Rachel Barenblat's Blog, page 8

Rosh Hashanah 5785: Many Views, One Community

[image error]I want to start the new year by naming the elephant in the room.

This year some of us have been deeply worried about Israel and Israelis. We can��t stop thinking about October 7 and Israeli hostages in Gaza. Maybe we��ve lived in Israel. Maybe we have family or friends in Israel and they know someone who was killed or taken prisoner. Compounding all of that, maybe we feel like the world has turned on Israel, maybe on all Jews. We��re worried about Jews worldwide at increased risk. Every anti-Zionist slogan, or boycott of a Jewish or Israeli business, or campus protest, leaves us feeling like the world doesn��t want us to bring our whole Jewish self to the table.

And some of us have been a wreck because of Gaza, the West Bank, and now Lebanon. Maybe we have a familial connection there, or maybe our families are Arab or Muslim. We yearn for a ceasefire; maybe we��ve been standing out for one in the Williamstown roundabout every Friday. Compounding all of that, we feel alienated from the sector of the Jewish community that seems not to feel what we feel. Maybe we aren��t comfortable with Zionism, or maybe with any kind of nationalism, and we wonder how to find home in a Jewish community that doesn��t see this the way we do.

These are composite people, but between them, they represent most of the conversations I��ve had this year. Some of us are feeling elements of both of these. And some of us are feeling just one �� and alienated from whoever��s feeling the other. Many of us have been somatizing our grief, and rage, and hopelessness: experiencing them in the body. This is, it turns out, a trauma reaction.

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When something activates trauma, time telescopes. Even if danger isn��t present here and now, the body feels like it is. The body responds with fight-or-flight, sometimes both at once. Cortisol and adrenaline go through the roof. Cue the wobbly legs, upset stomach, racing heart, tears, and inability to breathe. For many of us, this kind of trauma reaction has been a big part of the story of this year.

I used to think that as Jews, we had a problem with over-focusing on antisemitism. There is so much richness and vitality in our traditions, texts, cultures, music, poetry, ethics, and more. I want our Judaism to be affirmative! I don��t want anyone��s Jewish identity to feel based in how people have hated us throughout history�� or how some people still do.

Lately I��ve been thinking that even when we talk about antisemitism, we haven��t paid enough attention to what we carry within us. For many of us, the Hamas attacks on October 7 aroused dormant trauma. And then we saw people seemingly rejoicing at the slaughter of Jews, and that aroused trauma too. So did (what felt like) waves of allies abandoning us. Many of us felt like the world just doesn��t care about Jewish suffering or Jewish safety, which awoke epigenetic echoes from the Shoah and from long before.

Many of us in the CBI community and extended family also feel these traumas from a different lens, or from multiple lenses. Arabs and Muslims also carry trauma, including impacts from American Islamophobia and anti-Arab racism after 9/11. Some of us are both Arab and Jewish. Jews with roots in Syria, Lebanon, or Iraq have different traumatic histories than the Ashkenazi history I carry in my bones.

Many of us have struggled this year with moral injury, damage to the conscience when one witnesses or fails to prevent something wrong. What we��re seeing has been so devastating. Meanwhile, emotional reactivity can make it much harder for us to relate to each other. Some of us are terrified for Israeli cousins called up for reserve duty. And some of us see an oppressive military force in those same reserve soldiers. Faced with that difference, we don��t know how to listen to each other.

[image error]Many of you have told me that you��ve been avoiding Jewish spaces because it��s too painful to encounter Jews who hold the ��other�� view. Many of you have asked me, ��How could anybody Jewish not see what I see happening right now?��

These divisions can be exquisitely painful: within our families, within our community, within the Jewish community writ large. So we brace ourselves against the likelihood of being angry at each other, or disappointed in each other. But ��braced against�� is not a great way to be in community, and it��s not the spiritual posture I want for us at the start of a new year.

Instead I invite us to recognize our trauma reactions, name them, honor them, and learn to work with them �� for our own emotional and spiritual health, and for the health of our community. For me, naming trauma reactions as trauma reactions helps me seek equilibrium. When I notice that I��m experiencing a trauma reaction, I use my senses to ground myself in the here-and-now, and I remind myself that I am safe. The main message I want to convey about this is: a trauma-informed therapist can help. The effects of personal or inherited trauma do not have to be forever.

My mother fled the Holocaust as a young child. I didn��t begin to reckon with the impacts of her story on me until after October 7. I am learning how important this work is �� and what it feels like to heal enough to put things in perspective and not be reacting from a place of fear. This year I needed to put on my own oxygen mask. And now when I feel like I can remove that oxygen mask sometimes, I can better help others sit with the uncomfortable reality that multiple things can be true.

The Hamas attack of October 7 was the deadliest day for Jews anywhere since the Holocaust. Over a thousand Jews were killed, thousands were injured, and hundreds were kidnapped. As of this writing, Hamas still holds Israeli hostages in Gaza. And. The war in Gaza has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Starvation and disease are crippling Gaza �� including, now, a resurgence of polio �� and in the West Bank, attacks by extremist settlers and army raids are on the rise. Honoring one of these realities does not make the other less true.

Some of us feel that our grief and fury for Palestinians or Arabs isn��t welcome in Jewish community. Some of us feel that our grief and fury for Israel and Israelis isn��t welcome anywhere else. Some of us feel that acknowledging any degree of truth in a different perspective on the Middle East is a betrayal of people and values we hold dear. But I don��t think it has to be.

[image error]It is not a betrayal of the Israeli people to care about Palestinian self-determination. And it is not a betrayal of the Palestinian people to care about Israeli safety. The world is not a zero-sum game.

In the months after October 7, many of you asked me if we could learn more as a community about this. I heard a particular interest in learning about some of the words we often see in the news: what exactly does ��the occupation�� mean? Who are ��settlers�� in the West Bank, and what are they doing (and why)? As American Jews, what are the stories we don��t hear, and where are the gaps in our knowledge and understanding?

We began some of that learning together at our summer film series and in the heartfelt and vulnerable discussions that followed each film. And I hope we��ll do more together in the new year. On Sunday, November 3 �� about a week after Simhat Torah �� we��ll gather here in this sanctuary to talk about what kind of learning we want to do on these subjects in the new year. I hope many of you will join us for that conversation and for the learning. And, I affirm that all of this can be incredibly painful to talk about and learn about, especially in a time when both the Israeli and Palestinian people feel existentially under threat�� and therefore, emotionally, maybe we do too.

This all feels like a ��third rail�� you know: the one that electrocutes whoever touches it. But not talking about it doesn��t feel tenable anymore. I am here to gently urge us not to turn away �� from these realities, or from each other.

It is not a betrayal of solidarity with either people to recognize that in order for one people to thrive, the other needs to thrive too.

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One of my role models in this is Rabbi Haviva Ner-David. She is part of �� | �� | Standing Together, a grassroots movement bringing together Arabs and Jews to organize against the occupation and for justice and peace. R. Ner-David has shared posts on her Facebook about Palestinian and Israeli teens learning together, about visiting the mourning tent for a Bedouin neighbor killed in Gaza, about learning Arabic with her neighbors, about Israelis and Palestinians protesting together and together countering despair. They��re doing the difficult and holy work of building community even in this terrible year.

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Sally Abed, a Palestinian who is one of the leaders of Standing Together, says, ��We need a new story. Our mission is to build a new majority around peace, equality for all, and ending the occupation.�� She acknowledges that, ��peace right now is a very, very radical word. But it��s also the only option. I think in very deep crisis, you also have great clarity.��

[image error]I keep returning to this short poem by Mahmoud Darwish: ��She said: when do we meet? I said: after a year and a war. She said: when does the war end? I said: after we meet.�� Genuinely meeting may feel impossible �� but it doesn��t have to be. Not for Israelis and Palestinians on the ground there; and not for us.

It is easy to get caught up in where we feel different: one��s focusing on a ceasefire, the other��s focusing on the hostages, so we feel like we��re in opposition. We divide into camps based on where we place blame and with whom we feel kinship. I encourage us to go deeper and plumb the Jewish values at the heart of our yearnings. The one who��s grieving for this side and the one who��s grieving for that side actually have a lot in common, if we can let ourselves feel it. Trying to feel-with each one of you has been my profoundest spiritual practice this year.

[image error]All year long I��ve urged us to consciously cultivate empathy for whichever ��side�� doesn��t feel easy for us. I know that some of us object to that posture, seeing it as implying moral equivalency between victim and perpetrator. I believe that empathy is our ethical obligation. And empathy leads us to take action.

The Hebrew �� is a transliteration of the Greek ��. So is empathy really a Jewish value? Of course I��m going to say yes. French Jewish philosopher Emmanuel Levinas wrote that we are infinitely responsible in the face of the ��Other.��

In other words: in a genuine encounter, we feel with someone and therefore we have a responsibility to them. We feel, and because we feel we are obligated to act.

In midrash we read that, "A human being, mere flesh and blood, cannot hear the cries of two individuals simultaneously. However, the Creator can. Even when all of the world's inhabitants cry out at once, God hears every individual cry.��" (Yalkut on Ps. 62) Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersch Weinreb goes on to say, ��No [one] can feel the pain of two different individuals at the same moment. The emotional effort needed to truly empathize with one other person is all-consuming, and there is no room left within us to feel the pain of yet another person at that same time. Only the Almighty can ��multi-task�� empathy.�� He may be right about that. But I still believe it��s our job to try.

Just as I��m asking us to strengthen empathy for both the Palestinian and Israeli peoples, I��m asking us to strengthen empathy for each other here. We need each other to make a minyan, to celebrate our births and uplift our teens and dance at our weddings and bury our dead. If someone is gathering ten for kaddish, there is no political litmus test for participation.

[image error]Talmud teaches that �� , ��all Israel is responsible for one another.�� (Shevuot 39a) We are Yisrael: God-wrestlers, after our forebear Jacob who wrestled with the angel. If we can wrestle and dance with God (whatever that word means to each of us), we can do the same with each other.

And in an election year shadowed by Christian nationalism, community fragmentation is the last thing we need. Project 2025 poses real dangers for Jews. One lawmaker from my birthplace remarked this summer that he��d like to ��ethnic cleanse�� people like me. We��ve all heard the Hitler-style argument that immigrants ��poison the blood of our country.�� Neo-Nazi and far-right groups are increasingly vocal.

All of this can activate our anxiety and our trauma, too �� and reinforces for me that as Jews we need each other, even when we disagree. Christian nationalism threatens us whether we stand in solidarity with Israelis or with Palestinians (or both).

That we can be in community even when we disagree is not a new idea. The sages of the Talmud share page space across fierce disagreements. Hillel and Shammai are the paradigmatic example of disagreement ��for the sake of Heaven.�� In R. Danya Ruttenberg��s words, they ��engaged in earnest debate, sometimes jabbing in jest, sometimes possibly angry and hurt, sometimes just... living in community, and disagreement.�� She goes on to note that the house of Hillel and the house of Shammai,

[H]ad directly contradictory rulings from one another, but they still lived as though the other's ruling was kosher: They were popping in and out of each other's homes! Borrowing each other's stuff! Marrying each other's people �� they were family! They were community! These contradictory rulings about what God said was OK to do and not to do �� and the long fights and debates that accompanied them �� didn't preclude the bread-breaking. [emphasis hers]

We may be conflict-averse, but Hillel and Shammai weren��t. They were ��conflict-adept.�� And they understood themselves as part of a single community. So can we.

[image error]This is a recent cover from The Canadian Jewish News, which is not a progressive publication. It shows a family celebrating Rosh Hashanah, sharing pomegranates as a symbol of blessing in the new year. I see a mom taking a selfie with her daughter, people gesticulating animatedly, joyful smiles. I see a grandmother standing between two granddaughters, one of whom is wearing a kefiyyeh and watermelon earrings, symbols of support for Palestinians. That grandmother is a Zionist, wearing a yellow ��bring them home�� pin. And they are family and they are celebrating together!

At the bottom of the frame I see maybe a mom with her head in her hands, and someone looking at war news on their phone. The sorrow and suffering of the world is still here. But we find ways to celebrate together even across our differences, in this broken world, and in these painful times. Because that is what it means to be Jews.

As we sang earlier this morning, ��The world stands on three things: learning, prayer / service, and acts of loving kindness.�� (Pirkei Avot 1:2) I invite us to learn, and pray, and take care of each other with bravery and hope and curiosity. Bravery, because it takes courage to show up with our whole selves when we know someone in the room is different from us. Hope, because in Mariame Kaba��s words (now framed on the wall of my office) hope is a discipline �� it��s a muscle we have to keep strengthening. And curiosity, because Pirkei Avot counsels us to see one another through generous eyes.

[image error]Instead of assuming the worst of people with whom we may disagree about Israel and Palestine, can we seek to learn with open hearts �� can we, in Ted Lasso��s words, ��be curious, not judgmental��?

I think that if we can do that, we��ll discover common ground where we can gather to celebrate and to mourn, to mark the rhythms of the Jewish year, to teach and learn Torah. We can feed the hungry and care for the vulnerable. We can do these things for and with each other even though we don��t all hold the same views on Israel and Palestine. And as we do, we can learn from and with and about each other.

I mentioned Hillel and Shammai. There��s a story in Talmud (Eruvin 13b) where Hillel and Shammai argue something for three years, and then a voice from Heaven calls out, ".�� , �� "�� These and those are the words of the living God, and the halakha follows the house of Hillel.�� Why does the voice from on high favor Hillel? According to tradition, it��s because Hillel��s students learned both Hillel��s and Shammai��s opinions. Are we brave enough to follow suit?

[image error]I believe that the only way we get to a better world is by building one together�� and if we only build with people with whom we are perfectly aligned, a lot of important building work isn��t going to get done. But the needs are too great for that. The stakes are too high for that. The world needs us to figure out how to work together. And our hearts and souls need that, too.

In 5785, as a community, may we be curious, not judgmental.

May we work through our own trauma so we can do right by each other.

May we lean in to shared values even when we disagree.

May we press for a world of justice, human rights, and safety for all.

And may we be there for each other in sorrow and in joy, in sickness and in health, for all of our days to come.

This is the sermon I offered on the first morning of Rosh Hashanah 5785 / 2024. (Cross-posted to the congregational From the Rabbi blog.)

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Published on October 03, 2024 09:00

(Not) In my hands

The news out of the Middle East is not good. (Understatement.) It looks like the wider regional war -- the one everyone's been saying all year that we need Israel and Iran to avoid -- is beginning. Which might mean that, as horrendous as the last 360 days have been, we may be headed for worse.

It's a good thing I spent part of this year learning how to recognize and work with trauma reactions, including my own. The panicked feeling in my stomach, the shortness of breath, the tears banging at the back of my eyelids, the paralysis and fear -- hello, trauma. I don't want to welcome you back in.

But I've learned that trying to pretend trauma away doesn't work. And neither does squeezing my eyes shut and begging God to make the world different. The only path forward is to soften, thank the trauma for trying to take care of me, and use my meditation tools to help the grief and fear drain.

You know what I can't fix? The Middle East. Anything happening in Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen, or anywhere else. (While we're at it: I can't fix American xenophobia, one political party's plans to deport tens of thousands, or the likelihood of post-election violence, either.)

I can't fix climate crisis denialism, or the impacts of Hurricane Helene, or rising antisemitism and Islamophobia and transphobia, or any of the things that are ratcheting up anxiety until I feel -- so many of us feel! -- like an over-tightened guitar string that's about to break. I cannot fix any of it.

So I make challah dough, listening to psalms, softly singing the Thirteen Attributes. "Adonai, adonai, el-rahum v'hanun -- Yud heh vav heh, compassion and tenderness..." I run the dishwasher and put away clean warm plates. I set the table for the new year 5785, literally and metaphorically.

I think of everyone whose holiday table will be incomplete. I think of everyone who won't have a table or a place to celebrate at all. I think of scenes of devastation, from the Middle East to Appalachia, and I pray for safety and tranquility and kindness. I pray for all of us to be able to take care of each other.

Most of us don't have the power to fix the big things that are broken. It's simply not in our hands. But we can fix what we can reach. We can find the next good thing to do. "We must love one another or die," Auden wrote. It's and, really. The second part of that line is inevitable. The first part is up to us.

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Published on October 02, 2024 07:36

A letter from now

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Dear Mom --

Today is my shul's annual cemetery service. As always, I will think of you and of your grave two thousand miles away. I will remember your mother who used to talk about how in Prague they visited relatives in the cemetery on Sundays. She thought Americans don't do that enough. I think of you often at this time of year as the trees put on their fall colors. You loved this season when you were lucky enough to be in a place that has it. The leaves changing, the light changing. Autumn in south Texas doesn't look anything like this. More than thirty years after moving north I still marvel at it too.

I thought of you the other night when I took my son to the symphony. The local symphony plays in an imposing building with huge columns. During the first pandemic year, when my son was ten and we were sheltering-in-place, we took lots of walks on the college campus, and he built a replica of that building in Minecraft! But he'd never been inside. He was appropriately wowed. But mostly he was wowed by the experience of seeing a symphony orchestra up close and personal. It's entirely unlike the experience of watching one on YouTube, or even on the big screens on the lawn at Tanglewood.

The first thing on the program was Beethoven's 7th, which might be my favorite of his symphonies. As we listened, I found myself remembering shiva for you. Your longtime friend, who had been my rabbi when I was a teen, spoke about your love of European culture. How you always took your children to the symphony and to the opera. You wanted us to appreciate the beauty of great art in that grand old tradition. In retrospect I wonder whether you got that from your mother, who grew up cosmopolitan in urban Prague. What must it have been like for her to move to the rural American south after that?

It's strange for me to realize that my son wasn't yet playing the double bass when you died. He got the opportunity to try playing the bass in his fourth grade year, which in the spring became the first Covid year. But your headstone's unveiling happened right before Covid, which means you died a year before the pandemic, long before he took up this instrument. The double bass has pride of place in our living room, next to the hand-me-down upright piano that once was yours. He'll be playing part of the Max Bruch Kol Nidre at services soon: another piece of music that I remember you used to love...

Anyway, my teen was set alight by watching the orchestra from just a few rows away, and seeing three of his music mentors performing live. His favorite was the Stravinski: such bombast! On our way out I told him that I remembered going with you to see (what was then called) the San Antonio Symphony. He knows you were deeply musical, and he thinks that's why you loved the symphony so much. He may be right. Dad enjoyed it too, but I think Dad was there because you wanted to be. You wanted us to appreciate this kind of music. I wanted you to know that your youngest grandson does, too.

Happy new year, Mom, wherever you are.

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Published on September 29, 2024 05:00

Equinox

My eyes harvest color.
Paper-thin slivers
of purple cabbage
gleam, speckled
with Aleppo pepper.

Slabs of ruby beet
make labneh blush.
The burning bush
outside my window
blazes scarlet.

My crispers teem
with ombre leeks,
with wax peppers
in yellows and oranges
bright as tree-tips.

If I hold my breath
will time stop
on this hinge
between seasons?
But then

I wouldn��t get
to embrace you
again, or to hope
for what yet
might grow.

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Published on September 22, 2024 05:17

Together We Shine: Ki Tavo 5784 / 2024

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Earlier this week I was studying the writings of the Mei Hashiloach, also known as the Ishbitzer rebbe (d. 1854), on this week��s Torah portion, Ki Tavo. His musing on a seemingly unimportant half of a verse caught my eye and my heart.

The verse is �� / ��Look down from Your holy abode, from the heavens[.]�� (Deut. 26:15) The Ishbitzer riffs on this verse, noticing that God here is viewing us as a group. And then he writes:

��It��s only when we are seen as a group that we can be at ease. For when God observes the community as a whole, one person clarifies the acts of the other, and each makes his neighbor look good, for each soul has some pristine facet.��

At first my study partners and I thought: is this a back-handed compliment? ��Hey, next to you I look great!�� But we decided instead to understand that ��one person clarifies the acts of another�� can mean that we make each other better. We bring out the best in each other.

We are better together than we are apart. This is part of Judaism��s fundamental communitarianism. Judaism is not a solo activity. Think of how many mitzvot require a minyan, ten adults doing something together. Even Torah study traditionally happens in pairs.

Earlier this week I saw my Jewish Journeys students come together to do a mitzvah they wouldn��t have done alone. They were making ��blessing bags�� each containing socks and gloves, hygiene supplies, protein bars �� to give away to folks who are unhoused and in need.

Could any one of these kids have assembled the items and made the bags themselves? Arguably, sure; any of us could. But most of us don��t. Each kid provided one batch of items �� the toothbrushes, the soaps, the jerky �� and together they made short work of that mitzvah.

We are better together than we are apart. It��s a poignant and powerful message to receive from Torah now, with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur less than two weeks away. The moon of Elul is waning. Soon we��ll come together in community to start a new year together.

A lot of us learned, as kids, that the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the ideal time for teshuvah �� repentance, return, turning our lives around, apologizing to those whom we��ve harmed so we��re not carrying karmic schmutz on our souls at Yom Kippur.

That��s not wrong, exactly, but it��s also not the whole story. I��d say that these weeks that we��re in now are actually the most ideal time. So that when we come together to celebrate a new year, our hearts can feel clear and light, not weighed down by the old year��s misdeeds and missteps.

As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg reminds us (following Rambam), teshuvah has five steps. 1) Name and own the harm / acknowledge where we messed up. 2. Begin doing the inner work to become a better person. 3. Make restitution / amends. 4. Apologize. 5. Make better choices.

Teshuvah is a process: not just the apology, but all of the work that has to come before it �� and after it. And we do the work because the work matters and it��s the right thing, not because we expect any particular outcome. Teshuvah matters, whether or not forgiveness comes.

The most important outcome, ideally, is that we ourselves are transformed. We become better people who, faced with the same opportunity to mess up, wouldn��t make the same mistake again because we��ve changed. In the eyes of Jewish tradition, that��s what really matters.

We are better, together, than we are apart. I love the Ishbitzer��s the idea that we ��clarify�� each others�� actions. He��s using that word in the sense of the way an artist might mix a paint color to be clear and lovely, or how a silversmith removes anything extraneous so silver can shine.

At our best, as human beings and as Jews, we help each other shine. What work do we each need to do over the next two weeks so that when we come together as a whole community for the holidays our hearts are clear and we can help each other really shine?

I invite each of us to find one instance where we need to make teshuvah. Maybe we hurt someone��s feelings, or didn��t take their needs into account, or shared gossip without thinking, or �� you��ll know where you need to make repair. Find one thing to do to make amends.

Try to make someone in our community shaleim, try to make them more whole. This is our tradition��s language for repairing what we��ve broken. We��re not just gluing the pieces back together, ��sorry I broke your coffee cup,�� but trying to make the injured party more whole.

And I invite each of us to seek out ways to help each other shine. To encourage each other, and notice good things about each other. To praise and uplift each other: maybe someone cooked a great dish, or ran a great meeting, or did something admirable. Tell them so. Make a habit of uplifting each other.

Imagine if we all did that. Imagine how we might feel different when we stand before God* (whatever that word means to us: God far above or God deep within, Truth, Meaning, Justice, Love) at Rosh Hashanah. Imagine the new year that could flow from that new beginning.

Shabbat shalom.

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.)

Shared with extra gratitude to the Bayit Board for our weekly study time.

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Published on September 20, 2024 17:00

Public Service Announcement

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It��s Elul, the month that leads us up to the Days of Awe. The busiest time of the year for pulpit clergy. Also the most spiritually intense time of year, when we��re supposed to be engaging in an accounting of our souls and making teshuvah. We are eating, sleeping, and breathing high holiday prep. Those of us with "halftime" pulpit positions are working fulltime-plus. (These things are true every year.)

All of us have just had the hardest Jewish year we can remember. Usually when we reach Simchat Torah, we get an emotional and spiritual break. In 5784, we went into crisis mode before the holidays ended. The calamities haven't stopped, so we never downshifted out of crisis mode. Even those of us with extensive pastoral care experience may have never provided it at these levels for this long.

I can't begin to describe the depth of grief and trauma across our communities this year. Some of us are ministering to Jews who are strongly Zionist-identified, to progressive Jews who are struggling with what's unfolding, and to non-Zionist or anti-Zionist Jews in deep solidarity with Palestinians. Many of us are trying to hold together communities, families, and friendships that are fracturing.

Please be kind to your clergy. Many of us are worn thin, feeling (in Tolkien's words) "like butter scraped over too much bread." We have spent this year trying to bring presence while mourning, ourselves. Preparing for the High Holidays is an awesome responsibility, and we��re grateful to be able to do it! And this year, we may be running on empty before the marathon of the holidays even begins.

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Published on September 12, 2024 05:07

��

It is always humbling to read my words translated into another language -- especially into this language that I so deeply love. And I'm moved to know that this particular poem, a cry from my heart, reached one of my Israeli friends and colleagues deeply too. Thank you for this translation, R. Simcha Daniel Burstyn.

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(You can read my poem in English plaintext here in an earlier blog post. And/or, the Hebrew and English are both posted as comments on this Facebook post where I also shared this translation.)

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Published on September 09, 2024 04:21

Three Practices for Now (Shoftim 5784 / 2024)

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I want to look at three verses from tonight��s Torah portion. One of them is big and systemic, while the other two are more intimate and personal. Each one suggests a spiritual practice to me �� something we can actively make a practice of doing as we approach Rosh Hashanah.

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Justice, justice shall you pursue, that you may thrive and inherit the land that your God ��;;�� is giving you. (Deut. 16:20)

This verse is one of Torah��s profoundest messages. The repetition of the word tzedek, justice, might come to teach us to chase after justice both internally and externally, inside and out. Or maybe it means that we need to seek justice for others, and also for ourselves.

Ibn Ezra says the repetition means that we must pursue justice whether we ourselves win or lose. We must pursue justice because justice is what��s right �� even if it doesnt benefit us personally. Justice matters, justice is precious and holy, even when we don��t ourselves win.

The American justice system is not perfect. There are wrongful convictions (which is why The Innocence Project exists). But I believe that justice, as an ideal, is one of the ways we live up to what��s best in us. And my time serving on a jury left me feeling humbled and moved.

��Jury service,�� I wrote then, ��asks us to do our best to root out any preconceptions or prejudice, and to approach everything we hear with an open mind. That's a pretty good spiritual practice for anytime, honestly. So is holding deep empathy while also upholding accountability.��

I invite us to try to live in the world, between now and the holidays, as though we were serving on a jury and someone��s future is at stake. Notice our biases, and work to mitigate them. Approach everything with an open mind. Seek accountability from a place of deep empathy.

�� ''��

You shall appoint magistrates and officials in your gates, in all the settlements that your God �� is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. (Deut. 16:18)

Appoint judges for your sh��arekha �� your gates. For our mystics, this means not only the literal gates of our towns, but the ��gates�� into us. Our eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth are seven gates that we need to guard in order to ensure the justice that this week��s parsha tells us to pursue.

What do we let in through these gates: what words do we read, what media do we consume? Whose stories do we seek out, and whose stories do we ignore? Where are we getting our news? Whose voices do we center? Whose voices do we ignore, or just�� not want to hear?

And what do we let out through these gates? Are we careful with the words we speak? Do we repeat hearsay or gossip, or speak about others outside of their presence? Have our words caused harm this year? (The answer is yes, whether or not we can call instances to mind.)

I invite us to guard our gates as a spiritual practice this month. ��The mind is like tofu: it takes on the flavor of whatever we soak it in,�� said Reb Zalman z��l: whatever we let in these gates becomes our marinade. And whatever we let out of these gates shapes our impact on the world.

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You must be wholehearted with your God ��. (Deut. 18:13)

During Elul, our mystics teach, ��the King is in the Field.�� Though sometimes tradition imagines God as a King, transcendent, unapproachable, this month we imagine God ��descending�� into creation and walking with us in the fields, a friend Who wants to hear what��s on our hearts.

This verse invites us to bring our whole hearts to God. Here��s my invitation: suspend whatever disbelief might be getting in the way. Take some quiet time this month �� whether we��re out for a walk, or driving alone in the car �� and speak aloud to God, as to a friend, what��s on our heart.

What are we worried about? What do we regret? What do we hope for? We might be surprised by what we hear ourselves say, or how it feels to hear ourselves say it. If we make a practice of this, between now and Rosh Hashanah, how might that deepen the holidays for us this year?

Three invitations:

Pursue justice by approaching the world with the integrity of a juror.

Guard our gates, mindful of what we��re taking in and what we��re putting into the world.

And pour out our hearts �� not to the vast indifferent universe, but to an imagined beloved Friend.

Shabbat shalom.

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 September 06, 2024 17:00