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What is the greatest miracle in Jewish history? Many would answer it is the one we read about this Shabbat – the splitting of the sea. Rarely, though, do we stop to notice another, perhaps equally astounding, miracle that happened when our ancestors reached the shore – they all broke out into song together. How did this happen? What did it look like? Why should we care?
The vision of simultaneous song endures as an example of striking unity among our people. It is also fleeting. Today, division runs deep and unity remains fleeting. Does this song, or the other song from which Shabbat Shira gets its name, the song of Devorah, give us any insight helpful to our modern experience which is characterized by anything but simultaneous song? Join us tomorrow morning as we unpack what the Torah is trying to tell us about the possibility or impossibility of lasting unity (source sheethere).
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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There is a fascinating paradox at the core of human experience: we know what is required to live healthy, happy lives and yet, we often make choices that directly contradict our own well-being. This is well-documented. For example, the consequences of smoking cigarettes have been studied intensively, and the results of those studies have been widely publicized. And yet, experts estimate that there are still1.1 billion smokers world-wide, a number which has remained constant despite intensive efforts to protect public health. In other words, knowing what is healthy and what is not is not necessarily predictive of whether or not we will be able to actualize our own best interests.
That's where our Torah is so important. As we open Exodus, we see a pattern that we know all too well. Pharaoh in the midst of a plague is open to change. With locusts devouring the land or under cover of darkness, Pharaoh repents and offers to change his behavior for the better. But as soon as the plague recedes, Pharaoh reverts to his cruel ways and to his refusals of our people. How many times have we done the same?
Interestingly, God is also aware of this pattern and the dangers of the human condition. God asserts that the signs and wonders are in order to show Pharaoh and the Israelites that God is powerful and present, with the hope that the Israelites will forever remember God's intervention in their lives and remain thereafter faithful.
But like Pharaoh, the Israelites recognize God's glory in the midst of the signs and wonders and do not always remember God's glory when memory of those miracles recedes. God's answer to this collective amnesia is ritualized memory. But what is ours? How do we subvert our own attention and memory such that we can make the best choices in every moment, even when we are not suffering from a particular plague?
Here are the sources.
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Shimon The Righteous would say that the world stands upon three things: upon Torah, upon Avodah - the Temple Service, and upon G’milut Hasadim - acts of loving kindness. Since I am finishing my fifth month working with the teen community here at Temple Emanuel I thought that I would humbly reflect upon three stories that illustrate these three pillars of Jewish life, which point our compass as we continue to establish our teen community.
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If you have not already done so, please take a couple of moments to watch this clip of the most famous part of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at a prayer service this past Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, at the Washington National Cathedral.
In class we will watch this clip together before our study and conversation. Here are some questions we will consider together:What do you think of her message?What does it say about our nation now that Bishop Budde’s message—have mercy—can ignite so much emotion and controversy?How do you think it felt to be Bishop Budde delivering that message in that moment to the new President, to the nation, and to the world?How do Jewish sources help us interpret this moment? Tomorrow we will lookat two prophets who speak truth to power: Nathan, who tells King David that he was immoral; and Jeremiah, who is nearly killed by a mob for saying that if the Judaeans do not change their ways, Babylon will destroy the Temple and exile the people.Does speaking truth to power ever work? For those of us who are not prophets and bishops, how does this large question intersect with our daily lives? What is asked of us, now?
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For 469 days, ever since October 7, every morning, and every evening, at our daily minyan, we pray for the IDF, that God should guard and protect Israel’s courageous and heroic soldiers. We pray that God return our hostages safely to their families. We say Mourner’s Kaddish as a community, as part of am Yisrael, for Israel’s fallen soldiers.
Occasionally, somebody will ask: how much longer? How much longer will we offer these prayers? No one knows for sure, but the general answer has to be something like: We will keep praying for the IDF for as long as Israel is at war. We will keep praying for the hostages as long as the hostages are stuck in Gaza. And we will keep saying Kaddish as long as soldiers keep dying in combat. Just this week, 5 more IDF soldiers were killed in northern Gaza. If you read the article in the Times of Israel, it just breaks your heart. You see pictures of these five idealistic, noble, beautiful young people. So incredibly, heartbreakingly young: Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan, 23; Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, 20. Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, 20; Yoaf Feffer, 19; Aviel Wiseman, 20. Fifteen months later all that young beautiful life snuffed out. How could we not say Kaddish for them?
The larger point is: it is all so murky—and sad. When will it end? How will it end? How will Israel and Israelis be at the end? All so murky.
And then this week, news of the ceasefire and hostage deal. I want to offer three questions. First, what is a lens through which we can see this murky deal in this murky war? Second, when we apply that lens to the facts before us, what do we think, and how does it make us feel? Third, what do we do?
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This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch.First, a cruel new Pharaoh who demonizes a vulnerable and marginalized minority and commands “all his people, saying: Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” Exodus 1-22. In other words, baby-killing is state policy. Infanticide is the law of the land.Second, in the face of such cruelty, in all of Egypt, only two people, Shifrah and Puah, stand up to resist. At most two in a whole land fight against manifest cruelty. The rest of the country went along.Why only two? Where was everybody else? How to explain indifference to manifest immorality?In class we will not only read the story of Shifra and Puah, but also a piece of stunning biblical scholarship by an Israeli scholar named Judy Klitsner which sees the Exodus story as what she calls the “subversive sequel” to the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. Brilliant insight which will leave us thinking: what does all of this mean to us now?
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There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire.
We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes hayeled einenu, Joseph is no more.
And when that happens, the person we love dies and is no more, it is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and always a huge, paradigm-shifting change. The one we love is no more. How will we do life without the one we love? But we are set up for it. Our tradition has equipped us with the rituals that will help us get through it. We have shiva. We have sheloshim. We have minyan. We have kaddish. We have yahrtzeit. We have the words to say and the deeds to do in the comfort of a community that enable us both to mourn our loss and also affirm our life.
But now there is a new form of loss. We don’t have the rituals and traditions and know-how, because we have not seen this epic loss, on this epic scale, before. What happens when it is not a person who is no more, but a house, and all that it contains, that is no more?
The house we grew up in is no more. The house that we wake up in and go to sleep in and do life in is no more. The ketubah on the wall is no more. The artwork gathered over a lifetime of going to art galleries in special places is no more. The Judaica is no more. The challah trays and challah covers, the kiddush cups, the Shabbat candlesticks that are a family heirloom from a beloved departed grandmother is no more. The seder plates, the Elijah cups and Miriam cups, the haggadot are no more. The benchers, the kippot, the tallitot are no more. The kitchen table and the dining room table on which we had 1,000 beautiful meals with our loved ones is no more. The cards and letters and photographs and memories are no more. The relics of our children’s childhood—the macaroni-encrusted pencil holders spray-painted gold that they would give us for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, are no more. The home is gone. And with it the physical manifestation of the life we used to live is no more.
Multiply that by all the businesses that are no more.
Add to that the synagogue in Pacific Palisades where Elias’s friend and cantorial colleague Ruth works, a 100-year old congregation, that is no more. Thank God the Torah scroll was saved from the wreckage, but the rest of the House of the Lord is no more.
We have members who grew up in Pacific Palisades. They came to the special prayer service for LA we held in the Gann Chapel on Thursday night. Before the service, she showed me on her cell phone what einenu, what is no more, looks like when homes, businesses, and every structure that used to stand is no more. Where a city block used to be, it is no more. Apocalyptic emptiness.
The loss is so enormous. Where do people whose house is no more go to live? What clothes do they wear when their clothes are incinerated? What food do they eat? How do they go to work and do a day of life when their entire foundation has been so cruelly overturned? And that is not even dealing with the deep, deep, super scary, terrifying financial implications. From what I have read, and heard from my family in Los Angeles, most residents who lost their homes do not have insurance that covers a home destroyed by fire. They lost everything. There is no insurance.
What happens now?
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How is it with your soul?In her book on evangelical Christianity, Circle of Hope, Eliza Griswold shares the centrality of that question in helping people understand one another. How is it with your soul?Do I wake up angry and aggrieved, and spend my energy honking the horn, sending flaming emails, taking offense, looking for a fight?Do I wake up feeling grateful for the good in my life?Do I wake up rattled and unsettled or centered and anchored?What shapes our soul? What shapes our inner life? Can we control it? Can we intentionally become less angry, more grateful, less rattled, more serene?Tomorrow morning we will look at the inner life of Joseph and David as they are dying—an abject lesson in how our deeds shape our souls, and how our souls shape our deeds.
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Earlier in the year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about her father's friend who was kidnapped at knife-point 50 years ago. It was a powerful piece--both for the thoughtful discussion of this original trauma and its impact on her and on her family friend. But the real story wasn't the kidnapping, nor the way the kidnapping re-ignited memories of her own lived traumas. The real story was that her article inspired countless emails from total strangers who reached out to share their own stories of trauma. Six months after her original article, Taffy published a second reflection titled, "I Published a Story about Trauma. I Heard About Everyone Else's." As humans, we are desperate to share our stories. And, when we tell our stories it doesn't just give us the opportunity to connect, those stories can have a healing affect on our emotional well-being and on the trajectory of our lives. There is a whole school of psychotherapy called narrative theory and practice whereby mental health practitioners help people to process trauma by telling and retelling their story until they find meaning.In this week's Talmud class, we're going to apply narrative theory and practice to the story of Joseph. Joseph's life is full of trauma: he loses his family, is tossed into a pit and sold into slavery, is wrongly accused and imprisoned, and lives the rest of his adult life as an outsider. His story could be a story of loss and trauma, but he reflects a story of hope and connection. He says God brought him to exactly where he needed to be. He gives thanks.How can do this? How can we use the power of stories to metabolize trauma into healing and transformational possibility?
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One of the most magnetic moments drawing us to shul is the observance of a yahrtzeit, the anniversary of our loved one’s passing, which offers us a precious opportunity to show up again for our beloved departed, to say a few words about them, and to recite Kaddish in their memory. Ordinary people who do not show up at shul all that much the rest of the year show up for their loved one’s yahrtzeit. That is through all the seasons. That is through the snow and the cold and the ice. And they do that for years, for decades, sometimes even remembering their loved one in death far longer than they were blessed to have them in life.
And when somebody comes to mark their loved one’s yahrtzeit, a thing we often say is: may you continue to be your loved one’s living legacy. May your father’s beautiful values live on in you. May your mother’s beautiful values live on in you. We say it. We mean it. It is beautiful and true.
I have been saying it, and I have been receiving it when others say it to me, for many years. But this year, for the first time, I experienced a wrinkle, a complexity, that I had never noticed before. What happens if we and our beloved departed mother or father or grandparent have a real disagreement over a matter of principle? They lived. They died. We know where they stand. Their legacy is now ours. But on a fundamental question of principle, we disagree.
For the first time ten days ago, I felt this tension myself.
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I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated.On the one hand, there is a certain wistful beauty to it. Our children were so young and small and cute. We were so much younger. Our parents were alive, standing with our children, three generations lighting candles. What a blessing.On the other hand, there can be a certain wistful melancholy to it. Our children are grown and gone and out of the house. We don’t see them every day like we used to. Our parents have passed. We were not only younger back then but also healthier. Before the back pain. Before the hip pointer. Back when we used to be able to run and play tennis whenever we wanted and climb up and down stairs without even thinking about it.An old photo is a mixed bag. My late father in love used to say: “There are no happy pictures. There are only pictures of happy memories.” The memories are of course happy. We were blessed to have lit candles with our young children and our beloved parents. But the picture is not entirely happy because in the intervening years we have felt the ravages of time in our body and in our soul.Is there any inoculation against the ravages of time? We cannot stop the worries, stresses and conflicts of daily living. That comes with the human condition. But is there a way to think about our life that minimizes the ravages of time? Our Torah has so much to say here.
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Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (Genesis 41: 29-30)Truer words were never spoken. Joseph’s interpretation of how lean years swallow up fat years, how bad times swallow up good times, how seventy years of life and health get swallowed up by a decade of dementia, when we struggle to remember what our loved one used to be like—his words were true for ancient Egypt, and they are true for us. In his commentary on Joseph’s interpretation, Rashi picks up on this note of swallowing. Bad swallows good.What have you done for me lately? The recency bias is so powerful. Like the thin ears of corn that swallow the fat ears of corn, like the scrawny cows that swallow the robust cows, today’s truth crowds out yesterday’s truth. In sports, in the economy, in culture, the fact that a team used to win, that the economy used to be strong, that a singer used to belt out number one hits, is always eclipsed by what is happening now. So too our moods. The fact that we used to be happy is scant consolation if we are depressed now. And, as noted above, one of the cruelest expressions of the recency bias is dementia. It literally is hard to remember our loved one before their decline, so powerful is their decline at swallowing up time and energy.Is there an answer for the all-powerful recency bias? Joseph’s solution is to store up a reserve during the good time to hold us in the bad time. That solution worked for ancient Egypt. At least it staved off mass starvation. Does the storing up solution work for us? If not, do we have any other way to counter the awesome power of the recency bias?
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The volume of outrage in our world has hit a crescendo. All the time I hear questions like, “how can you bear to be around someone who voted like that?!” or “how can you stand working with people who are so anti-Zionist or who are so pro-Israel?” As if people who do not rage against those they disagree with are somehow condoning or supporting evil perspectives. Young people, already stressed by the pressures of their own lives, feel pressured to respond to hateful social media posts and/or to present content that will fight against what they see as evil lies. Everything is pitched as though the conversation is an existential battle between good and evil and each one of us is either fighting for good or conceding to forces of evil.
We saw this so sharply this week. When Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson in broad daylight, the story on the street and on social media wasn’t about a horrific crime against humanity. People lionized Luigi, they asked him on dates, they offered to be his alibi, they fundraised for his legal costs, they even competed in dress-alike competitions. Why? Because they see him as someone willing to take decisive action against the evils of our world, never mind that he committed an atrocious crime and never mind that killing Brian Thompson does nothing to fix our broken health care system nor address the real pain of the American people.
There’s a word for this energy in our tradition: zealotry. Zealots are people who are inspired by passion, who take action without due process, and who force the world to align with their vision.
The most famous zealots in our tradition arose in a tumultuous time in our history. Way back in the first century, during the Second Temple Period, our ancestors were fighting to build a life in the shadow of the Roman Empire. At the time, the future of Judaism and Jewish community was precarious and there were different groups that had different ideas about what should happen. Some groups fought for justice and against elitism and classism that they felt were destroying society. Some believed that the Roman Empire was the way of the future. They promoted assimilation and Hellenization and worked to try to suppress Jewish revolt against the occupying power. While others raged against Roman rule, encouraging resistance to Roman culture and strict adherence to Jewish cultic rites.
According to the Talmud, the elders of the Jewish community wanted to mobilize their community thoughtfully. But the zealots didn’t have the patience for this. They felt an existential threat and believed it was their duty to force the Jewish community into action. They provoked and attacked the Romans, trying to incite violence. And when their guerilla tactics worked and the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, the zealots burned the granaries and food stores in the city so our ancestors would be forced to fight for their lives.
When we tell this story, we focus on our survival. We focus on Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s improbable escape in a coffin. We focus on his heroic journey to Yavne and the way he preserved the Judaism that he and the other rabbis believed in. But that leaves out a critical piece of our history. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had to escape because of the zealots, because their radical ideology created a toxic culture of violence which threatened our very existence.
Today, more than ever, we need to remember the zealots.
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The murder last week of CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York in broad daylight inspired large-scale celebration. The article from the Times and social media posts show delight in his murder; the celebration of his murderer as a hero.What is wrong with us? How could thousands of Americans celebrate murder? There is an ugliness and hate in our nation now. Is there any way to heal it?Our reading this week deals with violence in a violent place, Shechem: the rape of Dinah, the revenge of Simon and Levi. Violence often leads to more violence. Hate to more hate. Ugliness to more ugliness.But are those cycles inevitable? What do we learn from this violent story about how to heal the hate in our world now, if healing is even possible? In the wake of Brian Thompson’s murder, much has been written and spoken about anger, outrage, fury at the health insurance industry’s denials and delays which have led to death and dying during people’s most vulnerable times. Does our Torah offer us a better way to respond to this pain than what happened on the streets of New York?
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On a Tuesday in late October, 2022, Jared Goff, a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, was summoned to a meeting in the office of his coach Dan Campbell. The summons gave Jared Goff a pit in his stomach. He figured he was going to be benched or released—fired. Some version of bad news felt inevitable. Goff had begun his career with the Los Angeles Rams, who had traded him to the Detroit Lions for the Lions’ former quarterback, Matthew Stafford. In his first year, Stafford led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory. But Goff’s first year for the Lions was a disaster. The team went 3-13-1. His second season started out just as bad: one win, six losses, including an ugly loss that Sunday in which Goff played terribly. Hence the summons to the coach’s office.
When he got to the coach’s office, to Goff’s surprise, Coach Campbell did not have bad news. He had a good question. Jared, you are a much better player than the way you have been playing. What do you think is going on? What do you think you might do differently to play better? What tweak might we think about? To which Jared Goff responded: I’ve been trying to do too much. I need to let go of all my anxiety and just do my best one play at a time. To which Campbell responded: Jared, that’s all I’ve wanted you to do this whole time.
The next game, Jared Goff played dramatically better. The team still lost, but his play improved appreciably. And the game after that, the Lions won, and they have been winning ever since. This year the Lions are tied for the best record in the league. Goff’s play has been spectacular.
I bring up this story not to talk about football but to talk about how to respond to people who are seriously struggling. Jared Goff assumed that he was going to be benched or released. But Dan Campbell did not give up on him. How do we not give up on people or places that we love that are going through a hard time?
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Is everything going to be okay? We live with that question every day.Is everything going to be okay with Israel? December 7, marks 14 months of war, and the situation is still murky, unresolved and painful for all. This week when he was in dialogue with Michelle, Donniel Hartman was real, and real was not upbeat.Is everything going to be okay with our country? We are a 50-50 nation. Both halves have deep convictions and deep anxieties. The side that is not in power is worried.Is everything going to be okay with ourselves and our loved ones? When we face serious challenges—relational, emotional, physical, financial, professional—will we emerge okay on the other end?What kind of prayer is helpful when we worry whether everything is going to be okay? The Torah offers us a primer of two different models of prayer, same person, same anxiety, same dread fear, twenty years apart. Young Jacob running away from home worries that Esau will kill him.Older Jacob coming back home to Canaan worries that Esau will kill him and his family. In both cases, he prays.Tomorrow we will consider each prayer in its own context and ask whether we pray a prayer like that, and if so, whether doing so helps. We will also study the interpretation of these two prayers by the late Rabbi Harold Kushner found in his classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People.Rabbi Kushner uses these two prayers of Jacob as illuminating prayers that do and do not work.How is it with your prayer life? Can our prayer life grow so that our prayers help strengthen us when we could use the strength?
- Visa fler
