Who’s to blame?

“These are the words that Moshe addressed to all Israel on the other side of the Jordan…” (Deuteronomy 1:1)

The book of Deuteronomy is in large part a retelling of everything that happened during the forty years of wandering in the wilderness. It’s Moshe’s farewell speech. Before they cross the river into the Land of Promise, he reminds them where they’ve been and what they’ve done.

And notably, in Moshe’s retelling, everything becomes the Israelites’ fault. Even God’s decision that Moshe will not enter the Land of Promise. Remember that the first time we read that story, God said that because Moshe struck the rock instead of speaking to it gently, he would not enter the Land. God didn’t say anything about blaming it on the children of Israel — but that’s how Moshe retells it.

Now, we could have a whole conversation about what the striking-the-rock thing means, and whether it’s fair, and how we understand it. But what really jumps out at me this year is how, in the retelling, Moshe blames his situation on the Israelites for being quarrelsome and for having insufficient faith in God. He places all the blame on someone else.

This Shabbat — the one right before Tisha b’Av, our communal day of mourning — is called Shabbat Hazon, the Shabbat of Vision. It invites us to turn our vision inward. To notice how we retell the stories of our lives, and where we elide responsibility. It’s a very human thing to do. It’s normal. Even Moshe does it, in this week’s parsha. And… it’s a pattern we need to break.

Where do we fall into the trap of blaming others? Do we look at our body politic and blame those who voted for the “other side,” or those who didn’t vote at all? Or closer to home: where our family systems might have some dysfunction, do we blame it on the other members of the family without looking at how our own actions contribute to recurring patterns?

That’s normal. It’s human. And I believe that authentic spiritual life asks us to do better. It asks us to take responsibility.

Rabbi Alan Lew z”l teaches that the journey of teshuvah — of repentance and return — begins with the low point of Tisha b’Av. Then the updraft of this spiritual work carries us through the Days of Awe and into who we’ll be in the year to come. He teaches that every year the seasonal calendar calls us to face our unconscious patterns and the recurring issue in our lives.

On Tisha b’Av we remember the fall of the Temples. Rabbi Lew points out that in a historical sense, the Temples fell because of massive military might — first Babylon, then Rome. But our spiritual tradition ignores that.

Our spiritual tradition teaches that the first Temple fell because of idolatry, sexual immorality (which I understand as unethical boundary-crossing), and bloodshed, and the second Temple fell because of sinat chinam, baseless hatred. These teachings ask us to take responsibility for our part in what happens to us. It asks us to take responsibility for what happens to our community.

I have a lot of empathy for Moses. He’s been leading the children of Israel through the wilderness for forty years, and they’ve often been ungrateful and quarrelsome and afraid. I have empathy… and I wonder what would have happened if he’d retold their story in a way that recognized the community’s struggles and took responsibility for his part in their imperfect situation. If instead of saying, “I don’t take responsibility at all,” he’d emphasized that we’re all responsible for how our community functions, how might Torah’s story have been different?

And what happens if we tell our story that way? If we tell the story of our community — our shul, our county, our nation, our world — with the assumption that we all take responsibility? Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel z”l taught that “one must feel for the suffering of human beings, that indifference to evil is worse than evil itself, that in a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.”

May this Shabbat Hazon move us to see our responsibility for each other, and with that vision, to build a better world.

 

This is the d’varling Rabbi Rachel offered at Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat services (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

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Wake up: change is coming

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promise

“…If a man makes a vow to God or takes an oath imposing an obligation on himself, he shall not break his pledge; he must carry out all that has crossed his lips…” (Numbers 30:3)

It’s like clockwork: every year we reach these verses at the start of Matot-Masei precisely as my high holiday preparations kick into high gear. It’s July. It’s summer. I want to be in the moment, not nine weeks from now. Because you know what’s exactly nine weeks from now? Rosh Hashanah.

And every year I spend all winter craving summer’s long light and vibrant blooms and exquisite produce and gentle warmth. I don’t want to rush ahead to the holidays or to fall or to school. And wow, that feels especially true during this pandemic year.

And yet.

And yet here comes Torah reminding me about vows and oaths and forgiveness. Whether or not I want to hit pause on time, the holidays are on their way. Whether or not I feel ready, the season of inner work is coming.

A vow: Rashi writes, “This is when one says, Behold, I take upon myself an obligation which is as sacred to me as an offering.” A vow is a commitment.

What vows do I make to the people in my life; to my family; to my loved ones; to my communities? What promises have I made to the community where I live and pray and celebrate and mourn? What commitments have I made to my nation, to the ideals of America, to liberty and justice for all?

What vows have I made, and am I living up to them?

Our Torah verses today distinguish between the vows made by a man, which automatically stand, and the vows made by a woman, which could be undone if her father or husband said so. Obviously that doesn’t sit well with us today. Here’s how I’ve come to understand those verses: when Torah says “woman” here, what it means is “someone who for one reason or another isn’t master of their own fate.”

It’s as if my ten year old promised a friend something that wasn’t his to promise — “I’ll have a Zoom playdate with you at 11pm!” I would need to gently tell him, kiddo, you can’t have playdates at 11pm, you have to be in bed then. And if he said, “But I promised!” I would have to tell him, “That wasn’t your decision to make.”

I don’t love the fact that in antiquity, women had as little control over their circumstance as does my child now. And, that’s what it was. Today, if one partner exercised that kind of control over another, we would call that coercive and unhealthy.

Setting the gender piece aside: if a person makes a vow to God, or takes on an obligation, then we’re supposed to live up to it. Sounds simple, right?

In just over ten weeks we’ll stand together at Yom Kippur and take a good long look at ourselves and our souls and our choices. Are we living up to our promises? Because if not, now is the time to try to do better. Not just so we can stand before God on Yom Kippur with an easy heart… but because living up to our commitments and our values is what Judaism asks of us.

What promises have we made to each other, to our communities, to God? And are we living up to them? And if not, can we start now?

Because nine weeks from tomorrow I’ll be singing the words from Mary Oliver that we always hear on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, from her poem about the goldfinches: “Believe us, it is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world.”

It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in the broken world. May the promises we make — and the promises we keep! — help to bring about repair, speedily and soon. Shabbat shalom.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI’s Zoom Shabbat morning services (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

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Wholeness, justice, and peace

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A d’varling for Pride Shabbat and Shabbat Korach.

In this week’s Torah portion, Korach, there’s a rebellion. Korach stands up against Moses and demands power. He cloaks his demand in words that sound nice — aren’t all God’s people holy? — but it becomes clear that he doesn’t want to democratize spiritual power, he wants to claim it for himself and his sons. So, the earth opens up and swallows Korach and his followers.

Korach insists he deserves to be in leadership, but he really wants power. He doesn’t want to be a public servant, he wants to be a bigshot. Torah offers us this fantasy: what if the earth swallowed the power-hungry? Imagine what a world we could build if all of the Korachs just disappeared! We can’t rely on that. But maybe it can help us envision what ethical leadership really is.

God instructs Moses to take a staff from the leader of each of the 12 tribes and put them all in the Tent of Meeting overnight. In the morning, Aaron’s almond-wood walking stick has flowered and borne fruit. With that, the rebellion is truly over. Everyone can see who God has chosen to be in spiritual service to God and to the community. The question for me is: why Aaron?

Pirkei Avot 1:12 says, “Be like the students of Aaron: loving peace and pursuing it.” During homeschooling earlier this year, my son and I read some Pirkei Avot together. I asked him what he thinks the difference between those two things might be. “You can love something, but not do anything to make more of it,” he said. “Pursuing it means running after it, trying to make it happen.”

Tradition holds that Aaron pursued shalom (peace) and shleimut (wholeness). That’s why his staff was blessed to flower: because he actively pursued shalom. But what is peace, really? It can sound kind of wishy-washy. It can sound like a band-aid we put over community divisions and injustices in order to ignore them. That’s a false peace, a spiritual-bypassing peace.

Shalom and shleimut don’t mean the absence of war, and they don’t mean that false peace, the band-aid that papers over injustice. They mean integrity, living in alignment with what’s right. In Rabbi Brad Artson’s words: “Shleimut, wholeness, means offering to the world the fullness of who you are at your best: your beauty as you are, your greatness as you are.”

Reading those words this week, I was struck by how right they feel for Pride Shabbat. Coming out likewise means offering to the world the fullness of who one is. And as Rabbi Artson continues, shleimut also means inviting others to live out their truest selves too. When we stand in our truth and let our authentic selves shine, we give others permission to do likewise.

Aaron pursued peace. That verb also appears in the verse, “Justice, justice shall you pursue.” As my kid reminds me, pursuing means taking action. When we act for justice, we lay the groundwork for peace. Today’s protestors say “No justice, no peace.” I’ve also seen signs that say, “Know justice, know peace.” When we know justice inside and out, then we’ll know shleimut.

Justice means equal rights for everyone: for people of every gender expression and sexual orientation, people of every race and ethnicity. Justice means safe access to healthcare for everyone: including queer and trans people and people of color. Justice means equal treatment under the law for everyone: for queer and trans people, and for people of color, and for all of us.

Justice means fundamental human rights and dignity for everyone, because we’re all created in the image of God. These are core Jewish values. Our world doesn’t quite live up to them yet. We still have a lot of work to do before everyone can safely know shleimut, the wholeness that comes from offering the world the fullness of who we are. That work is our calling as Jews.

Korach said we’re all holy, but he really meant: I want more power for me and those who are like me. We can be better than that. We can build better than that. And when we do, then we won’t need to fantasize anymore about the earth swallowing the power-hungry. And then structures that had seemed wooden and lifeless will flower and bear fruit. As Judy Chicago wrote in 1979:

And then all that has divided us will merge
And then compassion will be wedded to power
And then softness will come to a world that is harsh and unkind

And then both men and women will be gentle
And then both women and men will be strong
And then no person will be subject to another’s will

And then all will be rich and free and varied
And then the greed of some will give way to the needs of many

And then all will share equally in the Earth’s abundance

And then all will care for the sick and the weak and the old

And then all will nourish the young
And then all will cherish life’s creatures

And then everywhere will be called Eden once again.

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Zoom Kabbalat Shabbat services on Friday night (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

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In the cloud

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cloud“When the cloud lifted, they would break camp…” (Numbers 9:21)

This week’s Torah portion, B’ha’a’lotkha, describes, again, how the children of Israel would stay put when the cloud of God lingered over their encampment, and when the cloud lifted they would break camp and resume their journeys. Wait, didn’t we read this back in March? (Indeed we did: the end of the book of Exodus contains strikingly similar language.)

This repeated motif — the cloud, the journey, the waiting — gives a sense of timeless time. (A bit like what many of us have been feeling in recent months, unmoored from regular schedules.) When the cloud is here, we’re fogged-in. Is it March, or is it June? Is it then, or is it now? When will we be able to start moving again? How long are we going to be waiting like this?

Am I talking about the Israelites on their journey, or about us in the midst of turmoil and pandemic?

The image of the cloud makes me think of “the cloud of unknowing.” (That’s the title of an anonymous work of Christian mysticism, written in the fourteenth century.) The author of the Cloud of Unknowing argues that the way to know God is to give up on trying to understand. It’s in surrender to not-knowing that we meet the Infinite.

In our moment, we need to surrender to a lot of not-knowing. We don’t know when the pandemic will be over. Whether we were exposed to the virus on that most recent trip to the grocery store. Whether the Black Lives Matter protests will result in the kind of sustained, systemic change that our nation so sorely needs. There’s so much that we don’t know.

The haftarah portion assigned to this week is also assigned to Shabbat Chanukah, probably because this week’s Torah portion speaks of the golden menorah that stood in the mishkan. It’s from the book of Zechariah. And here’s its most famous line. In Debbie Friedman’s singable translation, it’s “Not by might, and not by power, but by Spirit alone shall we all live in peace!”

Not by might, and not by power. That feels like a message for our times, both on a macro scale and on a personal one. How do we reach wholeness and peace? Not by grasping for control or imagining that we’re in charge. Not with military might in any of its forms. Not by pretending the pandemic away or pretending systemic racism away. Not with platitudes or false certainty.

The path to shalom and shleimut, wholeness and peace, is through spirit. And this week’s Torah portion offers a road map. We get there by recognizing that all of life is spiritual life — both the times of waiting and the times of action. Times when the cloud is low over the camp and we have to shelter-in-place, and times when the cloud lifts and we can be on the move.

We get to wholeness and peace both by pursuing justice with all that we are, and by surrendering to everything we can’t know about how we’re going to get there from here. It’s not an either/or: it’s a both/and. If we wait until we feel fully ready we might never act at all, and, if we imagine we know all the answers we’re guaranteed to be wrong. We need humility and chutzpah.

“Not by might and not by power, but by spirit.” The Hebrew word for “spirit” here, ruach, can also be translated as breath. I find a message in that for our current moment too. We reach wholeness not through pursuing power, but through ensuring that everyone can breathe freely. When all of God’s children can breathe, that’s wholeness and peace.

Eric Garner’s last words were “I can’t breathe.” George Floyd’s last words were “I can’t breathe.” Racism, like coronavirus, steals the breath. Just this morning we sang nishmat kol chai — “Breath of Life, the breath of all that lives praises Your name.” We name God as the Breath of Life. When a human breath is diminished, it’s as though God were diminished.

We don’t know when the cloud will lift — when justice will roll like thunder and righteousness like a mighty stream. (Amos 5:24) We don’t know when the cloud will lift — when the pandemic will end and it will be safe to return to the world again. We only know that right now, we’re in the cloud. It’s hard to see how we get there from here. But that doesn’t exempt us from trying.

Our task is to protect ourselves and each other during these pandemic times. To end racism in all its forms. To cultivate the chutzpah of believing we can make the world a better place alongside the humility of knowing that we don’t have all the answers. When the cloud lifts, we move forward. When the cloud doesn’t lift, we do what we can to build justice right here where we are.

This is the d’varling that R’ Rachel offered at CBI’s Zoom services this Shabbat (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi).

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God, and community, in the space between

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The Israelites shall camp each with his standard, under the banners of their ancestral house; they shall camp around the Tent of Meeting at a distance. (Numbers 2:2)

Tn this week’s Torah portion, Bamidbar, we read how the twelve tribes would encamp around the mishkan (the dwelling place for God) and the ohel moed (the tent of meeting). Each tent was at an appropriate distance from every other. In normal years, I’ve resonated with the idea that the tents were arranged at a distance to give each household appropriate privacy.

(That comes from Talmud, which explicates “Mah tovu ohalecha Ya’akov,” “how good are your tents, O [house of] Jacob,” to say that our tents were positioned so that no household was peeking in on any other. What was “good” about our community was healthy boundaries.)

This year, of course, the idea of camping at a distance from each other evokes the physical distancing and sheltering-in-place that we’ve all been doing for the past few months of the covid-19 pandemic.

Sometimes distance is necessary for protection and safety. Like our tents in the wilderness positioned just so. Like the physical distance between us now, each of us in our own home, coming together in these little boxes on this video screen.

But notice this too: our spiritual ancestors set up their physically-distanced tents around the mishkan and the ohel moed, the dwelling-place for God and the tent of meeting. The place of encounter with holiness, and the place of encounter with community.

Here we are, each in her own tent. This week’s Torah portion reminds us that our tents need to be oriented so that we all have access to the Divine Presence — and so that we all remember we’re part of a community.

When the Temple was distroyed by Rome almost two thousand years ago, our sages taught that we needed to replace the Beit HaMikdash — the House of Holiness, the place where God’s presence was understood to dwell — with a mikdash me’aht, the tiny sanctuary of the Shabbes table.

When we bless bread and wine at our Shabbat table, we make that table into an altar, a place of connection with God. That feels even more true to me now, as I join this Zoom call from my Shabbes table! In this pandemic moment, our home tables become altars: places where we encounter God and constitute community even more than before.

“Let them make Me a sanctuary that I might dwell among them,” God says. Or — in my favorite translation — “that I might dwell within them.” We make a mishkan so that God can dwell within us.

That feels even more true to me now too… as our beautiful synagogue building waits patiently for the time when it will be safe for us to gather together in person again. Until then, we need to learn to find — or make — holiness in where we are. We need to learn to find — or make — community even though we’re apart.

Our distance from each other protects us. And maybe more importantly, it protects those who are most vulnerable in our community: the elderly, the immunocompromised, those with preexisting conditions who are especially at-risk in this pandemic time. Pikuach nefesh, saving a life, is the paramount Jewish value. For the sake of saving a life we are instructed to do anything necessary, even to break Shabbat.

Being apart is painful and hard and it is one hundred percent the right thing to do — and the Jewish thing to do.

So we’re at a distance. So were our ancestors, as this week’s Torah portion reminds us. Our task is to make sure that our tents are positioned so that there’s space for God, and space for our community connections. So that God and community are the holy place in the middle. The place toward which all of our tents are oriented, toward which all of our hearts are oriented. Even, or especially, when we need to be apart.

Shabbat shalom.

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services over Zoom this week. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

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A message from Rabbi Rachel before Shabbat

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Here’s a video message for the CBI community from Rabbi Rachel. If you prefer to read it rather than viewing it, the text is enclosed below.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AsoGsAcRq4]

 

(And if you can’t see the embedded video you can go directly to it: In the Wilderness.)

Hello friends.

As Shabbat approaches, we’re finishing week eight of shelter-in-place and social distancing.

Many of you have described to me a sense of being unmoored in time. Normal life stopped in March. Kids don’t go to school anymore. One day blurs into the next. Has it been two weeks since this started, or two years? It feels like both.

I keep thinking about the Torah story we’re reading right now — about our spiritual ancestors wandering in the wilderness. They might have thought when they left Egypt that their journey would be quick. It wasn’t.

Even in my worst moments I know this pandemic won’t last 40 years! But it might feel that way sometimes. And a journey always seems longer when we don’t know how long it will take.

This year I empathize with our ancestors in a way I never did before. Everything about this is hard. Maybe especially wondering whether these hardships are worth it, and not knowing how long this will last.

In our Torah story, our ancestors displayed almost every emotion there is. Sometimes they railed against God and against their leaders. Sometimes they were accepting. Sometimes they were grateful for manna. Sometimes they complained because they didn’t have meat. We too may be emotionally all over the map. That’s normal.

And I’ll bet our ancestors felt unmoored in time, just like we do. The only marker of time they had was the double portion of manna that fell on Friday, enough to sustain them on Shabbat.

Here’s how I’m trying to tether myself in time. I try to bookend each day with a moment of mindfulness — to wake with modah ani, the morning prayer for gratitude, and go to sleep with the bedtime shema. Counting the Omer helps, when I remember to do it.

Baking challah on Fridays helps. Friday morning meditation, now in the CBI zoom room instead of the CBI sanctuary, helps. Shabbat services, ditto. I try to take Shabbat as a day away from the news — to give my soul time to heal, and to make Shabbat different from other days.

I try to notice as spring green return to the trees, as the moon waxes and wanes. These remind me that the cycles of the natural world continue.

And I’m trying to stop speculating about how long the journey will be. We can’t know. But like our ancestors, we’re not alone. Even if we can’t be together “in person,” we can be together on Zoom or Facetime or over the phone. We can be together in spirit.

Tonight as the sun goes down, I’ll kindle two little lights. As sundown sweeps across the globe, I imagine a wave of tiny lights appearing in response. In my home and your home. All around the world. Whether or not we have candles, we can kindle that light in hearts.

May that light shine brightly and bring us comfort for the journey ahead — however long the journey may be. Shabbat shalom.

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After the deaths, holiness

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Tombstones-graves-cemeteries

This week we’re reading Acharei Mot-Kedoshim. Acharei mot means after the deaths. After the deaths of Aaron’s two sons, we read, vayidom Aharon: and Aaron was silent. That’s resonating with me in a new way this year.

After the deaths that covid-19 has wrought in our county, our nation, our world — after reading the accounts of ICU nurses and ER doctors in New York — after facing the inconceivable suffering in this moment — I understand Aaron’s silence anew.

Sometimes there are no words. Sometimes nothing we can say makes anything better, and our words of hope for the future ring hollow or feel like bypassing. All we can do is sit with our grief, or sit with our fellow human beings in their grief.

Our double Torah portion this week takes its name from the two parshiyot that make it up, Acharei Mot and Kedoshim. Acharei mot: after the death. Kedoshim: God tells Moses to tell us, Kedoshim tihiyu: y’all shall be holy, for I your God am holy.

This year, the name of the double portion reads to me like a sentence, or maybe like a promise. Acharei mot, kedoshim. After the deaths, y’all can be holy. Because deaths are always part of reality, and we have a choice in how we respond to them.

When it comes to the horrors of covid-19, we can respond with nihilism: deciding that suffering is inevitable, so we might as well do whatever we want. People are going to die no matter what, so it’s every person for themselves, right?

Or we can respond with care and compassion: taking care of our fellow human beings in the ways we are able. I think you can guess which one of those two options I think is ethical and correct. But don’t take my word for it. Take the Torah’s word.

Our Torah portion gives us specifics: Care for our elders. Keep Shabbat. When we harvest the earth’s abundance, leave some for the poor. Care for the widow, the orphan, and the stranger in our midst. Don’t keep a laborer’s wages until morning.

Here’s another way to put that:

Preserve the life and safety of our elders, and make their needs a priority. Give them the resources they need to stay healthy. Wear masks and shelter in place to protect their immune systems from being ravaged by covid19.

Remember that human lives are more important than productivity. That means life matters more than the economy. If someone doesn’t have enough to live on in this pandemic moment, we can help them. If someone has died, we can’t bring them back.

Make sure everyone has enough to eat: that means give to our local food pantries, if we can, and it also means ensure the safety of those who work in the fields and the meat packing plants. Don’t force them to work in unsanitary and unsafe conditions.

Care for all who are vulnerable to abuse. Torah speaks often in the language of “the widow, the orphan, and the stranger who lives among you.” Today that might be immigrants, refugees, people of color, queer and trans people. Those most at-risk.

Don’t exploit those who labor for others. Protect and uplift them and give them the resources they need to be safe and healthy and fed. In a nutshell, protect and uplift life. That’s what it means for the members of a community to be kedoshim.

Kedoshim is a plural word.  As a community, it’s our job to respond to death with compassion. As a community, it’s our job to respond to death by taking care of the vulnerable. As a community, it’s our job to live out Jewish values — to be holy.

Acharei mot: kedoshim. After these deaths, in response to these deaths, in response to the world’s suffering today, it’s our calling to be a holy community. To respond by caring for those in need and making choices that uplift life.

Kein yehi ratzon — may it be so.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel shared at Shabbat morning services via Zoom this week. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

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A Video Message from Rabbi Rachel

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-ZFNaIsiSY]

This short video begins with a check-in for the CBI community, and then moves to a teaching from the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto for this week’s parsha that feels especially meaningful to me this year. There’s a transcript below the video if you’d rather read it than watch it. Thinking of you all. – Rabbi Rachel

 

Shavua tov, friends: a good week to you. I hope that your Shabbat was restorative. As we enter into week six of sheltering-in-place and social distancing, I wanted to check in. How are you holding up?

I miss you. All of you. It’s been a joy to see some of you via Zoom at my drop-in office hours on Mondays, at the Psalm-writing class I’ve been teaching on Fridays, at Friday morning meditation and at Shabbat services. I look forward to continuing to see you on Zoom, or hearing your voices by phone, or receiving your emails and texts, since right now those are the modalities available to us.

Here’s a funny thing that I’m starting to think maybe isn’t a coincidence. At the start of the new Jewish year, back in October, both of my hevruta partners / learning buddies — Rabbi Megan Doherty, who’s the Jewish chaplain at Oberlin, and my colleagues on the board of Bayit: Building Jewish — felt called to study a rabbi known as the Piazeczyner, also known as R’ Kalman Kalonymus Shapiro, also known as the Aish Kodesh, also known as the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto.

The Piazeczyner was writing from the Warsaw Ghetto. In a time of profound fear and anxiety, deprivation and illness. And yet he found ways to cultivate hope, even in those terrible times.

This week’s Torah portion is Tazria-Metzora, which offers teachings about how to handle a particular kind of sickness that was observable both in people, and in their dwellings. Both human beings, and their homes, could become “contagious” and needed to be quarantined for a time.

Whoa, that resonates in a whole new way this year.

The scholar Rashi, who lived around the year 1000, says this teaching is really about treasure hidden in the walls of the houses of the Emorites, whom our ancient ancestors conquered when we moved into the promised land. The houses would be marked as having tzara’at, and then they would be demolished, and we would find treasure in them.

The Piazeczyner asks: if the point is that there’s treasure in the walls, why wait seven days? Why not just knock them down? His answer is this: because the waiting helps us cultivate faith that good things will come.

Even in a difficult time, he writes — “when there is no school for our children, no synagogue in which to pray in community with a minyan, no mikvah (ritual bath)” — even in a time like that (a time like this!), we need to trust that God can help us turn even the most difficult of circumstances into blessings. We never know, when something difficult is happening, what blessing we might be able to find in it later when we look back on it.

So as we stay quarantined, sheltering in place, socially distancing to protect the vulnerable from the spread of this awful disease: may we follow the advice of the Piazeczyner, and try to cultivate trust that there may be treasure in these difficult days.

Maybe it’s the treasure of knowing that we are protecting each other from illness. Maybe it’s the treasure of coming to recognize what really matters to us — even if what really matters to us is something that right now we can’t have.

May we live to emerge from this narrow place, and may we connect in person again: speedily and soon, with God’s help.

Thinking of you and sending blessings to all.

 

Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi. With special thanks to R’ David Markus for learning this with me on Shabbes. For those who want the original teaching, it’s the Aish Kodesh on M’tzora 1940 / 5700.

 

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In the wilderness

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A d’varling for the end of week five of covid-19 sheltering-in-place.

As we leave Pesach behind we set out into the wilderness, trusting that somehow we’re moving toward Sinai, toward revelation, toward connection. The spiritual practice of counting the Omer is tradition’s way of helping us link Pesach with Shavuot, liberation with revelation, the constriction we’re leaving behind with the expansiveness and covenant we’re heading toward.

This year it may be hard to focus on that count because we are doing another kind of counting: how many days we’ve been quarantined / sheltering-in-place / socially distancing / staying home. How many days and weeks it’s been since life felt “normal.” And how many weeks it might be before we can return to seeing each other again, being with each other again.

The first thing I want to do is give all of us blanket rabbinic permission to “mess up” the Omer count. It’s okay if we forget. It’s okay if we miss a day. It’s okay if we can’t focus on the kabbalistic meanings of the seven qualities we’re called to cultivate. A lot of our brainspace is dedicated right now to the news, the pandemic, what we’re going to eat, who’s sick and who’s well.

That’s normal. And it’s okay. And… that’s exactly the wilderness in which we’re wandering this year — as a people, as a nation, as a planet. Which means we’re right where our core ancestral story says we should be. In the wilderness. Not totally sure where we’re going or how we’re going to get there or what losses we’ll incur along the way. Maybe uncertain. Almost certainly afraid.

The Hebrew word bamidbar, “in the wilderness,” shares a root with the verb l’daber, “to speak.” The wilderness can be a place of fear, a place of not-knowing, a place that feels dangerous. And that’s exactly the place where we hear God’s voice. The place where holiness speaks to us. The revelation at Sinai takes place in a place that no one owns, in the wilderness, in not-knowing.

As I watch the pandemic play out at hospitals around the world, I’ve been thinking a lot about the time I spent as a student chaplain at Albany Medical Center almost 15 years ago. I remember that hospitals are profoundly holy places — not despite our fear and not-knowing, but precisely because of it. When our hearts are cracked open, they also open to connection.

It’s like Jacob said when he woke from the dream of the ladder with angels moving up and down: “God was in this place, and I — I did not know!” God is always in the place where we are, when we are there fully. A crisis like this one can focus us. It can make us really present, which may be uncomfortable. And it can open us to God’s presence, which may be uncomfortable, too.

The whole world is wandering in the wilderness of this pandemic. We don’t know how we’ll get to the other side, or how long it will take, or what losses we’ll incur along the way. We’re not alone in this. We may be alone in our homes, but we’re not existentially alone. We’re all in this together. The spread of the virus reminds us that we’re more connected than we ever knew.

Last Shabbat, in the Torah reading for the Shabbat during Pesach, we heard God say to Moses, “I will go in the lead and will lighten your burden.” That verse is bringing me comfort this week: the idea that God is here with us in the wilderness. God is walking with us. God is keeping us company. And our souls are keeping each other company, too, even when we are alone.

May we feel each others’ presence in this time of separation. May we feel God’s presence in this time of separation. May we hear the voice of holiness speaking to us in this wilderness. May we open ourselves to the voice of love, the voice of justice, the voice of hope. And may we build a world of greater justice and love — for everyone — when we make it to the other side.

 

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services via zoom this week (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

 

 

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Engraved on our hearts

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One artist’s rendering of the stones for Aaron’s shoulders, engraved with the names of the 12 tribes.

In this week’s Torah portion we read about the instructions for making special garments for Aaron, brother of Moses: the first High Priest. We read about blue, purple, and crimson thread; about exquisitely decorated vestments; and about Aaron being declared “Holy to God.” What leapt out at me this year are the two precious stones engraved with the names of all the tribes of Israel. (Ex. 28:9-12) Aaron carried the names of the whole community on his shoulders, or at least, the names of the twelve tribes that together represented the whole community. Because to serve the community means to serve the whole community.

Today we welcome a beautiful little girl into our community. And I can’t wait to find out who she’ll grow up to be. Maybe she’ll want to put on costumes and star in our Purim play. Maybe she’ll sing the Four Questions at the community seder. Maybe she’ll make friends in our Hebrew school. And yet she isn’t just joining this little rural shul, this smalltown community. Because we’re part of something much bigger. We’re connected with Jews around the world, on every continent. And we’re connected with our spiritual ancestors stretching back thousands of years, and hopefully stretching forward at least as long.

To serve the community means to serve the whole community — and to join the community means to join the whole community. I point this out over and over to those who join the Jewish people as adults: they’re not just joining this shul, they’re joining the entire Jewish people! They’re joining Jews of every denomination, Jews of every race and skin color, Jews of every sexual orientation and gender expression. Rationalists and mystics, theists and atheists. Jews who express their Jewishness in so many different ways: through prayer, or poetry, or study, or feeding the hungry, or working for justice, or so much more. 

There hasn’t been a High Priest in thousands of years. But as I sat with this Torah portion this week, here’s what came to me: what if all of us together could make the choice to engrave the names of the whole community — not on our shoulders, but on our hearts? Those names now include the name of the newest member of our community, to whom we are now responsible. It takes a village to raise a kid, and our shul is now part of her village. May we engrave her name, and each others’ names, on our hearts. And in that way, may all of us together be “holy to God,” as Aaron was, so very long ago. Shabbat shalom.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Shabbat morning services (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

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