Parashat Vayechi 5784

There is a lot I could say about my mother. She is an amazing artist. She is a very skilled rollerblader. She is a wonderful friend to many. She has a great sense of humor. She also has this thing, where she seems to really like going to funerals and shivas. She goes to so many, that oftentimes she will arrive at a shiva house, look around and whisper to the person next to her…“who died?” I am not sharing this to make fun, but rather to share that we all have our mitzvah–our piece of the Torah that we care about deeply, that we want to live into. Hers seems to be honoring the dead, whether or not she knew who they were.

Our Parsha, Vayechi–and he lived–similar to Parshat Chayei Sarah–the life of Sarah–is actually talking about death more than life. Both Jacob and Joseph die in our Parsha, a sign of how deeply connected they were to one another.

When the time comes for Jacob to leave this world, Joseph brings his children, Ephraim and Menashe, to receive a blessing. Jacob responds to his grandchildren with somewhat shocking bluntness, מִי אֵֽלֶּה? Who are these? 

A midrash paints the picture for us. Jacob’s grandchildren were dressed like Egyptian princes because of their father’s governmental role. Jacob, also known as Israel, didn’t recognize them as part of his Jewish family. His grandson reassured him: "Shema, Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad. Listen, Israel! Adonai is our God, Adonai alone." In a sigh of relief, Jacob responded: "baruch shem k'vod malchuto l'olam va-ed -- praised be God's name for ever and ever!" 

What does it mean to bless those whom we do not recognize, know, or understand? How, even in this fraught and divisive time, can we stretch our hearts to offer blessings to those who make us think–מִי אֵֽלֶּה–who are these people? What are these beliefs? How on earth can we be a part of the same Jewish family? Our midrash imagines that Jacob received some sort of sign that they were, in fact, part of the same family. But, how can we still bless one another when we do not receive that sign? 

Then, Jacob, our forefather, dies. Joseph has him embalmed, as was the custom in Egypt. And we read this striking verse: וַיִּבְכּ֥וּ אֹת֛וֹ מִצְרַ֖יִם שִׁבְעִ֥ים יֽוֹם–and Egypt bewailed him for seventy days. Rashi and others offer unsatisfactory, in my opinion, explanations of this verse. Rashi explains that it was because of the blessings Jacob brought to Egypt–that upon his arrival, according to a Midrash, the famine ceased and the waters of the Nile again increased. Sforno explains that Egypt cried for Jacob out of respect for Joseph. But, I’d like to offer a different interpretation. 

I’d like to offer that perhaps our Parsha, like my mother, is teaching us how to bless and mourn for those whom we do not know or understand. 

I will venture to guess that all of us in this room have experienced some sort of loss. Have grieved a relationship, a pet, a loved one, a place. Judith Butler, in her 2004 book Precarious Life: the Powers of Mourning and Violence, writes:

The question that preoccupies me in the light of recent global violence is, who counts as human? Whose lives count as lives? And, finally, what makes for a grievable life? 

In a world with so much devastating loss, not only in times of war, these questions are ones that we are urged to keep on our hearts. Because, as Judith Butler and others have taught us throughout the ages, grief is what keeps us human. Grief is what keeps our heart working, flexible, malleable. 

“One mourns,” Judith writes, “when one accepts that by the loss one undergoes one will be changed, possibly for ever. Perhaps mourning has to do with agreeing to undergo a transformation (perhaps one should say submitting to a transformation) the full result of which one cannot know in advance.”

What would it mean for us to submit? What would it mean for us to allow ourselves to be transformed by our grief, knowing that whoever we were before this war is not the same person we will leave it, and perhaps that is not only okay but just right.

One week from today, I will be in Israel on a similar delegation to what Rabbi Carie was on mere weeks after October 7th. I’ll be with a group of Rabbis and educators going to see what is happening on the ground. We will visit the site of the Nova music festival and Kibbutz Be’eri, offering our prayers and tears to the land there. We will visit with families who are living in hotel rooms by the dead sea. We will meet with Arab Israelis who lost people on October 7th and who also have people in Gaza fearing for their lives. 

In going to visit Israel, I feel like I’m going to visit a sick friend. A friend I saw just six months ago who seemed healthy, but those who know her closely knew that she has been sick for a long time. 

None of us are her doctors, we don’t know the remedy. In his commentary on this week’s parsha, the Dinover Rebbe, writes that Joseph–the biggest crier in all of Tanach–was actually a healer. That the tikkun, the remedy or medicine, for the brother’s sin was contained in Joseph’s tears. Through his tears, we are taught, the family lineage was healed. 

So, I will be bringing my tears, our tears, to the land with me next week. To offer as a potential tikkun, a potential remedy for the pain that is there. 

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Ki Teitzei 5784

The first piece of Talmud I ever learned in the original was at Yeshivat Hadar on the Upper West Side. Twenty four years old with patchy Hebrew, I gingerly walked into the Bet Midrash and took a seat, daunted by the thick dictionaries, the seemingly solid, impenetrable blocks of Hebrew and aramaic on a single amud of Talmud. But, with a good hevruta, I was able to decode the first three words: בן סורר ומורה, the wayward and defiant son. 

This week’s Torah portion contains seventy four of the Torah’s 613 commandments, many of them bein adam l’chaveiro, about human relationships and the way we treat one another (no mistake that it is always read during Elul). An infamous commandment that emerges this week is, “If a man has a wayward and defiant son, who does not heed his father or mother and does not obey them even after they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his town at the public place of his community.” There he is stoned to death by the men of the town. 

The Talmud’s entire chapter devoted to this case is often taught as an introduction to Talmud in the liberal world, because it shows the way the Talmud thinks. The perek opens with:

בן סורר ומורה מאימתי נעשה בן סורר ומורה 

The wayward and defiant son, from when is he made a wayward and defiant son? 

The Talmud narrows the timeframe considerably, and a Midrash said one can not be deemed a ben sorer u’moreh if outside a specific three month period. The Talmud continues to narrow the case: a son not a daughter, not a minor (since he would be exempt from mitzvot) but not an adult (because he wouldn’t be called a “son” but rather a “man”). His parents, who “take a hold of him” in the Torah text, need to be the same height and have the same voice, since the verse refers to them speaking in unison. Then the Talmud goes on to explain the words “wayward” and “defiant” which clearly mean consuming a certain amount of stolen meat and wine, maybe even from a festive meal. And maybe the meat has to be raw, showing how savage and addicted he is. Pages and pages of dissecting each word, narrowing the case so severely that even the Talmud admits:

בן סורר ומורה לא היה ולא עתיד להיות

This case never was and never will be in the future.

ולמה נכתב

So, why is it written both here and in the Torah?

דרוש וקבל שכר

So that you may expound upon it and receive reward.

This is where people usually stop reading, and it’s where we stopped when I was at Hadar in 2011. The discussions in shiur revolved around the Talmudic thinking modeled in this perek–how the rabbis see something unjust in the Torah and instead of simply erasing it, they engage with it, wrestle with it for pages and pages, often using the Torah against itself to make a point. The takeaway, when concluding the text here, is that perhaps we can use the same type of halachic reasoning when faced with other injustices in the Torah–not erasing them, but rather engaging with them and allowing our progressive values to interface with the text. 

When I learned this text a second time with my teacher, Rabbi Benay Lappe, she had us continue one more line. Eight words that change the whole game:

 אמר ר' יונתן אני ראיתיו וישבתי על קברו

Rabbi Yonatan says: This is not so, as I saw one. I was once in a place where a stubborn and rebellious son was condemned to death, and I even sat on his grave after he was executed.

[Before I go on to share Benay’s chop on this piece, I want to just ask you: why do you think both of these opinions are recorded in the Talmud? Why do the Rabbis think it is important to both share that it never happened/will happen, and that R’ Yonatan sat on his grave?*]

So Benay concludes her teaching of this text by adding that Rabbi Yonatan was a Kohen, which means that according to Torah law, he could only be present at the grave of one of seven immediate family members. Perhaps his own son, or his own brother. This fact transforms his statement to a cry, a scream. Begging to be heard, begging to be seen, Rabbi Yonatan is saying–do not look away from the violence that this text has caused. I saw it. I lived it. 

I think the stama kept this piece from R’ Yonatan in to remind us that as we continue to work to grow into better people, and God willing create a better world, to not look away from the pain that has been caused. As we move deeper into the month of Elul, and as we work on repairing our relationships ben adam l’chaveiro, may we have the expansiveness to embrace the dual responsibility our text points to: to look towards the future we want to build–one based on compassion, flexibility, and wholeness–while at the same time not ignoring the pain, of the past and present, in our lives and in the world.

Shabbat shalom

Parashat Re’eh 5784

If you have a trained eye, Brooklyn is full of medicine. Beyond the blaring sirens,  you will find linden trees in late spring that fill the air with their intoxicating scent. Besides providing sweet-smelling air, linden leaves, stems and flowers are also known for soothing anxiety, summer colds and fevers. Gripping the gate of the Ft. Hamilton entrance to Greenwood Cemetery are the tendrils of my favorite plant, passionflower, showing off its otherworldly flowers that bloom for only one day. The wild, fringe-like petals unfurl in the morning and by nightfall, they’ve already begun to wilt. The flowers, tendrils, and leaves can help with insomnia, anxiety, and muscle spasms. If you walk through the streets of South Slope, you will find towering mullein in people’s front yards. With its fuzzy soft leaves and tall, slender stalk of bright yellow flowers, mullein supports lung health, can soothe a chest cold or cough, and can be an emotional support in times of grief. 

The list keeps growing as I wander the streets, parks, and cemeteries: deep purple elderberries, ecstatic-looking echinacea flowers, lush silvery-green mugwort. These plants are perfectly situated to ease the stresses that seem to multiply in our often chaotic borough, almost as if the Divine knows where they are needed most.

Our Torah portion, Re’eh, is the command form of the word “to see,” in which God, through Moshe’s final speech commands us to:

רְאֵ֗ה אָנֹכִ֛י נֹתֵ֥ן לִפְנֵיכֶ֖ם הַיּ֑וֹם בְּרָכָ֖ה וּקְלָלָֽה׃ 

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse. 

On this verse, Sforno asks a legitimate question, why just these two extremes? Why do we only have the option of a blessing–which he says gives us more than we need–and a curse–which gives us less than we need? Sforno says, we are given two extremes lest we become half-hearted or lukewarm about life, always trying to find a middle ground. 

The first word of our Parsha being “to see,” with Sforno’s help it seems that our pasuk is saying that each day we have a very important choice, we can choose to see blessing–the abundance we have in our lives. Or, we can choose to see curse–the areas in which we lack, we don’t have enough in our lives or in the world. 

Perhaps Sforno is saying that it doesn’t really matter which you choose, in either case (whether you are feeling abundant or lacking) you will be truly alive. How Jewish is that? Whether we are kvelling or kvetching, we understand what it is to be truly alive, but anything in the middle is half-hearted. 

Since-October 7th, my eye, and perhaps yours, has been searching for brachot, blessings, abundance and medicine. I have been looking for what can help us get through this time, what light might be available around us that we may not be able to see. When I look around the garden that is PSJC, I see abundance and medicine in the form of laughter at kiddush, deep kavannah as we continue to pray for an end to this war and the return of our hostages. I see medicine in the form of our 20s and 30s Shabbat dinners on Friday nights and our schmoozes in the park on Saturday evenings, through book clubs and mah jong and sandwich making and advanced Talmud and so much more. Each gathering, each moment of connection, is a thread in the fabric of our community, weaving together a tapestry of support, resilience, and hope, and creating sacred spaces where healing and transformation can take place. Each moment of connection is a reminder of the blessings we have and the abundance that is available to us right here in this very building.

As our parsha instructs us, I invite you to not only look but also see. See the blessings, the abundance, the medicine, that is available to us in our borough and in our community. In this way may we be able to heal as a community and as a world.

Parashat Eikev 5783

Ten years ago I left my life in Brooklyn, where I was living the mid-20s life of being a nanny, barista, and Hebrew School teacher, for Rabbinical School in Boston. Leaving Brooklyn was very painful. Although it took me a few years and it wasn’t easy, I had made a home here. When I left, in a van stuffed to the brim with things I had collected from stoops over the years (a hot pink pleather chair, a blue nightstand, various knicknacks), I vowed internally to come back. 

I was at a comedy show recently where a comedian was talking about Boston saying, “did you guys know that there is a huge competition between Boston and New York IN BOSTON?” I am not here to say which place is better, but because my heart was here, I spent 5 years in Rabbinical school being obnoxious about how much better Brooklyn was than Boston. I even talked about the annoying parts as positives, “in Brooklyn, you really have to work to get your groceries! It’s better that way!” or, “in Brooklyn I used to have to walk up 5 flights of stairs to my apartment, I got sooooo much exercise!” I would also say, on a more real/spiritual level, “even the sidewalks just feel Jewish in Brooklyn.” This is really why, as a Jew from the Midwest, I feel and felt so alive in Brooklyn. 

In this week’s parsha, Eikev, Moshe continues his speech to Bnai Yisrael as they are about to enter the land, saying

Keep, therefore, all the mitzvot that I enjoin upon you today, so that you may have the strength to enter and take possession of the land that you are about to cross into and possess,
and that you may long endure upon the soil that hashem swore to your fathers to assign to them and to their heirs, a land flowing with milk and honey.

Brooklyn is a אֶ֛רֶץ זָבַ֥ת חָלָ֖ב וּדְבָֽשׁ, a land flowing with milk and honey. Or, perhaps, a land flowing with seltzer and gefilte fish. A land flowing with culture, magic, and wisdom. An embodiment of this is walking past a Brooklyn apartment building at night, and seeing each apartment illuminated, you can feel that there are unique worlds within each space. One filled to the brim with plants. Another illuminated by a pink light. Another with a cat in the window. When you cross a threshold in Brooklyn you actually truly don’t know what will be on the other side. 

This community is a beautiful display of this Brooklyn magic. In addition to the history of this community, Jewish knowledge and engagement evident in its members, there are artists, quilters, theater performers and directors, writers, teachers, lawyers, psychologists, small business owners, and so much more. I can’t wait to get to know each of you and hear more about your unique lives and interest, like a Brooklyn apartment at night, to see the unique people that create PSJC as a whole.

When I left my meeting with Rabbi Carie this past Spring when she offered me the position of Associate Rabbi, I walked home full of joy through the quiet park on a Sunday afternoon. A song came to me and I just started humming, not remembering at first what it was. I started singing….

Hashivenu hashem elecha v’nashuva

Chadesh yameinu k’kedem

Return us, Hashem, to you and let us come back

Renew our days like before

We just heard these same words in a different tune, at the end of Eicha just over a week ago when we mourned the destruction of the Temple. Tisha b’Av is a day we think a lot about home. What does it mean to be home, to be pushed out of our home, to have to make home somewhere new? This word hashiveinu, return us, shares a root with another word that we are about to be saying a lot of in the coming months–teshuva. Return. Repentance. Ultimately: coming home. 

As we Jews are well versed in the art of wandering, I ended up making a home and a life in Boston, and again in Ithaca. While there is beauty in this ability, it is a blessing to return home to this place and this community, which flows with milk and honey. This place is famously heimish, it is known for the way it makes you feel at home when you walk through the door. I feel so honored to get to join the sense of home that you’ve all built here. I am excited to be able to continue to make a home with you and welcome others in.

May the Holy One bless us to be able to sense when we are home, and to feel nourished and supported by the milk and honey that flows here. 

Shabbat Shalom

Parashat Matot-Masei 5784

In preparation for this week, the parshiot where the word וַיִּסְעוּ֙ comes up 42 times, illustrating the Israelites’ 42 wanderings in the desert, I counted up the number of places I’ve lived in my 37 years of life. Without including short stints working at camps or living in tents, I counted 26 different homes that I had created and lived in. Some highlights include: the room in the Old City of Jerusalem, with the windows that looked out to stone buildings, where the call to prayer poured in five times a day. The tiny, windowless coffin-eque room on St. Marks Place in the East Village, a fourth floor walk up that was between an “adult” shop and a frozen yogurt place. My roommates there included two best friends, one of them an aspiring actress whose job was dressing up like different characters in Times Square, as well as impressively large roaches and some similarly sized mice. The room of a soferet–female scribe–that I sublet in Washington Heights, full of dusty Torahs and the smell of animal skin. Countless roommates throughout the years–roommates I thought for sure I’d love and ended up deeply frustrated by, and others I assumed I would hate but ended up loving and continuing to stay close to for years to come. My home in the heart of Collegetown Ithaca–my first “house” as an adult, the outside of the house had a sloped asymmetrical roof, like a cute queer haircut. It had a wind chime in the shape of a sun on the front that was rusty from Ithaca winters and springs. The backyard where I would grow my garden and enjoy (way too much) solitude during COVID. And now, my sun filled (and tuna can size) studio in Park Slope.

The thread connecting all of these very different places is that I–like the Israelites–made a home there. In each of these temporary dwellings, stops on my journey–whether I lived there for a month or three years–I set up shop. Put things on the walls. Made it a space that I would come back to and my breath would deepen and I would feel in my bones that I was home.

These three weeks in our calendar are referred to as בֵּ֥ין הַמְּצָרִֽים, between the narrows, when we commemorate the destruction of the Temple and tend to the grief inside of us and the world. It is no mistake that these weeks–and in a sense our High Holiday cycle–according to Rabbi Alan Lew, begins with a home and ends with a home. He explains that we begin with the Temple, which is called a bayit, that is burning, sieged. A home that–whether or not we relate to it with longing or with disgust–was our home, was the center of Judaism for as long as our ancestors could remember. Lew writes, “We live in a fearful state of siege, trying to prop up an identity that keeps crumbling, that we secretly intuit to be empty. Then Tisha B'Av comes and the walls begin to crumble, and then the entire city collapses. But something persists -- something fundamentally nameless and empty, something that remains when all else has fallen away.”

We end our holiday cycle with a home as well, our Sukkah. This home, similar to the Temple, is falling apart, but joyfully so. This time we created it that way, it was our desire to make it such. Lew explains, “...We sit flush with the world, in a ‘house’ that calls attention to the fact that it gives us no shelter. It is not really a house. It is the interrupted idea of a house, a parody of a house…And it exposes the idea of a house as an illusion. The idea of a house is that it gives us security, shelter, haven from the storm. But no house can really offer us this. No building of wood and stone can ever afford us protection from the disorder that is always lurking all around us. No shell we put between us and the world can ever really keep us secure from it. And we know this. We never really believed this illusion. That’s why we never felt truly secure in it [...]”

It is so beautiful–and so Jewish–that within this flimsiness, within this dissolution of any illusion of safety and security in the physical world, we find the deepest and most expansive sense of joy. It is precisely in the setting up of a home that we know we'll take apart that we find the most joy. 

This time in our calendar points us to the fact that every home, Temple, apartment, sun filled tin can studio, tiny room with no windows, that we live in will be taken down. And, just like the Israelites who wandered in the desert to 42 different journeyings, we get to make home anyway. We get to put up the paintings that we will eventually take down. In the acknowledgement of the temporal nature of everything is precisely where the joy is. Lew says that once the illusion of security has fallen away, “Suddenly we are flush with our life, feeling our life, following our life, doing its dance, one step after another.”

The Bnei Yisaschar explains that the parshiot we read during the Three Weeks, including ours this week, come to strengthen and awaken us in a time of despair. Because, in moments of great transition, recalling times in the past where we’ve survived and even thrived during transition can be incredibly strengthening, helping us to awaken to this moment and rise to the challenge. 

May we be blessed to remember that all of our journeyings on this planet, and all of the homes we create at each stop on the journey, are temporary. In that remembering, may we find joy and liberation instead of despair. May we be blessed to connect with and cling to that “something fundamentally nameless and empty, [that] something that remains when all else has fallen away.” 

Shabbat Shalom

Parashat Chukat 5784

It may not surprise some of you to learn that I went to a very hippie college for undergrad. I got my (real, I promise) bachelor's degree in religious studies from Naropa University, a small Buddhist liberal arts school in Boulder, Colorado. Founded by a Tibetan Monk and featuring founders and teachers such as Reb Zalman Shachter-Shalomi, Allen Ginsburg and Anne Waldman, it’s not surprising that some of my classes included Meditation (which was a requirement), herbal medicine and, my personal favorite, Ikebana.

Ikebana is the Japanese art of flower arranging, and is a spiritual practice in itself. Each arrangement is supposed to embody the relationship between heaven, humans and earth. In our class, we learned how to create a mindful and striking flower arrangement from start to finish. The start was going out and gathering materials, but not just picking flowers without abandon. When you see something that is beautiful to you, whether it be a branch, a reed or a flower, you start by asking. Asking for permission, or at least pausing for a moment of gratitude and reverence, for this living thing which you are about to take in order to enhance beauty in your life and in the world.

This may seem strange, or at the very least “not very Jewish,” to have a two-way relationship with these plants, to acknowledge their sentience and ability to communicate with us. However, our tradition and our parsha are full of this type of sentience. 

This week, the Israelite people are without water in the wilderness. G!d commands Moshe and Aaron to speak to the rock in order that it may flow with water. Moshe, frustrated and tired, exclaims 

שִׁמְעוּ־נָא֙ הַמֹּרִ֔ים הֲמִן־הַסֶּ֣לַע הַזֶּ֔ה נוֹצִ֥יא לָכֶ֖ם מָֽיִם׃

Listen, you rebels, shall we get water for you out of this rock?

And, in his frustration, Moshe strikes the rock twice with the staff.

We also, in our parsha, have the Israelites singing the song of the well, which begins with,

אָ֚ז יָשִׁ֣יר יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל אֶת־הַשִּׁירָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את עֲלִ֥י בְאֵ֖ר עֱנוּ־לָֽהּ׃ 

Then Israel sang this song:

Spring up, O well—sing to it—

Hinted at in the song of the well is the well that appeared to Hagar when she fled from Sarai, which she named Be’er l’chai roi, “the living well, the one who sees me”. 

In my weekly study with a congregant, we have been learning the famous story of the Oven of Achnai, in which Rebbe Eliezer brings proofs for his case from carob trees, streams, walls and even a voice from heaven. One could deduce from this story that his relationship with the natural world is two-directional, that there was sentience there. 

And yet, if I said to you today that I have a two-directional relationship with this well, with this rock, with this carob tree–you may look at me as if I was crazy, or at the very least not so Jewish. But, what do we lose when we view only human beings, or at best breathing beings, as alive?

When Moshe hit the rock in his anger and upset, his lost connection to the natural world. Nevertheless, copious water emerged, but G!d was not pleased, saying: “Because you did not trust Me enough to affirm My sanctity in the sight of the Israelite people, therefore you shall not lead this congregation into the land that I have given them.”

The punishment for this act of anger–after years of listening to these people complain mercilessly, after years of leading these people on his own without much support–is painfully severe. But/and, perhaps as a leader, he was supposed to be modeling a type of reverence and two-way relationship with the land that the Israelites didn’t know of in their scarcity slave mentality.

How can we learn from this devastating story, and be trusting of Hashem and each other even in our most worn down and exhausted moments? How can we remember, even in Brooklyn, to treat every living thing as the image of God and not only as a tool for meeting our own needs?  

I feel like Moshe could have paused and taken wisdom from Buber, when he writes,  “I consider a tree. I can look on it as a picture: stiff column in a shock of light, or splash of green shot with the delicate blue and silver of the background. I can perceive it as movement: flowing veins on clinging, pressing pith, suck of the roots, breathing of the leaves, ceaseless commerce with earth and air—and the obscure growth itself. I can classify it in a species and study it as a type in its structure and mode of life… In all this the tree remains my object, occupies space and time, and has its nature and constitution.

It can, however, also come about, if I have both will and grace, that in considering the tree I become bound up in relation to it. The tree is now no longer It. I have been seized by the power of exclusiveness…Everything belonging to the tree is in this: its form and structure, its colours and chemical composition, its intercourse with the elements and with the stars, are all present in a single whole. The tree is no impression, no play of my imagination, no value depending on my mood; but it is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it — only in a different way.

Let no attempt be made to sap the strength from the meaning of the relation: relation is mutual.”

May we be blessed to build a two-way relationship with the natural world, coming closer to ourselves and the divine as a result.

Parashat Chukat 5785

As a child, I had a lot of fears. The dark terrified me, and I would need ample nightlights, even traveling with them to a sleepover at a friend’s house. Bees sent me into a frenzy, even without being allergic and without ever having been stung, because of the pain I saw it caused others. Tornados–growing up in the Midwest–were a real threat, as many Spring and Summer days were spent in the basement with my family making art and listening to music as the storm passed. 

But, my biggest fear was fire. I believe it started with the mandatory–and completely inappropriate for children–videos we were shown in school about the risks of fire. Images of destroyed homes, of burnt skin, of family’s wailing over their losses–all due to a single cigarette or candle left unattended, have stayed with me to this day. My family would frequent a Greek restaurant in Minneapolis for birthdays and celebrations, and they had a famous appetizer that was a slab of cheese set completely aflame. I did not take this well. As demonstrated by my six year old body bolting out of the restaurant and onto the street, I would have way rather braved the cold Minnesota night alone than be in the room with the platter of flaming cheese.

I remember seeing a school counselor about my fears, and their main tactic involved a clipboard, pen, and a checklist. The checklist was a list of common fears in children: the dark, spiders, being alone, etc), and each week I was supposed to check off what I was still afraid of. I remember even at such a young age, internally rolling my eyes at this technique, because it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. But, now, I can see that the purpose was to normalize the fears, put me face to face with them (at least in my imagination) and hopefully demonstrate progress.

This week’s Parsha is so packed with notable moments–the laws of the Red Heifer, the death of Miriam, Moshe striking the stone (perhaps out of his grief) and then being told he will not enter the promised land, and the death of Moshe’s other sibling, Aaron. And then there is the often overlooked plague of serpents. 

In their typical fashion, the very Jewish Israelites are once again complaining about food. Perhaps connected to their overwhelming grief about Aaron’s death, they are once again unsatisfied and fixating on something they can (or feel they should be able to) control: food. The text said they grew “וַתִּקְצַ֥ר נֶֽפֶשׁ” short of soul or short tempered, and started in again with their usual complaint,

“Why did you make us leave Egypt to die in the wilderness? There is no bread and no water, and we have come to loathe this miserable food.” i.e. Manna.

Without even a pause, God sends nechashim seraphim, burning serpents to attack the people, and many of the Israelites perish. The people beg Moshe to intercede (it’s interesting that he doesn’t do so of his own desire, perhaps he too is fed up with these people), and God stops the serpents and instructs the people to

וַיַּ֤עַשׂ מֹשֶׁה֙ נְחַ֣שׁ נְחֹ֔שֶׁת

“Make a seraph (burning) figure and mount it on a standard. And anyone who was bitten who then looks at it shall recover.”

“Moses made a copper serpent and mounted it on a standard; and when bitten by a serpent, anyone who looked at the copper serpent would recover.”

There are so many questions that might arise from this story. Some of them include:

Why is Moshe being asked to make what the Advanced Talmud participants know very well is at the very least edging on being an idol? And, how is looking at this brass serpent going to heal the people from their serpent bites? 

Rashbam ignores the whole idol thing by saying that looking at this brass snake on a pole was just a way for the Israelites to look up towards the heavens, “from whence their help will come,” as the Psalm says. Perhaps, he’s implying, that without a physical thing to force their eyes upwards they would stay fixated on themselves.

The 13th century Spanish commentator Rabbeinu Bachya, however, said that the serpent worked, “the opposite of the natural process.” He brings in examples, such as King Chizkiyah who was cured from his boiled by applying dried fig leaves (which would normally intensify a rash), or the bitter waters at Marah back in Exodus 15 which were sweetened by adding a bitter (not sweet) wood into it. 

Here too, he explains, the snake-bitten Israelites had to look at not only the image of a deadly snake, but one made out of copper, which Rabbenu Bachya says, “symbolizes the planet Mars associated with war and death.” “In this instance,” he teaches, “by looking at “death” the people were cured…the very symbol of what bit them had therapeutic effects for the victims instead of the reverse.”

For Rabbeinu Bachya, this serpent was not simply a statue, it was a type of spiritual vaccine, a way of the people ingesting a little bit of the fear and poison from the snake without actual harm and through this exposure to what they feared and what harmed them, they were able to be healed not only spiritually and emotionally but physically. 

When we think about the things that fear us the most, whether it be the loss of a loved one, not living our purpose, health crises, or maybe darkness, bees, and fire–most of the time what we are most afraid of is the unpleasant experience of fear itself. When we look back at all the losses we have weathered, all of the bees that have stung us, we see just how strong and resilient our souls truly are.

In this time of great uncertainty in our world, it would be a type spiritual vaccination for us to contemplate, what do we fear the most? Without diving headfirst into it, without constructing an actual moving and biting serpent to face, can we look our fear–or even our fear of fear–right in the face? Perhaps through this type of meditation we can find healing, and above all a reminder of our deep well of strength.

Shabbat Shalom.

Parashat Korach 5784

This week, a man named Korach leads a rebellion of 250 men against Moshe and Aaron, saying:

 רַב־לָכֶם֒ כִּ֤י כָל־הָֽעֵדָה֙ כֻּלָּ֣ם קְדֹשִׁ֔ים וּבְתוֹכָ֖ם יְהוָ֑ה וּמַדּ֥וּעַ תִּֽתְנַשְּׂא֖וּ עַל־קְהַ֥ל ה׃

“You have gone too far! For all the community are holy, all of them, and G!d is in their midst. Why then do you raise yourselves above the G!d’s  congregation?”

In a frightening event, the earth opens and swallows up Koach, his assembly, all of their families, homes and belongings. This may seem like a strange parsha to celebrate an Aufruf on, but I actually think it’s just right.

The Gottman Institute, a research-based organization specializing in relationship counseling, claims to be able to predict with 90% accuracy (after only a few meetings) if a couple will be together for the long term. The things they look out for seem simple but are actually quite deep. They ask: does this couple seem like they are good friends, do they mutually respect and admire one another? Do they repair well after inevitable ruptures in communication? Do they have a higher ratio of positive interactions to negative ones? 

The Gottmans also look out for what they dramatically call the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. As you can imagine, these four things signify that the foundations of the relationship need tending to. The four horsemen are: 

Criticism: Attacking your partner's character or personality

Contempt: Showing disrespect or disdain towards your partner

Defensiveness: Responding to conflict by playing the victim or counterattacking

Stonewalling: Withdrawing from interaction and shutting down emotionally

When these behaviors are present, it can be challenging to focus on building positive interactions, loving and admiring one another, and supporting one another’s dreams. To draw from the images in our Parsha, when these four horsemen are dominant, they can threaten to swallow up all that we have built with another person. 

In our Parsha, we have a different kind of relationship, but still a relationship that needs major tending to and analysis. Korach and his rebels have a legitimate complaint against Moshe and Aaron. After all, the entire community is holy, and everyone should be treated as such. So then, why would God open up the earth to swallow them up?

Nechama Leibowitz explains, “Note that they do not say ‘All the congregation is holy’ as a unit but, ‘All the congregation are holy, every one of them’ each one taken individually. The assertion of individual, selfish ambitions outweighs their group feeling as a ‘kingdom of priests and holy nation.’” Similar to the wicked child in the Passover Haggadah who is admonished for separating himself from those at the seder by saying “What is all of this for you?,” the Israelites who staged this rebellion put themselves on the outside, separating themselves from the rest of the community. 

It seems that all four of the Gottman Institute’s horsemen were present here, criticizing the Priests for “raising themselves above the congregation.” Contempt for Moshe and Aaron, treating them as if they were the oppressors of the Israelites. Defensiveness in the form of a rebellion and not a collaboration. And, finally, stonewalling. Korach and his rebels decided to burn the sacred ketoret incense, another act that signified shutting down and lack of openness to connection. 

It makes sense that the Israelites, having recently been freed from slavery, and even more recently having been told they were not going to enter the land of Israel, would feel traumatized and victimized. In that state, they (and we) cannot see anything but oppression. They can not consider the fact that Moshe and Aaron are not intending to hurt them, or that maybe this hierarchy is meant to serve as an ease to the transition to a non-slave life and mentality. Particularly since the Israelites were in transition and felt on shaky ground, what they truly needed was not a rebellion, but rather to hold onto one another and their collective vision. 

Whether or not we are on the precipice of a marriage, may we be blessed with the skills to stay connected to one another in times when our base instinct might be to separate ourselves. In all of our relationships–romantic, platonic, communal–may we learn to interrupt the pattern of jumping to make divisions between victim and oppressor/right and wrong. And, in this time of great division in our country and our world, may we continue to cultivate the skills necessary to stay close to one another amidst our differences.

Parashat Sh’lach 5784

My first experience of homophobia was very memorable. I was 24, and my then girlfriend and I were on a beach together near Cape Cod. We were lying on a blanket, cuddling and being affectionate the way couples do, when a man came storming up to our blanket. Towering over us, he instructed us to stop what we were doing and said strongly, motioning to the others around, “this is a family beach.” In the scheme of things, it’s pretty miraculous that nothing worse happened in that moment. Also pretty miraculous that it had taken me years to encounter homophobia in a direct way. I don’t take for granted for a moment the ways that previous generations, many of whom are in this room, fought for both of those miracles. 

I share this story not because I still feel victimized or want you to feel sorry for me, but because it was the first moment that I had felt in my bones that there was something offensive, something not family-friendly, something that needs to stay hidden, about being queer. It changed the way I viewed the world, perhaps in a helpful sobering way, but also in a heartbreaking way. The world went from a place I could be openly myself to a place where I needed to hide a piece of who I was. 

This week in our Parsha, Moshe sends a leader from each tribe to scout the land of Canaan, the land that G!d is about to give to the Israelites. Forty days later, the spies come back and report that the land does indeed flow with milk and honey. However, they feared greatly that the people were too strong, saying:

וַנְּהִ֤י בְעֵינֵ֙ינוּ֙ כַּֽחֲגָבִ֔ים וְכֵ֥ן הָיִ֖ינוּ בְּעֵינֵיהֶֽם

We looked like grasshoppers to ourselves, and so we must have looked to them.

The Israelites were filled with anxiety, even wishing to go back to Egypt immediately. 

When the man approached my girlfriend and I on the beach, we both cowered, nodding sheepishly, unsure what was the best way to respond at that moment, what would keep us safe. Similar to the spies, we felt like grasshoppers in his eyes and therefore our own. 

After the fact, she, being in school at the time to be a drama therapist, led us in one of the most powerful exercises of my life. Finding a secluded area, we acted the scene out again. We took turns being the man approaching, said to each other, “stop, this is a family beach.” We took turns responding in the way that we wished we had. We yelled, we cried, we even got to a place of compassion for this man, who was clearly feeling threatened and uncomfortable within himself, and came through the experience feeling closer to each other and safe again in the world. 

It seems like no mistake that later in this parsha, G!d commands the Israelite people to tie tzitzit, fringes, to the corners of their garments, saying:

וְהָיָ֣ה לָכֶם֮ לְצִיצִת֒ וּרְאִיתֶ֣ם אֹת֗וֹ וּזְכַרְתֶּם֙ 

That shall be your tzitzit, look at him/it and remember

Something I love about the commandment to wear Tzitzit, which we recite twice a day in the Shema, is that the object of this sentence is wonderfully unclear. When it says “that shall be your tzitzit, look at oto” it could mean it or him. A teacher of mine in rabbinical school, on the opening Shabbaton of my first year, shared this ambiguity, and added that perhaps when we look at the tzitzit we see something about “oto” aka God, wrapped and tangled in the world and in our lives, reminding us that we are connected. Perhaps the tzitzit acted as a sort of friendship bracelet for the Israelities, a reminder of their connection to the Divine in times of uncertainty and fear. 

When we know we are safe in the world, when we know we are connected, we are able to be “right sized” in our own minds. Not all-powerful but not completely powerless. On this Pride Shabbat, may we be blessed to feel proud of ourselves in all of our identities, knowing that we can hold onto our literal tzitzit, or metaphorical tzitzit in the form of the Divine, our community, and ourselves, in times when, like the spies, our self-perception is not right sized. 

Parashat Pekudei 5784

Four years ago this week, our lives changed forever. There are few moments in our lives and in history where we all knew “where we were when…” We all knew where we were when the COVID lockdown happened. I was six months into my first job out of Rabbinical school, at Cornell. My home was decked out with fabrics and crazy lights, the food was ready, the drinks were ready, my costume (Moshe Rabeinu) was ready. It was Purim. Some students were already in my home helping set up, getting their first rounds of food and drinks, when they got the email, which said that they weren’t going to come back after Spring Break in a few weeks. We didn’t know then, that within just a few days, not weeks, they would all be gone, Collegetown would be a ghost town, and many of them wouldn’t know a normal college experience ever again. We didn’t know then that there would be over a million deaths from COVID in the US alone, and even now–four years later–we would still be thinking about this virus in our day to day lives, protecting the most vulnerable among us. 

One beautiful thing about college students is that, for many of them at least, nothing will get in the way of a good party. So, even with phones in hand, tears in eyes, they wandered through the door costumed and ready. The polarities of Purim were on full display. And we partied and danced like the world was ending, because in a way it was. In a way, the world as we knew it did end that day.

In the weeks surrounding Purim, we have parshiot all about garments, clothing, and apparel. This week, the apron, breastplate, cloak, crown, hat, tunic, sash and breeches of the Kohanim are made. There are some who say that it’s no mistake that we have these parshiot in the weeks preceding the donning of our own costumes on Purim. 

The custom (or as some rabbis like me like to understand it, very serious law) of dressing up on Purim, like many aspects of Purim, has mysterious origins. The first explicit mention of Purim costumes was by Rabbi Yehuda Minz, a 15th-century Italian rabbi who said that costume wearing, and specifically cross-dressing, was permissible on Purim because it creates joy. (And, can we just note how interesting it is that a 15th century Rabbi is proclaiming cross-dressing as joyful!?) Others say it coincides with the medieval Catholic tradition of dressing up on mardi gras, our pseudo-sister holiday during this time. And, others simply point to Megillat Esther itself, saying that the amount of hiding and revealing in the story–and the way that the Divine, though never mentioned, is hiding throughout the story–lends itself to dressing up, to hiding ourselves, or perhaps revealing our true selves that lay beneath the day-to-day costumes we have to put on in order to function in our world. 

For those of us who have never fit easily into the mold of our modern, capitalist society, Purim can be a healing balm to the soul. A time to show our true colors, to take off the costumes and constraints of conformity and allow our weirdness and our humanness to shine. 

In our Parsha, the Mishkan is called by a new name, מִשְׁכַּ֣ן הָעֵדֻ֔ת, the Mishkan of Witness. Why did the Israelites need a witness in the desert? The Sfat Emet explains that, after the Golden Calf, the Israelites did not believe they were worthy of closeness with G!d. The Mishkan acted as a witness to their true nature, their true goodness. It acted as a reminder to them and all of us, as he explains, “not to fall too low in [your] own eyes, for by teshuva we really are restored to what we were before.” The Mishkan, like a good therapist, bore witness to the Israelites when they felt the lowest about themselves, not forcing them to feel otherwise, but simply existing as a reminder that their actions did not define them. 

On Purim, and on this fourth anniversary of the pandemic, how can we bear witness to one another? How can we act as reminders to our loved ones and community that we are good and deserving of love and closeness? Bearing witness, as well, to all the ways in which we have struggled individually and collectively. The personal and global traumas we have experienced.

And, as we choose our costumes this Purim, I invite us to consider digging deep. What aspects of yourself do you need to hide in order to conform to our world? In what way can you embody those parts on Purim? My Purim costumes have spanned mostly the world of my alter egos or things I was personally grappling with. Moshe Rabbeinu, my first year out of Rabbinical school, is somewhat obvious. A reluctant spiritual leader who doesn’t always have the right words to say. In other years, I channeled my inner Chabad Rebbetzin and pressured people to come to my home for Shabbat all day. Last year, when I was teaching at Luria, I was a traditional hippie (crystals, incense and all), and was asked blank-faced by one of my students if I was dressed up or not. 

May we be blessed with many witnesses, human and otherwise, to remind us of who we are. To remind us that we are good. To remind us that as human beings we deserve connection, no matter how we may have messed up. And, as Purim approaches, may we serve as witnesses to one another, holding our humanness tenderly, allowing our masks to come off as another goes on. 

Shabbat Shalom