Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 3

Spring

The trees are leafing out again at last.
Flying little chartreuse flags, crumpled
like wet laundry before they spread
and take up space.

If this were a love poem
I would say, I want you to take up space
and stretch toward the sun, exuberant
as the birds who can���t stop singing.

If this were a love poem
I could say anything at all
and you would know I really mean
all I want is for you to bloom.

 

 

If you like this poem, you might also like Texts to the Holy (Ben Yehuda Press).

Justice - Shmini 5785 / 2025

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I had already written a d���varling for tonight, about Aaron���s response to the death of his son and how the silence of those who suffer invites us to respond with care. And then a congregant reached out to me this morning and asked if I could speak tonight about a breaking news story, the FBI���s arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan in Wisconsin, and what our response to this as Jews ought to be. What moral guidance can Torah offer for the world we���re in today?

First let me share a bit of context, and then I���ll talk Torah more broadly. The Department of Homeland Security changed their policies in February to shift the status of certain previously ���protected areas��� or ���sensitive locations��� ��� including courthouses, social service agencies, and houses of worship. These areas used to be legally protected from ���immigration enforcement,��� and now they are not. Or at least: public spaces within them are not. Private spaces are.

This sparked a lot of conversation among rabbis: if ICE shows up at the door, what is the ethically and legally correct response? The Union for Reform Judaism signed on with many other faith organizations in a lawsuit challenging that rescission of the ���sensitive locations��� policy. Meanwhile, the National Immigration Law Center���s fact sheet notes, ���ICE still needs a judicial warrant to enter any private space, including a house of worship.��� 

In the case of Judge Dugan, Rep. Ryan Clancy notes that ���ICE did not present a warrant before entering the courtroom; it is not clear whether ICE ever possessed or presented a judicial warrant.��� (A judicial warrant is not the same as an ���administrative warrant��� from ICE.) This sounds to me like a parallel to how things work if ICE comes to a synagogue: they need a judicial warrant in order to enter ���private space,��� and it sounds like they did not show one.

Courtney Milan, a former clerk for Justice Sandra Day O���Connor, explains that the judge is accused of ���obstructing��� ICE through adjourning the proceedings and allowing the defendant to leave the courtroom through the jury box, ���both official acts performed as a judge,��� and that ���a judge is given enormous discretion as to the operation of their courtroom in order to preserve due process.��� The judge doesn���t appear to have done anything that merits FBI involvement.

If her arrest was retaliatory, that seems like erosion of due process. I know many of us are worried about that, especially amidst current tension between the executive branch and the judicial branch. The arrest of this judge comes on the heels of a rise in anti-judge rhetoric and hints of refusal to abide by judicial decision. There have even been claims that the judicial branch is meant to be subservient to the executive. Can Torah help us navigate this?

At the start of Torah we were in Eden, innocent and childlike, all of our needs met by God. In the book of Exodus we went down into Egypt, where we were enslaved by Pharaoh, our agency (and our humanity) denied. Now we are in Leviticus. We���re wandering in the wilderness, learning how to be a mature people with human agency who take responsibility and take care of each other. And that includes the institution of judges to help guide the people.

�������������������� �������������������������� ���������������������������� ���������������������������������� �������������� ���������������������� �������������������� ������������ ���������� �������������������������� ���������������������� �������������������� ����������������������������������

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 18:19)

Torah tells us that we should appoint judges and officers to govern the people with justice. Torah also tells us (a verse or two later) to pursue justice with all that we are. We might see shoftim v���shotrim, ���judges and officers,��� as somewhat akin to today���s division of government into coequal branches who together govern with justice, but it doesn���t occur to Torah that the shotrim might decide not to listen to the shoftim, e.g. that the judges and the rulers might be at odds. 

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Art by Steve Silbert.

I am envisioning a New Yorker-style cartoon, a line drawing of someone saying, ���Don't you wish we lived in precedented times?��� (So I asked my friend Steve to draw it.) After the pandemic, the insurrection, and the last hundred days or so of chaos, I think we���re all getting tired of living in ���unprecedented times.��� But once again, that���s what we���ve got. All we can do is study Torah in search of values and principles to guide how we respond to what���s unfolding around and within us.

In this week���s parsha, Shmini, Torah gives us instructions about what to eat and not eat, and descriptions of the right way to offer the korbanot, offerings / sacrifices. Torah says we have a choice: we can be like Aaron and follow the commandments, or we can be like his sons Nadav and Avihu who died after bringing ���strange fire.��� Being a free people means claiming our agency to act, and hopefully choosing to act in a way that���s aligned with Torah.

Torah���s mitzvot are addressed to all of us, not just to judges or officials. Use honest weights and measures, don���t cheat people, don���t lie, don���t steal, feed the hungry, love the stranger for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: these mitzvot are incumbent on every Jew. And, Torah also has some words about what kind of person should be appointed as a leader, a person in authority ��� which for Torah was simultaneously a secular role and a spiritual one. 

Torah teaches that a leader should not self-aggrandize. They shouldn���t be too wealthy, or have too many wives and horses, or bring the people backward to the way things were in constricted times. (Deut. 17:15-18) This comes at the very end of Torah. Later the sages of the Talmud and the Jewish legal tradition expound on it further, but the basic principles stand. Judges should be fair and honorable, and leaders should be humble and forward-looking. 

So what should our response as Jews be to today���s headlines ��� any of today���s headlines? 

There���s a story in Talmud about scholars who disagreed about a matter of Jewish law. One of them even disagrees with the Voice of God offering ���the answer��� from on high! That scholar quotes Torah back at God, saying lo bashamayim hee ��� ���[wisdom] is not in the heavens, [you���ve given it to us].��� And God laughs and agrees in apparent delight. The pinnacle of human development is when we claim our agency to interpret what���s just, and we act accordingly. 

Torah is not in the heavens, and neither is justice. They are ours, to steward and keep. 

 

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

Care

This week���s Torah portion, Shmini, contains the following somewhat shocking vignette. First we read about Aaron bringing forward a korban, a sacrifice or offering, and blessing the people. Afterwards, Aaron and Moses go inside the Tent of Meeting. When they emerge, they bless the people together, and the presence of God appears to all the people. So far, so good.

Then two of Aaron���s sons, Nadav and Avihu, apparently decide to follow suit. Were they so excited at the prospect of divine service that they couldn���t wait until it was their turn? Were they, as some commentators have suggested, intoxicated and therefore making poor decisions? We don���t know. What we do know is, they make an unauthorized offering, and they die on the spot.

Then we get these two searing words:  �������������������� ������������������ / vayidom Aharon. ���And Aaron was silent.���

Rashi says that Aaron was rewarded for his silence by hearing the Voice of God speaking to him alone, revealing to him further details of the sacrificial system. Ramban says that he cried out without words, and was then silent. The Sforno says he took consolation in realizing that his sons��� deaths in this manner made them the highest possible ���offering��� he could give to God. 

Sometimes in the face of tragedy or trauma, in the face of a profound and earth-shaking injustice, the one at the center of the grief may have no words. When one���s whole soul cries out that this is wrong, this isn���t the way the world was supposed to be, there may be no words adequate to that heart���s cry. Not for the person or people most afflicted. 

This year Aaron���s silence feels like an invitation. 

The silence of suffering invites us to offer care. This is our most basic job as human beings. Whether a phone call, a text conversation, a casserole, a hospital visit: what matters is that we extend ourselves to those silenced by injustice, sorrow, or grief. This doesn���t fix whatever they���re suffering, but it can remind them that they���re not alone. Presence and care matter.

And then we do what we can. Maybe as we support those who are silenced by sorrow, together we can figure out how to support them in action. I think of Candace Lightner, whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver in 1980 and who went on to found MADD. I think of the Parents��� Circle Families Forum, founded by grieving Israelis and Palestinians together��� 

In the case of an injustice, someone who���s been unfairly treated or discriminated-against or wrongly accused, we can name the injustice clearly and speak against it. And maybe it���s easier for us to do that when we���re one step removed from the injustice itself. Maybe when we ourselves aren���t impacted, we have more bandwidth and energy to stand up for what���s right.

Aaron stands alone in his silence, but we don���t have to. We can always speak up for each other. We can always care for each other. When times are good we can celebrate with each other, and when times are tough we can uplift and accompany each other. This is what community is for: this is why we are here. That���s the lesson for now that  I find in our Torah portion this week. 

 

I wrote this for Shabbat services... and then something else caught on fire (metaphorically) and I wrote something entirely different to share at shul. So here's where the parsha took me yesterday. Stay tuned to see where it takes me today.

A year unlike any other

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Yom HaShoah begins tonight at sundown: our collective day of remembrance for the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis. Confronted with the pure evil of the Holocaust, my words fail me. If you are looking for a way to remember and to mourn ��� or to uplift and to honor those who survived ��� this video archive at Yad Vashem offers both survivors��� video testimonies and historical insights into how and why the Shoah happened. I hope you���ll watch a video or two.

Yom HaShoah arrives every year, and yet for many of us this year feels different than any other. A friend of mine texted me today that her lunch in Northampton might be disrupted because there are reports on social media of planned neo-Nazi activity in town. Two of my younger relatives are seeking my mother���s Czech birth certificate in hopes of securing EU citizenship in case it becomes too unsafe to live in this country as Jews. Neither of these things feels normal. 

Some of us hear echoes of Nazi eugenics in news stories about people with autism who ���will never pay taxes,��� as though productivity were the measure of a human being���s worth. Some of us feel alarm about our history and our future as diversity initiatives are shut down. And some of us feel chilled by the imprisonment of anyone without due process.

���Never again��� is now. The Shoah didn���t begin with concentration camps and death camps: it began with nativism, a worldview that posited strong white Aryans as inherently better than Jews or people of color or queer people or people with disabilities or people with unpopular political views (in those days, Communists), and the dehumanization of those groups. 

As the descendants of a people that against all odds survived Hitler���s extermination attempt, we resist the values that brought it forth. As Jews we stand against nativism, white supremacy, ableism, and derogatory treatment of anyone, including immigrants and people of color. When people (including us) are dehumanized for their identity or their views, it becomes easier to turn away. Instead we are called to metaphorically link arms with other vulnerable communities, and to find strength and purpose in standing together and caring for each other.

I believe that this nation can be a haven for immigrants and refugees, and that the ethical measure of our society is found in how we treat the most vulnerable among us. I believe that our diversity makes us stronger, and that every human being is made in the image of God. And I believe that the best way to honor the memory of those who died in the Shoah, and the memory of those who, trauma-scarred, survived, is to build a world in which we give discrimination no quarter. A world in which all are free to be who we are without fear. 

May it be so, speedily and soon.

 

Locals: join us on Sunday, May 25 at 3pm for We Were Strangers: A Shavuot Concert celebrating the immigrant, the refugee, and the stranger ��� in alignment with the Book of Ruth which we read at Shavuot (a story of immigrants and refugees!). This event is free and open to the public; please RSVP if you plan to attend. Donations are welcome, with all proceeds benefiting the Berkshire Immigrant Center, a local nonprofit that is dedicated to supporting immigrants and refugees in our community.

 

This is what I shared with my congregation today (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog). It seemed worth sharing here, too. 

Two Truths for Entering the Sea

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The familiar words of the haggadah landed differently with me this year. We speak every year of freedom from Mitzrayim ��� meaning not only ������������������ / ������ / literal Egypt, but also more broadly all of life���s narrow places and times of constriction. But this year I���m keenly aware of constriction and lack of liberty in ways that go beyond the metaphorical. 

I think of Tufts graduate student R��meysa ��zt��rk, imprisoned in Louisiana though the State Department found no evidence linking her to terrorism, just an op-ed opposing the war in Gaza and calling for divestment. Or Mohsen Madawi, a green card holder and Columbia student detained this week by ICE at a naturalization interview in apparent retaliation for his activism. 

Both arrests were ostensibly to secure safety for Jews. But along with most of my colleagues, I don���t believe that imprisoning grad students makes Jews safer. I do believe that chipping away at free speech rights and due process makes all communities less safe. And calling their activism ���terrorist��� cheapens the word and diminishes our capacity to name actual terrorism and antisemitism.

Or take Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran national who fled here to escape gang violence, now deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador ��� which the government now admits was a mistake. The Supreme Court has ruled that the administration must facilitate his return, but the administration now claims there���s nothing they can do (or, want to do)  to bring him back.

As historian Heather Cox Richardson writes, ���if the administration can take noncitizens off the streets, render them to prison in another country, and then claim it is helpless to correct the error��� it could do the same thing to citizens.��� As far-fetched as that sounds, the idea is actually under discussion. (Here���s more on that at NBC and at Reuters.)

The opening prayer in the Reform movement���s Gates of Freedom haggadah celebrates:

Freedom from hatred and freedom from fear

Freedom to think and freedom to speak

Freedom to teach and freedom to learn

Freedom from hatred and fear ��� when an arsonist attacked the home of a Jewish governor on Pesach, and it���s increasingly unsafe to be trans or gender-nonconforming? Freedom to think and speak ��� when today some claim the ability to deport people over beliefs? Freedom to teach and freedom to learn ��� when there���s a push to erase diversity and climate science? 

The festival of freedom feels different to me this year than it ever has before, and I know from our conversations in recent weeks that many of you are feeling these things, too. How can we possibly celebrate freedom in a time like this? I think Jewish spiritual life invites us also to ask the opposite question: how can we not? We need to uplift freedom especially now.

Today, the seventh day of Passover, is the anniversary of the date when we found ourselves face to face with the Sea: the Egyptian army behind us, water ahead, with nowhere to go. Midrash teaches that when Nachshon ben Aminadav stepped into the waters and walked until the waters were up to his mouth, the sea parted and we walked through on dry land. 

Here are two truths that are sustaining me right now. One:

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Tradition teaches that we didn���t leave the Narrow Place alone, but rather as part of an erev rav, a mixed multitude. Pharaoh���s daughter came with us. Other people who sought liberation came with us. Torah teaches us that the path to freedom is one that we all take together. I take strength in remembering that we are not seeking liberation and justice alone. 

There���s some enlightened self-interest here. In the words of the CCAR (the association of Reform rabbis), ���whenever vulnerable minorities are attacked, Jews will ultimately be vulnerable because we are Jewish.��� We know that Jews are safest when everyone���s civil rights and civil liberties are honored; standing up for others helps us too. It���s also the right thing to do.

And two:

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I also take strength in remembering that sometimes we will feel caught between Pharaoh���s army and the sea. At those times, the only thing to do is step into the sea, whether or not we feel ready. Pesach is a celebration of taking a leap together, choosing to trust that the world can be different and better than it has been. But we may need to step into the sea without certainty. And that's ok.

The question that keeps coming up for me is: what do we owe to each other? I think our obligation as Jews and as human beings is to stand up for the civil rights and human rights of others. There���s a reason people keep quoting Niemoller���s poem that begins, ���First they came for the Communists������ I think we owe it to each other to stand up for our shared human dignity. 

I think we owe it to R��meysa ��zt��rk and Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Madawi to stand up for their rights. I think we owe it to Kilmar Abrego Garcia to stand up for his rights. I think there���s a reason Torah tells us 36 times to love the stranger because we were strangers in Mitzrayim. I think this mitzvah, loving the stranger, is one of the core ways we leave Mitzrayim behind.

We���re not alone. And there has never been a better time to reach out to each other, both across the Jewish community and across all our local communities. If you are feeling afraid, know that your Jewish community is here with you. And if you���re not feeling afraid, I hope you���ll reach out to someone who might be, and let them know that you���re here and you���ve got their back. 

This is how we cross the sea: one step at a time, taking a leap of faith together, as an erev rav / a multitude connected across our differences. Our nation has never yet fully lived up to the dream of liberty and justice for all, but that���s all the more reason to keep trying. May our Passover story of liberation inspire us to work toward that sacred dream, for everyone.

 

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

Querencia

 

 

Old magnolia: gaps just the right size
for my dangling legs, a branch to rest a book on.

The seaglass blue of sky over hills
like an embrace from the horizon.

Limestone painted pink at twilight,
rosemary between my fingers.

The light of Shabbat candles
after a brief whiff of struck match.

Singing the alto note in a chord,
holding and held.

 

 

For my birthday last month one of my nieces gave me a deck of illustrated cards depicting untranslatable words. I drew a card this morning: querencia.

"Describes a place where we feel safe, a 'home' (which doesn't literally have to be where we live) from where we draw our strength and inspiration. In bullfighting, a bull may stake out a querencia in a part of the ring where he will gather his energies before another charge."

Shabbat. Jerusalem. Harmony. A particular quality of sky. A tree that was chopped down decades ago.

Where are these places for you?

 

Slow down

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The words of the "blessing for the body," superimposed over an MRI machine.

There is nothing like a surprise trip to the hospital to remind me that I am not actually in charge. Things at the hospital happen on someone else's timeframe. God's timeframe, maybe. Not mine.

I had forgotten the sounds of the MRI machine: the swish-swish like a distant ocean, the banging and buzzing and thudding. I had forgotten the taste of chewable aspirin, a jolt of childhood on my tongue.

I almost fell asleep in the MRI this morning, I was so tired from being up all night in the ER and the ambulance. I prayed lines from the morning services in my head, accompanied by its soundtrack.

Before anyone starts worrying, I'm fine. As best we can discern, this was a TIA -- a "transient ischemic attack," a clot that had some tangible impacts for a couple of hours and then apparently floated away.

What caused it? That's a bigger question. It's probably related to whatever caused my heart attack in 2022 and my two cryptogenic or idiopathic (aka inexplicable) strokes in 2006... whatever that was.

I guess I'm heading back into a period of investigative diagnostic work. Not my favorite thing, but it gives me plenty of opportunities to practice sitting with the discomfort of not-knowing something. 

And. While I was in the emergency room last night at the first hospital I went to, I was messaging a Facebook friend who is hospitalized on the other side of the country with high-grade lymphoma. 

Since yesterday, I've seen and heard people who are in far tighter straits than I. I don't enjoy not-knowing. But I know how lucky I am to be dealing only with this, rather than with something worse.

I am reluctantly admitting that I will need to scale back my seder preparations. The kitchen will not be kashered as intensively as I would prefer. I will rely on storebought chicken broth for soup.

I will need to remind myself to take things easy for a while, which is not my strong suit. If you see me exerting myself, remind me that my body seems to be saying: slow down. You move too fast.

New edition of the VR Haggadah!

[image error]I think I started sharing Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach on this blog in 2007, though the haggadah existed long before that. Anyway: cue the fanfare, drumroll please: as of 2025, here's an updated edition, version 9. Find it here:

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach

The gorgeous cover illustration is by my friend and Bayit colleague Steve Silbert, and his work appears in various places throughout the haggadah. 

There's new material here, including prayer-poems by me and by my fellow Bayit Liturgical Arts Working Group hevre Trisha Arlin, R. David Markus, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, and David Zaslow. And poems written by people I don't personally know, like Amnon Ribak and Linda Pastan. And I added a favorite piece from Marcia Falk's gorgeous Night of Beginnings haggadah, and some wisdom from the new A Quest for Our Times haggadah.

Some pieces appear both in long form and in shorter form. Some pieces appear in several forms (there are six different versions of the Four Children; which one speaks to you this year?) 

Most importantly to me: there's more attention to what freedom asks of us. When I started working on this haggadah for my own use 25 or 30 years ago, I was really focused on the inner journey of liberation. And... in today's world I am keenly aware that freedom comes with obligations to each other and to those who are not free. So there's more of that in here too.

As usual I also fixed typos, improved formatting, and adjusted layout. 

The PDF is available for download and as always, you're welcome to use it as your haggadah, or to intersperse these pages with the haggadah you already know and love, or to intersperse these pages with other readings that speak to you -- make seder your own. 

Again, find it at the Haggadah page at velveteenrabbi.com, or click the link below:

The Velveteen Rabbi's Haggadah for Pesach

May your Pesach be everything you need it to be.

This Year

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What does it mean this year to celebrate freedom?
What does it mean this year to claim we are free?

Are we free to speak ��� or only if we hold the ���right��� opinions?
Are we free to be who we are ��� or only if we fit a certain mold?

Can we celebrate liberation when innocents are shackled?
When ���give me your tired, your poor��� seems out of style?

When communities live in fear, Seder���s journey feels hollow.
What does Seder mean this year? What if we don���t feel free?

Sometimes Seder is about hope we don���t yet know how to feel.
We are not the first generation to live Passover in tight times.

We welcomed Elijah to our door during the Crusades.
We sang Seder songs in the Warsaw Ghetto and in the camps.

The world is not yet healed or whole. There is no sign of redemption.
That has never stopped us from building, singing, retelling, yearning.

The way things have been is not the only way the world can be.
It is our covenant to seek greater freedom for all who are bound.

Dr. King knew, ���Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.���
Justice everywhere is our destination. May this seder be our fuel.

 

 

Shared with gratitude to my first reader, whose wise suggestions made this better. 

This could be used as a responsive reading at seder. If you do that, I'd recommend having the whole room read the first couplet; that way the whole room is also reading the last couplet aloud.

If this speaks to you, you might also find merit in Bayit's new Passover collection, From the Depths.

Bloom

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������������������ �������������� ������������ ������������ �������������������� ������������������ ���������� ������������ �������������������� ����������������������

This month shall mark for you the beginning of the months; it shall be the first of the months of the year for you. (Ex. 12:2)

[image error]This is the beginning of the special Torah reading assigned to this Shabbat. The new month of Nissan begins on Sunday at sundown ��� that���s the month containing Passover, and it���s the first month of the year. Some of us might be thinking: Rosh Hashanah is in the fall, so how is the first month of the year now?! The short version is, we have more than one new year. Actually we have four. The year begins again in the fall; the months begin again in the spring.

Here in the northern hemisphere, spring is a time for new beginnings. And new beginnings aren���t necessarily easy. I think of Louise Gl��ck���s poem The Wild Iris, the way she depicts the new life of a bulb that has pushed its way out of the soil: ���the stiff earth / bending a little,��� ���I tell you I could speak again.��� Every bulb that winters over experiences a kind of Exodus from constriction. What a powerful metaphor for us as we prepare ourselves to go free.

Take a lamb, says Torah, and paint its blood on the doorposts. Ibn Ezra (d. 1167) says that was a onetime thing, just for the generation of the Exodus. What���s not onetime is the instruction to feast with bitter herbs and unleavened bread: hurriedly, with staff in hand and sandals on our feet. This is ���a Pesach offering to YHVH,��� a ���festival to YHVH throughout the ages��� (Ex. 12:12,14) ��� the origins of the ritual feast of retelling we know as the Passover seder. 

Intriguingly, Rashi (d. 1105) teaches that the lamb���s blood was meant to be painted on the inside of the doorposts. Abarbanel (d. 1508) agrees: the blood on the doorposts was placed on the inside. Its purpose wasn���t to show something to others, but to remind us of something. Maybe that it���s part of our identity to eat our feast of liberation with sandals on our feet, ready to go. Pesach wasn���t ���just��� about ���them / then��� ��� it is also always about us, here and now.

As we read in the haggadah: ������������-���������� ������������ ������������ ���������� ���������������� ������-�������������� ������������������ �������� ���������� ������������������������ /  ���in every generation one must see oneself as if one had personally gone forth from Mitzrayim.��� So what does it mean to see ourselves into this story? One answer is to map it to our personal narratives of breaking forth from stuck places or oppression. Another is to take responsibility for helping others find their way out of painful and unjust circumstance. I think we need both.

Rabbi Toba Spitzer points out that marking our doors is our first collective act toward liberation:

This is the challenge that our ancestors leave for us. We may no longer be slaves, but the world is still far from redeemed, and these questions still echo for us: What are the steps that we need to take on our own journey of liberation? How do we mark ourselves as both oppressed and free? What is the risk that we each are willing to take, to signal the beginning of new possibilities? 

The world is still far from redeemed: that is always true, and this year I know many of us are feeling it especially keenly. Repairing what���s broken in our world is communal work. Just as the building of the Mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God that our ancestors built in the wilderness) was collective work. And the Exodus from Mitzrayim, the Narrow Place, is always a collective journey. It���s never just about personal transformation; it���s also about community.

Judaism is a communitarian tradition. The highest ideals of Judaism inhere not in any individual practice, but in what we do together: what we do with and for each other, and with and for those who are more vulnerable than we. We ���do Jewish��� best when we do Jewish together. And that includes seder. As a generous reading of the parable of the four children (and the potential wisdom we can find in each) reminds us, the seder table is big enough to hold our differences. 

[image error]Anais Nin writes, ���The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.��� Every year, Pesach and the unfolding spring invite us to embrace the risk that comes with opening. We open our hearts (internal) which then impels us to take action (external) ��� to love the stranger, to invite all who are hungry to come and eat, to pursue liberation for all who are bound. The internal is necessary, but not sufficient.

Were our people ever slaves to a Pharaoh in Egypt? The historical record suggests probably not. But for me that���s beside the point. What matters is that this is the story we���ve been telling about ourselves for well over two thousand years. As Torah reminds us over and over, we know the heart of the stranger because we were strangers in Mitzrayim. And because we know the heart of the stranger, we have an ethical obligation to love the stranger and to help them.

Louise Gl��ck writes, ���whatever / returns from oblivion returns / to find a voice.��� This year, that speaks to me as a deep truth about recovering from depression, or grief, or any kind of tough time that might feel deadening. I know many of us have felt that, of late. The wild iris��� voice is expressed in its glorious riot of colors. It���s up to us how we express our voice, individual and collective. I believe deeply that the world needs us to use our voice to speak for what���s right.

Earlier this week, masked ICE agents in our own state detained a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk and whisked her off to Louisiana against judicial orders. She was arrested for engaging in ���activities in support of Hamas.��� As many outlets have reported (from the Guardian to Vanity Fair), the apparent ���evidence��� of this is that she co-authored an op-ed last year that called on the university to divest from companies with ties to Israel. 

As a Jewish community, we will have all kinds of views on that op-ed. Some of us are appalled by it. Some of us agree with it. Both of those are legitimate Jewish opinions, and I hope we can explore them together with curiosity and kindness, maybe around the seder table!  I read the op-ed, twice, and it is lightyears away from ���supporting Hamas.��� And the proposition that someone can be imprisoned for writing an op-ed is profoundly chilling. 

Pirkei Avot teaches that we must give others the benefit of the doubt. I believe Jewish values ask us to do this for Rumeysa Ozturk, which means at minimum insisting on due process and compassion for her -- and for everyone. My question is: are there places where our reluctance to give the benefit of the doubt becomes a kind of hametz, the pride and puffery of stale stories or unhelpful ego, which we would do well to discard before Pesah?

I spoke recently with one of you who is struggling to figure out how to approach Passover this year given everything unfolding around us. Pesach is about freedom, they noted, but this year many of us don���t feel particularly free��� or safe. I told them I draw strength from knowing we aren���t the first generation of Jews to celebrate Pesach in a time of constriction or fear. All we can do is turn to our texts and traditions, and remember that we���re not alone. 

The mitzvah most-often repeated in Torah is to love the stranger, precisely because we know what it���s like to be one. This is a deep spiritual truth. Because we���ve known tight places, we have an ethical obligation to free the bound. So as Nissan begins, let���s be like our ancestors. Let���s write a note on the inside of our doorposts about who we intend to be. Let���s take the risk of blooming ��� and may our flowering lead to the fruits of compassion and justice for all. 

 

This is the d'var Torah I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)