Wake Up! (A d’varling for Shabbat Shuvah)

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Shofar-in-front-of-stained-glass

כְּנֶ֙שֶׁר֙ יָעִ֣יר קִנּ֔וֹ עַל־גּוֹזָלָ֖יו יְרַחֵ֑ף יִפְרֹ֤שׂ כְּנָפָיו֙ יִקָּחֵ֔הוּ יִשָּׂאֵ֖הוּ עַל־אֶבְרָתֽוֹ׃

Like an eagle who rouses their nestlings, gliding down to their young, So did God spread God’s wings and take [us], Bear [us] along on God’s pinions.

(Deut. 32:11)

This verse from this week’s Torah portion, Ha’azinu, leapt out at me this year. The metaphor of God bearing us on eagles’ wings, lifting us out of slavery to Pharaoh and out of our constricted places, is not a new one. But what struck me here was the word יעיר, to arouse or to wake up.

Rashi says this image is meant to evoke an eagle who doesn’t want to scare its nestlings, so the eagle flaps its wings a few times before coming in to the nest, to wake the young ones up and ensure that they feel strong enough to receive the eagle’s coming.

Later in the passage, Rashi says an eagle carries its young on its wings rather than in its claws, because the eagle reasons, “if there is an arrow, better the arrow should pierce me than pierce my young” — the eagle protects its young, and that’s the quality of love that God has for us.

I love the idea of God carrying us on vast eagles’ wings, seeking to protect us and uplift us. But even more than that, this year, I’m moved by this language of awakening or arousal.

God’s love for us is both protective and a little bit pushy. Torah here imagines God carrying us and keeping us safe — and also nudging us to wake up.

Just as the shofar’s call nudges us to wake up.

Just as this whole season nudges us to wake up.

The commentator known as the Or HaChayyim agrees: “Moses uses the simile of the eagle to show that just as the eagle rouses its young first, so G’d rouses the children of humanity to warn that we have to put our spiritual house in order.” This is the season for doing exactly that.

Shabbat Shuvah is our wake-up call. God is the eagle hovering over the nest, flapping mighty wings to urge us to rise up with all our strength and to do what’s right. God is the shepherd taking account of each of our lives as we pass beneath the staff, reading the Book of Life that we have written with our choices. God is in the shofar’s call — which sometimes sounds like triumph, and sometimes sounds like anguish — begging us to wake up.

Not because Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night, although it does.

But because the world needs us to wake up. Our community needs us to wake up. Our souls need us to wake up.

To what do we need to wake up at this moment in our spiritual year?

To what do we need to wake up at this moment in our national life?

Much is going to be asked of us in this new year. We need to wake up. We need to strengthen our souls and strengthen our resolve to stand up for what’s right.

God is here to wake us up. To rouse us from our sleep. To arouse in us the yearning to do what’s right. To enflame our hearts with a passion for righteous acts and justice: on a personal scale, on a communal scale, on a national scale.

Will we be woken?

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

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Blessing and curse in pandemic times

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Blessing-and-curseLast week my son and I were watching the fifth Harry Potter movie, Order of the Phoenix. There’s a moment where two teenagers are kissing on a bench, and with a flick of her wand, Dolores Umbridge separates them by several feet.

We’ve seen this film several times before. But this time, six months in to the pandemic, my son joked, “Look, Mom, social distancing!” And we both laughed.

The laughter feels complicated for me as a parent. I know he’s layering this pandemic experience over what he sees in movies or on tv because it helps him process needing to stay apart. It breaks my heart that he has to do that. And I’m also glad that he can find a way to make sense of what’s happening, and even to joke about it, as we stay apart from loved ones in order to keep each other safe.

In this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tavo, Moses says: I want these six tribes to stand on this mountain for a blessing, and those six tribes to stand on that mountain for a curse. Reading that verse this year, my mind made the move my son keeps making: “look, it’s social distancing!” Okay, obviously not. But then I thought: actually, this matter of blessing and curse does feel relevant.

Torah teaches, “Cursed be he who moves his fellow countryman’s landmark.” Literally, moving someone’s landmark means causing them to be lost. Spiritually, this verse resonates for me as a teaching about gaslighting. One who claims that the pandemic is hype, denying the reality of more than six million cases in the United States alone, is denying reality’s landmarks.

Torah teaches, “Cursed be he who misdirects a blind person on his way.” In a literal sense, this teaching seems obvious. Spiritually, I think of the claims about quack remedies for covid-19, from hydroxychloroquine to drinking bleach. Remember when emergency rooms started reporting an uptick in people who poisoned themselves by blindly following that bad advice?

Torah teaches, “Cursed be he who subverts the rights of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.” In Torah’s paradigm, this is a way of saying “the powerless.” Torah here condemns the one who disenfranchises or harms those who are vulnerable. I don’t think that one requires any translation. Literally and spiritually, it’s a clear instruction for this pandemic moment.

And then Torah says: the curses aren’t our only option. If we observe the mitzvot and act in accordance with God’s commandments, we will experience the opposite outcome. We’ll be blessed in our homes and in our fields, our flocks and our herds, in city and country, in our comings and in our goings… if only we observe the mitzvot and do not deviate from them.

In years past I’ve struggled with the blessings and curses articulated in Torah. The curses seem so punitive. I don’t believe in a God Who sits on high and throws punishments at us like lightning bolts from Mount Olympus! Many of you have told me over the years that that’s not your theology either, and that encountering it each year in Deuteronomy is challenging. For me, too.

But this year I’m reading these verses through the lens of global pandemic. This year I don’t see these as teachings about divine punishment at all. I’m reading them as teachings about our power to shape the world in which we live. I think Torah is reminding us that we bring about the blessings or the curses by dint of our choices. (And suddenly it feels like Yom Kippur.)

If we gaslight each other, if we misdirect each other, if we subvert each others’ rights — those actions themselves are curses, and they carry their own consequences with them. They harm the fabric of community. They damage trust. And in this pandemic moment, they contribute to the spread of the virus that continues to ravage our interconnected human family across the globe.

And if we do what’s right — if we persist in the discomfort of our masks and strict social distancing in order to protect each other and especially to protect the vulnerable — those actions themselves are blessings, and they carry their own consequences with them, too. When we choose to act in those ways, we bless each other with our mutual concern and care.

May we continue to bless each other with our mutual concern and care, through this pandemic and beyond.

 

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

 

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To Do What’s Right (reading Eikev through the lens of covid-19)

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6a00d8341c019953ef0240a4ce9b56200dI made it three verses into this week’s Torah portion, Eikev, before being brought up short:

“And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully… God will ward off from you all sickness…” (Deut. 7:12, 15)

My first thought was: wow, that verse has not aged well in this coronavirus moment. As we watch illness ravage the nation like a wildfire, the promise of health and safety feels off-key. Or at least, the connection between doing mitzvot and being healthy feels off-key, because it suggests that someone who falls ill  is somehow wicked, or is not following Torah’s instructions for spiritual and ethical living.

And then I thought: there’s another way to read these verses.

This isn’t about whether or not a single individual does what’s right. We all know that it’s possible to lead a spiritual and ethical life, rich with mitzvot, and still fall ill. And we all know that it’s possible to do all the right things in this pandemic — washing our hands, wearing our masks, socially-distancing and staying home — and yet still be at risk of falling ill if someone carrying the virus coughs on us.

But what if Torah is trying this week to teach us that what matters is for the collective to do what’s right? For the community to pull together and together commit to following the best practices that science and authentic spiritual life can offer us… not (only) for our own sakes but also for the sake of others who may be older, or medically vulnerable, or living with preexisting conditions that put us at greater risk?

“When we obey these mitzvot and observe them carefully,” that’s how God protects us from sickness, acting through us in the ways we care for each other. It’s not a guarantee that no one will get sick — nothing can offer that guarantee — but it’s what’s in our hands to do. As we sometimes sing on Friday nights, “Ours are the arms, the fingers, the voices.” Ours are God’s hands, and this moment calls us to turn our hands toward keeping each other safe.

“And if you do obey these rules and observe them carefully…” The classical tradition links this back to Exodus 15, where God similarly tells us that if we follow the mitzvot and do all the right things, then God won’t plague us with the unnatural illnesses that the tradition sees as divine punishment. “Ki ani YHVH rofecha,” says Torah (Ex. 15:26) — “For I am YHVH your Healer.”

One way to understand that is as a lesson about the interconnectedness of all things, and how our choices have collective impact. If we don’t take care of the planet’s fragile environment, then the conditions will be right for newer and more terrible illnesses to arise and spread. But if we do what’s right by our planet, then we protect ourselves and each other from that terrible outcome.

This too feels to me like a teaching about our responsibility to each other and to the whole of which we are a part. When we act in ways that take care of our planet, when we act in ways that take care of each other and protect each others’ health, we are embodying the aspect of God that we call Healer.

It’s poignant to read these verses on the runway to the Days of Awe. Usually at this season we’re preparing for our community’s biggest in-person gatherings of the year. This year’s Days of Awe will be different. Our challenge this year is to make our homes into sacred space, and to find connections in each others’ faces and voices over Zoom, as we protect each other by staying physically apart.

I know that for some of us, the prospect of Zoom-based High Holidays feels like a loss. Maybe we can’t imagine how it will work. Or we’re tired of Zoom and wish life could go back to normal. Or we’re afraid it won’t feel meaningful and real the way we want it to. Those feelings of loss are real, and I honor them. (I even share them.) And… I believe that these are the mitzvot the current moment asks of us.

This moment asks us to practice the mitzvah of masking, the mitzvah of social distancing, the mitzvah of gathering over Zoom.  So that we can keep covid-19 out of our beloved community, and in so doing, can hasten the day when we will all be able to gather safely in person again, here and everywhere.

 

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

 

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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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