From the Bimah: Jewish Lessons for Life

Rabbi Mishael Zion comes from a Haggadah-filled home: he is co-author of A Night to Remember: The Haggadah of Contemporary Voices (2007) and The Israeli Haggadah (2024), together with his father Noam Zion, who is the author of A Different Night: The Family Participation Haggadah (Hartman, 1997). Mishael was ordained by Yeshivat Chovevei Torah in New York, has served as co-Director and rabbi of the Bronfman Fellowships, and founded the Mandel Program for Leadership in Jewish Culture for Israeli Arts, Culture and Media leaders. He is also leader of the Klausner Minyan in Talpiot, Jerusalem, the neighborhood he was born in and in where his wife Elana, and their four daughters, live.

This week, I was speaking with a member who has been struggling with an intense family situation and was heading into a tense and painful meeting. She was riding in a Lyft. The driver was playing Christian radio quietly in the front. A few minutes before they arrived at their destination, she heard something on the radio that piqued her interest. "Can you turn that up?" she asked. The hosts of the Christian radio show were discussing a verse from the book of Joshua where God says to Joshua, "I will be with you as I was with Moses. I will not fail you and I will not forsake you." Just then, the car stopped at her destination.She shared that as she was riding in the Lyft, she was feeling deeply afraid and alone. Hearing that verse gave her strength. As she put it, “how freaking amazing to get that message from Christian radio of all places in the exact moment I needed it….[and] of all the verses they could possibly be discussing, they are not only discussing verses from my part of the Bible as a Jew, but they are also discussing the exact verses that I need to put my faith in right now.” When she got out of the Lyft, she stood taller and stronger, fortified by the wisdom of Torah echoing through Christian radio.Now, let’s just pause for a moment. Think about this: What if our member had just been in that car, stressing about her meeting, messing around on her phone, tuning out the world? That would have been a totally reasonable response. In a stressful situation, it is so tempting to disconnect. It is so tempting to lose oneself in music, social media, reading and entertainment, or in chemical substances. But she was sitting in that car with her phone put away, looking out the window, listening to a random radio broadcast in her Lyft. Because her eyes and ears were open to possibility, that's how she received the wisdom she needed for that moment.

Shall we invite the troubling headlines—from Israel, Gaza, America, our world—to our seders? Are our seders supposed to be a joyful way to avoid the world (family, friends, songs, children’s skits, plays, games, great food, lots of wine, tasty desserts), or an invitation to engage the world and think out loud together about how we can make it better?Are there any great options? Three options present themselves:Festival of worry. If everyone around the seder table agrees, and we talk about it, what ensues is a lot of worry, angst, negative energy, along with resolving to do our part to protest the troubling turn of events.Festival of acrimony. If people around the seder table do not agree, and we talk about it, what ensues is conflict, friction, acrimony. Who needs it?Festival of willed indifference. We do at the seder what we do most days, live our lives like it is not happening. Ignore the elephant. Talk about something else. But is that what we should be doing at a seder whose purpose is to inspire us to do our part to create a more just world?We do not have the answer for this question. But we are going to explore four lenses that can enable you to arrive at your own answer: • a halakhic lens• a poetic lens• an interpersonal relationship lens• a justice lens from the HaggadahAre we to celebrate the redemption that happened thousands of years ago, or to engage the redemption that needs to happen now? What do you think?

In the Torah God tells us that from time to time God will hide God’s face. This would seem to be such a time. How do we find God in our troubled world together?

A woman named Jessica Sklar, her husband and their two children were happily living their lives in Pacific Palisades when their house burned down. Since losing all their earthly possessions, they have been wandering in the wilderness. In less than two months, this family has moved five times, from A B & B X5. In the home they used to love, they had stability and serenity. In the wilderness they now inhabit, they have anxiety and uncertainty. A deep question lodges in their soul: We are not okay. Will we ever be okay again? In the face of this anxiety and uncertainty, one place has brought them deep comfort: the Pacific Palisades Youth Baseball League which, because the Palisades fields were destroyed by the fire, are in neighboring towns. A Times article recently reported: At last came the siren call: Play ball! The pomp and circumstance…provided a modicum of normalcy for families who in the previous 53 days have had to find new homes, schools, doctors, cars, clothes, places to worship and more—all while navigating the maze of insurance and government assistance and deciding what to do next. I cried seeing people, said Juliana Davis, who lost her home. I cried coming, said her friend Erin Chidsey, whose house also burned.Of the 450 boys and girls who had signed up to play before the fire, 305 are still playing. And parents and children are finding it a tonic to their souls.What do we do when we are in the wilderness? We have not lost our homes to the wildfire. Yet many of us feel that we are in a different kind of wilderness.I have a wonderful Sisterhood class on Tuesday mornings. More than 30 people show up every Tuesday. We have been talking about our world through the prism of Jewish texts. What I hear from these students is deep anxiety. I have deep anxiety about our world. We are not okay. Will we ever be okay again?What will be with Israel? I have always loved Israel. But I am just confused. And worried. How does this end? What will be with our country? My students will say to me: I know you can’t talk about politics, and we respect that. But what is happening with our checks and balances? Will we be leaving a democracy to our future generations?Edge. Anxiety. Concern for our future. Not feeling deeply anchored. And wondering: what can I do to create the world I want to live in and leave to my loved ones?That is the Torah’s question now. How do we create a counterworld to the wilderness?

How are we to understand the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil and the stated intent of the federal government to deport him?It is good. He is an Israel hater. Finally the federal government is cracking down on Israel hate and Jew hate that have been running rampant on college campuses, leading to the intimidation and harassment of Jewish students and supporters of Israel. Columbia has been the capital of Jew hate and Israel hate. It is about time.It is bad. It changes the fundamental character of our country if somebody can be arrested and possibly deported for expressing opinions, however distasteful they may be to some. Deporting somebody for the exercise of free speech means we are in scary times in a scary country. Though some in the pro-Israel community may cheer this development, how can we be sure that we are not next? See Pastor Marin Niemoller’s iconic words about Nazi Germany:First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.It is good. The intimidation and harassment of Jewish students have gone on too long. Our children who go to Columbia walk past signs, posters, and placards that say: “Jews go back to Europe.” How can we not see and combat that kind of hatred, which is real, throbbing, urgent, and getting worse? The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil will deter ugly hate directed against Jews and against Israel that has gone on for too long. Thank you, President Trump.It is bad. The administration is weaponizing antisemitism to try to achieve its immigration objectives. It does not actually care about antisemitism. And it is going to come back to haunt the Jewish and pro-Israel community by deepening divisions and hatred.Deepening hatred? How could it be worse than it is today, signs in New York City telling Jewish students and professors: “Jews go back to Europe.” The thing we fear may happen next is here. Now.On and on. How do we process such a complicated conundrum and negative energy sink hole? Tomorrow I want to offer an unexpected lens: the documentary hypothesis. Unlike our headlines, the documentary hypothesis is dry, a little boring, and safe to talk about in public. It will offend nobody. Also, and most importantly: At its heart is an insight that, whatever your view on the painful headlines, we all need to hear.

Robert Housman established Yad Chessed so he could help his neighbors struggling in Boston’s Jewish community. In the early years, he ran it by himself, with help from his wife Sue, as he worked full-time as a computer programmer. He directed Yad Chessed until the summer of 2012 when he became a member of its Board of Directors.

On Yom Kippur, October 9, 1943, in the middle of the Holocaust, Rabbi Walter Wurzburger gave a sermon at Congregation Chai Odom in Brighton, Massachusetts entitled “The Individual in the Crisis.” He argued that Jews in Greater Boston own moral responsibility for the Holocaust. On the basis of the High Priest’s avodah service, Rabbi Wurzburger offered this stark challenge:We behold a world of agony, misery, cruelty, injustice, brutality, and tyranny. We are responsible for it. It is our world. No complaints! No excuses! No defense mechanisms! No passing of the buck. (quoting the High Priest) “I and my family, we sinned, we failed, we are guilty, we are responsible.”If this be our lens, we cannot just lament and decry the pain of our world. We own the pain. We own the moral responsibility for doing something to fix it.That feels like a tall order. What can we do, here or in Israel? Maybe we should just focus on our dalet amot, the four cubits of our own existence. We cannot control what goes on in Washington or in Israel or in Gaza. We can have more control over what goes on in our homes, workplaces and communities.So consider this lens. When Moses announces the decisive tenth plague, he says it will happen at about midnight. The Talmud jumps on the word about. Why wasn’t Moses more precise? The Talmud’s answer: The Torah says about midnight to teach us to say: “I don’t know.”Is “I don’t know” a valid Jewish response to the pain of the world? I did not cause it. I cannot fix it. I don’t know.The first lens came from a class this past summer at Hartman taught by Elana Stein Hain. The second lens came from a class taught by Yehuda Kurtzer. Are we living the second lens? If so, is that okay?

In 1992, then 25-year-old Sinéad O'Connor appeared on Saturday Night Live. She was a budding international musical superstar with two chart-topping records to her name. And, unbeknownst to producers, she had decided to use her platform to protest rampant child abuse in the Catholic Church. At the end of her performance, she stared straight into the camera, tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and threw it at the camera as she shouted, “fight the real enemy.”Now remember, 1992 was almost a decade before the sexual abuse scandals in the Catholic Church would come to light in this country. Not only were most Americans unaware of the evils that had unfolded behind closed doors, but they were also outraged that a pop star would dare to dishonor and defame a venerated religious leader. Sinéad was immediately and very publicly scorned, mocked, and ridiculed.Two weeks later, she was scheduled to perform at a special Madison Square Garden concert. Country music star Kris Kristofferson introduced her by saying, “I’m real proud to introduce this next artist, whose name’s become synonymous with courage and integrity, Sinéad O'Connor.” As soon as he says her name, the crowd begins to boo and jeer at her. Sinéad walks on stage and stands in the face of that hate for what seems like forever. She adjusts her mic, tries saying “thank you” the way she would begin any other performance, but the crowd just keeps screaming at her. The band tries to save her by starting her song, but she cuts them off. 20,000 people in the audience are still booing. Jeering. The hate doesn’t end. She stares out, waiting. Kris returns. He leans in and whispers something in her ear, then walks away. Again, the band tries to temper the vitriol of the crowd with instrumentals to no avail. Finally, Sinéad says, “turn this up,” and then begins to sing/scream the same song she sang on Saturday Night Live. She gets out every word. The crowd is still booing. She finishes, turns and begins to walk off the stage. Kris meets her, hugs her, and the two exit together.As a performer, I cannot imagine the grit it took to stand strong in front of 20,000 angry, booing audience members; not only to stand strong but to have the presence of mind to be able to pause and reflect about what she wanted to do, how she wanted to proceed, to decide to sing the very same song that earned her all of this vitriol. Later she would share that she herself was the victim of abuse growing up. That the picture she shredded belonged to her abusive mother. That she wasn’t just taking a stand for victims in general, but for herself and for every child that had ever been abused. That she believed that she was more than a pretty voice and had an obligation to stand for justice. Fundamentally she was right. A decade later, the country would be roiled by revelations of abuse, cover ups, and the church would begin paying out settlements. But she was a ahead of her time. That courageous stand ended her career.This story made the rounds in September of 2024, when Kris Kristofferson passed away, because this moment of support kindled a beautiful friendship that would last for the next thirty-one years. But it resurfaced in my memory this week for a very different reason.

Often music reflects the mood of the time we are in. That is the case with Megillat Esther – but in a surprising way. While we are chanting in a joyous musical mode, reflected in the trope of Purim, we suddenly hear two mournful tunes at several points during the Megillah reading. There are six verses that we sing to this mournful trope, the trope for Eicha, the book of Lamentations, which we read on Tisha B’Av. What does Purim, our happiest holiday, have to do with Tisha B’Av, our saddest?Join us on Shabbat morning as we examine different times during the Jewish year where there is a juxtaposition between joy and sorrow. How do we hold both at the same time?

Has this ever happened to you? One frigid morning, I grab my warmest jacket. I reach down to zip the zipper and it won’t budge. I pull. I push. I take it apart. I put it back. I pull again. I’m late. I’m from California – I need this coat to zip. Now there are probably more rational things to have done, but I do not do them. I pull with all my strength – words that I make it a practice not to say bubbling up in my mind – until I have whipped myself into a quiet frenzy. The coat is broken. The world is broken. It’s all too much.From broken zipper to broken world in 60 seconds flat. As the feeling moved from my kishkes to my head and calm descended, I thought of the many members who have shared how close to the surface that feeling of overwhelm is for so many right now in this moment of shifting ground. Our assumptions of what is usual or expected, in everything from the political to the tech to the economic to the global – whether you think those changes are good or not good – have been so rapidly changing that one could be forgiven for experiencing some whiplash. How do we meet this moment?

I was out having a coffee last week with a friend. In our musings about the vagaries of life, the phrase, “If only” come up in conversation. How would our lives be different “if only?” Would they be better? Worse? If only we had done this and not that, or NOT done this or that? Our micro and macro decisions effect not only the trajectory of our lives, but the lives our family, friends, community and perhaps beyond. How different would our world be if for example Drew Bledsoe had not been injured? If the Challenger had not exploded? If Noah had argued with God? If Pharoh had decided to kill the girls? When and how does “If only” become, “If not now, when?”As always, Torah has a way of framing and addressing these philosophical questions. Looking forward to exploring with you on Shabbat morning “if, only” through the lens of society, Biblical text, and personal reflection.

What is the greatest miracle in Jewish history? Many would answer it is the one we read about this Shabbat – the splitting of the sea. Rarely, though, do we stop to notice another, perhaps equally astounding, miracle that happened when our ancestors reached the shore – they all broke out into song together. How did this happen? What did it look like? Why should we care?The vision of simultaneous song endures as an example of striking unity among our people. It is also fleeting. Today, division runs deep and unity remains fleeting. Does this song, or the other song from which Shabbat Shira gets its name, the song of Devorah, give us any insight helpful to our modern experience which is characterized by anything but simultaneous song? Join us tomorrow morning as we unpack what the Torah is trying to tell us about the possibility or impossibility of lasting unity (source sheethere).

There is a fascinating paradox at the core of human experience: we know what is required to live healthy, happy lives and yet, we often make choices that directly contradict our own well-being. This is well-documented. For example, the consequences of smoking cigarettes have been studied intensively, and the results of those studies have been widely publicized. And yet, experts estimate that there are still1.1 billion smokers world-wide, a number which has remained constant despite intensive efforts to protect public health. In other words, knowing what is healthy and what is not is not necessarily predictive of whether or not we will be able to actualize our own best interests.That's where our Torah is so important. As we open Exodus, we see a pattern that we know all too well. Pharaoh in the midst of a plague is open to change. With locusts devouring the land or under cover of darkness, Pharaoh repents and offers to change his behavior for the better. But as soon as the plague recedes, Pharaoh reverts to his cruel ways and to his refusals of our people. How many times have we done the same?Interestingly, God is also aware of this pattern and the dangers of the human condition. God asserts that the signs and wonders are in order to show Pharaoh and the Israelites that God is powerful and present, with the hope that the Israelites will forever remember God's intervention in their lives and remain thereafter faithful.But like Pharaoh, the Israelites recognize God's glory in the midst of the signs and wonders and do not always remember God's glory when memory of those miracles recedes. God's answer to this collective amnesia is ritualized memory. But what is ours? How do we subvert our own attention and memory such that we can make the best choices in every moment, even when we are not suffering from a particular plague?Here are the sources.

Shimon The Righteous would say that the world stands upon three things: upon Torah, upon Avodah - the Temple Service, and upon G’milut Hasadim - acts of loving kindness. Since I am finishing my fifth month working with the teen community here at Temple Emanuel I thought that I would humbly reflect upon three stories that illustrate these three pillars of Jewish life, which point our compass as we continue to establish our teen community.

If you have not already done so, please take a couple of moments to watch this clip of the most famous part of Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde’s sermon at a prayer service this past Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, at the Washington National Cathedral. In class we will watch this clip together before our study and conversation. Here are some questions we will consider together: What do you think of her message? What does it say about our nation now that Bishop Budde’s message—have mercy—can ignite so much emotion and controversy? How do you think it felt to be Bishop Budde delivering that message in that moment to the new President, to the nation, and to the world? How do Jewish sources help us interpret this moment? Tomorrow we will look at two prophets who speak truth to power: Nathan, who tells King David that he was immoral; and Jeremiah, who is nearly killed by a mob for saying that if the Judaeans do not change their ways, Babylon will destroy the Temple and exile the people. Does speaking truth to power ever work? For those of us who are not prophets and bishops, how does this large question intersect with our daily lives? What is asked of us, now?

For 469 days, ever since October 7, every morning, and every evening, at our daily minyan, we pray for the IDF, that God should guard and protect Israel’s courageous and heroic soldiers. We pray that God return our hostages safely to their families. We say Mourner’s Kaddish as a community, as part of am Yisrael, for Israel’s fallen soldiers. Occasionally, somebody will ask: how much longer? How much longer will we offer these prayers? No one knows for sure, but the general answer has to be something like: We will keep praying for the IDF for as long as Israel is at war. We will keep praying for the hostages as long as the hostages are stuck in Gaza. And we will keep saying Kaddish as long as soldiers keep dying in combat. Just this week, 5 more IDF soldiers were killed in northern Gaza. If you read the article in the Times of Israel, it just breaks your heart. You see pictures of these five idealistic, noble, beautiful young people. So incredibly, heartbreakingly young: Cpt. Yair Yakov Shushan, 23; Staff Sgt. Yahav Hadar, 20. Staff Sgt. Guy Karmiel, 20; Yoaf Feffer, 19; Aviel Wiseman, 20. Fifteen months later all that young beautiful life snuffed out. How could we not say Kaddish for them? The larger point is: it is all so murky—and sad. When will it end? How will it end? How will Israel and Israelis be at the end? All so murky. And then this week, news of the ceasefire and hostage deal. I want to offer three questions. First, what is a lens through which we can see this murky deal in this murky war? Second, when we apply that lens to the facts before us, what do we think, and how does it make us feel? Third, what do we do?

This week we begin the Exodus story which offers humanity a one-two punch. First, a cruel new Pharaoh who demonizes a vulnerable and marginalized minority and commands “all his people, saying: Every boy that is born you shall throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” Exodus 1-22. In other words, baby-killing is state policy. Infanticide is the law of the land. Second, in the face of such cruelty, in all of Egypt, only two people, Shifrah and Puah, stand up to resist. At most two in a whole land fight against manifest cruelty. The rest of the country went along. Why only two? Where was everybody else? How to explain indifference to manifest immorality? In class we will not only read the story of Shifra and Puah, but also a piece of stunning biblical scholarship by an Israeli scholar named Judy Klitsner which sees the Exodus story as what she calls the “subversive sequel” to the Tower of Babel story in Genesis. Brilliant insight which will leave us thinking: what does all of this mean to us now?

There is a new form of loss in the world, and it is spreading like wildfire. We know what it is like to lose a person we love. Our mother dies. Our father dies. Our grandparent or sibling or friend dies. There is a Hebrew word for that, and it comes from the Joseph story. After the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, older brother Reuben observes hayeled einenu, Joseph is no more. And when that happens, the person we love dies and is no more, it is usually sad, sometimes tragic, and always a huge, paradigm-shifting change. The one we love is no more. How will we do life without the one we love? But we are set up for it. Our tradition has equipped us with the rituals that will help us get through it. We have shiva. We have sheloshim. We have minyan. We have kaddish. We have yahrtzeit. We have the words to say and the deeds to do in the comfort of a community that enable us both to mourn our loss and also affirm our life. But now there is a new form of loss. We don’t have the rituals and traditions and know-how, because we have not seen this epic loss, on this epic scale, before. What happens when it is not a person who is no more, but a house, and all that it contains, that is no more? The house we grew up in is no more. The house that we wake up in and go to sleep in and do life in is no more. The ketubah on the wall is no more. The artwork gathered over a lifetime of going to art galleries in special places is no more. The Judaica is no more. The challah trays and challah covers, the kiddush cups, the Shabbat candlesticks that are a family heirloom from a beloved departed grandmother is no more. The seder plates, the Elijah cups and Miriam cups, the haggadot are no more. The benchers, the kippot, the tallitot are no more. The kitchen table and the dining room table on which we had 1,000 beautiful meals with our loved ones is no more. The cards and letters and photographs and memories are no more. The relics of our children’s childhood—the macaroni-encrusted pencil holders spray-painted gold that they would give us for Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, are no more. The home is gone. And with it the physical manifestation of the life we used to live is no more. Multiply that by all the businesses that are no more. Add to that the synagogue in Pacific Palisades where Elias’s friend and cantorial colleague Ruth works, a 100-year old congregation, that is no more. Thank God the Torah scroll was saved from the wreckage, but the rest of the House of the Lord is no more. We have members who grew up in Pacific Palisades. They came to the special prayer service for LA we held in the Gann Chapel on Thursday night. Before the service, she showed me on her cell phone what einenu, what is no more, looks like when homes, businesses, and every structure that used to stand is no more. Where a city block used to be, it is no more. Apocalyptic emptiness. The loss is so enormous. Where do people whose house is no more go to live? What clothes do they wear when their clothes are incinerated? What food do they eat? How do they go to work and do a day of life when their entire foundation has been so cruelly overturned? And that is not even dealing with the deep, deep, super scary, terrifying financial implications. From what I have read, and heard from my family in Los Angeles, most residents who lost their homes do not have insurance that covers a home destroyed by fire. They lost everything. There is no insurance. What happens now?

How is it with your soul? In her book on evangelical Christianity, Circle of Hope, Eliza Griswold shares the centrality of that question in helping people understand one another. How is it with your soul? Do I wake up angry and aggrieved, and spend my energy honking the horn, sending flaming emails, taking offense, looking for a fight? Do I wake up feeling grateful for the good in my life? Do I wake up rattled and unsettled or centered and anchored? What shapes our soul? What shapes our inner life? Can we control it? Can we intentionally become less angry, more grateful, less rattled, more serene? Tomorrow morning we will look at the inner life of Joseph and David as they are dying—an abject lesson in how our deeds shape our souls, and how our souls shape our deeds.

Earlier in the year, Taffy Brodesser-Akner wrote about her father's friend who was kidnapped at knife-point 50 years ago. It was a powerful piece--both for the thoughtful discussion of this original trauma and its impact on her and on her family friend. But the real story wasn't the kidnapping, nor the way the kidnapping re-ignited memories of her own lived traumas. The real story was that her article inspired countless emails from total strangers who reached out to share their own stories of trauma. Six months after her original article, Taffy published a second reflection titled, "I Published a Story about Trauma. I Heard About Everyone Else's." As humans, we are desperate to share our stories. And, when we tell our stories it doesn't just give us the opportunity to connect, those stories can have a healing affect on our emotional well-being and on the trajectory of our lives. There is a whole school of psychotherapy called narrative theory and practice whereby mental health practitioners help people to process trauma by telling and retelling their story until they find meaning. In this week's Talmud class, we're going to apply narrative theory and practice to the story of Joseph. Joseph's life is full of trauma: he loses his family, is tossed into a pit and sold into slavery, is wrongly accused and imprisoned, and lives the rest of his adult life as an outsider. His story could be a story of loss and trauma, but he reflects a story of hope and connection. He says God brought him to exactly where he needed to be. He gives thanks. How can do this? How can we use the power of stories to metabolize trauma into healing and transformational possibility?

One of the most magnetic moments drawing us to shul is the observance of a yahrtzeit, the anniversary of our loved one’s passing, which offers us a precious opportunity to show up again for our beloved departed, to say a few words about them, and to recite Kaddish in their memory. Ordinary people who do not show up at shul all that much the rest of the year show up for their loved one’s yahrtzeit. That is through all the seasons. That is through the snow and the cold and the ice. And they do that for years, for decades, sometimes even remembering their loved one in death far longer than they were blessed to have them in life. And when somebody comes to mark their loved one’s yahrtzeit, a thing we often say is: may you continue to be your loved one’s living legacy. May your father’s beautiful values live on in you. May your mother’s beautiful values live on in you. We say it. We mean it. It is beautiful and true. I have been saying it, and I have been receiving it when others say it to me, for many years. But this year, for the first time, I experienced a wrinkle, a complexity, that I had never noticed before. What happens if we and our beloved departed mother or father or grandparent have a real disagreement over a matter of principle? They lived. They died. We know where they stand. Their legacy is now ours. But on a fundamental question of principle, we disagree. For the first time ten days ago, I felt this tension myself.

I have a thought experiment for you. In honor of Hanukkah, which begins Wednesday night, find a photograph of you lighting Hanukkah candles with your family from 25 years ago. Take a good long look at that old photo. How does it make you feel? For many of us, it can be complicated. On the one hand, there is a certain wistful beauty to it. Our children were so young and small and cute. We were so much younger. Our parents were alive, standing with our children, three generations lighting candles. What a blessing. On the other hand, there can be a certain wistful melancholy to it. Our children are grown and gone and out of the house. We don’t see them every day like we used to. Our parents have passed. We were not only younger back then but also healthier. Before the back pain. Before the hip pointer. Back when we used to be able to run and play tennis whenever we wanted and climb up and down stairs without even thinking about it. An old photo is a mixed bag. My late father in love used to say: “There are no happy pictures. There are only pictures of happy memories.” The memories are of course happy. We were blessed to have lit candles with our young children and our beloved parents. But the picture is not entirely happy because in the intervening years we have felt the ravages of time in our body and in our soul. Is there any inoculation against the ravages of time? We cannot stop the worries, stresses and conflicts of daily living. That comes with the human condition. But is there a way to think about our life that minimizes the ravages of time? Our Torah has so much to say here.

Immediately ahead are seven years of great abundance in all the land of Egypt. After them will come seven years of famine, and all the abundance in the land of Egypt will be forgotten. (Genesis 41: 29-30) Truer words were never spoken. Joseph’s interpretation of how lean years swallow up fat years, how bad times swallow up good times, how seventy years of life and health get swallowed up by a decade of dementia, when we struggle to remember what our loved one used to be like—his words were true for ancient Egypt, and they are true for us. In his commentary on Joseph’s interpretation, Rashi picks up on this note of swallowing. Bad swallows good. What have you done for me lately? The recency bias is so powerful. Like the thin ears of corn that swallow the fat ears of corn, like the scrawny cows that swallow the robust cows, today’s truth crowds out yesterday’s truth. In sports, in the economy, in culture, the fact that a team used to win, that the economy used to be strong, that a singer used to belt out number one hits, is always eclipsed by what is happening now. So too our moods. The fact that we used to be happy is scant consolation if we are depressed now. And, as noted above, one of the cruelest expressions of the recency bias is dementia. It literally is hard to remember our loved one before their decline, so powerful is their decline at swallowing up time and energy. Is there an answer for the all-powerful recency bias? Joseph’s solution is to store up a reserve during the good time to hold us in the bad time. That solution worked for ancient Egypt. At least it staved off mass starvation. Does the storing up solution work for us? If not, do we have any other way to counter the awesome power of the recency bias?

The volume of outrage in our world has hit a crescendo. All the time I hear questions like, “how can you bear to be around someone who voted like that?!” or “how can you stand working with people who are so anti-Zionist or who are so pro-Israel?” As if people who do not rage against those they disagree with are somehow condoning or supporting evil perspectives. Young people, already stressed by the pressures of their own lives, feel pressured to respond to hateful social media posts and/or to present content that will fight against what they see as evil lies. Everything is pitched as though the conversation is an existential battle between good and evil and each one of us is either fighting for good or conceding to forces of evil. We saw this so sharply this week. When Luigi Mangione murdered Brian Thompson in broad daylight, the story on the street and on social media wasn’t about a horrific crime against humanity. People lionized Luigi, they asked him on dates, they offered to be his alibi, they fundraised for his legal costs, they even competed in dress-alike competitions. Why? Because they see him as someone willing to take decisive action against the evils of our world, never mind that he committed an atrocious crime and never mind that killing Brian Thompson does nothing to fix our broken health care system nor address the real pain of the American people. There’s a word for this energy in our tradition: zealotry. Zealots are people who are inspired by passion, who take action without due process, and who force the world to align with their vision. The most famous zealots in our tradition arose in a tumultuous time in our history. Way back in the first century, during the Second Temple Period, our ancestors were fighting to build a life in the shadow of the Roman Empire. At the time, the future of Judaism and Jewish community was precarious and there were different groups that had different ideas about what should happen. Some groups fought for justice and against elitism and classism that they felt were destroying society. Some believed that the Roman Empire was the way of the future. They promoted assimilation and Hellenization and worked to try to suppress Jewish revolt against the occupying power. While others raged against Roman rule, encouraging resistance to Roman culture and strict adherence to Jewish cultic rites. According to the Talmud, the elders of the Jewish community wanted to mobilize their community thoughtfully. But the zealots didn’t have the patience for this. They felt an existential threat and believed it was their duty to force the Jewish community into action. They provoked and attacked the Romans, trying to incite violence. And when their guerilla tactics worked and the Romans laid siege to Jerusalem, the zealots burned the granaries and food stores in the city so our ancestors would be forced to fight for their lives. When we tell this story, we focus on our survival. We focus on Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai’s improbable escape in a coffin. We focus on his heroic journey to Yavne and the way he preserved the Judaism that he and the other rabbis believed in. But that leaves out a critical piece of our history. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai had to escape because of the zealots, because their radical ideology created a toxic culture of violence which threatened our very existence. Today, more than ever, we need to remember the zealots.

The murder last week of CEO Brian Thompson on the streets of New York in broad daylight inspired large-scale celebration. The article from the Times and social media posts show delight in his murder; the celebration of his murderer as a hero. What is wrong with us? How could thousands of Americans celebrate murder? There is an ugliness and hate in our nation now. Is there any way to heal it? Our reading this week deals with violence in a violent place, Shechem: the rape of Dinah, the revenge of Simon and Levi. Violence often leads to more violence. Hate to more hate. Ugliness to more ugliness. But are those cycles inevitable? What do we learn from this violent story about how to heal the hate in our world now, if healing is even possible? In the wake of Brian Thompson’s murder, much has been written and spoken about anger, outrage, fury at the health insurance industry’s denials and delays which have led to death and dying during people’s most vulnerable times. Does our Torah offer us a better way to respond to this pain than what happened on the streets of New York?

On a Tuesday in late October, 2022, Jared Goff, a quarterback for the Detroit Lions, was summoned to a meeting in the office of his coach Dan Campbell. The summons gave Jared Goff a pit in his stomach. He figured he was going to be benched or released—fired. Some version of bad news felt inevitable. Goff had begun his career with the Los Angeles Rams, who had traded him to the Detroit Lions for the Lions’ former quarterback, Matthew Stafford. In his first year, Stafford led the Rams to a Super Bowl victory. But Goff’s first year for the Lions was a disaster. The team went 3-13-1. His second season started out just as bad: one win, six losses, including an ugly loss that Sunday in which Goff played terribly. Hence the summons to the coach’s office. When he got to the coach’s office, to Goff’s surprise, Coach Campbell did not have bad news. He had a good question. Jared, you are a much better player than the way you have been playing. What do you think is going on? What do you think you might do differently to play better? What tweak might we think about? To which Jared Goff responded: I’ve been trying to do too much. I need to let go of all my anxiety and just do my best one play at a time. To which Campbell responded: Jared, that’s all I’ve wanted you to do this whole time. The next game, Jared Goff played dramatically better. The team still lost, but his play improved appreciably. And the game after that, the Lions won, and they have been winning ever since. This year the Lions are tied for the best record in the league. Goff’s play has been spectacular. I bring up this story not to talk about football but to talk about how to respond to people who are seriously struggling. Jared Goff assumed that he was going to be benched or released. But Dan Campbell did not give up on him. How do we not give up on people or places that we love that are going through a hard time?

Is everything going to be okay? We live with that question every day. Is everything going to be okay with Israel? December 7, marks 14 months of war, and the situation is still murky, unresolved and painful for all. This week when he was in dialogue with Michelle, Donniel Hartman was real, and real was not upbeat. Is everything going to be okay with our country? We are a 50-50 nation. Both halves have deep convictions and deep anxieties. The side that is not in power is worried. Is everything going to be okay with ourselves and our loved ones? When we face serious challenges—relational, emotional, physical, financial, professional—will we emerge okay on the other end? What kind of prayer is helpful when we worry whether everything is going to be okay? The Torah offers us a primer of two different models of prayer, same person, same anxiety, same dread fear, twenty years apart. Young Jacob running away from home worries that Esau will kill him. Older Jacob coming back home to Canaan worries that Esau will kill him and his family. In both cases, he prays. Tomorrow we will consider each prayer in its own context and ask whether we pray a prayer like that, and if so, whether doing so helps. We will also study the interpretation of these two prayers by the late Rabbi Harold Kushner found in his classic When Bad Things Happen to Good People. Rabbi Kushner uses these two prayers of Jacob as illuminating prayers that do and do not work. How is it with your prayer life? Can our prayer life grow so that our prayers help strengthen us when we could use the strength?

Last week, I came across a fascinating article in the New York Times Magazine. Kim Tingley, in her article “‘Nature’s Swiss Army Knife’: What can we Learn from Venom ?” writes about the incredible potential of highly toxic reptile and insect venom to provide pharmaceutical miracles. It turns out that reptile and inspect venom contains hundreds, even thousands of molecules, which each have the ability to act in powerful ways on the human body. In the aggregate, the venom can have disastrous consequences. But applied strategically and sparingly, these compounds can make a world of difference. Take, for example, the wildly popular weight-loss drugs Ozempic, Wegovy, Mounjaro, and Zepbound. These drugs were created from research into a venomous reptile called the Gila monster which lives mostly underground in southern Arizona and northern Mexico. It’s a very striking lizard—typically they have a black head and matching black tongue, black legs, and a tiger-like pattern of orange and black down their back and tail. And they are highly toxic. If you Google them after shabbos, you’ll find a bunch of stories of people who have lost their lives to chance encounters on hiking trails or from bites from Gila monster pets. Gila monster venom had been screened back in the 80s, but when gastroenterologist Jean-Pierre Raufman and endocrinologist John Eng re-screened it, they discovered a molecule that had been previously overlooked which resembled a hormone that regulates insulin in healthy humans. That molecule, which they called Exendin-4, is the basis for these weight-loss drugs which have so transformed the medical landscape. Learning about this research and these medicines made me wonder—what would happen if we were able to look at the toxins in our lives with the same outlook?  There is no universe where we would see all the misfortunes of our lives as helpful or even healing, but would it ever be possible to get to a place where we could see elements of the challenges in our lives as having blessed us with possibility?

Dear friends, There is a fascinating paradox in our Torah reading this week. On the one hand, we've spent these last weeks reading about the trials and tribulations of our ancestors. In our Talmud class, we've discussed how loss, trauma, and pain shape their lives. We've seen how they suffer from dislocation, dashed hopes, and painful interpersonal dynamics. And yet, at the end of their lives, the Torah focuses not on the challenges they've endured but on the complete and total blessing of their lives. We are taught that each and every one of Sarah's 127 years was equally good. We are taught that God blessed Abraham in everything. How can this be? Is it possible that Sarah's years of infertility and strife were as good as the years she spent showering her son, Isaac, with love? Could it be that God's blessing for Abraham included dislocation, war, and the dissolution of the family he so yearned for? Or is it possible that the blessing and goodness that our ancestors experienced was less about what objectively happened and more about their adopted perspective?

What does Naftali Herstik, a pre-eminent cantor at the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for 30 years, have in common with Bobby Allison, who was one of the greatest race car drivers in American history, who won 85 NASCAR races over 30 years? One is an all-time great cantor. The other is an all-time great race car driver. They both recently passed away. But they share something important in common in how they lived which speaks to one of the greatest mysteries of the Torah—the meaning of the binding of Isaac, akeidat Yitzchak, in our portion this morning. This terrifying story is famously incomprehensible. God commands Abraham to bind his own son Isaac and offer him up as a burnt offering. How could God command such a thing? How could Abraham have been prepared to do it? Perhaps the wisest word I ever heard about this story was from Rabbi Simon Greenberg, a great teacher at the Seminary, who taught rabbinical students: don’t even try to teach this story. It makes no sense. Teach something else. But then this summer, while in Israel, I had something of a breakthrough. I think I finally understand the meaning of the binding of Isaac. This story is about how parents and children are bound. Decisions of parents shape the lives of children. All of us are bound by our parents. Who they are, what they do, shapes who we are, what we do.

We are plumb in the middle of two of the hardest stories in the Torah. Genesis 16:1-16 tells of Sarai’s continued inability to get pregnant, which leads her to assign her servant Hagar (literally the stranger) to Abram so that she might conceive a child with Abram who would somehow be reckoned as Sarai’s child. When Abram and Hagar have relations, she gets pregnant right away. It does not go well. The two women hurt one another. “Abraham cohabited with Hagar and she conceived; and when she (Hagar) saw that she had conceived, her mistress (Sarai) was lowered in her (Hagar’s) esteem.” 16:4. Which led to: “Then Sarai treated her (Hagar) harshly, and she ran away from her.” 16:6. That was in last week’s reading. This week tells the familiar story (the Torah reading for Rosh Hashanah day 1) of the birth of Isaac, which leads Sarah to direct Abraham to expel Hagar and Ishmael from their home into the wilderness. 21: 9-21. Not Sarah’s finest moment: “Cast out that slave woman and her son, for the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” 21:10. There are 70 faces of Torah (shivim panim l’Torah), and these stories have been grist for the mill for feminist critiques, class critiques, racial critiques. It is a story about the patriarchy. It is a story about rich and poor. It is a story about white and black. It is a story about power imbalance. All of which is also true. And tomorrow we are going to focus on a human question that affects us all: what does pain do to us? These stories yield four characters, and four different responses. Lashing Out in Our Pain Hagar and Sarah do that to each other. Self-Pity Hagar and Sarah both do that as well. Bystander Abraham The One Who Sees Me The angel of God There is no shortage of pain in the world. How can we avoid the first three moves and emulate instead the example of the angel of God who sees the person before them.

I have a friend who is a therapist.  She tells the story that once, she had someone in her office who was really struggling.  As he shared story after story of misfortune and sorrow, she found herself thinking, “oy, he really needs a therapist.”  Then, the patient paused and asked her for her wisdom.  “Oh no,” she thought, “I am that therapist.” I’ve never felt this story more deeply.  This week, I looked at the sermon schedule and thought, “oh no…I am supposed to be the rabbi.”  How do you speak to this moment? Everyone is feeling this week so differently. For some people, this was an incredible week of miracles, and for some people, this week plunged them into despair and anxiety. What do you say to that? What do you say to this space where we are all processing it so differently? I want to tell you a story today. It’s one of my favorite stories of all time and I hope you love it just as much. It’s about two rabbis. Now these two rabbis could not have been more different. Rav Baruch of Medzhybizh was a very distinguished rabbi. He believed every prayer should be said with decorum, proper pronunciation and annunciation; that prayer services should be thoughtful, reflective, quiet, studious, and proper affairs.  When he davened, he would come into the sanctuary, and he would sit down with a straight back, and he would pray reverently and quietly, as would his students. They would do every prayer, with every word, until the end. The other rabbi, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, was charismatic and emotional. He didn’t believe in doing things because you should do them one particular way, he believed in following his heart wherever it led him. He sang loudly sometimes, and quietly others; he believed you should move in a service, and you should dance– if you felt it, you should just get up and move and dance around the room. He believed in singing prayers loudly that he felt and maybe skipping some other words. He was all about the emotional experience of the prayer. By the way, when he came into a sanctuary he didn’t sit in one spot. He would start over here, move over there, he would dance over there, he would clap, he would sing– it was a lot of motion and movement all the time. Now, Rabbi Yitzchak of Berditchev had one dream, and that is he wanted to share a Shabbat with Rav Baruch of Medzhybizh. So he sent him a message and said, “Hi, I’d really love to have Shabbos with you.” And Rav Baruch writes back, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’s just not going to work. There’s no universe in which you come to my shul, my house…It’s just not going to be pretty, no thank you, let’s get together another time but not for Shabbos.” But Rabbi Yitzchak was not to be deterred.

A consequential week, in America and in Israel. How can Torah help us become better versions of ourselves? How can Torah help us become better citizens here and better lovers and supporters of Israel? This week we begin the Abraham story. Why Abraham? Why did God pick him? We know that God picked him, but we have no idea as to why. In his essay A Palace in Flames, the late Rabbi Jonathan Sacks offers three explanations based on three different midrashic traditions. One, Abraham was an iconoclast. He fought against existing thinking. His friends, family and neighbors worshipped idols. He smashed idols. They are undeserving of our praise. He had the courage to stand alone. Two, Abraham was a philosopher. He thought deeply and clearly about reality. With his powers of rational thought he understood that idols did not create the world. Three, Abraham was an activist. He saw a world on fire, a world struggling with evil, and he was determined to be a force for justice and righteousness. He knew that God needed help, and so he answered with his trademark Hineni, I am here. Today we examine each of these three midrashic traditions with this lens: what does this midrashic tradition teach us now? Is one of these moves most urgently needed now? How would we translate Abraham energy—as an iconoclast, a philosopher, or an activist—into our world?

On the morning of Kol Nidrei—Friday, October 11 to be exact—my colleagues and I were doing a Kabbalat Shabbat service with our youngest learners, our preschool children who range in age from 15 months to 5 years old.  Yom Kippur was in the air. Kol Nidrei with all its solemnity, was in 9 hours.  How to convey Kol Nidrei intensity to our youngest learners? So I asked them: what is your favorite Jewish holiday?  One hand after another shot up.  The first young child answered:  Halloween!  The second learner spoke up: Halloween! And so it would go.  Surprisingly, not a single child said Yom Kippur was their favorite Jewish holiday.  No three-year-old said I just love Unetaneh Tokef.  The clear choice for favorite Jewish holiday of our youngest learners is Halloween. I have been thinking about their response, and while of course Halloween is not a Jewish holiday, in a deep way, they are right.  Holidays are supposed to be joyful. What is more joyful than Halloween the way we practice it today?  It’s about parents and children planning out costumes, walking the streets together in search of candy bars, and dividing the spoils at the end of the night. It’s about neighborhood and community.  It’s about creativity.  So many families really do up Halloween with intricate gothic scenes.  It’s about fun. And of course it is about Heath Bars, Butterfingers, Snickers Bars, Kit Kats. All good stuff. Maybe our youngest learners are on to something. There is only one problem.  The Halloween so many of us observe, sweet neighbors giving sweet children sweets,  works great for children.  But in the real world adults face complexity.  Joy does not come so easily for us.

The biblical character Lot presents a unique challenge. He appears in three portions, Noach this week, Lekh L’kha next week, and Va-yera two weeks from now. He is a supporting actor in multiple chapters in Genesis: chapters 11, 12, 13, 14, and 19. And yet no one ever talks about him. We don’t mine his story. We avoid him. There is good reason why we stay away from Lot. The end of his story is gross, in fact doubly gross. Incomprehensibly, he offers his two virgin daughters to the rapists of Sodom in a bizarre attempt to protect the visitor/angels from being raped. After God destroys Sodom, and Lot and his daughters escape to a cave, those daughters get him drunk, sleep with him, get pregnant, and thereby create the nations of the Moabites and Ammonites. Yuck. The cringe factor of these two concluding Lot stories explains why we never talk about Lot. But Lot has a lot to teach us. What do we learn from the early and middle parts of his story that can help explain its unspeakable end? Lot’s story is a cautionary tale. What are its lessons? To answer these questions, we will consult an evocative and wise passage from Rambam's Mishneh Torah, Hilkhot De'ah, 6:1-2.

The question always is, what’s next? And the answer is, let’s be together. What’s next? This is a question that weighs on me in every facet of my life. My son Avishai, who many of you know well after his many years at Hebrew school here and around at services, for a long time would have the same question for us when we first woke up. “What’s for dinner?” And, truthfully, we hardly ever knew. It’s hard enough to keep of track of who is getting who to where they need to be when. So the thought of what any combination of us will be eating, 12 hours later, is impossibly daunting. Despite our best efforts to have a routine for the five of us, we find ourselves taking it one day at a time, one hour at a time, one moment at a time. My phone is constantly reminding me, what’s next. Meetings, appointments, commitments - I feel very busy. And when I speak to my friends in my age group and demographic, they also project as being very busy. We sometimes wear busy-ness as a badge of honor, proof that we are worthy of the blessings of life that we have been bestowed. And more often we use busy-ness as a shield, an excuse, for why we haven’t lived up to other commitments or why we haven’t stayed in touch. “You know, the start of school is so busy, and then it’s so busy right before the holidays, then it’s really busy during the holidays, then it’s really busy right after the holidays then it’s really busy before break,” and so on. What’s next? I find that my contemporaries, and I would surmise, anecdotally, all people ever, are always keeping busy with the next thing. Asking, what’s next?

How are we to understand the death of the leader of Hamas, and the mastermind and architect of October 7, Yahya Sinwar? Does his death mean that an end to the war, and the beginning of the day after, is closer? Or should Israel’s military continue the fight? What will Sinwar’s death mean for our hostages? These questions are hugely important and above my pay grade. Our question this morning is how do Jewish values help us interpret this moment?

When I was growing up, we spent a lot of time with my Grandpa Gene feeding the geese. My Mom kept a 50 lb. bag of birdseed in the car, and, even when Sir Grandfather, as he liked to be called, was not feeling well, we would drive to the pond, and he would sit and watch from the front seat as we tossed out birdseed to grateful honks. My grandfather also had this superpower. He could spot any flock of birds in the sky and would just know exactly the number of birds in an instant. He would look up and say 39 or 17 or 22 and we would start counting and a minute later, we would confirm his internal knowing. I loved my grandfather, and I loved the time we spent together, but I did not love birds. My mom and sister spent hours learning the different names and calls and colorings of all the local birds, but not me. I did not want to learn more. If someone would say to me, “wow, that’s a beautiful bird—do you know what kind it is?” I would always say definitively, “yes, that’s a mongor.” If they really didn’t know, then I seemed smart, and we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation. And if they did know, well then, they would laugh, and then we could move on to more interesting topics of conversation. When Eder was born, we named him after my Grandpa Gene. It’s funny, whenever I meet with soon-to-be parents and they want to talk about how to name their children, I always tell them that when you give your child the name of an ancestor, it’s more than a name. I share that according to Jewish tradition, each one of us accrues blessings in our lifetime that live far longer than we do. When you name a child after someone you love, it’s like giving them a spiritual trust fund. They get all the mitzvah points that their ancestor accrued during their lifetime, and they also earn their own mitzvah points with a great interest rate. I believed in this Torah, but I didn’t fully get it. In my mind, by naming Eder after my grandfather, I was trying to create a link so that my grandpa could be connected to this little one even though they would never meet in real life. I wanted to create opportunities to talk about my grandfather and the qualities I hope Eder will emulate when he’s older. I never could have predicted what has actually happened. Eder is 17 months old. He is just starting to express himself and to share his preferences. What does he love more than almost anything in the world? Birds.

One quiet Shabbat morning in August, a long-time member comes in and says, Rabbi, I turn 93 today.  Can I have an Aliyah?  I said of course. We’d love to give you an Aliyah.   Just want you to know one thing. You are a youngster. A youngster?  I’m turning 93 today.  How is that a youngster? I pointed in the direction of a woman who was sitting with her children, grandchildren and extended mishpacha.  I said we are doing an Aliyah today for that woman surrounded by her family because she just turned 103. Without skipping a beat, he says:  Is she single? That’s what I want to talk about today.   The good stuff.  The lightness, the laughter, the loveliness, that have been so hard to come by this past year.  There has obviously been a deep heaviness all year.  And we are not done with that heaviness.   The wars are ongoing. Our worry is ongoing.  The heartbreak caused by Helene and Milton is ongoing.  And yet, we are not wired to live in heaviness indefinitely.  We cannot live in heaviness indefinitely. We crave hope. We crave uplift. Even now.  Especially now.   And so I want to talk about finding hope, but with a particular angle.  How do we find hope when it sometimes feels like hope is gone?  What can I do, what can you do, what can we each do to make our world a more hopeful world? 

Rabbi David Wolpe tells a classic story of speaking to a group of American Jews  in Tulsa, Oklahoma at their JCC about God.  He was trying to make the case that God loves them.  But he could see that his words were not resonating.  Being the seasoned speaker that he is, he decided to take a bit of a gamble.  He stopped his prepared remarks and said:  If you think God loves you, please rise.  In the entire large amphitheater which sat hundreds of people, exactly one person stood up.  So Rabbi Wolpe tried again.  If you think God loves you, please stand up.  Nobody else got up.  Just the one man standing.  At last Rabbi Wolpe turned to that man and said, Sir, you believe that God loves you? I do indeed, he said.  What is your name?  Oral Roberts. Oral Roberts was a Christian televangelist.  He was the only one in the Jewish Community Center that believed that God loves us. That lack of ease with God is built into our very name: Israel, the one who struggles with God.  This story happened years before October 7.  If it were hard for Jews to connect with a loving God before October 7, how much harder is it for us to believe in God’s love after October 7.  As we approach the one-year anniversary of October 7, is there any God we can believe in?

As the horrors of October 7th were unfolding, a common reaction was “ein milim,” no words. But it is not surprising that Hebrew poetry soon appeared that gave expression to the nation’s raw feelings and emotions. Our teacher Rachel Korazim, our member Michael Bohnen and Heather Silverman of California have recently published a moving anthology of those poems which they have translated to English. Their book, Shiva: Poems of October 7, is available on Amazon, and all royalties go to the Israel Trauma Coalition for their work with victims of that terrible day and its aftermath. This Shabbat morning, October 5, Michael leads us in a discussion of a selection of those poems. They cover a wide range of reactions to tragedy, including poems about: • A voice mail message left on October 7 • A depiction of terror • Challenging God • Praying for the return of a child taken hostage • Answering a child’s questions about death • A soldier emotionally impacted by his service returns home • A now sad poem of hope by Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s mom View the poems HERE But we think you would find the whole anthology a meaningful way to commemorate October 7 and support the work of the Israel Trauma Coalition. See: https://a.co/d/5RoITJ8 A short, recorded introduction to each of the poems in the book is available HERE. “These pages take unimaginable pain and transmute them to art. The poems are powerful, important and remind us of the of the rawness and the resilience that poetry brings to our lives.” - Rabbi David Wolpe, Emeritus, Sinai Temple

Years ago, I was talking with our preschool learners, 3- and 4-year-olds, about God. Not sure what I was thinking that day. I was a young rabbi, fresh out of the Seminary. So I turned to very young learners and asked: have you ever seen God? As you might predict, it did not go well. There was a long, awkward silence. Nobody raised their hand. Nobody said a word. I did not know how to get out of this jam. And then mercifully one child at last, sheepishly, raised her hand. I have seen God, she said. You did? You saw God? When did you see God? I saw God at Logan Airport when we came back from vacation. Logan Airport? Where at Logan Airport? In the bathroom. In the bathroom? How did you see God in the bathroom? I was on the potty. When I got up from the potty, God flushed my toilet. How do we see what we see? How do we know what we know? In his new book How to Know a Person, David Brooks offers the following thought experiment. Imagine that you are in a bedroom with your eyes closed. You are instructed to open your eyes and describe what you see. There is a chair, a bed, a desk, a window, a painting. If there were, say, ten people asked to describe the contents of this bedroom, would we expect that we would get a broadly consistent picture? After all, aren’t the people in this thought experiment just capturing objective reality? A chair is a chair. A window is a window. But different people see differently. Different people see different things. The designer in the bedroom notes the interior decorating. The security specialist notes the window and the areas of vulnerability. The artist is focused on the painting. The personal trainer on whether there is an area in the bedroom for planks, burpees and pushups. We don’t only see with our eyes. We see with our whole soul. This is our issue now. Whether it is the hard news of the day, or events in our own families, we may look at the same thing, but we see different things based upon our different experiences, beliefs and values.