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Earlier this week I had the privilege of taking a group of Kol Tzedek teenagers on a field trip to the encampment at UPenn, where students gathered as part of a nation-wide university divestment effort. I had originally imagined it would be a quiet night on campus, marked by an interfaith prayer service and hopefully a chance to talk to some students. As it turns out, there was a last minute student march which led to increased police presence and a more confrontational tone. I kept the young people close as we took in the sea of flags, posters, and t-shirts, surrounded by many familiar Kol Tzedek faces. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, a young Jewish student put on tefillin and began shouting the Shema over the din of the protest. At which point the protest began chanting over the sound of the Shema. Our heads scanned back and forth as we found ourselves suspended in the political theater.
When a quiet moment emerged, I gathered the students and we walked to a grassy knoll to debrief our experience. We were joined by another KT member, who is now a student organizer at Penn. The teens asked thoughtful questions about the goals of the encampment and the organizing process. As I began to recount the experience of the Shema, one of the teens asked if they were just praying or if it was meant to be disruptive. In the moment it was hard to tell. We learned that this had become a regular tactic for counter-protestors on campus, to interrupt the activities at the encampment by loudly chanting the Shema. Apparently the student organizers have spent long hours trying to decide how best to respond. Sometimes the crowd quiets. Sometimes they chant over it. I am still processing the cognitive dissonance of hearing the Shema and not instinctively joining in. Those six powerful words are meant to unify not just Jews, but humanity. And yet in that moment, they were divisive. Sitting with these students I felt the pain of not knowing who my people are. In a week when there are congressional hearings about antisemitism in schools and Israel begins to invade Rafah, it is a complicated time to be Jewish. The intentional fusing of Jewishness with the Israeli state has proliferated very real antisemitism. And it has also criminalized very urgent righteous protest. My week has been full of conversations with members who are ashamed and horrified by the actions of the Israeli government. They do not want to be implicated in this catastrophic attack on Palestinian life in Gaza. I have been called in to consult at my kids’ school in response to concerns that students of different backgrounds are struggling to talk about what’s happening in Israel and Palestine. Reading the news I find it can be hard to discern what is and isn’t antisemitism. Just this week I read an article in the Times about Republicans who are propagating antisemitic tropes while simultaneously supporting the State of Israel in the name of Jewish safety. It is a confusing time to be Jewish. I am a rabbi, and I barely know how to thread this needle. It is not new that we as Jews disagree about questions that are core to our self-understanding. It is also not new that we as Jews disagree so aggressively about Zionism and the question of a Jewish nation state. This disagreement long precedes the founding of the state itself in 1948. How on the one hand can I feel a bone-deep love for Jewish traditions and prayer, and on the other hand feel threatened by the sound of the Shema? There is so much at stake in this political moment that it feels hard to know how best to live our Judaism. Whether at home or in the streets, I invite you to return to the basics. To the Shema. To the Holiness code in this week’s parsha. To the most foundational teachings in Torah. To treat others with dignity so that we can remain connected to our own inherent dignity. In the words of Marcia Falk, Hear, O Israel-- The divine abounds everywhere and swells in everything; the many are One. May it be so. There are many beautiful verses in this week’s parsha, Acharei Mot, and yet it is best known for its most perverse teaching. Leviticus 18:22 reads, “Man shall not lie with a man as he does with a woman, it is an abomination.” The Hebrew word for abomination is To’evah - and I have a piece of art in my office with just that word. This verse has been used to shame and scar generations of Queer Jews.
A few years ago a colleague of mine, Rabbi Guy Austrian, gave a very memorable d’var Torah on this week’s parsha that did not redeem the verse, or reverse the harm, but did give me a way to relate to this and many other painful verses in Torah. Rather than wrestling with the translation or interpretation, he opted to wrestle with the trope, the melody with which they are sung. Classically there are six different melodies with which we sing the Torah. The most common is of course the trope we use on weekdays, shabbat and holidays. In addition, we often hear the Haftarah for the prophetic readings and the special trope for the High Holidays. And but once a year we get to hear the special trope of Lamentations on Tisha B’av, Esther on Purim, and if we are lucky the three megillot that are ready on the festivals of Passover (Song of Songs), Shavuot (Ruth) and Sukkot (Ecclesiates). That particular Shabbat, Rabbi Guy posited: what happens to this verse if we make it a lament and read it in Eicha trope? What happens if we eroticize it and sing it in the trope of Song of Songs? Can we flip it on its head with the playful trope of the Purim megillah? Can we give it gravitas with the Days of Awe trope? Changing the melody was an unexpected way to reclaim agency over this verse in Torah. To reclaim queer sexuality and sing it as a love poem. To reclaim queer grief and cry out in lament. The one thing I wasn’t able to do was make it into prophecy and sing it like the Haftarah. I offer you all of these options as a way to heal this part of Torah. Honestly, these days this verse hurts less than many others. The treacherous teachings about the sotah waters, the instruction to stone the rebellious child, the endless chapters of conquest in the land. Which is why, despite being musically challenged, I think it is so beautiful and important that we chant the words of Torah week after week. To remind ourselves that their meaning is not static. Every Torah service truly is an act of revelation. What Torah “means” is contextual, impacted by the reader, the teacher, the time, and as it turns out, the trope. Torah is a tree of life, and we give voice to its evolving truths. How might we sing our way back into the painful verses of Torah? What might that teach us about how to relate to the harm and contradiction present in other parts of our lives? In this complex political moment, Rabbi Mó pointed me to another verse in Torah, a prayer which is typically sung as a way to bless the places we gather. It emerges from the book of Numbers (24:5) and blesses the places where we pitch our tents. These words have taken on new meaning in this time, in which college students are bravely rising up and calling for divestment on college campuses around the country. מַה טֹּבוּ אֹהָלֶיךָ, יַעֲקֹב; מִשְׁכְּנֹתֶיךָ, יִשְׂרָאֵל Ma tovu ohalekha Ya'akov, mishk'notekha Yisra'el. How lovely are your tents, O Jacob; your encampments, O Israel! In singing these words, may we like Balaam, transform the harshness in our hearts, and in the world, into blessings for protection. Last night, Shosh and I were cleaning out our fridge in preparation for Passover. We composted shriveled carrots, yellowed kale leaves and some moldy anchovies. We wiped down sticky shelves and tossed old condiments. Towards the top of the fridge door Shosh found my secret stash, aka ice box apothecary. A shelf dedicated to homemade bitters, including cough cordial, fire cider and a roots and shoots tonic. I rinsed the bottles and returned them to their shelf, not wanting to waste a drop.
Bitter herbs have been known to get a bad wrap. Of the many tastes, most people prefer things sweet or savory, if not spicy and salty. Few people fall in love with bitter. But I have known the healing power of bitter herbs. Dandelion root and burdock to cleanse the liver. Horseradish with cider vinegar and honey to clear a relentless cough. I have a soft spot in my heart (and even a tattoo) for bitter herbs. According to Jewish time, yesterday was the 10th of Nisan. This is an auspicious date in Jewish time, a date marked by many miracles. According to the Babylonian Talmud, it was the date of the original Shabbat HaGadol. The Israelites were believed to have left Mitzrayim on a Thursday, which would have been the 15th of Nisan. Therefore, that last Shabbat before their flight to freedom, known as Shabbat HaGadol/The Great Shabbat, would have been 5 days prior on the 10th of Nisan. Why then don’t we celebrate the anniversary of Shabbat HaGadol with its own festival on the 10th of Nisan? Because some 39 years after the Exodus, it was miraculously also the day that Miriam the prophet died. In reverence for her yahrzeit, the rabbis established that Shabbat HaGadol would be celebrated on the Shabbat immediately preceding Passover, regardless of the date. Miriam was one of the 7 prophetesses in Tanakh. She is counted among Sarah, Deborah, Hannah, Abigail, Huldah and Esther (B.T. Megillah 14a). She was the elder sister of Aaron and Moses. Among her many merits, she is credited with having saved Moses’ life, led the Israelites in song and dance as they crossed the sea, and drawn forth a well of water for 39 years in the desert. Every year I look forward to the moment at our seder when we fill a glass of water for the Prophet Miriam and sing her song. I am proud to have danced at the original women’s seders with Debbie Friedman herself, z”l. That said, this year, I am realizing that maybe Miriam was always present at the seder, albeit not explicitly. Miriam’s name actually means bitter, from the same root as maror. What medicinal wisdom might be held in her roots? There is no question that Passover this year, and perhaps every year, is bitter/sweet. It is dreadful and devastating to sing of freedom with Gaza and Ukraine under siege. And yet we are called to find a way to see ourselves as if we are personally leaving a narrow place. The Passover story is at once a very political story, and a very personal one. Both are important. Hope is important. It occurs to me this year that perhaps more than the 4 cups of wine, or even the story itself, it is the bitter herbs that are essential. As we journey into Shabbat HaGadol and Passover seder(s), I offer you the prophetic words of the Puertorriquena poet Aurora Levins Morales, in her reflection on Bitters. “Eat bitterness. Eat bitterness and speak bitterness and share bitter herbs upon your bread, for in bitterness we empty ourselves of poison. Bitterness cools the boiling blood, dries the festering wound, tightens, reduces, expels, rejects, empties the toxic wastes that cruelty deposits on our souls. Here are stories to be taken with horseradish on dry, unleavened bread; with gentian root, six drops of tincture in a glass of water, a dash of angostura in your orange juice; a tea of goldenseal and sage. Without bitters you will sicken. Your liver will ache. You will not digest what is true. So take these stories as bitters, as tonics for the centuries of lies. Let your own pain dissolve into the larger streams of the world. Find comfort with these women, those who lived, those who died. The poison they took in, that made them retch and burn with fever, is the same poison you live with every day. But if you eat bitters, drink bitters, speak your bitter truth, your liver will unclench, your tongue come alive, your fever, the fever of the wronged, will break into luminous sweat. Come clean. Come home. Be healed.” And in the words of Cathy Cohen's newest poem "This Fragile Moment: Breaking the Middle Matzah", “Each of us must emerge from this year, this story and bring to the table our pieces to share what’s luminous among us.” To fully prepare and observe Passover, we can’t just clean our fridges. We need to clean ourselves from the inside out. So consider grating your own horseradish. Indulge in arugula and romaine lettuce. Put a brave portion of maror on your korach sandwich. Tell your story, speak your bitter truth, share what’s luminous among us. f you have ever sat in the shade of an old olive tree, you know its like being embraced by an elder or even an ancestor. Ancient olive trees are known for their twisted, gnarly trunks and silvery leaves. The first time I encountered olive trees that were hundreds of years old was in the West Bank of Palestine. I placed my hand on the tree’s limb and was instantly transported into the arms of my nana, who used to gently scratch my forearms with her knobby fingers, joints gnarled from years of arthritis, skin paper thin.
It says in the Torah that when you go to war (why must we go to war?!), you are not to cut down the fruit trees. Consider them like human beings, consider them civilians, says Torah. I thought of this verse earlier this week when I read that 48% of all of the trees in Gaza have been destroyed, most of them fruit trees, many of them ancestral. It will take generations for the earth to regenerate. This week marks six months since October 7. Six months of kaddish for the 1200 Israelis who were murdered. Six months of relentless siege displacing 2 million civilians in Gaza, killing more than 32,000, and starving the rest of them. I do not know the words to describe the horror of this genocide. This week also marks the beginning of the month of Nisan and the coming of Spring. There is a special blessing that can only be recited under the moon of Nisan called Birkat Ilanot, the blessing of the trees. It is specifically designated that we should bless the flowering of fruit trees in Nisan: Blessed are You, Source of all Life, whose world lacks nothing and who made wondrous creations and beautiful trees for human beings to enjoy. With the cherry blossoms popping off and their flowers frosting the sidewalk, I feel called to gratitude, wonder and delight. And also to disgust and disgrace and despair. What is the blessing for a felled fruit tree? What is the blessing for fertile ground turned to “sand, shit and decomposing flesh”? Every year at this time, at the same time as I seek out trees to bless, I return to words of Ada Limón, in her poem, Instructions on not giving up, “More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees that really gets to me. When all the shock of white and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath, the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin growing over whatever winter did to us, a return to the strange idea of continuous living despite the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then, I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.” This year I need these words more than ever. Despite the mess of us, we must find courage and endurance in the slick leaves unfurling all around us, green skin growing over what this winter has done to us, and to mother earth herself. Join me, let the greening of the trees really get to you. Find the strength to bless this brutal, beautiful world. Today and everyday. I am a lover of the moon. I got married on Rosh Hodesh Tammuz. My first child was born and named for Rosh Hodesh Iyyar. We try to celebrate the new moon every month. To the embarrassment of my family, I have been known to shout “Shalom Aleichem” at the waxing crescent. We even have the phases of the moon on our shower curtain and posted on our refrigerator.
So you can imagine my excitement that this coming Monday a total solar eclipse will trace a path across 13 U.S. states, known as the path of totality. I have been delighted by the many people I have spoken with this week who have mentioned their plans to travel to see the eclipse in the path of totality. One of my favorite things about Jewish time is that it uniquely follows both the sun and the moon. This is in contrast to the Muslim calendar which is entirely lunar and the Gregorian calendar which is entirely solar. The holidays roam the days of the week but are set in their season. While it leads to many scheduling inconveniences, it also creates a kind of spiritual tetris in time that I love to play. One might think that a total solar eclipse would be the ultimate celebration of Jewish time, given our connection to both great luminaries created on the fourth day in Genesis. Imagine my surprise when one excited/concerned congregant texted me, “Why don’t we get to say a blessing over the eclipse?” I must be honest, this was news to me. Which led me to do some research. Apparently solar eclipses are as old as time and are referenced throughout Tanakh. Earlier this week, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg noted that “There was an eclipse known as the Bur-Sagale eclipse (well-documented in Assyrian records) that likely took place on June 15th, 763 BCE– and a partial eclipse occurred over the relevant patch of land 60 years later, on March 5, in 702 BCE. The first one is most likely responsible for Amos' writing. Either or both could be the cause of the reference in the Book of Joshua.” Eclipses are actually a natural phenomenon that illustrate a deeper spiritual power struggle. One midrash that imagines back to the fourth day of creation when the Holy One created these two great luminaries. “They were equal as regards their height, qualities, and illuminating powers, as it is said, "And God made the two great lights" (Gen. i. 16). Rivalry ensued between them, one said to the other, I am bigger than you are. The other rejoined, I am bigger than you are.” Avinu Malkeinu, our ancient parent, steps in to resolve this celestial sibling rivalry, explaining that one will govern the day and the other night. Except for occasions when one eclipses the other. About which there is great spiritual ambivalence which is best illustrated by a teaching in the Talmud: In masechet Sukkah, “The Sages taught: When the sun is eclipsed it is a bad omen for the entire world.” It is this ancient teaching that leads the rabbis to decide that one does not say a blessing over eclipses. I can imagine their feudal fears. I wonder if they thought perhaps the light might never return, like the first human thought during the first winter. Which brings me back to my text message and the question of blessing the eclipse. Given that now we do know that eclipses are actually amazing moments when we see clearly the relationship between the sun and the moon, I would personally be inclined to bless it along with the other great miracles of nature, Oseh ma’aseh v’reishit. It is hard to overstate the spiritual significance of this shabbat for our community and for the natural world. It is Shabbat HaChodesh - the Moon’s Shabbat! Which is the special name for the blessed shabbat that precedes the new moon of Nisan. It calls us to spring and renewal, to possibility and liberation. According to the Torah, this is the first new year, a time of beginnings. That Shabbat HaChodesh coincides with the total eclipse of the sun and the first shabbat in our new home is incredible timing. There is a well of blessing opening to us in the universe. May we have the courage to open to the light and the dark, the new and the ancient, and to encounter it with caution and awe. When I was in rabbinical school, we were expected to gather every morning to pray the shacharit service. Most days it started at 8 am but on Mondays and Thursdays when we would read Torah, it began at 7:45. However, most days one of my teachers could be found there as early as 7 am tidying the space and pushing an antiquated non-electric vacuum (apparently called a sweep broom) across the carpet floor. Initially we teased him, as he paced the room Mr. Miagi style picking up paper scraps and pencil shavings. Then naturally he invited us to join him. As someone who tends to run 10 minutes late, it was a revelation that one could arrive early to prepare the space.
It says in the mishnah that the pious ones would arrive an hour before the morning service to meditate and prepare to pray. But it had never occurred to me to come early to clean. As it turns out, this too is an ancient spiritual practice. This week’s parsha, Tzav, details the many sacrifices made by the priests on the ancient altar. Offerings of forgiveness and gratitude. First fruits and entire meals. But what happens when the sacrifices are done burning? Who tends to the altar to keep it tidy? In an essay entitled, The Removal of the Ashes:Between Necessity and Meaning, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, z”l, wrote, "One of the daily services in the Temple was תְּרוּמַת הַדֶּשֶׁן, the removal of ashes from the altar. The altar represents the connection between God and Israel (Rashi, Ex. 20:21) and resting upon it is the ,נֵר תָּמִיד, the deeply symbolic “eternal flame,” which is never to be extinguished (Lev. 6:6). The ashes are removed to ensure that it continues to burn well." I am picturing the priests with their little sweep brooms, maybe made of olive branches and palm fronds, daily removing the sacred ashes to keep the sacred fire bright. When we think of Leviticus, we likely think more about the sacrifices and less about cleaning the ashes. What stands out to me this year is that both are actually forms of terumah - both are sacred offerings. I am someone who finds great joy in both tending a fire and cleaning a house. I love cleaning the insides of a dishwasher and a refrigerator, the sacred appliances that keep my kitchen humming. (Early plug for Passover cleaning!) In drafting next year’s budget, we are considering how often our new building should be professionally cleaned. And I am also dreaming of the new ways we will be able to take care of the space together. As we prepare for our final shabbat at Calvary and our move on Monday, I am hoping in our new space there will be more joy in taking care of our sanctuary together. This has not been possible or even necessarily safe at Calvary. Vacuuming and doing dishes, resetting chairs and reshelving library books, maybe even sweep brooming! I am excited for the domestic labor that accompanies our spiritual practices to be more shared and seen, as it is in Torah. Maybe we even start a new Terumat HaDeshen: Dusting committee!? May the work of tending to our new perpetual altar live in the space between necessity and meaning, and may we feel more to encounter it as holy. In a powerful essay called Facing Amalek, which was published today in Jewish Currents, Maya Rosen begins, “IN A TELEVISED PRESS CONFERENCE on October 28th, as Israel began its ground invasion of Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced Israel’s “one supreme goal: To destroy the murderous enemy.” Israeli soldiers, he boasted, “are longing to recompense the murderers . . . They are committed to eradicating this evil from the world.” Then he quoted Devarim 25:17: “Remember what Amalek did to you.”
Invoking Amalek was a spiritual red flag, a way for him to communicate his ethnic cleansing goals garbed in religious language. It was scary at the time. And it has haunted me for the past 146 days. Every year, on the shabbat before Purim, Jewish communities read a special maftir/additional Torah reading from the book of Deuteronomy 25:17-19. It concludes with a paradoxical spiritual instruction, to “blot out the memory of Amalek from under the sky; you shall not forget.” This instruction references an earlier moment in Torah back in Exodus 17, when Amalek fought the Israelites and won, supposedly by attacking the most vulnerable. It is held up as an example of immoral warfare and irredeemable evil. Yet little attention is paid to the morally troubling idea that a people can be blotted out. Maya Rosen continues, “While a divine directive to obliterate an entire people is always troubling, it is particularly distressing to read this commandment to commit genocide in the midst of a genocide. As I sit in synagogue this year, it will be impossible not to wonder how those around me are understanding the verse, or to avoid imagining it being chanted by Israeli soldiers in Gaza.” Purim is always a risky holiday. It is a practice flirting with a world flipped upside down, where boundaries are blurry. Every year this makes me more anxious than excited. And every year it feels worth it. But this year, it feels dangerous. Originally there were four mitzvot associated with Purim as described in the megillah itself. They are reading the megillah, having a festive feast, exchanging gifts with your neighbors and redistributing money to folks who need it. But some one thousand years later, the Talmud added a fifth mitzvah: Megillah 7b reads, “Rava said: One is obligated to become inebriated [with wine] on Purim until they cannot tell the difference between cursed be Haman and blessed be Mordecai.” When experienced in the same 12 hour period, as we will tomorrow, the relationship between Shabbat Zachor and Purim itself is complicated. We are at once blotting out evil and also identifying with it. We are remembering to forget our worst fears and we are flirting with becoming them. In 2009, Rabbi Rachel Barenblat wrote a poem about this conundrum, At every opportunity they remembered Amalek who attacked from the rear without warning. They had been famished, weary, and then the screams in the night… As God was their witness they would never be victims again. They put their trust in rebar and concrete, distributed machine guns for teenagers to fondle. Taking action felt so good. Was this what God meant? This fierce attachment the opposite of forgetting. No one knows how to blot out without holding on. This Shabbat Zachor, may we find a way to forgive the past without forcing ourselves to forget. And may it bring us closer to an understanding of Jewish safety that is not forged in fear and revenge. 13, 11, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, and 10.
It reads like a secret code or the gematria for tying tzitzit. When in fact, it is the number of inches between each of the 10 bookshelves that will hold the prayer books in our new sanctuary. One of my very specific construction tasks this week was to figure out the optimal spacing of the shelves in our new sanctuary to accommodate our shabbat siddurim, machzorim, chumashim and a few tikkunim. I measured each book an embarrassing number of times and assessed the spacing of all of our various existing bookshelves. I tried to determine how many books would fit on each shelf. I even called a friend to ask about the potential size of a future chumash we might want to buy, lest we need to resize the shelves in 5 years when it is published. Needless to say, I updated the markings on the bare drywall three times. I cannot tell you how many times in the last year someone has joked, “They probably didn’t to teach you this in rabbinical school!” Commercial lease negotiations, HVAC specifications, permit fitout drawings, soundproofing materials, and the list goes on. I affectionately refer to these details as the parallel parsha. These days you are more likely to find me reviewing MEP drawings than studying Talmud. This year as we complete the book of Exodus, the minutia of the Mishkan does not feel abstract or even metaphorical. Even the redundancy makes sense. It is in fact true that you must first design every detail and then build it. Just this morning I revisited an email in December where we decided on the precise handle to be installed on the sanctuary doors. Now it is time to actually purchase it. Every detail has been designed discussed and budgeted for at least twice, if not more. I will not tell you how many times we have reviewed which windows need to be frosted and which tinted, the soundproofing materials, the lighting specifications, the locations of microphones and cameras. When this process started, I imagined delegating most of these decisions and staying in my lane as ritual leader. But I quickly learned that every detail was relevant to ritual leadership. How will we orient the room? Where will the prayground go? Will the chairs have a place to store prayer books and will the chumashim fit? (Yes, they will!) No detail was too small to impact the ritual experience of the room. Accessibility was considered for every outlet, every texture, every doorway – both for the varied needs of our community, but also for the Divine. What will most allow us to open our hearts to the holiness in each other? This has been my guiding question. These days all of this work is not a parallel parsha. It’s in the parsha after all! Blue, purple, and crimson yarns. Hammered out sheets of gold. Tanned ram skins and dolphin skins. Many hundreds of cubits of fine twisted linen with their exact number of posts and sockets. The parsha begins, אֵלֶּה פְקוּדֵי הַמִּשְׁכָּן These are the records of the Tabernacle… They brought the Tabernacle to Moses, with the Tent and all its furnishings: its clasps, its planks, its bars, its posts, and its sockets; the lampstand, the gold altar, and the copper bowl for washing. The book of Exodus ends this week when the Israelites complete the Mishkan and Moses blesses them. One midrash (Bemidbar Rabah 12:9) asks, “Well what was Moses’ blessing?” To which the rabbis respond with the words of Psalm 90, verse 17: וִיהִי נֹעַם אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ עָלֵינוּ וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ כּוֹנְנָה עָלֵינוּ וּמַעֲשֵׂה יָדֵינוּ כּוֹנְנֵהוּ׃ May the sweetness of the Shechinah be upon us, May the work of our hands endure, O flourish the work of our hands! I am so grateful to everyone in our community who has and will participate in the building of our mishkan. May we merit to experience נֹעַם אֲדֹנָי אֱלֹהֵינוּ עָלֵינוּ - the sweetness of the Holy One in our midst. In the words of Exodus 25, עָשׂוּ לִי מִקְדָּשׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּי בְּתוֹכָם. Make for me a sanctuary, and I will dwell in your midst. It is with great anticipation that we will be moving into our new sanctuary on April 1. Everyone is invited to mark this moment and make this transition on Sunday March 31 from 3-6 pm. We will begin at Calvary with a Tisch, to say L’chaim to Calvary, our spiritual home for the last 19 years. And then we will parade with the Torahs and the Simcha Band to 5300 Whitby to prepare the sanctuary for our first shabbat. The first parsha we read will be parashat Shimini. The same week B’nei Yisrael inaugurates their mishkan we will initiate ours. May our new sanctuary bring refuge, connection, joy and resilience to all who encounter it. Charlotte's Web is one of my all time favorite books. I only recently learned that E.B. White was a writer beyond the world of Zuckerman’s Farm.
In 1969, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, “”If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy. If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem. But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve (or save) the world and a desire to enjoy (or savor) the world, This makes it hard to plan the day.” These days, I feel this tension deeply. In fact, it is this tension that animates my spiritual life. In religious terms this is the tension between the verses, Tzedek Tzedek Tirdof - justice, justice, you shall pursue and the words I recite before Kiddush every Friday night, וַיַּרְא אֱלֹהִים אֶת־כׇּל־אֲשֶׁר עָשָׂה וְהִנֵּה־טוֹב מְאֹד “God looked at everything that happened, and called it very good.” Each week, we find something good in our week to be grateful for without denying the aching for things to be different. Judaism has a very specific way it reconciles E.B. White’s very human conflict – Shabbat! Shabbat is a weekly opportunity to do what my gym coach calls “deloading.” Whether building muscle or social movements, is it necessary to deload to build strength and power. In the words of last week’s parsha (Exodus 34:21), שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תַּעֲבֹד Six days a week you should labor… Six days a week we rise with the purpose of improving the world. וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי תִּשְׁבֹּת On the seventh day, you should cease…enjoy and savor the world. , It is of course not so easy to compartmentalize our lives into neat structures, nor the false binary of saving and savoring the world. But the rabbis also know that given the work and pain of the world, it can feel nearly impossible to actually cease and savor. So they are sure to repeat themselves. This week’s parsha, Vayakhel, also begins with another instruction to observe shabbat: שֵׁשֶׁת יָמִים תֵּעָשֶׂה מְלָאכָה Six days a week we work… וּבַיּוֹם הַשְּׁבִיעִי יִהְיֶה לָכֶם קֹדֶשׁ שַׁבַּת שַׁבָּתוֹן לַיהֹוָה And the seventh day should be reserved for holiness, for savoring… Except here in Exodus 35, unlike in Exodus 34, the verse continues and add a rather intense consequence, כׇּל־הָעֹשֶׂה בוֹ מְלָאכָה יוּמָת Anyone who does work, will die. The rest of the parsha goes on to detail the intricate beauty of the mishkan, colors and textures in total abundance. As a result, the rabbis craft a shabbat practice that stands in contrast to the building of the mishkan. Mountains of rules hanging by the thread of three verses. Don’t weave or cut or thrash or sort. What’s crucial is that shabbat be distinct from the rest of your week. But what about the week’s when it’s not? Need it really come with the threat of death? Here is what I do know - the weeks when I am lenient in my shabbat practice, I enter the new week less refreshed; my ability to fully greet the week to come is diminished. I often feel more irritable, less connected to my family and my body, not fully myself. This is not the same thing as death, but it does add it up and it does motivate me to sink into shabbat more fully each week. As we round the corner on the second half of this year, I want to invite you to pause and consider, how is my shabbat practice going? Where is my work in the world? And where is my delight? How can I savor more, so that I can labor more effectively in the week to come? E.B. White got it right - it’s not an either/or. We are called to save and to savor, however incomplete our ability to do either may feel. I know the fuller I savor shabbat, the more restored I am for the challenges of the week ahead. As the sun sinks, I am grateful that we are wisely instructed to savor one day a week. To imagine it whole so that our nervous systems can reset and we can return to the work of saving this broken, beautiful world. However, if you are reading this, the work of the week is not over. The horrible war is raging on as the people of Gaza prepare for Ramadan. Before or after Shabbat, I invite you to either read or watch the testimony of Susan Abulhawa, a Palestinian writer who just spent two weeks in Gaza. (Content warning: Her testimony is graphic.) May we have the courage to savor this seventh day and make it holy. And may we emerge refreshed with a sense of vitality and purpose. A few years ago, on a sunny Fall morning in the midst of the pandemic, we gathered in the empty lot on 50th Street for a B’nei Mitzvah in the KT Sukkah. It was on that auspicious day that one of my greatest fears came true. At the end of the Torah service, the B’nei Mitzvah kid placed the Torah back in the ark and stepped away. I turned to face the kahal and had not noticed it was not fully secure. The Torah tipped forward and in seemingly slow motion fell to the ground and the wooden handles shattered. Everyone joining on Zoom had a close up shot of the Torah lying broken on the cement ground. My jaw dropped and I froze. A member gently approached and invited me to pick up the Torah. Which we did. We then invited the community to a collective 30 day fast, in which 30 of us each fasted for a day, as is the custom when the Torah touches the ground.
First let me say, it was completely my fault. It is entirely my responsibility to spot a B’nei Mitzvah and ensure the Torah is put away properly. I do it every week and this is their first rodeo. It was a very intense, memorable and hopefully not too traumatic experience. For the past few years I have been living with the broken Torah in a portable ark in my office and using it for educational purposes. It has come with me to Torah School and protests in Washington D.C. I even carried this Torah for an entire day on the Pilgrimage for Peace. Recently I reached out to a Torah scribe to inquire about repairing this Torah. With a shameful tone I explained what had happened. To my surprise she responded rather light-heartedly, assuring me this happens all the time! Why else would we have a set of customs for how to respond and repair it?! Yesterday, a package arrived at the office. It was a new set of eitzim, wooden Torah rollers. We are preparing this spring to replace the broken eitzim with this new set. After years of planning, measuring and shopping for just the right replacement, how fitting that the second set of rollers would arrive this week, when we read Parasha Ki Tisa. The week in which we read about the two sets of tablets Moses brings down from Sinai. Infamously smashing the first set, only to journey back up the mountain for a second, whole set. A beloved midrash explains that the broken tablets journeyed in the mishkan along with the whole tablets. How else could it be? The first set was broken but it still had the teachings of the Holy Blessed One engraved upon them. They couldn’t be left behind. Even in our most ancient text, ritual objects are smashed to pieces, and the pieces are gathered up and carried forward. Apparently it happens all the time. Ki Tisa is not a story about what happened. It is a story about what always happens. In the words of Roger Kamenetz, “The broken tablets were also carried in the ark. Insofar as they represented everything shattered, everything lost, they were the law of broken things…” As I contemplate the process of unstitching the parchment from the broken eitzim and rethreading the parchment to the new (very beautiful) eitzim, I am struck by how long it has taken me to do this. Healing and repair take time. It took us years to get the new eitzim, and in the meantime, we honored and continued to care for and use the broken ones (though not during services!). I am also so grateful for the scribe’s reminder that things breaking are not a mistake or a problem. We need not fear it. It's inevitable. Our spiritual practices and sacred stories are meant to cultivate in us an ability to bear rupture and be with that which is broken. If it’s true for the Torah and the tablets, our tradition’s most sacred objects, then certainly it’s true for just about every aspect of our lives. We are broken and whole all at once. The truth is that I should have known this. Every time something breaks, my father is the first to shout, Mazal Tov! And my mother-in-law is always looking to make beautiful mosaics out of broken plates. But somehow it is this specific Torah that has taught me this lesson fully. For which I am so grateful to my B’nei Mitzvah student. Lest you hold this story with shame, know that you have been my teacher as much as my student. I hope we as a community will continue to carry the broken parts along with the whole in our ark, and our hearts. |
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General Questions: (267) 702-6187 or [email protected]
Shabbat Services: 5300 Whitby Ave, Commercial #1, Philadelphia, PA 19143