Whose heart so moves

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Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart so moves him…. And let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them. (Ex. 25:2, 8)

I recently gathered a bunch of paperwork to bring to the person who helps me with my taxes. Maybe you’re doing something similar as spring approaches. Here’s the thing about taxes: they are not optional. They are not “gifts” that we give to the government out of the goodness of our hearts. And we don’t only have to give them if we happen to feel moved to do so.

We may or may not feel moved by the need for roads and hospitals and schools. I mean, I think we should feel moved by those things! But regardless of whether or not our hearts resonate with the need for working traffic lights and decent pavement and safe places to educate kids, we pay taxes to support those things, because that’s how our society works.

But when it came to the building of the mishkan, the dwelling place for God, it wasn’t a matter of taxation. It wasn’t a matter of “dues.” It was a free-will offering from everyone whose heart was so moved. And a few verses later, God says “Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell among them.” Or, in my preferred translation, “that I may dwell within them.”

I see a connection between the freewill nature of the offerings, and the indwelling presence of God within and among us. If a place is built out of dry obligation, or God forbid with coercion, then it’s not a place where holiness can dwell. The way we make a place where God can dwell is by opening our hearts. Not by asking “what have you done for me lately,” but by giving.

Later at the end of the book of Exodus we’ll learn that so many people brought contributions that Moshe had to tell them to stop. But we’re not there yet. This week, we’re at the point in the story where God tells Moshe to tell the children of Israel to bring gifts. And they bring all different kinds of gifts. Materials for building, for weaving, for metalworking…

One of my favorite ways to read Torah is as an inner road map to becoming the people we’re called to be. I believe that these verses aren’t just about “them back then” but also about us now. Which raises the question: what are the gifts we can bring? What skills, what talents, what passions can we bring to the building of this community so that holiness will dwell within us?

Sometimes our presence is a gift — when we show up to pray, to learn, to experience holidays, to celebrate and mourn. Sometimes our skills are a gift — whether needlework or baking, carpentry or grant-writing. Sometimes our time is a gift.  And of course sometimes our money is a gift. “Ein kemach, ein Torah,” the Talmud teaches: without food, there is no Torah.

What matters isn’t how much we give, or in what form. What matters is that we feel moved to give in the first place. Because the more of ourselves we give, the more we receive in return. The more of ourselves we give, the more connected we feel with whatever we’re giving to. And lack of connectedness is one of the most profound sorrows afflicting the world today.

Robert Putnam wrote about it twenty years ago in his groundbreaking book Bowling Alone. He described how Americans have become increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, even from the structures that sustain our democracy. The best antidote to disconnection is to show up and connect. And giving connects us. Especially when we give of ourselves. 

Torah has different names for different kinds of offerings. The word that gives this week’s Torah portion its name is terumah, sometimes translated as a “lifted-apart” offering, or an “uplifting” offering. As Torah describes, those whose hearts lifted up in generosity brought what they could. Or maybe: those who brought what they could, found that their hearts were lifted up.

So that’s my prayer for us today. May our hearts move us to give. May our giving connect us. And may our souls be uplifted on giving’s spiritual updraft. 

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

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Community in our hands

But Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing you are doing is not right; you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone.” (Exodus 18:17-18)

This week’s Torah portion is named after Yitro, father-in-law to Moses. Yitro was not part of the Israelite community. Torah describes him as a “priest of Midian,” an outsider. Maybe that’s why he was able to take one look at what Moshe was doing and say, “Hold up, son, this isn’t going to work.”

Image by Darius Gilmont.

Moshe was working himself to the bone, all day, every day, standing in judgment. He was the sole point of contact between the people and God: their spiritual leader, their judge, their administrator, their magistrate, everything. Yitro knew that wasn’t a sustainable model. His solution was simple: share leadership.

He told Moshe to draw others into leadership and to empower them. This way the burden of caring for the community, and carrying the community, is shared. And it gives others the opportunity to step up and take some responsibility for the community, and in that way, the fabric of community is strengthened.

This is a basic leadership lesson, and it still resonates. The work of building community isn’t the job only of those in leadership — it’s a job that belongs to all of us. The work of building the Jewish future isn’t the job only of those in leadership — it’s work that belongs to all of us.

Not only because “many hands make light work,” though that is true. But because when we step up and take responsibility for building healthy community, the whole community gets stronger… and those who have stepped into holy service don’t burn out, because others are willing to tend to the needs of the whole.

After this advice from Yitro, God tells Moses that the children of Israel are to be “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” (Ex. 19:6) It’s the same theme: holiness isn’t just for priests (or rabbis) or public servants. All of us are supposed to strive to be holy. The whole community is instructed to be holy.

And then after that, the whole community hears the revelation at Sinai. Not just Moshe; not just the judges; not just the men; everyone. All of us are a “nation of priests and a holy people,” and all of us received Torah at Sinai. Torah is our collective birthright, as the community is our collective responsibility.

What will we do this Shabbat to open our hearts to revelation?

And what will we do in the new week to take responsibility for co-creating, and caring for, the holy community we’re called to be?

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

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To Know God

Do we harden our hearts like Pharaoh, or do we let them soften?

This week’s Torah portion (Bo) begins like this:

God said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh. For I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his courtiers, in order that I may display these My signs among them, and that you may recount in the hearing of your children and your children’s children how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and how I displayed My signs among them, in order that you may know that I am God.” (Exodus 10:1)

I like the interpretation that Pharaoh hardened his own heart first, which means God just helped him along — the spiritual equivalent of, “if you keep making that face, you’ll get stuck that way.” I can understand that as a spiritual teaching about how the choices we make about compassion (or lack thereof) shape who we are and who we become.

But this idea that God “made a mockery of the Egyptians” so that we would know God — it’s troubling, to say the least. It seems to treat the Egyptians as meaningless pawns in our journey of spiritual awakening. How can we redeem this verse?

Talking this over with one of my hevruta partners this week, here’s where I arrived. Yes, Torah and the classical commentators show a distressing lack of concern for the Egyptian people who will suffer under Pharaoh’s hardened heart. I can’t magic that away. I can temper it by saying that this is a natural way for a traumatized people to react to abuse of power, and surely the children of Israel are traumatized at this point in their story.

And, I don’t want to operate from a place of trauma. I reject the idea that the suffering of the Egyptians was fine because hey, it got us to a place of knowing God. And, I’m moved by the fact that Torah says that the whole point of this story is for us to know God.

We could even say: the whole point of our being alive is to know God. Maybe the G-word doesn’t work for you. In that case, substitute something that does. The point of our being alive is to know love, or compassion, or justice, or meaning, or truth. The whole reason we’re here is to connect with something greater than ourselves — to “know God.”

Maybe this means: to have deep spiritual encounters, to live in such a way that our hearts are open to the sacred. Maybe it means to know each other more deeply, because each of us is made in the divine image. Maybe it means to know creation more deeply, because when we delve into the natural world, we can (in the words of poet and pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr.) “put out [our] hand and touch the face of God.” Maybe we seek God through Torah study, or prayer, or environmentalism, or pursuing justice. One way or another, our purpose in this life is to connect with the sacred.

And that leads me to the spiritual practice I find in this week’s parsha: approaching everything with that lens. It’s the first lens in my spiritual direction toolkit: “Where is God in this?” If someone in a position of power has hardened their heart and they’re making choices that harm me, how can I harness that experience to open myself to God? How can I choose to center justice and love and hope, even when others are acting unethically — or especially then?

I love this as a spiritual practice. And… it’s really important that it’s a practice I’m choosing, not one that’s imposed from outside. It’s one thing for me to say that I want to respond to a hardened heart by opening to holy connection. It’s another thing to say that anyone else has to respond to injustice in the same way. “Your boss mistreated you — great, what an opportunity for you to know God more deeply!” Um… no. If I were to say that to someone who’d been mistreated, that would be rabbinic malpractice.

Here’s the choice I think we each have: when we encounter injustice — when someone hardens their heart and acts wrongly — will we harden ours in return, or will we choose to soften and to make space for the ineffable? I’m not talking about softening to an abuser. I’m talking about making the choice to keep our hearts open to God even in the face of injustice and suffering.

Torah says the whole drama of the plagues and the Exodus happened so we would know God. This year, that says to me: whatever’s unfolding in our lives — on a personal scale, on a communal scale, on a national scale — can be an opportunity to soften our hearts and to more deeply know God… if we choose to use it that way.

Finding God in whatever’s unfolding won’t erase injustice, but it can give us resilience in the face of injustice. It won’t erase suffering, but it can give us hope in the face of suffering. And maybe that resilience and that hope will give us the capacity to create justice: for ourselves, and for everyone.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI this morning. (Cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.)

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The world is our kin: lessons from Moshe about being an upstander

וַיְהִ֣י ׀ בַּיָּמִ֣ים הָהֵ֗ם וַיִּגְדַּ֤ל מֹשֶׁה֙ וַיֵּצֵ֣א אֶל־אֶחָ֔יו וַיַּ֖רְא בְּסִבְלֹתָ֑ם וַיַּרְא֙ אִ֣ישׁ מִצְרִ֔י מַכֶּ֥ה אִישׁ־עִבְרִ֖י מֵאֶחָֽיו׃

Some time after that, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his kinsfolk and witnessed their labors. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his kinsmen. (Exodus 2:11)

I always imagined that Moshe didn’t know, growing up, that he was an Israelite. He grew up in Pharaoh’s household as though he were a grandchild of Pharaoh. Surely Pharaoh didn’t know the baby’s origins — he wouldn’t have let his daughter adopt a Hebrew baby when he’d just ordered them all drowned, right?

Who teaches us to stand up for what’s right? This week’s answer: Moshe.

Along with that, I’ve imagined a dramatic moment when Moshe discovers that he wasn’t originally part of the ruling family. A moment when Moshe learns that he was born into a slave household rather than the royal one. But Torah here calls the Hebrew his kinsman. In this moment, it seems that he knows.

Two enticing possibilities flow from that. One is that Pharaoh’s daughter told him, in secret, where he came from and who he really is. Maybe he’s always known that he is secretly part of his nation’s most oppressed people, rescued only by miracle, and that his destiny would be to help his people go free.

Or maybe he grew up as an Egyptian royal kid, having no idea that he was different from the rest of his adoptive family… and when he saw the overseer mistreating the slave, he knew in his bones that the man being oppressed was his kin, because all human beings are kin, and mistreatment is never right.

The commentator known as Ramban says that someone told Moshe he was a Hebrew, so he went out to the fields to see what kind of life his kinsmen lived. The commentator known as the Sforno says he was moved to strike the overseer because of a feeling of brotherliness — he felt that the slave was his kin.

This year I’m moved by the idea that maybe Moshe didn’t know his origins. Because in that case, his choice to be an “upstander” — to step in and protect someone powerless who was being harmed — was based not in a sense of loyalty to “his own,” but in the sense that oppression is wrong, period.

Maybe I’m drawn to that interpretation because I want us to be like that Moshe. I want us to open our eyes to unethical behavior and oppression and abuse of power. I want us to step up and say: that’s wrong. The world shouldn’t be like that. As a human being, it’s my job to protect the vulnerable from harm.

Earlier this week, my son attended an assembly at his elementary school about systemic racism. He came home deeply upset, having learned about the Tulsa Massacre of 1921. Three hundred were killed. Ten thousand became homeless. It’s a horrific story of white people slaughtering black people.

My son wanted to know, how could human beings treat other human beings like that? He was shocked and angry and full of grief. I know that his surprise at the horrific viciousness of racism is a sign of his privilege. Through no merit of his own, he’s been able to grow up mostly oblivious to racism.

My job now is to help him grow into awareness that we who have privilege are obligated to use our power to help those who don’t have it. Because oppression is wrong. Which Moshe knew. And he knew in his bones that the man being beaten was his kin; Torah calls him “kinsman” twice to make that point.

Now, I don’t recommend Moshe’s methods here. (Killing the overseer: not the way to go.) But Moshe’s apparently immediate knowledge that this person who was experiencing systemic oppression is his family, and that therefore he has an obligation to act — that’s Torah’s role model for us this week.

Who experiences systemic oppression in our world? I’m not talking about individual acts of mistreatment, but about the systems and structures that give some people an inherent advantage and others an inherent disadvantage. Oppression expressed in the practice of social and political institutions.

[Harvest answers from the room]

Here are some of my answers: Immigrants. Refugees. People of color: at increased risk of unfair sentencing, and of being shot by police because of unconscious bias. Trans people: at increased risk of suicide because of prejudice and mistreatment. Women. Non-Christians. Those who live in poverty.

And, of course, one can be many of these things at once. This week I see Moshe’s choice to stand up against the oppression of that Hebrew slave as Torah’s lesson for us. Our world contains systems of oppression too, no less than the Mitzrayim ruled over by this Pharaoh who didn’t remember Joseph.

Those who are oppressed are our kin, and it’s our job to stand up for them as we are able, as Moshe stood up for his kin in the field. Not necessarily because we see ourselves in their faces, though maybe we do. But because oppression is wrong, and Jewish tradition calls us to pursue justice with all that we are.

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

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Vayechi: angels, memory, blessing

Golden_Haggadah_Jacob_Blessing_Ephraim_and_Manasseh-1
Jacob blesses Ephraim and Menashe on his deathbed.

This week’s Torah portion, Vayechi, begins with Jacob on his deathbed. Joseph comes to him with his sons Ephraim and Menashe, and Jacob marvels: he hadn’t expected to see Joseph again, and now here he is with Joseph and the next generation too! He blesses the boys with a verse (Genesis 48:16) that became part of the liturgy of the bedtime shema — “May the angel who kept me from harm, bless the ones who come after,” in Reb Irwin Keller’s beautiful translation that we sang this morning.

The syntax of this verse is unclear. Rashi reads it in a literal, non-mystical sense. He thinks Jacob is talking about the angel whom God sent to wrestle with him at the banks of the Jabbok. But many translations capitalize Angel, because the way the sentence is phrased makes it seem as though Jacob is referring to God as an Angel, both a protector and a source of blessing. As Reb Irwin writes, “So he could mean a guardian angel, or he could mean God, or he could intend the ambiguity, knowing that angels are just a face of the Divine anyway.”

Reading these verses this year, I couldn’t help remembering last February when I took my son to Texas to say goodbye to my mother. I knew when we flew down that it would be our last time seeing her alive.

While we were there, she soaked up every moment she could with her youngest and final grandson. She managed to get out of bed once to sit with him while he ate dinner. I remember that she asked him about his favorite cartoon — an anime called Pokémon, which was completely foreign to her, but he happily told her all kinds of details about the various Pokémon and their evolutions. And — this is a story I told in my Yom Kippur sermon, Come… and Prepare to Go — she came downstairs for that final Shabbat, and heard him sing the words of the kiddush over wine one last time.

My mom didn’t use the language of “blessing” each other, and angels were not part of her Judaism. They were as foreign to her as Pokémon. But I think her presence with her generations that Shabbat was the blessing she was able to give us from her deathbed. She spent the last of her strength making it to her wheelchair to come downstairs for Shabbes dinner because celebrating Shabbat with her children and grandchild mattered to her. She showed us with her actions that family and Jewish tradition had been a blessing for her that she hoped would continue to be a blessing for us.

Her unveiling approaches in two weeks. I still think of her every week when I make challah, remembering that she tasted my homemade challah on that last Shabbes of her life and declared it good. And my son remembers her when we make kiddush on Friday nights, because he was proud of being able to sing those words where she could hear. In these ways she’s still with us even though she’s gone. Sometimes I imagine that she peeks in at our Shabbes table each week, like the two angels described in Talmud who seem able to say only one thing: “May next week be just like this one.” Even on the weeks when we only spend a few minutes over candles and wine and challah, I like to imagine that she feels joy when she sees us carrying this tradition forward. 

Before he dies, Jacob reminds Joseph that he wants to be buried in the same place where his parents are buried. Joseph gets Pharaoh’s permission to travel, and then Joseph carries Jacob’s bones back to the Cave of Machpelah before returning to Egypt. 

Later in Torah, this carrying of bones will be recapitulated. Moshe will take Joseph’s bones out of Egypt when the children of Israel depart. The word used in that verse (Exodus 13:19) is etzem, which means both bone and essence. I see a deep truth in these two parallel stories. No matter where our forebears are buried, we carry their essence with us. Like Joseph, and like Moshe, we carry our forebears with us. Sometimes their physical features reverberate through the generations. Sometimes their traumas, their memories, and their stories live on in us. And that’s true whether or not those whom we remember were good to us, whether or not they could be be the parents or grandparents we needed them to be. We carry both the bitter and the sweet. 

May the memories of those whom we carry — in our minds and hearts, and sometimes also in our DNA — be the blessing that we need in our lives. May they inspire us to live up to our best selves. May they help us shed any baggage, any hurts, so we can grow beyond them and not transmit them further. May we experience their memories as a blessing for us… so that we can transmit that blessing in turn to those who come after, our children and the children of our children. Or in the rabbinic reinterpretation, our students and their students and the students of our students. So that all of us can experience ourselves as part of a chain of generations and a chain of blessing, watched-over by that same angel (or Angel) whom Jacob evoked so long ago.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at CBI on Shabbat morning (cross-posted to Velveteen Rabbi.) Image from the Golden Haggadah.

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Vayigash: choosing again

Stepping in the same river twice.

In this week’s Torah portion, Vayigash, there’s a poignant moment when Joseph reveals himself to his brothers.

Last year I was struck by the beautiful Hebrew word להתודע, “to make oneself known” or “to reveal oneself.” This year what leapt out at me is the precursor to Joseph’s revelation of self. Before he could make himself known to his brothers, he needed to know that they had changed. He needed proof of their genuine teshuvah, their repentance, their turning-themselves-around.

But how could he get that proof? He couldn’t exactly ask. So he demanded that they abandon their youngest brother Benjamin in Egypt. Judah’s response — “I promised our father that we would keep him safe. He’s already lost one beloved son; if he lost this one too, it would kill him; take me instead” — proves to Joseph that Judah, at least, is different than he once was.

Judah has learned from the brothers’ mis-steps. He understands now that their scheme to get rid of Joseph caused incredible harm to their father… and presumably also to Joseph, though he doesn’t yet know that he’s speaking with the brother they sold down the river. Presented with the opportunity to make a similarly damaging choice a second time, Judah chooses differently.

Heraclitus famously wrote that one can’t step in the same river twice. But Rambam argues that we can. In fact, that’s precisely how he says we can tell if our teshuvah — repentance and re/turn — is genuine. When we are presented with the same opportunity to miss the mark, and we choose differently, then we know that we’ve really made teshuvah. We’ve done the work to actually change.

Conventional wisdom holds that “[w]hen someone shows you who they are, believe them.” In general I think that’s a good rule of thumb. Our actions and choices show who we are, and sometimes they reveal realities we might not want to admit. We can say all kinds of pretty things about who we imagine ourselves to be, but when push comes to shove, our actions will speak deep truths about who we are.

If someone says they value kindness, but they act in ways that are unkind — if someone says they are truthful, but they act in ways that are mendacious — if someone says they are ethical, but they act in ways that are power-hungry or abusive — I’m inclined to say, then believe them. Their actions show who they have chosen to be. It’s reasonable to expect their choices to continue.

And yet — Judaism stands for the proposition that change is always possible. As is written in the CBI Board covenant, which is posted in our social hall, “We acknowledge that things can always change; can always be better than they have been.” Things can always change. People can always change — if we put in the hard work that’s required in doing so. But we have to choose to change.

Change isn’t easy. Our actions and our choices carve grooves of habit on heart and mind, and it’s difficult to become someone new. Difficult, but not impossible. Authentic spiritual life asks us time and again to do what Judah did: to face our mis-steps, to apologize and make things right, and when our lives lead us to the same river again, to choose other than we did before.

Judah’s teshuvah leads to their family becoming whole again. It leads to plenty and prosperity instead of famine and sorrow. I believe that doing the work of teshuvah can open us to abundance too. Not necessarily a full pantry and a family reunited — but surely the comfort of knowing that we’re doing the work and “walking our talk.” That we are living up to who we say we are.

I have the sense that the coming year will challenge us, repeatedly, to do our inner work — and to live up to the values we say we hold dear. What are the values we want to embody this year… and what tools can we use to keep ourselves honest, so we’re not just paying lip service to Jewish values but actually taking action to live them, every day?

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

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