Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 5

People of Truth: Yitro 5785 / 2023

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When I sat down to read this week���s Torah portion, Yitro, this verse jumped out at me:

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Seek out, from among all the people, capable individuals who fear God��� trustworthy ones who spurn ill-gotten gain. ( Ex. 18:21 )

The speaker here is Yitro, father-in-law of Moshe. Moshe has been carrying the burden of all the people and all of their questions and needs. Yitro instructs him that he should appoint honorable, trustworthy people to serve as ���chiefs��� of thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens, and let them judge the people and answer their queries, so Moshe won���t be quite so overloaded. 

Rashi (d. 1105) says anshe-hayil (���men of valor��� or ���of worth���) could mean wealthy people who won���t be swayed toward injustice by the promise of profit. But he immediately balances that by noting Torah���s instruction that these also be anshe emet, ���people of truth,��� whose word is honorable and respected, who would never engage in unethical business practices.

Ramban (d. 1270) says that an ish hayil means one who is wise, alert, and fair. He goes on to add, ������people of truth, hating ������������� means those who love the truth and hate oppression. When they see oppression and violence, they cannot tolerate them, their whole desire being only to ���deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the oppressor.������ (That���s Jeremiah 21:12.)

We learn a few things here about the kind of society Torah envisions. Power is not concentrated in one leader. Instead it���s broken up, with different people tending to different segments of the community, so that everyone has both recourse and accountability. Meanwhile, Ramban also says here that ���������������� ���������� ���������������� ���������� are meant to ���love truth and hate oppression.���

I don���t think the call to love truth is just for our leaders. I think this can be an instruction for all of us. We���re all called to love truth, to live truth. One way we live this commandment could be through teaching and learning our nation���s complex history, even when it���s a painful one, because only when we face who we���ve been can we grow into who we���re meant to become.

I think loving truth also has to mean recognizing our biases and making sure the stories we share with others are real. In a world of increasing disinformation and misinformation and deepfakes, it���s all too easy to lose sight of what is actually true. As Jews, we are called to be otherwise. Such a world needs us to be anshe emet, people of truth, more than ever.

The mystic known as the Baal Shem Tov (d. 1760) wrote that ���anyone who makes a judgment of truth, the real truth, becomes a partner with God in the work of creation.��� When we judge the world with truth, when we discern right from wrong and value what is true, we are partnering with the Holy Blessed One in a way that keeps the world turning.

I think Torah���s call to hate oppression likewise isn���t just an instruction for our government, though in my ideal world a government���s purpose is to lift people up, not push them down. But for me the instruction feels kind of detached. How do we live that? The opposite of oppression is liberation, so another way to put this is: seek freedom and human dignity for all.

Tu BiShvat is the first of three full moons in a row that serve as stepping-stones on a spiritual journey. The first one, this one, is when we feel the first stirrings of spiritual spring. Maybe we���ve felt frozen or paralyzed. Now is time for thaw. At Purim, as we read the a story of Esther hiding and revealing her Jewishness, we���ll look inside at who we are and what we stand for.

And a month after that is Pesach, festival of freedom. Not just freedom ���from��� ��� from oppression, from servitude, from injustice ��� but also freedom ���to.��� Freedom to be all that we are. Freedom to speak and think and dream. Freedom to dedicate ourselves to what matters, to build a world of compassion and justice not just for ourselves but for everyone. 

This week���s Torah portion also includes the Aseret ha-Dibrot (the 10 commandments.) You know: honor Shabbat, don���t murder, don���t steal, don���t bear false witness. Those are important. But Judaism has always emphasized that our covenant with God is all 613 mitzvot, not just those ten, which is part of why Jews resist calls to post ���the big ten��� on schoolroom walls. 

And honestly, this week, that earlier verse feels at least as important. I keep coming back to the Baal Shem Tov���s teaching that when we uphold truth, we partner with God. And I keep coming back to things I know to be true, like: Vaccines save lives. Gender-affirming care saves lives. Feeding the hungry saves lives. And there is no greater mitzvah than saving a life.

All of us can be be anshe-hayil, people of valor, people whose word is worth something. All of us can be anshe emet, people who stand up for what���s true, people who call things what they are. All of us can live in a way that supports liberation: not just freedom from, from oppression and want and fear, but freedom to. Freedom to speak, to pray, to dream, to be. 

Tu BiShvat marks the beginning of spiritual spring. Even though where we live is still covered with snow, the lengthening light is drawing forth the abundance of the harvest to come. Look inside and feel spiritual sap rising. Cultivate the inner rise of good intentions and hopes for better. We can harness the turning season to support our work toward a world redeemed. 

Things we can do in the coming week to build toward a better world:

Put on your own oxygen mask. Here���s an essay I found helpful recently: Help With Despair Over the State of the World: 25 Tips from a Buddhist Monk.
Uplift truth; be mindful on social media. Here is good advice from Gus Andrews, author of Keep Calm and Log On: More Ways to Spot Fake News and Break Out of Your Filter Bubble.
Call congresspeople to express your priorities. 
Give tzedakah (local ideas: the Berkshire Food Project, Louison House; national ideas: The Trevor Project, the American Cancer Society).
Help build our synagogue community. Here is a contact form where you can reach out to join the Hesed / Caring committee, the Hevra Kadisha / volunteer burial society, the Cemetery committee, or the Tikkun Olam / Healing the World committee. The choir is also accepting new members as we begin preparing for our June 1 Shavuot concert.

 

This is the d'varling I offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services at Congregation Beth Israel (cross-posted to my From the Rabbi blog.) Shared with extra gratitude to the Board of Bayit for studying the Baal Shem tov together this year.

In hope

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Shabbat morning: I sat down in the sanctuary to tune my guitar. I like arriving early and playing a little bit of music for God. In summer I sing to the birds and the trees and the herbs in our pollinator garden. At this season I sing to the snow-covered landscape. And always to the silent Presence that fills every room when I open myself to notice. On this particular morning my fingers plucked their way to chords that fit a half-forgotten melody. It was insistent in me. It wanted to be remembered.

I sang the melody haltingly to myself. After a few minutes I realized it was Shnirele Perele, a Yiddish folk song I learned 25 years ago from Rabbi Arthur Waskow. I remember tears in his eyes and his voice as he sang it. He was so suffused by fervor for the hope of a better world. He is in his 90s now, still writing contemporary midrash, still working toward a world redeemed that he will surely not see. Then again, these days I don't imagine I will live to see it either. It was easier to feel hopeful then. 

The Yiddish lyrics were written down a mere 125 years ago. They promise that Moshiach will come this very year; that our redemption is at hand. What a fervent prayer that must've been in 1901, after the pogroms that characterized Jewish life in Russia and elsewhere in the late 1800s. (And after the centuries of persecution that preceded those.) Can we even imagine a world without injustice or suffering or hate, a world where we can be who we are as Jews without fear? 

When the first daveners arrived, I taught it to them. We used it as the melody for Modah Ani, our morning gratitude prayer, and for Adon Olam. My subconscious brought it back to me, I decided, as a reminder to lean into the messianic hope inherent in Shabbat. As broken as our world has been over the last week, Shabbes comes to remind us that we can live into the hope for better. Is there any more quintessentially Jewish act than that? Amidst the world's shards, we live in hope.

 

Shnirele Perele performed by the Klezmatics in Berlin, 2007

Na'aleh L'artzeinu: a simple melody with an intricate story, the musical history of this melody in both Hebrew and Yiddish modalities

Lyrics in Yiddish, English, and transliteration

Coming Soon, a daily April poem inspired by this Yiddish folksong, 2013

 

The only way is together: Beshalah 5785 / 2025

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This week���s Torah portion contains one of the most visually beautiful passages in Torah. Some compare this calligraphy to brickwork, like the bricks Torah describes our ancient ancestors making for Pharaoh. Others compare it to waves, like the sea we crossed en route to freedom.

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This is the Song at the Sea, which linguistic scholars tell us is one of the oldest passages in Torah. It���s the origin of the words of ���Mi Chamocha,��� the song of liberation which we sing at every service: ���Who is like You among the gods, Adonai? Who is like you, wondrous and holy?��� 

These are the words our ancestors sang upon crossing the sea and escaping Pharaoh. For our mystics, this story is an example of deep inner faith. After all, we walked into the sea not knowing if it would part (and many midrashim suggest that it didn���t part until the last minute.)

In every era we find ourselves walking into the sea hoping it will part. Sometimes this is individual. We each cross challenging seas in our personal lives: a diagnosis, a job loss, a grief. And sometimes it is communal, as in our ancestral story where we all seek safety together.

Torah teaches that a mixed multitude left Egypt. Just so in our day: we are not seeking freedom alone. On the contrary, I believe that the only way to freedom is together. The only way to a better world is together. The only way to a world of greater compassion and justice is together. 

This week our world has felt very distant from compassion and justice. I���ve felt crushed about the shuttering of USAID, which had been providing AIDS medication across Africa, defusing landmines in southeast Asia, and caring for malnourished babies and toddlers in Sudan. 

Some of you may know that my ex-husband Ethan lived in Ghana. I was blessed to travel there with him twice in his years running Geekcorps (���like the Peace Corps, for geeks.���) I only spent a few weeks in Ghana, but it was enough to give me a lifelong feeling of connection.

The people I met in Ghana were amazing: musicians, teachers, traders, digital entrepreneurs and more. And every Western geek I met who spent time in the developing world through Geekcorps came away spiritually transformed (though that���s my term, not theirs.)

The thing is, people everywhere are amazing. And that includes people in every place where USAID worked, all over the world. This funding freeze is catastrophic. Even a 3-month pause will result in 136,000 babies born with HIV. (And HIV is only one of the organization���s concerns.)

I want to note that the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, a global health program implemented by USAID in more than 50 countries, was founded 20 years ago by Republican President George W. Bush. I do not see this as a partisan issue. I see it as a moral issue.

The United States spends less than 1% of our budget on foreign aid. For us as a nation it is a minuscule amount. And for many, that tiny amount of money was the difference between famine and food, between having mosquito nets for malaria or retrovirals for HIV and not having them.

I���m ashamed that our country is withdrawing humanitarian aid from people who need it ��� especially when we can so easily afford to provide it. I asked our reps in Congress to do something, but I don���t know if they can. And then I donated to the Berkshire Food Project.

The best answer I know to the feeling that we are squeezed tight in the narrow straits of injustice is to do something to help someone else. Join our Hesed (Caring) committee and bring a meal to someone who���s sick. Join the hevra kadisha, the group that prepares us for burial.

Or join up with a secular group that is working toward or supporting a cause you believe in. Maybe it���s supporting teachers in an era of book bans. Maybe it���s supporting immigrants and refugees. Maybe it���s supporting vaccination access to help keep our communities healthy. 

I know this may sound pollyanna. It is a drop in the bucket compared with everything that needs repair. But I believe it is how repair happens: each of us doing what we can to help others. Tikkun olam ��� ���repairing the world��� ��� is a Jewish imperative. It is our obligation as Jews.

Our job is to bring repair, and as CNN notes, right now some people are doing everything they can to break things. If you���re feeling a disjunction around that, you are not alone. Of course, many of us feel deeply connected with one of the places in the world that may feel most broken.

Many of you reached out to me in dismay this week over the suggestion that the United States should ���own��� Gaza and relocate its population. Many American Jewish groups, including the Reform movement, oppose this as ethnic cleansing and not an expression of our Jewish values. 

I���ve also heard a lot of fear that even this suggestion of a plan may jeopardize the ceasefire and put our beloveds at risk. For my part, I still hold out hope for organizations like Women Wage Peace, Standing Together, and Women of the Sun, who are working toward justice and peace.

Whatever our views on Israel and Gaza, I invite all of us to Drawing Through Conflict, a March 9th program organized by our Israel / Palestine Learning Committee, where we will use art to explore our personal relationships with the peoples and places of the middle east. 

I am really excited about this program, and I really hope you will all come. You don���t need to be an artist to participate. No one���s going to try to convince anyone of anything. All of our perspectives are welcome. And we can learn more about each other, with care and curiosity. 

I believe we owe it to each other to support each other as Jews even when we disagree. I also believe we owe it to our secular community to find ways to support those who are vulnerable, even when that means partnering with others with whom we might not agree on everything.

When Torah says a mixed multitude left Mitzrayim with us, that means it wasn���t just us. The Exodus was for everyone who was seeking freedom, Jews and Egyptians alike. Maybe that was hard for our ancestors. But we did it anyway, because freedom is for everyone, not just for us.

Literally Mitzrayim means Egypt. But in a bigger-picture sense, mitzrayim is wherever we experience being min ha-meitzar, ���in narrow straits.��� We are in mitzrayim now. The only way to freedom is together, even when we differ.  It���s our job to help each other cross the sea. 

 

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

The big picture

Everything is interconnected. I take this as an article of faith. It is a first principle, like gravity. 

In a human body, everything is connected. I know that sometimes pain over here is actually caused by something wrong over there, because the systems of our bodies are not wholly discrete. Among human beings, everything is connected: no one is an island. And any human being with empathy and compassion feels-with others, which means that what happens to you can have an emotional impact on me and vice versa.

[image error]On our precious planet, everything is connected. Wasn���t that the world-changing insight of seeing our planet from space for the first time? We realized that no matter what international boundaries we may draw, what happens here can impact over there. Pollution knows no borders, and pandemic knows no borders. Thankfully hope, care, and connection don���t need to stop at borders either. 

Interconnection is a spiritual truth. As Rabbi Arthur Waskow has taught for decades now, we breathe out what the trees breathe in, and the trees breathe out what we breathe in. In this way we are ���interbreathing.��� (In the words of Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh of blessed memory, we inter-are.) Maybe that���s what our sages meant when they named God as Nishmat Kol Hai, the breath of all life. ���God,��� that shorthand word encompassing all of our highest ideals of the holy, can be found in the sanctity of the planet's shared breathing in which we keep each other alive.

And yet.

A Gulf researcher at a federal agency, who asked to remain anonymous, told me that her colleagues began removing, pre-emptively before Trump���s inauguration, language from their files that might rile future administrators. Anything related to the climate crisis, of course, but also, she said, any reports that used the concept ���One Health��� ��� a term adopted by federal scientists and doctors that means approaching a problem holistically by examining the ���interconnection between people, animals, plants and their shared environment���. Seeing the big picture is now verboten. [Source, The Guardian - emphasis mine]

Now apparently reference to the interconnectedness of all things is being edited out of scientific papers. As though fundamental truth could be wiped out with the stroke of a pen.

In recent days, some on the Christian right have named empathy a sin. That���s as baffling to me as saying that we shouldn���t consider the big picture. I believe that empathy is a moral and spiritual imperative. We have to open our hearts to the feelings, experiences, and needs of others. This is a core human faculty. Spiritual life calls us to be compassionate. When I see someone who is hurting, I can imagine what it would feel like to be in their shoes. And, ideally, that imagining moves me to engage in the ethical mitzvot that Torah describes: feeding the hungry, caring for the powerless, loving the stranger. 

Doing right by others can take so many different forms. On a global scale, caring for others might look like providing AIDS medication across Africa, defusing landmines in southeast Asia, and caring for malnourished babies and toddlers in Sudan. Actions like these bring moral principles to life. They���re the right thing to do. Perhaps you���ve already guessed that the actions I just listed are all part of the work of USAID, which seems this week to have been frozen by the same people who deny the interconnectedness of all things. (Evidently they seek to shut it down altogether.)

[image error]Maybe you saw the image that was circulating this week of janitorial staff at Quantico, where the FBI is headquartered. It shows staff following instructions to paint over a mural that until last week featured the words ���FAIRNESS,��� ���LEADERSHIP,��� ���INTEGRITY,��� ���COMPASSION��� and ���DIVERSITY.��� [image source, NYT | article source, WaPo]

The mural isn���t the point, of course. The words themselves aren���t even the point. I just can���t wrap my mind around a worldview in which one would try to erase these qualities or would regard them as a negative. Fairness, leadership, integrity, and compassion are among my guiding lights; I wouldn't want to be otherwise!

And diversity is core to the splendor of creation. Torah teaches that humanity is created b'tzelem Elohim, in the image of God, which means our diversity is a reflection of the Divine. Our diversity is holy. 

What upside-down and backwards world is this, in which empathy, integrity, and compassion are disparaged and the fundamental interconnection of all things is denied?

It can be difficult to cultivate hope in the face of gratuitous cruelty like the decision to withdraw humanitarian aid from people in need. I remind myself, again and again, that hope is not a feeling: it is an action. Hope is a discipline (thank you Mariame Kaba.)

I sustain hope by holding on to what I believe. And I believe that our world is interconnected. Our hearts and souls are interconnected. Empathy and compassion are good things. Human beings have a responsibility to each other. Integrity and fairness are among the highest of human ideals and we should aim for them always. All of these are part of the big picture of ethical life in our world, and none of them will ever stop being true.

There's much in the world that you and I can't control. (Though we can contact our congresspeople to express our views -- here's a useful starting point.) But we can all aim to follow the instruction of our sages in Pirkei Avot 2:5: "in a place where there are no mensches, be a mensch." In a time when a lot of people seem to be making (or overlooking) unethical choices, we can choose otherwise. 

(Not) Empty

 

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Grief is sticky. It glues things together, so one source of sadness links up with another. Sometimes it plays possum in my heart and I think it's gone. But it's not gone. It always seems to visit again.

I remember my mother teaching me the phrase "play possum" after we found a mama possum and her babies in one of the trash cans behind my childhood home. They're not dead, they're pretending.

One day recently my beloved ex, who is spending a few days in Texas near where I grew up, sent me a photograph of a mostly-dry lakebed in a place where my family and I spent a lot of my childhood.

In the grand scheme of climate grief, the loss of a small Texas lake doesn't even register. More than half of the worlds' large lakes are drying up. This isn't like that. But it still makes my heart seize.

My parents used to tell stories about dancing to a jukebox beside that lake, drinking longnecks under the big starry Texas sky. They started going there as young marrieds in the 1950s. How can it be gone? 

It turns out that the lake isn't actually gone forever. The dams feeding that system of lakes were failing -- but now they're being repaired, and water will fill the lakes and river again by late 2025. 

Suddenly I remember my dad reminiscing about a watch he lost in that lake decades ago. I'll bet while the lake is dry and they're repairing the dams, someone's finding all kinds of treasure down there. 

If this were a poem, or a dream in need of interpretation, the dry lakebed could represent feeling drained, empty of resources or resilience, after pandemic and insurrection and so much more.

Does our feeling tapped-out change if we remind ourselves that the spiritual well from which we each draw is not, in fact, empty? That life-giving waters will rush back in, that we will be buoyed again?

If you're feeling empty, you're not alone. So much is broken; so much is breaking. We're struggling to figure out how we can best help each other, how to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe.

When life's cup feels empty, it can be difficult to believe that it will be filled again. For me, some of the work lies in remembering that what feels empty now may not be that way forever. 

A partial list

I believe the days are getting longer. I believe this nation can become the land of promise my mother understood it to be. I believe we have obligations to each other. I believe every human being is made in the divine image. I believe in science. I believe fundamentalism damages the spirit. I believe truth matters. I believe everyone should be ethical. I believe hope is a discipline. I believe what I see with my own eyes. I believe vaccines work. I believe we shall overcome someday. I believe life is always better with music. I believe we are stronger together than we are apart. I believe a better world is possible. I believe as a Jew I am obligated to love the stranger. I believe there is more than enough to go around. I believe it takes work not to swing at every pitch in the dirt. I believe I would be a terrible baseball player. I believe no race or gender is superior. I believe there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in my philosophy. I believe healing the world is everyone���s responsibility. I believe it���s the government���s job to care for all of its citizens. I believe human beings are meaning-making machines. I believe Star Wars Episode IV is the best of the bunch. I believe humanity can be better than we have been. I believe that spring will come. I believe that love matters. I believe it is not incumbent on me to finish the work. I believe I am enjoined to begin anyway.

Here is what I know

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In yesterday's Letter from an American, Heather Cox Richardson noted that some of yesterday's Executive Orders are, in the words of one observer, ���bizarre legal fanfic not really intended for judicial interpretation.��� Even so, they are already causing harm. One of my friends reported panic attacks upon reading about the EO that attempts to ban transitioning or gender nonconformity.

So many of these "bogus decrees" (in Jennifer Rubin's words) are appalling. Ending birthright citizenship? Pardoning the violent rioters who engaged in the January 6th insurrection? Not to mention withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accords and from the World Health Organization -- as though we were not an interconnected planet where the climate crisis and pandemics impact everyone.

One of the president's wealthiest supporters spoke to the crowd and threw two Nazi-style salutes. (Wired has an article about neo-Nazi delight at his gestures). And then the Anti-Defamation League denied that these were Nazi gestures, which leaves many Jews reeling. Many of us grew up believing that the ADL's purpose was to call out antisemitic hatred. It's hard to square that circle now.

Gaslighting is a form of emotional abuse that involves manipulating someone into questioning their own reality, feelings, and sanity. One of its tactics is lying, while insisting that the lie is the truth. Like denying the lived reality of trans people. Or claiming that January 6 was "a day of love," or that there is no climate crisis, or that the sieg heil everyone just witnessed is not actually a Hitler salute.

And all of that was just within the first few hours. We are in for a ride. 

The best thing I read yesterday was Beth Adams' beautiful essay How to Survive at her blog The Cassandra Pages. She notes that we are entering a time that we know is going to be difficult, and we need to remember to take care of ourselves and those around us. The coming years, she notes, will ask our mental and physical strength. I would add emotional and spiritual strength to that list. 

Beth writes:

[T]here is almost always something life-giving to notice, like the mother and child on the bus today. There is color. There is music. There are words. There���s the smell of food being prepared, or flowers in a supermarket display. There is the cold of winter on my cheeks, and the warmth of the distant sun which can still be felt even in sub-zero temperatures. There���s the taste of coffee, salt, lemons, chocolate. We miss so much when we���re wrapped up in ourselves and our worries ��� and our screens ��� and we have to train ourselves to turn back to the actual world, which is right there, existing, waiting to be noticed ��� full of sorrows, yes, but also full of beauty, joy, and simplicity.

Beth calls us to connect with our innate humanity. She invites us to notice beauty amidst brokenness, and from noticing to move into doing: plant seeds, bake bread, learn a language... something creative and constructive, something we can materially change. I found a similar message in an essay by Jared Yates Sexton that a friend sent me yesterday, called Preparing for the Storm:

Pick something to learn or do or construct. Learn a new language. Pick up a guitar. Start painting. Find some hobby that illustrates materially that things build over time. Something that, when we get to January 1st, 2026, you can look at and realize that your efforts and energy are important and constructive.

(Most of his post is more explicitly about preparing for authoritarianism and political collapse, though in typical fashion I'm drawn toward the spiritual instructions. For me, the encouragement to make music or art is inherently an invitation to spiritual life.) In early March of 2020, when Covid was new to us, I wrote a letter to my congregation which I cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. I wrote:

My friend and colleague Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg writes that now is a great time to double down on our spiritual practices��� and if we don���t think we have any, now is a good time to develop some! Whether that means prayer, meditation, yoga, making art, listening to music: we should lean into whatever sustains our hearts and souls in this time. Because we���re going to need every ounce of strength and compassion and rootedness we���ve got in order to take care of each other.

It was true at the start of the pandemic, and it is true now. I am resolving to make more art in the coming months and years: not because I am an artist (poet, yes; artist, no!) but because creativity nourishes my soul, and I need all the nourishment I can muster. We all do. I'm going to bake bread and cook new recipes and sing in harmony as often as I can, because those things will help me stay steady.

Here is the best counsel I can offer:

Give yourself permission to pay less attention to the news. Feeling tempest-toss'd by each new horror is objectively exhausting, and we will need our strength in order to care for each other. Practice kindness. As Pirkei Avot instructs, give each other the benefit of the doubt: many of us are already struggling emotionally and spiritually. Hold fast to what you know is true and what you know is right.

Be ethical: let your integrity shine, even when it seems like it doesn't matter because the world is so broken. (It does matter, especially when the world is so broken.) Don't let anyone convince you to rewrite the past. (It's easy to think in Orwell's terms -- "we've always been at war with Eastasia" -- witnessing current attempts to whitewash the insurrection. There will be more of this. Resist it.)

The new regime was clear that they intended to begin with a campaign of "shock and awe." Shock and awe, according to Wikipedia, is "a military strategy based on the use of overwhelming power and spectacular displays of force to paralyze the enemy's perception of the battlefield and destroy their will to fight." What we're witnessing is shocking, yes. But awe? Think about what brings you awe.

I feel awe when I encounter beauty. I feel awe at the range of human diversity, including diversity of gender expression. I feel awe when I consider our precious planet: its many fragile ecosystems, the vast currents of our oceans and skies. I experience awe when I see people lifting each other up. On a good day, the fact that I'm alive, that God restored my soul to me this morning, brings me awe. 

Awe connects me with that infinite source of justice and mercy my tradition names as God. The "G-word" may not work for you; if that's the case, find a source of meaning that does speak to you, Truth or Justice or Hope or simply doing what's right because it's right. Cultivate a sense of awe, and let it buoy you. We will need to lift each other as we stand up for those who are more vulnerable than we.

In the words of my friend and colleague R. David Evan Markus, "The call of liberation resounds until the root causes of bondage ��� false superiority, xenophobia and hate (even in polite form) ��� are history." In the words of poet Aurora Levins Morales, "Another world is possible." Don't give up. We have work to do, and we have each other, and I believe that together we can be stronger than we know. 

Doing what's right: Sh���mot 5785

 

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My heart breaks for everyone suffering fire in California. This week I���ve been struggling not only with the fires, but also with untrue things people are saying about the fires. One notorious figure has even claimed that the wildfires are being spread intentionally as part of a globalist plot. The term ���globalist��� is often a coded way of blaming the Jews, so that���s worrisome.

What shocks me even more than the conspiracies is how some want to hold back aid, or argue that a government has no obligation to help people who voted for the other party. I remember similar arguments early in the pandemic when supplies of ventilators were limited. In my mind, the role of government is to care for all of its citizens. The alternative��� well, let���s turn to Torah.

At the start of this week���s parsha, Sh���mot, Torah tells us that a new king arises in Egypt who did not know Joseph. And the new Pharaoh says, ugh, there are too many of these immigrants. (Ex. 1:9) Meaning the children of Israel, who had fled to Egypt to escape famine. Rashi notes that Pharaoh describes us as a ���swarm,��� like vermin. This is dehumanization.

This is how Hitler described the Jews. It���s how white racists have often described people of color. This kind of language normalizes hatred. Judaism invites us to do the opposite. Judaism invites us to uplift the values of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, recognizing that every human being is made in the divine image and deserves dignity, rights, and respect.

Pharaoh���s an extreme example of what not to do. There are subtler examples, like Noah. Our sages agree that he was the best of a bad generation. But he falls short compared with patriarchs like Abraham, whose tent was open on all sides and who offered hospitality to all. Noah only saved the animals and his own family. Our sages ask us to do better than that.

That���s another place where Jewish values differ from what we���re seeing in the news. I believe Judaism calls us to resist any political litmus test for who ���deserves��� aid. People impacted by fires or floods ��� or for that matter, people impacted by famine or war ��� deserve our help because they are people. Noah failed that test. But fueled by Jewish values, we can do better.

Turning again to this week���s parsha, this week we meet the role models Shifrah and Puah, the brave midwives who helped Jewish women give birth despite Pharaoh���s orders to drown all of the Jewish baby boys. They followed their conscience, and they did the right thing ��� even though helping Jews was dangerous, even illegal. Judaism calls us to emulate their bravery.

Hatred seems to recur ��� from the Pharaoh who wanted to wipe us out, to the talking heads blaming California���s wildfires this week on globalists and diversity. But resistance to hatred and dehumanization also recurs throughout history. From Shifrah and Puah in this week���s parsha, to everyone today who chooses not to demean but to uplift.

Alongside the parsha, I���ve been reading Octavia Butler���s prescient science fiction novel The Parable of the Sower. Published in 1993, her book begins in 2025. In her book, the climate crisis has intensified, as has wealth disparity. California is on fire. A Christian nationalist is running for president with a campaign slogan that echoes Hitler. (She wrote this 30 years ago.)

The protagonist of the book, Lauren Olamina, writes verses in her journal that become the sacred text for a new religion she calls Earthseed. Here is the first one: 

God is Change

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

It���s powerful to read her verses this week, when we also read the story of the burning bush. Moses sees a bush that burns but is not consumed, and out of the bush, God speaks.

God says: tell Pharaoh to let My people go. When Moshe asks, who are you? God says, Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh: I am Becoming What I Am Becoming. (Some translations say, ���I Am What I Am,��� but I think that���s too static.) One way of understanding the name YHVH ��� which seems to simultaneously mean Is / Was / Will Be ��� is to say, as Lauren Olamina says: God is change. 

The Parable of the Sower is a dark story. (And its sequel is darker.) Butler imagines some of the worst of what human beings can do to each other amidst an unholy conflagration of wildfires, scarcity, racism, and fear. But it is also a hopeful story. Because it posits that community is possible, and a better world is possible��� and I think Butler believed we can get there. 

Here are a few more words from Butler, from an essay she wrote in 2000:

���There���s no single answer that will solve all of our future problems. There���s no magic bullet. Instead there are thousands of answers ��� at least. You can be one of them if you choose to be.���

We can, and I think we must. Judaism calls us to stand up for the vulnerable, love the stranger, feed the hungry, clothe the naked. (In the new week, we who can will direct funds toward helping those impacted by fire.) Judaism calls us to resist dehumanization: not just those who would dehumanize us, but those who would dehumanize anyone. This is our sacred call.

This call lands poignantly on this Shabbat when we remember Martin Luther King z���l. We are far from realizing his dream of what America could be. But bending the arc of the moral universe more toward justice is holy work that is everyone���s to do. We don���t have the luxury of saying, ���It isn���t working, I give up.��� Shabbat enables us to rest, which we all need. Then we keep going.

I read an essay earlier this week by Benjamin Hamlington, a research scientist at NASA who lost his home in the fires. He writes, ���Even if thriving isn���t possible���protecting what is most important to us, supporting vulnerable communities across the globe, and ensuring a decent life for our kids can be possible and is worth working towards as best as we can.���

Dr. King taught that ���The time is always right to do what is right.��� We might feel as though the small things we can do don���t matter, but I invite us not to give away our power. "There are thousands of answers" to the systems and structures in our world that are broken and causing harm. We can be among those answers, if we choose to be. Let's choose to be. 

 

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

For Good: Vayehi 5785 / 2025

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In this week���s Torah portion, Vayehi, the patriarch Jacob dies. When Joseph���s brothers learn of their father���s death, they become nervous: what if Joseph decides now to pay them back for all the ways they mistreated him? But Joseph says, ���Have no fear. Am I a substitute for God? Besides, although you intended me harm, God intended it for good.��� (Genesis 50:20)

Joseph has been through the wringer: thrown in a pit, sold into slavery, cast into jail, even forgotten and abandoned there. But that���s not where he focuses his memory. By this point in his story, he has the sense that everything that befell him was for a reason: so that he would be in a position to rescue the children of Israel (and the nation of Egypt) from famine. 

Joseph���s story is the classic example of ���descent for the sake of ascent.��� Our mystics understand this as a spiritual teaching: when we make mistakes we ���fall away��� from God or from our best selves, and that very falling can be what spurs us to try again and do better next time. Every mistake becomes an invitation to teshuvah. I love that. 

But Joseph���s falling and rising are a bit more literal than that. Down into Egypt and into the dungeons; up to become Pharaoh���s right hand man. Everything seemingly bad that happens to him puts him in the place where he needs to be in order for something better to unfold. As it says in Mishlei (Proverbs 24;16), ���Seven times the righteous person falls, and gets back up.���

(Or as the Buddhist proverb has it, ���Fall down seven times, get up eight.���)

Though I don���t know if Joseph could have said ���God intended it for good��� to his brothers when he was still in tight straits. Even if one can look back and say, ���it worked out for the best,��� one might not feel that way in the moment. I also think ���Something good might come out of this��� is an attitude one can try to have, but is never a useful thing to say to someone who���s suffering.

The mishna teaches (Brakhot 9) that we should bless the bad things that happen to us, even as we bless the good ones. I don���t think this means, ���Thank You God for the fire that just burned down my house.���  It could mean something like the line from Japanese poet Mizuta Masahide (d. 1723), ���My barn having burned down, I found I could see the moon.���

I first encountered that line of poetry when I was in college, and I thought it was beautiful. I still do. Though I have experienced enough loss that it lands differently with me now. I���ve learned that we can���t rush the transition from the experience of loss to personal growth or meaning-making. And sometimes we can���t find a way to make meaning; the loss goes too deep.

Maybe the idea of blessing the bad things hinges on a different understanding of l���hodot, which I usually render as ���to thank.��� Hat tip to my friend and colleague R. Sonja Keren Pilz, who brought this teaching forward for me this week as we met with others in Bayit���s Liturgical Arts Working Group to brainstorm toward an upcoming collaboration on gratitude. 

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She pointed out that the Hebrew word l���hodot with different prepositions after it can mean either to be grateful, or to admit and acknowledge. Sometimes we can genuinely feel grateful for where life has brought us. And sometimes we can���t reach gratitude. Sometimes the world feels broken and we can���t access that inward upwelling of thankfulness ��� it���s just not available to us.

That���s when the other definition of l���hodot comes into play. Maybe we don���t always need to be happy about whatever���s unfolding. There can be a kind of blessing simply in recognizing and naming what is. God, the world is literally on fire right now. God, our nation feels fragile and divided right now. I can���t thank God for those things, but I can acknowledge that they are true. 

Authentic spiritual life asks us to be real, even when something difficult is happening. And once we make it to the other side, then maybe we can seek out some way to make meaning from our experiences, as Joseph did. For me, one of the purposes of spiritual practice is being able to feel ��� as we read of Joseph when he was in prison ��� that God* is ���with us��� even when life is hard. 

(God* = whatever that word means to you today: God far above or deep within, or if that word doesn���t work for you, try Meaning or Justice or Truth...) Whatever may be unfolding, regular spiritual practice can help us remember that we���re not in this alone. We have that Presence our tradition names as God. And we have each other.

I don���t know how to make meaning from the horrifying wildfires we���ve witnessed this week from afar. There is nothing I can say that would make any of this ok. Psalm 92, the psalm for Shabbat, says tov l���hodot l���Adonai ,���It is good to give thanks to God,��� but that might ring hollow in a week with so much destruction and loss. So I���m leaning into the other meaning of l���hodot.

We can admit and acknowledge and recognize: this catastrophe is caused, and compounded, by climate crisis. It is intensified by human choices and policies. And therefore it is aleinu, it is upon us / it is our responsibility, to do everything in our power to shift those choices and policies, and to take care of our fellow human beings as best we can. 

A Prayer During the Southern California Fires 2025

by Rabbi Nicole Guzik

Ribono shel Olam, Master of the Universe, protect those impacted by the devastating Southern California fires. Guide them towards shelter and safety. As family, friends, neighbors and fellow Angelenos experience physical and emotional loss, may we turn towards each other with open homes and open hearts.

God, spread a blanket of security over the firefighters and first responders that serve our community. Grant them strength and courage and may each one come home safely to those they love.

Let us be reminded of how to help one another. Holy One of Blessing, give us increased compassion and an abundance of kindness that we may extend our hands and hearts to those in need. As the prophet Elijah experienced, ���There was a great and mighty wind, splitting mountains and shattering rocks by God���s power, but God was not in the wind. After the wind���an earthquake; but God was not in the earthquake. After the earthquake���fire; but God was not in the fire. And after the fire���a small, still voice.���

God���s small, still voice runs through each one of us. May God���s voice compel us to reach out to each other and find pathways that lead to hope and ultimately, peace for all in need. Amen.

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

I serve today

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That's one of my contributions to a new collection of liturgical poetry and artwork arising out of the avodah blessing of the Shabbat amidah, co-created by members of Bayit's Liturgical Arts Working Group. (I'll enclose my prayer below in plaintext for those who need it in that format.) 

We begin our offering by asking some of the questions this piece of liturgy prompts for us:

Is service the same as prayer? Is all work a form of service? How do we (want to) serve today? These questions, and others, animate our collective offering on the theme of avodah. We hope that our offering serves to open up your deep questions, too.  

You can find the whole offering here: Avodah / Service. There's work by Trisha Arlin, Joanne Fink, R. Sonja Keren Pilz, R. David Zaslow, and me.  I love how we each chose different facets of the prayer to unpack, riff on, and uplift. As always, I think that together our contributions make up something that's greater than the sum of its parts. 

 

I serve today

 

I serve today by turning off the news.

I serve by refusing to blame everyone or anyone.

I serve by re-training myself not to check 

to find out what terrible thing has happened 

in the last fifteen minutes. I serve by affirming

it���s okay to feel joy even in times like these. 

By taking teenagers to the nursing home

and afterward praising the adolescent boy

who answered the repeated questions kindly

as though each time were the first.

I serve by admitting I don���t have the answers.

By promising I���m here for what you need

and meaning it. By reminding us to focus

on the horizon, the fixed point, our hope for better

that we may not live to reach. And that���s okay.

Judaism was here long before we were.

Someday our childrens��� childrens��� children

might cross the border into promise ���

into lions lying down with lambs, into vines 

and fig trees and enough water to grow them,

and no one ever again will take our rights away,

no one ever again will make us afraid.

 

--Rachel Barenblat