as proxy Israelis, and to link their deaths to the movement for Palestinian liberation.” The coincidence of the 8th night of Hanukkah with the Winter solstice has deep significance. I don’t know how often it happens, but I can tell you that the sages imagine it was like this in Gan Eden, when the world was first created. The Sages taught that when Adam HaRishon, the very first person, experienced the very first winter and saw that the daylight was progressively diminishing, they feared the days would just grow shorter and shorter until the light was gone and everything returned to tohu va’vohu, chaos and disorder. They said, “Woe is me; perhaps because of my own transgressions the world is becoming dark around me.” This must be my doing. In response, that very first human offered songs of praise and lit candles and observed a festival for 8 days. And thus was the very first Hanukkah! until they saw that the daylight was progressively lengthening. They realized the days become shorter and then longer, and this is the order of the world (B.T. Avodah Zarah 8a). This year, despite it being five thousand seven hundred and eighty six years since the creation of the world, there is something primordial happening. We are back in a state of chaos, kindling lights to reclaim order and hope. I know there are days when I feel the violence and disorder will not recede. I know terrorism and fascism are not akin to the solstice, nor should they be part of the natural order of the world. And yet, they are the doom and gloom of our time and we must use every spiritual resource we have to confront them. To quote the best fundraising email I have received this season from Bread and Roses Community Fund, “Despite everything we’ve lived through this year, there is another story unfolding—one where communities organize, resist, and rise up with unflinching resolve.” This joy, the world didn’t give it to us. But we can give it to each other! And we can remind ourselves that the world can’t take it away. Which is what Hanukkah is all about. I invite you to play this song on repeat til it wells up in you. Come sing it with us on Shabbat morning and again at our Hanukkah party on Sunday evening. Joy metabolizes stress and fear and anxiety. It is medicine for these times! Every holiday has its unique preparations. Today I found myself buying an abundance of oil, seven bottles to be exact (I should have added an 8th). It took me three trips to shlep all the bottles of grease from my car to the kitchen. I got a gallon of grapeseed oil for frying latkes, one kind of olive oil for roasting, another for dressing. A few varieties from Palestine, Lebanon, and Turkey for tasting. While I was at it I resupplied on toasted sesame oil. This is afterall a celebration of oil. Though unlike the Maccabbes, I will be starting out with an enormous amount. If it doesn’t last all week I will be concerned.
Often I am drawn to Hanukkah as the festival of lights. But this year, I am thinking more about the oil, and what it means to have a holiday that encourages the consumption of greasy foods. When I was growing up fat was the enemy. Diet culture deemed anything fat-free to be healthy. I can still recall the plastic flavor of a Snackwell cookie. Rabbi Minna Bromberg’s new book Every Body Beloved: A Jewish Embrace of Fatness is encouraging me to reflect on Chanukah as an opportunity to reclaim our relationship to our bodies and to food, and to fatty foods in particular. It reminds us that fat is not something to be feared. It is fuel; it is silky, viscous, life-giving, luscious and delicious. In the very first pages of the book she recounts this story being with her daughter at a preschool Chanukkah party while 39 weeks pregnant: “The preschool had hired a young man to play guitar and lead the singing and dancing…After a few lively renditions of familiar Chanukah tunes, we took a break to eat sufganiyot… Kids and parents alike were served the fried, jelly-filled Chanukah pastries. An absorbed hush fell over the munching crowd. Soon the young man picked up his guitar again, and once again I was impressed…And that’s when he check, check, checked his mic and said, “Okay! Let’s all get back to dancing, unless you’ve gotten too fat from those sufganiyot!” (5). Reading this story, I could hear the spiritual screech in the room, and feel the weight of his words in my own body. Rabbi Bromberg captures her internal reaction brilliantly: “Doesn’t this guy know that Chanukah celebrates the miracle of fat?!?... The miracle of Chanukkah is that that oil, that fat, lasted for eight days. We eat fried foods on Chanukah in remembrance of the luminous fat that allowed our traditions, and by extension our people, to survive. We celebrate fat as that which sustains and renews us in the face of hardship. We also eat fried foods because fat is yummy. And we do not need to be afraid of or uncomfortable with our own fat hunger – neither the hunger of fat people nor the hunger for fat” (12-13). Holy, holy, holy is the human body in all its forms. Rabbi Bromberg’s book beckons us to create a world where “we can trust our own hungers,” where “every body is beloved.” And her wisdom seems especially needed on this side of Chanukkah and the Holidays, so that we can enjoy ourselves and model for the young people in our lives a Jewish of embrace of delight, pleasure and desire. One of the most incredible parts of the book is that in between the chapters she interspersed letters she has written but never sent. A letter to her seven-year-old self. And a letter to the people at Yom Kippur services who would not move to let her through. And a letter to her college boyfriend who broke up with her because she was fat and Jewish. You get the idea. They are in essence teshuvah letters. Before Shabbat comes in, who might you write to knowing you never have to send it? I am grateful to Rabbi Bromberg for the idea of Chanukah being the yearly reminder to embrace our bodies and “broadcast the miracle of fat.” I encourage you to get on her mailing list to enjoy A Year of Fat Torah! I am not exactly conflict averse, but I don’t particularly enjoy conflict. I am prone to seeing it as the result of mistakes I, and the other people involved, have made, rather than a healthy opportunity for change.
The honest truth is that I am in conflict with several people in my life right now. The work of Teshuvah may be the focus of Elul but is not contained to those prescient days. Some conflicts have been resolved and others have worsened. I am working to remember that conflict is part of the spiritual path. And that Torah can guide me in navigating conflict with more grace. In a tribute written by Rebecca Solnit, the words of Buddhist teacher and environmental activist Joanna Macy, of blessed memory, captured my attention, a welcome refresh. Macy once wrote, “It is good to realize that falling apart is not such a bad thing. Indeed, it is as essential to transformation as the cracking of outgrown shells. Anxieties and doubts can be healthy and creative, not only for the person but for the society, because they permit new and original approaches to reality.” There is deep wisdom here that I have learned before but remains hard to internalize. It is hard to internalize because falling apart is painful. It involves loss and grief, disorientation and uncertainty. This week’s Torah portion, Vayishlach, contains the anticipated reunion of Jacob and Esau, brothers separated by betrayal, preparing to reencounter one another. Jacob is afraid, and he spends the night alone on the banks of the river Yabbok, where he famously wrestles with a being, somehow both human and divine. The tussle lasts until dawn, at which point the angel begs for release and Jacob relents on the condition that the angel bless him. Genesis 32 reads, וַיֹּ֣אמֶר שַׁלְּחֵ֔נִי כִּ֥י עָלָ֖ה הַשָּׁ֑חַר וַיֹּ֙אמֶר֙ לֹ֣א אֲשַֽׁלֵּחֲךָ֔ כִּ֖י אִם־בֵּרַכְתָּֽנִי׃ “Then he said: Let me go, for dawn has come up! But he said: I will not let you go unless you bless me. וַיֹּ֥אמֶר אֵלָ֖יו מַה־שְּׁמֶ֑ךָ וַיֹּ֖אמֶר יַעֲקֹֽב׃ He said to him: What is your name? And he said: Yaakov.” At this point the angel blesses Jacob with the name Yisrael - the one who struggles. Commentators ask if this struggle is internal or external. I am unsure it matters. Either way it is archetypal. It invites us to consider what we do with our fears, what we are struggling with, what we refuse to let go of, what we long to be blessed with. I offer you the wisdom of Joanna Macy, who invites us into a love greater than our fear: “Each one of us has been called into being at this time. I am convinced of that. We are not here by accident. Is it my imagination to think that we have chosen this? Is it not a privilege to be incarnating at a time when the stakes are really high, at a time when everything we’ve ever learned about interconnectedness, about trust, about courage, can be put to the test? Each one of us, I believe, is a gift the earth is giving to itself now, a unique gift. Every anguish, betrayal, disappointment can even help prepare us for the work of healing.” In the early chapters of Pirkei Avot, Rabbi Yochanan asks: Eyzeh hu chacham. Who is wise? What follows is a litany of rabbinic responses. There is no singular answer. But the one I am continually drawn to is that of Rabbi Shimon,who says: Haroeh et hanolad. The one who sees that which is being born.
In most translations of Pirkei Avot, this is interpreted poetically as “the one who has foresight.” But I think that misses the insight of Rabbi Shimon. Hanolad is a term for both that first sliver of the new moon and a newborn child. Today we mark the new Hebrew month of Kislev. In Kislev the nights continue to grow longer, as we anticipate the bright lights of Hanukkah. It is a month that celebrates darkness and the world of dreams. The month when the moon is most visible. This year and this week in particular, this teaching, which links the new moon with new life, has extra resonance. On Rosh Hashanah morning, I spoke about the midwives in Exodus as our defiant heroes, quite literally on the frontlines preventing the genocide of the Hebrews in ancient Egypt/Mitzrayim. And I shared a contemporary midrash by Orna Peltz that I want to return to today. “The midwives were asked: Where did you get your fearful awe of God? To which they answered: From the great and deep things that we saw at the birth stool, from the mystery that embraces us morning and evening: human being after human being coming into the world; where does each one come from and what do they each bring with them? The goodness that a [parent] sees in their child, the compassion and the love that awakens, crying babies bursting forth from exhausted bodies, and the soft seal of God’s finger imprinted on their faces.” While I may have the privilege of seeing the new moon, they have the honor of truly seeing hanolad, witnessing new life as it enters this world. Their wisdom is unparalleled, handed down from generation to generation, from midwife to midwife. For those who have not yet heard, this week the Bryn Mawr Birth Center, also known as the Lifecycle Wellness and Birth Center, announced it will be closing after 47 years of service. In nearly five decades, they have witnessed the births of 16,000 babies, trained hundreds of midwives and provided family-centered care to thousands of families. The loss is immense and utterly tragic. For profit healthcare has deemed birthing with dignity not profitable and therefore not insurable. I cannot help but feel this is a win for Pharoah. I am sending abundant love and gratitude to the many Kol Tzedek midwives, doulas and healthcare providers who currently work at the Birth Center. Please know that I feel awe in your presence, for your courage to witness human being after human being coming into the world. I am thinking about the many KT babies who have been born there, as recently as this past week, and sending comfort to the countless families who will no longer receive care at the Birth Center. This is a tremendous loss. To all of us, on this Rosh Hodesh Kislev, I want to remind us of the resilience and courage of the midwives of old and the ones in our midst. In the midrash, the midwives explain: “Our awe is “not in the heavens” (Devarim 30:12). Lo va’shammayim hi. Our awe of God arises precisely from within nature, from within the pain of what we witness on the birth stool. From there we learn to choose what is good, to protect life, to fight against death and to resist evil.” This is our task every week, and especially this week. To turn our attention to what is possible, to what is emerging, what is being born in our lives. So often we think of wisdom coming from past experience, and Rabbi Shimon reminds us that wisdom comes from paying closer attention to what is emerging in our own lives right now. May the new moon of kislev, the month of darkness and dreams, invite us to look more closely and appreciate that which is unfurling in our lives. May our attention cultivate wisdom. And may wisdom give us the courage to “to protect life, to fight against death and to resist evil.” With limited exception, Torah is not very romantic. Those exceptions include the Song of Songs, (which is perhaps more erotic than romantic) and this week’s Torah portion, Chayei Sarah, which is better known for including the deaths of both Sarah and Abraham, but also narrates the moment when Jacob and Rachel first meet.
We learn in Genesis chapter 29, that Jacob is at a well, when Rachel catches his eye. It is something like love at first sight. He rolls away the stone covering the mouth of the well and gives water to Rachel and Lavan’s flock of sheep, and then in a moment of relative biblical abandon, Rachel and Jacob kiss. A rare public display of affection. We don’t get many more details than that, but that is pretty racy for Torah. Perhaps not surprisingly what I love about this story is that they were at a well. Wells are meeting places. Water is life. And this year in particular, because the theme for the Days of Awe was Miriam’s well, I am paying extra attention to the role of wells in Torah stories. Wells are signs of resilience, reminders of what nourishes and sustains us. We learn in Pirkei Avot (5:6), “Ten things were created at twilight just before the first Shabbat, and the first three include, “the mouth of the earth, the mouth of the well, the mouth of the donkey…” This week, I am most intrigued by the mouth of the well. Which well is this referring to? In Elul, many of us learned the sages feel clear that the specific well referenced in this teaching is Miriam’s well, which journeyed with her and the Israelites throughout their time in the desert. But I would like to note that while Miriam was amazing, never once does Torah describe her as having a well. It is only after she dies, and the Israelites lose access to water, that they ascribe this primordial well to Miriam. But what if this well wasn’t Miriam’s? Or at least, not only Miriam’s. There are after all many ancestral stories in Torah that involve a well. Take for example last week, we read of the Hagar’s well, as she and Ishmael were thirsting in the desert, “The Holy Blessed One opened her eyes and she saw a well of water (Gen. 21:19). And next week, in parashat Toldot, we will read about how Isaac redigs the wells that his father Abraham had dug, which had since been clogged up by the Philistines (Gen. 26:18). I am increasingly inclined to believe the well in Pirkei Avot was intentionally unspecified. Not because it wasn’t Miriam’s well but because it wasn’t only Miriam’s well. It was also the well of Hagar and Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob. And it is our well too. For those of us who dwell in cities, it takes some effort to imagine that everything we need to sustain us is just under our feet, literally a clean, quenching, current in the earth, waiting for us to dig down and draw it forth. Inviting us to search together for its access point. Reminding us that we are likely to find our people at its mouth. I think Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weiberg captures the sentiment best in a kavanah that appears before the Amidah in the reconstructionist prayerbook Kol Haneshamah, “Dear God, Open the blocked passageways to you, The congealed places. Roll away the heavy stone from the well as your servant Jacob did when he beheld his beloved Rachel. Help us open the doors of trust that have been jammed with hurt and rejection. As you open the blossoms in spring, Even as you open the heavens in storm, Open us – to feel your great, awesome, wonderful presence.” On this shabbat, when we read the story of Jacob and Rachel, may we feel encouraged to roll away the heavy stones in our hearts and be reminded that we too have access to the mouth of the well. This has been a week of highs and lows. The election victories on Tuesday were a big relief, even a cause for revelry. I had begun to fear that Republican gerrymandering had been so successful that it was no longer possible for democrats to even win elections. I am so grateful to everyone who campaigned and worked the polls in PA, NJ, VA, NY, and Cali.
But the wins have been tempered by the cruel effects of the government shutdown. The starvation tactics we have witnessed in Gaza have come home to roost. To imagine prioritizing remodeling the White House while 42 million Americans can’t afford to eat, is truly the worst of human greed. The contours of the week are reflected in this week’s parsha, Vayera, which includes the elation of Sarah Imeinu, when she finds out she will at last bear a child. And the fear of Isaac, who suspects his father is prepared to sacrifice his life, wondering aloud, “I see the wood but where is the ram?” All of it is true at once, in the story and in our lives. When we read this parsha, we often focus on the binding of Isaac. But on Rosh Hashanah morning I invited us to linger in Sarah’s ecstatic laughter - her tzokh. Literally, the text says (Gen. 18:12), וַתִּצְחַ֥ק שָׂרָ֖ה בְּקִרְבָּ֣הּ “And Sarah laughed within herself.” As if to say, Sarah was tickled. The fact that the text includes the word “ בְּקִרְבָּ֣הּ // inside her” suggests it was embodied, even involuntary. I am picturing a kind of giddiness that bubbles up from the inside. Sarah got the giggles. I know this feeling well. In this moment, Sarah invites a kind of levity into her relationship with the Divine. And this inspires Isaac’s name, Yitzhak, derived from Sarah’s tzokh. This Shabbat, on the heels of electoral victories worth celebrating, I want to return to the poem I read on Rosh Hashanah and to the intention so many of us set in that moment, to invite in more levity, more laughter, more joy. In the words of Hafiz, “I sometimes forget that I was created for joy My mind is too busy My heart is too heavy Heavy for me to remember that I have been called to dance the sacred dance for life I was created to smile to love to be lifted up and lift others up O sacred one Untangle my feet from all that ensnares Free my soul That we might Dance and that our dancing might be contagious.” So much ensnares us. Let us not forget we were created for joy. Holy One, untangle our feet, that we might dance, and that our dancing might be contagious. It has been nearly nine and a half years since we moved to Philly (incredible!). I began my tenure at Kol Tzedek one week later.
I still remember the feeling of arriving in the heat of summer, sitting on the couch in our yet unpacked, un-airconditioned living room and thinking, “Take me back to Boston, we have made a grave mistake!” That feeling has nothing to do with Philly. And everything to do with my relationship to change, and moving is among the biggest of changes. I was a ball of resistance. Only now, in a life overflowing with blessings, this community tops among them, can I revisit the courage it took to move our family from Boston to Philadelphia (a relatively small move in the grand scheme of the world). I can hardly imagine the courage of our ancestor Abraham, told explicitly to leave his land, the place he was born, his home, and to go in search of himself. What makes such a journey worthwhile? What makes it possible? Lech Lecha - literally, go towards yourself - are the potent opening words and namesake of this week’s Torah portion. Honestly, accepting the position at Kol Tzedek was a pivotal Lech Lecha moment in my life. I have actually been studying this parsha for weeks in preparation for a class that I am teaching with Dr. Elsie Stern on Theologies of Exile. Elsie has helped me see that Torah is full of stories of migration. Adam and Eve leave the garden. Abraham leaves everything he knows. Joseph and eventually his brother journey to Egypt. The Israelites and the Exodus story. Nevermind 40 years in the wilderness. I have come to appreciate Lech lecha as a core migration story. But the rabbis insist it is also a mystical and inner journey. The alliterative doubling presents a grammatical mystery, one that points to more than physical movement. As if to say, Abraham - Go, Lech! Lecha! - Go, journey inside yourself, become aware of yourself. And in my experience, the inner journey is necessary to make the move possible. Each year Lech Lecha is an invitation to honor the places we have been and left behind, and also a summons to appreciate the journey inward. In my own experience the journey inward can actually be harder to begin. It is one of the reasons we created our new prayerbook, to serve as a starting point for the journey inward. I have sat with so many Kol Tzedek members who bravely confess they don’t know how to pray. Which is so relatable. Prayer is by nature intangible and internal. Especially when the Source of our prayers is ineffable, invisible, infinite. And particularly for our postmodern brains, prone to rationality. Given the depths of chaos and uncertainty in our world, I don’t think we can afford to silence the call of Lech Lecha this week – not as the call to flee, but as an invitation to be more present. I invite you to find a moment to close your eyes, to leave behind your to-do list, your computer, your cell phone, and to journey inward. To let your mind settle and wander and fill with wonder about everything that is unknown. Prayer as a practice begins with curiosity. This Shabbat Lech Lecha, can you find a moment to be curious about the mystery? In the words of Lucille Clifton in her poem “the story thus far”, so they went out clay and morning star following the bright back of the woman as she walked past the cherubim turning their fiery swords past the winged gate into the unborn world chaos fell away before her like a cloud and everywhere seemed light seemed glorious seemed very eden Lech Lecha – Leap, let go, go into the unborn world, encounter the mystery. May it be glorious! This past week, Jewish, trans and queer communities buried two beloved leaders, Ms. Major Griffin-Gracy and Reb Arthur Waskow, both of tremendously blessed memory. To borrow a page from the non-binary Hebrew project, Ms. Major and Reb Arthur are two gedolimot, two giants of our generation, who have been gathered to the ancestors and returned to the earth.
For me personally, they were role models and comrades. As I have been mourning each loss and reflecting on their impacts on my life, I am realizing that my entire path has been possible because each of them walked theirs with integrity, courage, dignity and joy. I am so very grateful to have lived alongside them, to count myself among their generations. While one cannot expect Torah to aptly honor the legacy of every person the week they pass, it is possible to read each of these luminary souls into this week’s Torah portion. Parashat Noah begins: אֵ֚לֶּה תּוֹלְדֹ֣ת נֹ֔חַ נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו אֶת־הָֽאֱלֹהִ֖ים הִֽתְהַלֶּךְ־נֹֽחַ׃ “This is the line of Noah.—Noah was a righteous person; he was wholehearted in his generations; Noah walked with God.—” Reading these words, my heart played spiritual madlibs. As if is said, Ms. Major, a righteous person who was wholehearted in her generations. She certainly walked with God. Reb Arthur, righteous among his generations, he too walked with Yah. The sages zoom in on this verse more closely and notice that it’s not just that Noah was righteous - but he was righteous in his generation. What does it mean to be righteous b’dorotav - in one's generation? Is this coming to qualify or amplify Noah’s nature? In Masechet Sanhedrin, we learn, “Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Relative to the other people of his generation he was righteous and wholehearted, but not relative to those of other generations.” As if to say, the bar was low when Noah lived. He was great, but not that great. On the other hand Reish Lakish says: In his generation he was righteous and wholehearted despite being surrounded by bad influences; all the more so would he have been considered righteous and wholehearted in other generations. As if to say, given better circumstances, one can only imagine how righteous he might have been. Are we today living through a relatively righteous or a relatively selfless generation? It's hard to imagine anyone looking back and saying, The Trump years, that was a righteous time. But as my history buff tween keeps reminding me, when was there really a righteous time? I can’t hardly pick a decade in the 20th century that looks rosy from this vantage point. I think in this case, I may always side with Reish Lakish - that the challenge is to be righteous regardless of, at times in spite of, others’ choices. I am thinking of Ms. Major, who was among the righteous souls at Stonewall, defending trans visibility before it was even possible to walk the streets as a visibly trans person. At a time when transwomen, as she describes it, were legally required to wear at least three articles of men’s clothing in public. What a disgraceful law so shaped by its time, and undone by the work of Ms. Major’s lifetime. I am thinking of Reb Arthur, who in 1976, nearly 50 years ago, wrote, “When we occupy another people, we risk losing the very soul of what makes us Israel-the people who wrestle with God and ourselves. Our security cannot be built on another’s dispossession.” His commitment to writing and advocating for justice in Israel/Palestine would later cost him his job and lead him to break with the very Jewish institutions he founded. As I reflect on the legacy of my mentors, I realize they were righteous precisely because they were ahead of their times. Because they had the courage to imagine the world transformed, to speak it into existence against all odds, to insist it was possible, to confront the limitations of the law and lean into the power of community. It is from them that I have learned what it means to be tzadik v’tamim b’dorotav. At Reb Arthur’s funeral, Bobbi Brietman, beloved chosen family, shared the poem “When Great Trees Fall” by Maya Angelou: “When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. … And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.” Great trees have fallen. May peace blossom. And may we remember that because they existed, we can be better, b’doroteinu, in our generations. On Shabbat morning I will be sharing personal stories about Ms. Major and Reb Arthur, and we will together be asking what it means to be righteous in our generation. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143