Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 6

In the east

There is a mental image I'm carrying with me. A mother, a bit younger than me, sitting on a folding chair in front of a cement wall. She is holding a toddler who clings to her like a life raft. Her eyes are closed and exhaustion is written in every line of her face. Another night of the alarms going off, the family racing to the bomb shelter, the frightened child trying to sleep in their mother's arms.

Another mental image: a desperate father holding a malnourished child, pleading on Bluesky for the aid that would enable him to maybe get a loaf of bread. There are so many people like this that they run together in my mind. I'm not proud of that. I want to be able to say that I take every person's suffering seriously. I know that every human being is a spark of God, made in the divine image.

The mother holding her child is Israeli. The father holding his child is Palestinian. I know one of them personally, and read her Facebook updates often. The other is a stranger to me. I ache for both of them. Their situations are not the same, but both are suffering. Their fates are bound up together. As a recent Forward article notes, neither of these peoples is leaving that beloved land.

I know that Israelis are lucky to have bomb shelters. (I wish Gazans had them too.) I also know that doesn't erase the trauma from the barrage of rockets, coming now from the Houthis. At least I think that's who's bombing now. It's hard to keep track. And it's easy to feel like everyone hates Jews anyway, so does it matter who's trying to kill us this time? Isn't someone always trying to kill us?

Some people hate Israel because they hate Jews, and they would prefer that we not exist at all. (Sometimes that takes the form of actively trying to wipe us out, which is an old story but apparently one that is evergreen.) Some people abhor the actions of Israel's government, or the actions of several consecutive Israeli governments. (Some of the most ardent among that group are Israeli Jews.)

Some say: but the occupation, and the brutality of the war on Gaza, mean that Israelis deserve to be bombed. And some say: but October 7, and the first and second intifadas, mean that Palestinians deserve to be bombed. And some say: empathy for "those people" just normalizes evil. My heart rebels against all of those views. No one deserves this. This is not the way the world should be.

My heart breaks for everyone living under fire. My heart breaks for every Palestinian parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted during a famine, in winter, in war -- and for every Israeli parent trying to keep their child warm and safe and comforted in a bomb shelter. Anguish on behalf of suffering parents and children is not partisan. This suffering doesn't nullify that suffering.

I keep thinking about every parent who is terrified for a child, or trying to comfort a child, or God forbid grieving the loss of a child. I think about the Prayer of the Mothers and Women Wage Peace. I think about the Prayer of Mothers for Life and Peace by Sheikha Iktisam Mahameed and Rabbi Tamar Elad-Appelbaum. I know I can only imagine, from a distance, what parents in that place endure.

The thought I keep coming back to is: no one should live like this. Surely every Israeli and every Palestinian has PTSD -- not just from the last 456 days but also from the years that preceded them. No one should live (or die) like this. And yet countless thousands are living and dying like this. I put my hopes in the coexistence activists of Standing Together, though their dream feels distant.

I didn't want to begin a new year without acknowledging that the suffering in the Middle East is a constant background hum. In the words of Yehuda HaLevi (d. 1141), my heart is in the east. Of course, 1000 years ago he was yearning for a Jewish return to Zion; it's different now. But the constantly of the yearning remains. How I yearn for all of the peoples of that land to live in safety and peace.

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Published on January 04, 2025 14:30

In the stillness

There's a stillness at the end of the year. In my home right now that's literal: my son is at his father's for a few days, so it's quiet enough to hear the hum of the heating system trying its best. (Usually there is a soundtrack of bass practice and YouTube.) But it's an existential quiet, also. A hunkering-down. I am wrapped in blankets. My soul feels like a small ember protected by cupped hands.

I read an essay this morning by Rabbi Jay Michaelson titled Check In on Your Elephant. He means the mental elephant in the room, the anxiety or fear or whatever we each are feeling about the next four years. He writes about how basic mindfulness can help us "notice the seed of a political thought before it germinates into poison ivy." I like how he writes about pursuing truth as a spiritual practice.

I laughed out loud at his description of getting comfortable with the itchy feeling of wanting to click over to the news constantly. "It me," as the kids say. Over and over again during the day I catch myself wondering, I wonder what new outrage has been reported, I should go look. But should I really? Does it help anyone, or does it just ratchet up the anxiety and leave me marinating in cortisol?

(It's the latter.) Jay proposes that "ordinary people can resist, simply by continuing to live our lives. We can and should continue to build communities we want to live in that are inclusive, welcoming of intelligence and culture and creativity and, gasp, diversity." We can and should and must. It doesn't feel like "enough," but then again, what would feel like enough in times like these?

Mit en drinen, amidst everything, here comes Chanukah. I read a good essay by Talia Lavin about Chanukah (Gilt by Assonciation; find it beneath the photo of the panel from the Arch of Titus.) Talia knows how to turn a phrase, and her essay is worth reading -- not least because she unpacks and explores many of the elements we associate with Chanukah and shows where they came from.

But one thing she doesn't talk about in that essay is the theme of enoughness, which for me is the most resonant element of the Chanukah story. Yes, even the letters on the dreidl are borrowed from somewhere else and the motto "A Great Miracle Happened (T)Here" was mapped onto them. But the miracle that in our sacred story, what little we had was enough...? That's still real and sustaining.

I don't need the miracle of the oil to be a historical truth, any more than I need the Exodus to be a historical truth. What matters to me is that since time immemorial these are the stories we tell about who we are. As a people we have known tight straits, and we choose service over servitude. As a people we choose the leap of faith of creating light, even when our spiritual reserves feel low.

It is easy to feel as though nothing is enough. Nothing we can do to protect human rights feels like enough. Nothing we can do to welcome and uplift and protect the immigrant or the stranger feels like enough. Nothing we can do to mitigate the climate crisis feels like enough. Chanukah teaches otherwise. Chanukah says: our souls are God's candles, and together we bring light into the world.

The other text that is rattling around my mind and heart today is Katherine May's Wintering, which I have been slowly reading over the last few months. It took me a while to get into it, maybe because there's so much I want to resist about winter -- both its reality and its metaphorical meanings. But there is a lot of wisdom here, if I take it slowly and give myself time to let the words sink in.

My favorite line (at least today) comes toward the end of the book, and it is this:

"Like the robin, we sometimes sing to show how strong we are, and we sometimes sing in hope of better times. We sing either way."

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Published on December 23, 2024 12:34

God* With Us: Vayeshev 5785 / 2024

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Jacob had twelve sons, and his favorite was Joseph, to whom he gave that ��technicolor dreamcoat.�� (R. Danya Ruttenberg argues that it might have actually been more like a stripey princess dress.) Joseph recounts dreams of his family bowing down to him, which might be why his brothers can��t stand him. They consider killing him. They sell him into slavery.

In Egypt, he��s purchased by Potiphar. That��s when Torah first tells us that God is with him. (Gen. 39:2) Potiphar��s wife tries to seduce him, and then falsely accuses him of seducing her. He��s thrown in prison, where again, Torah tells us that God is with him. (Gen. 39:21)

Abarbanel (15th c.) understands ��God was with him�� to mean that God was always in his mind. I noticed this year that Torah only begins to say God is with him once he��s in tough circumstances. Was God ��not there�� before, or was he just not aware of God until then? Did something change within him that enabled him to live with awareness of the holy?

This week a friend pointed me to a sermon given by Doug Muder at a Unitarian Universalist church. He starts off with a metaphor I heard a lot last month: waiting to find out the election results felt like waiting for the results of a biopsy. And then he tells the story of his wife��s literal cancer journey, offering wisdom about living with uncertainty�� which is something we all do.

Facing a miserable situation like chemotherapy, there��s a temptation to say: okay, I��m going to put my head down and bull my way through this, and once I make it to the other side of this obstacle there will be happier days to come. But there��s no guarantee, and cancer makes that very clear. It��s possible that this is what the rest of life will be. What do we do with that?

Doug writes: [W]e developed a practice that we eventually started calling ��How is this day not going to suck?�� Looking at the particular opportunities and limitations of each individual day, what could we do to appreciate being alive?

Sometimes they could go for a walk. Sometimes his wife was weak from the chemo but they could go for a drive. Sometimes he could read to her in bed. They found what they could appreciate about being alive.

Maybe because I read Doug��s sermon alongside the parsha, I thought of Joseph. He literally descends, over and over again: into a pit, into slavery, into prison. By any reasonable metric, things just keep getting worse. But as things decline, Torah tells us that God is with him. Another way to say that might be: he found access to hope. He found meaning. He found gratitude.

I know that many of us are feeling anxiety and fear. Fear of stronger storms and more wildfires amid the rejection of climate science. Fear of the resurgence of diseases like polio and measles amid the rejection of vaccines. Fear of school shootings, like the one this week. Fear of bans on the healthcare that we and our loved ones need. Fear of discrimination and loss of civil rights.

And I know that in many of our lives there are also personal challenges and difficulties. A diagnosis, or injustice in the workplace, or a sick family member. Sometimes these are invisible to everyone around us, which makes them feel even more difficult �� I��m going through this and no one even knows!�� Like Joseph, we might feel that our circumstances are getting worse.

So what can we learn from Joseph in this week��s parsha? It looks to me like what got Joseph through these downturns was the fact that, as Torah says, God* �� asterisk: whatever that word means to each of us: God far above or God deep within, a relational God or a transcendent God, or maybe not ��God�� at all but rather Love or Justice or Meaning �� God* was with him.

And God* is with us, if we allow that to be true. If we notice. If we cultivate awareness of the holy. The Kotzker rebbe asked, ��Where is God? Wherever we let God in.�� When we choose hope, seek meaning, and cultivate gratitude, that��s one way to understand God being ��with us.�� We experience the world differently when we make a practice of those things.

A community member pointed out to me this week that African Americans are not new to thriving despite injustice, and can be our teachers. In the words of Rev. Gerald Durley, a contemporary of Martin Luther King: ��I talk to people who are depressed�� and I remind them, this is not our first [struggle].�� We shall overcome someday is a fierce expression of hope.

Hope is a discipline, and we can always engage in it, even if life has dealt us the worst hand of cards. Meaning is something we make, and in the words of Maria Popova, we ��make meaning most readily, most urgently, in times of confusion and despair.�� Gratitude is a practice, and every day gives us opportunities to get better at it. (��Yippee, another effing growth opportunity.��)

All of these come with the risk of spiritual bypassing, using spirituality to pretend away brokenness. Suleika Jaouad writes beautifully about this: both about seeking small joys during cancer treatment, and about the spiritual danger of toxic positivity. But lately it seems to me that many of us are erring on the side of feeling the brokenness too much, rather than too little.

I invite us to be like Joseph. Even in tight circumstances, we can experience God��s presence with us. We can seek hope, and meaning, and gratitude. We can ask, ��How is today not going to suck?�� We can help each other ask, ��How is today not going to suck?�� because sometimes when we can��t find hope for ourselves, we can find it for someone else.

This is the balancing act: being present to what is, even when ��what is�� is difficult �� and cultivating an appreciation of how lucky we are to be alive. And, like Joseph interpreting dreams for his fellow prisoners, we can attune ourselves to how we can be there for each other. Often helping someone else turns out to be the best way to lift ourselves up, too.

May we take strength in that work in all the days to come�� starting now, with the winter solstice and the return of the sun��s light.

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.)

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Published on December 20, 2024 17:00

Where We Are: Vayetzei 5785 / 2024

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When you��re dizzy, fix your eyes on the horizon. Find a faraway point and focus attention there. I don��t remember learning this; it feels like something I��ve always known. I suspect this is a piece of wisdom that came from my parents. As a kid I used to get queasy in the backseat of their big old Cadillac. (This was in Texas, back when gasoline was cheap and no one worried about the climate.) They must have taught me this trick. Somehow it can smooth the bumps of the ride.

I��m spending a lot of time looking at the horizon these days. We live surrounded by hills, and I love admiring the spot where they meet the heavens. I��ve taken a near-infinite number of photographs of the sky at the horizon as it changes. Lately, gazing at the horizon feels like my childhood exercise of seeking balance and inner stillness in a moving car. The world is moving fast, the road is full of turns, and it is difficult to trust that we��re headed in the right direction.

So as I look at the place where sky kisses the hills, it becomes my fixed point when the world is spinning. I look at the landscape and I think about what lasts longer than we do. I think about how Judaism was around long before any of us were, and how it will be here long after we��re gone. I think about the slow arc of human progress as we try to bend the moral universe toward justice. We��re not the first generation to struggle with how long that��s taking.

Long ago, chronicled in parashat Vayetzei, the patriarch Jacob journeyed from Beersheva toward Haran. He stopped for the night at sundown, and he placed a stone under his head. He dreamed of a ladder planted in the earth with angels going up and down. When he woke, he declared that God was in that place (Gen. 28:16) and he hadn��t known. Spiritual life is a series of these awakenings. We lose sight of what matters, and then we regain it. And again.

And again. Judaism has long embraced the tension between imagining God in particular holy places (e.g. Beth El, the spot where Jacob had his revelation �� or the Kotel �� or the Temple Mount �� or Jerusalem �� or the Land of Promise writ large) and imagining that God is everywhere. In Isaiah��s words, ��All the earth is full of God��s glory.�� (Isaiah 6:3) After the fall of the Temple our mystics imagined the Shekhinah, God��s indwelling presence, in exile with us.

Where is God? The Hasidic master known as the Kotzker rebbe famously answered, wherever we let God in. Jacob figured that out: ��God is in this place, and I did not know.�� God is always in this place, even in our places of uncertainty. It��s easier for me to see God in the fixed point on the horizon that helps me stay stable and ethically upright. I struggle sometimes to remember that God can also be found in every stone along the twisting path. In this place? Really?

I find comfort in looking toward the horizon. It��s like looking toward the messianic future of a world redeemed: I don��t for an instant imagine that humanity will get there in my lifetime, but it��s a direction, an orientation. This year I��m trying to learn better how to look down at my own feet on the circuitous path. I want to seek (even if I can��t see) God here in this place. Even when it feels like we��re going the wrong way �� even like the whole world is going the wrong way.

Lately a lot of you have told me that you feel like the world is going the wrong way. Some of the rights we take for granted here, like the right to reproductive health care or the right to access the healthcare our doctors prescribe for our children, no longer hold true across the country. Measles seems to be returning; polio might do the same. The climate crisis is in everyone��s backyard, including ours �� the Butternut fire in Great Barrington was only just contained.

It��s so easy to get bogged down in every injustice. So much is not as it should be, which cues up the existential carsickness. But if all I ever do is look at the horizon, I��m not here and now. I��m projecting myself into an imagined future, or maybe into an imagined past. Neither one of those helps anyone. I don��t want to just be a passenger, gazing at the sky. Jewishly I also feel an obligation to do something: to feed somebody hungry, to comfort someone who��s afraid��

I think that��s the real work. It��s ok to feel afraid. And, we need to help each other move beyond the paralysis of fear and instead do something to help someone in need. Find one small good thing you can do for someone in the coming week. This week maybe it��s standing up for trans kids who need support. Donate to the ACLU. Connect with the Reform Action Center, the tikkun olam arm of the Reform movement, to support the LGBTQ community here and elsewhere.

God is in the fixed point of distant steadiness and is wrapped around us as we traverse every switchback. God is in our hopes for a better future, and God is also in this deeply imperfect present. I think if we can really hold on to that, we might feel centered even when the world feels upside-down. ��God is in this place, and I did not know�� I think when we help each other, when we stand up for each other, together we manifest God��s presence in the place where we are.

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

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Published on December 07, 2024 08:11

Cracked

Reading the news
is like
waking into
still having
dead parents.

Microplastics
and wars
persist.
Permafrost melts.
Hillsides burn.

Soon, in charge
of health:
a guy
who doesn't trust
vaccines.

No limbic system
was made
for this.
I am
a cracked jar.

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Published on December 02, 2024 16:08

Tangles

I don't like
what I've woven
from my outrage,
every ugly headline
a bold slash
of the wrong color.
What dissonant plaid,
plasticine fabric
dyed with arguments
about who counts.
Righteous indignation
too easily curdles.
Every choice
lays a thread.
Source of Mercy --
Shekhinah wearing
embroidery glasses,
Your golden scissors
like the ones
my mother used --
untie my tangles.

Plasticine fabric. I just read the fascinating essay Ghana Must Go, so those ubiquitous bags are on my mind.

Arguments / about who counts. This moment in the United States seems full of those: are immigrants fully human? Are trans people? (Yes and yes, obviously.)

Every choice. In the words of the Maggid of Kozhnitz on Chayyei Sarah, "The days of our lives are garments for the soul."

Source of Mercy... untie my tangles. See �� , part of Friday night liturgy.

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Published on November 23, 2024 13:45

I lift my eyes up

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The hills in my back yard, a few weeks ago. They were still colorful then.

"I lift my eyes up to the mountains. From whence comes my help?" (Ps. 121) I am fortunate enough to live in a valley ringed by mountains. I remember when I moved here, thirty-mumble years ago, and I said that to one of my hall-mates in my dorm. She was from Alaska, where there are real mountains. She graciously refrained from laughing. Compared with Denali, the Berkshires aren't mountains.

To me -- coming from south Texas, where the closest thing I knew to a mountain was Enchanted Rock, the pink granite batholith where the seventh grade once went camping -- these hills are miraculous. Yes, there are actual mountains in west Texas, seven hours away by car. Those didn't feel local to me any more than did Colorado, where we went by plane. It's different to live surrounded by hills.

They cradle the valley. They make the horizon feel like an embrace. I take considerable comfort in that. I watch them change colors over the course of the year. They've just put on their late autumn garb: in the distance they look light purple, with patches of dark green where the evergreens have sway. It's not as dramatic as their early autumn splendor, or summer greenery, but it's still beautiful.

The hills remind me that I am trying to take a long view. Not a geologic view, but a generational one. I suspect the rights to our own bodies that we lost a few years ago will not be restored in my lifetime. A few days ago I saw someone comment online that right now feels like living on the coast and bracing for a hurricane, knowing that it will cause untold devastation, not knowing yet exactly how.

How do I minister when so many are devastated and afraid? How do I help those who are not afraid understand those who are? Sometimes I can't wrap my own mind around the harm that I fear is coming. How do I serve from here? One answer is in trying to take the long view. Humanity will persist, and Judaism will persist, though any one of us might not. I try to sit with that knowledge every day.

"My help is from the Holy Blessed One, creator of the heavens and the earth." (Ps. 121) I think of the old joke: "I sent two boats and a helicopter!" But we are the boats and the helicopter. God helps my heart keep beating, at least for now, but what I do with them are up to me. What can any of us do but keep lifting up whoever we can, rescuing whoever we can, however we can?

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Published on November 20, 2024 06:33

Covenant: Vayera 5785 / 2024

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Attached to the filing cabinet in my office there is a quarter of a piece of posterboard. On it are the following words: ��I want to connect people with God.�� I wrote them as my rabbinic mission statement fifteen years ago. I was at a retreat for emerging Jewish and Muslim spiritual leaders, and I was very pregnant, which is how I know exactly when this happened. We were asked to write down one phrase that captured why we were going into this work, and that was mine.

When I was ordained a rabbi almost fourteen years ago, I received a blessing from Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser for stepping into a lineage of teachers. It begins with Moses on Sinai giving the Torah to Joshua, who gave it to the elders, who gave it to the prophets, who gave it to the men of the great assembly. I received another blessing that day offering a parallel lineage that began with Miriam, sister of Moses �� a lineage that was lost in history and then recovered again.

I was charged with teaching and preaching and accompanying those whom I serve in a way that brings healing and uplifts wholeness. And a few months later I signed a brit, a sacred covenant, with the first of many lay leaders whom I��ve had the privilege of serving alongside. We��ve updated the brit a bit, but it��s still fundamentally the same: I��m here to serve and to lead, to teach and to uplift, to accompany you as a community and as individuals in whatever life brings.

Looking back on thirteen years of service, what I remember most are intimate moments of connection. An unveiling with only a handful of mourners present. A baby naming around someone��s kitchen table. A pastoral visit with someone who was preparing to let go of this life. The big moments matter too, like Kol Nidre this year with the sanctuary packed full, or for that matter Kol Nidre during the first Covid year when we were all sheltering in place at home��

But in the kaleidoscope of images that arise for me, many are from one-on-one or small group settings. My brit is with CBI as a whole community, and yet I most often experience it as a hundred individual little covenants: with you, and you, and you...

I still want to connect y��all with God. Though these days I always put an asterisk after ��the G-word,�� as a reminder that if that word doesn��t work for you, you can substitute words that do. Maybe you want to connect with meaning, with justice, with hope. Maybe you want to connect with our traditions, with the generations that came before us and the ones that will come after. Maybe you want to connect with something that endures even when the world feels bleak.

Maybe you want to connect with Torah. With the Five Books, lovingly handwritten in these beautiful two hundred year old scrolls that need our repair. With commentaries on them, and commentaries on the commentaries. With Jewish legal writings, or ethical writings, or poetry, or music �� all of those are also Torah, which means all of those point ��in�� or ��up�� or ��back�� to the Source of All creativity, the source of love and justice in this world we��ve been blessed to inherit.

Maybe you want to ask big questions, like, ��Why?�� and also ��How?�� Maybe you want to know how to make meaning when life feels full of grief, or how to stay grounded when life feels full of joy. Maybe you want to find meaning in the passage of time, the holiness of the seasons, our changing planet, the waxing and waning moon, the stages of a human life. Maybe you want to know how the world could have changed so much, or why it hasn��t changed nearly enough.

To be clear, I don��t personally have the answers to all of these questions. Sometimes I feel like I don��t have the answers to any of them. But I know deep in my bones that Jewish tradition does. And I know that I have the best job in the world, because I get to help you find your answers. And because we��re all growing and changing all the time, sometimes the answers that speak to us need to change as we do�� which means the work I get to do is literally never done.

The work of spiritual life is never done. The work of becoming is never done. As long as we��re here, we��re growing and changing �� or we can be. My covenant with each of you is a promise to accompany you in whatever life brings your way.

The verses I chanted this morning also speak of a brit, a covenant between Avraham and Avimelekh. There��s an exchange of some female sheep, which is slightly funny because my given name means ewe. Avimelekh agrees that a nearby well was in fact dug by Avraham �� which of course our mystics understand both as a physical well that delivered much-needed water, and as a spiritual wellspring for Torah��s neverending flow of wisdom and insight.

And then Avraham plants an eshel, a tamarisk tree. What��s interesting to me is, our sages don��t exactly agree on what the tree represents. The well is clearly both water and Torah, but the tree might represent new beginnings, or maybe deep roots. Tamarisks can grow almost anywhere, making them akin to the Jewish people. Rashi says maybe the eshel was an orchard, or an inn. Both are symbols of hospitality, which is a quality our mystics often attribute to Avraham.

I love the idea of planting a tree to mark a covenant. To the Board, please don��t worry, I am not planting another tree on our grounds. I saw how much work went into watering our tiny orchard of baby fruit trees! I��m thinking about a metaphorical tree. A tree is a lot like a community, it turns out. Both need deep roots in order to flourish. Both need an outer growing edge that��s open to new ideas and change, and deep inner rings that record and remember. And both offer shelter.

My blessing for us, at this celebration of thirteen years of service, is this: like Avraham��s tamarisk, may we be shelter for each other when shelter is needed. May we sink our roots deep into the aquifer of tradition so that our hearts and souls are nourished. And may we bear the many fruits of sacred community, including spiritual authenticity, readiness to take care of each other when times are tough, and readiness to celebrate together and lift each other up.

This is the d'varling I offered at Shabbat morning services at Congregation Beth Israel of the Berkshires as we celebrated my first 13 years of service (cross-posted to the From the Rabbi blog.)

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Published on November 16, 2024 08:00

Covenant (Vayera 5785 / 2024)