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In this week’s parsha, Shlach, the scouts go to peek at the Land of Promise. They return with a giant bunch of grapes, so big it needs to be carried by two men on a carrying frame. And most of them say: nah, there’s no way we can conquer that land. The people who live there are giants. We felt like grasshoppers next to them, and we must have looked like grasshoppers in their eyes. We can’t do this.

And God gets angry, and says: because y’all don’t trust in Me, or maybe because y’all don’t trust in yourselves, fine, let’s make it a self-fulfilling prophecy: you can’t do this. This whole generation is going to die here in the wilderness, except for the two people who believed in this enterprise. They’ll lead the next generation into the land of promise. You don’t feel up to it? Now you can’t even try.

If all goes according to plan, I’m sharing these words with you from our first multi-access (a.k.a. hybrid) Shabbat service since the pandemic began some fifteen months ago. When the pandemic started, we went digital, like everyone else. It took us a while to find our feet, but we figured out how to pray together, how to celebrate and mourn together, how to learn together, how to be a community together over Zoom.

Now we’re standing at the edge of another paradigm shift. Many of you have told me how much it meant to you to be able to participate in the spiritual life of our community from home — even from afar. Congregants who long ago moved away joined us for shiva minyanim or Shabbat services. Family members in other states, even in other countries on the far side of the world, joined us for the Days of Awe and Pesach.

As we return to offering some onsite programming, like this morning’s Shabbat services, we’re met with a choice. We could go back to the way things were before, and stop offering an option for digital participation. Or, we can try to figure out how to chart a new path so that both the “roomies” and the “zoomies” are full participants in our community. So that those who are homebound don’t lose access to what we do.

But it’s not just about ensuring that if one of us is homebound or doing a stint in a rehab facility we can still watch CBI’s services as though they were on tv. The real challenge is figuring out how “zoomies” can be full participants. How we can all see each other, whether onsite or online. How all of our voices can be heard, whether onsite or online. How we can all count in the minyan, whether onsite or online.

This is a tall order. It’s going to require some technological infrastructure, which costs money. And it may lead to a fundamental redefining of what it means to be “in community,” what it means to be “together.” That’s not just us, by the way: that’s the whole Jewish world. None of the classes I took in rabbinical school exactly prepared me for this… except inasmuch as they taught me that Judaism has weathered changes before. 

It is tempting to be like the scouts: to say, nope, this is too hard, there’s no way we can do this. One bunch of grapes is as big as a black bear, we are not up to this, we feel like grasshoppers. The fact that our forebears in Torah said exactly that tells me that it’s a natural human impulse. It’s normal to feel afraid, faced with an enormous new challenge we’ve never before imagined being able to try to face.

And — as I was discussing with our b-mitzvah students a few days ago — because those scouts didn’t use their ometz lev, their strength of heart, the whole k’hillah suffered. Courage and community are two of the Jewish values we’ve been studying during this pandemic year. These values are part of their Jewish toolbox — and ours. If we want our k’hillah to flourish, we need to cultivate our ometz lev.

It will take a while for us to find our feet in this new chapter. I imagine we’ll have new and different technological challenges, and some personal and spiritual ones, too. If the tenth member of the minyan is on Zoom, will we all feel comfortable counting that person for kaddish? If someone’s joining us from another time zone, will they feel weird joining our evening prayers while the sun is rising where they are?

But if we bring hope and courage to bear, I’m confident that we can navigate a path through. This may not be exactly the Land of Promise we expected, but I believe it has gifts for us. And who knows: maybe when humanity has spread to the stars, Jewish space explorers will look back on the pandemic of 2020 as the moment when our sense of sacred place and time began to evolve into what it needed to become.

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

This June, We’re Moving to Multi-Access Services

In June, assuming that our primary constituent towns remain “green” or “grey” in the state chart, we’re going to shift our Shabbat services from entirely online to multi-access (sometimes called “hybrid”) services.

Multi-access means that you can participate fully either online (in the shul Zoom room) or onsite (under the willow tree behind the shul.)

How Will This Work?

Every Thursday, the weekly state COVID report comes out. Ollie will check the report, and if North Adams, Adams, and Williamstown are all color-coded as green or grey, we’ll send out an email on Friday letting you know that there will be a multi-access service. 

If There Is A Multi-Access Service

The service will take place beside the patio behind the shul, in the shade of the willow tree. We’ll use Mishkan T’filah, our bound siddur. (Those joining digitally are invited to get a digital copy of the siddur, available as a free flipbook at the publisher’s website, or as a Kindle download for your Kindle, phone, tablet, or computer.)

Pursuant to the latest CDC guidelines, singing will be allowed! Because we will be singing, we ask those attending onsite to please wear a mask. We will also ask those present onsite to fill out an attendance sheet, so that if (God forbid) a case of COVID does arise we can do appropriate contact tracing.

If Not

If the weather forecast calls for inclement weather, or if our local rates of infection rise such that one or more of our primary constituent towns is yellow or red, we will revert to digital-only services.

Either Way

Keep an eye on your email; a message will go out each Friday to let you know how Shabbat services will be held!

Kabbalat Shabbat services are scheduled for June 18, July 16, and August 20 at 7:30pm. On weekends when we celebrate Kabbalat Shabbat, there is usually no Shabbat morning service. (August 21 will be an exception.)
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If you can’t see the embedded video, above, it’s here on YouTube. You can also read the text of the video below.

Dear CBI Community,

As we look toward hopefully offering hybrid services this summer, I’m here to share some of the challenges and opportunities involved in shifting from all-digital offerings to hybrid ones. Of course there’s the challenge of staying on top of changing CDC guidance! But aside from the medical, there are also practical, spiritual, and communal impacts to how we make that shift.

I’m part of two clergy groups that arose at the start of the pandemic. One consists of about 3000 Jewish clergy from across the denominations. The other is for clergy of all faith traditions, and has 7500 members. In both of these groups, we share questions, resources, and emerging best practices. What we’ve been doing at CBI draws on the cumulative wisdom of all of these folks. 

When I lead prayer over Zoom, I screenshare slides that feature images and artwork and sometimes even video clips alongside the words of our prayers… and at strategic moments in the service, there’s a slide that reminds me to stop the screenshare so that we can all see each other’s faces, wave to each other, and remember that we’re connected in community together.

The slide that reminds me to stop the screenshare so we can see each other.

Some of us use the chat function in Zoom to connect with each other during services, chatting with each other via text, or sending a chat message to the whole room (for instance, if I ask people to share a blessing that they’re thankful for this week, or when I ask for names for healing.) Sometimes I call on people to lead a prayer from the place where they are.

One of the ways we’ve sought to sustain our community during the pandemic is through making our Zoom offerings as interactive as possible. Because of that interactivity, members and friends of CBI who live elsewhere or have moved away can join us not only in prayer but in seeing each others’ faces, texting each other messages, and being connected across distance. 

As we approach the next phase of the pandemic and the return to some in-person prayer, one of the biggest questions is: how can we make services most meaningful and participatory both for the “Roomies” (physically present) and the “Zoomies” (participating remotely)? Is there a way to do so that truly serves both of these constituencies, and that “works” for both groups at once?

Once we’re back at the shul, it’s easy to share a service via Zoom / Facebook Live — but that’s a broadcast paradigm, not an interactive one. Those who are remote can’t participate as fully, and can’t share their faces or voices with each other or with those in the room. That’s how we used to stream high holidays. But it’s not interactive, unlike what we’ve done over this pandemic year.

Across the denominations, we’re all grappling with how the pandemic has changed how we do Jewish and how we constitute community. We’ve spent more than a year “making a minyan” from afar, spanning from North Adams to Florida to California. The tenth member of our minyan might be in another time zone! That changes our felt sense of what it means to be together. 

It’s a paradigm shift for Jewish life everywhere. And we may not wholly understand its impacts until we can look back on this moment, five or ten or fifteen years from now. One thing that is clear is that this new way of constituting and connecting community opens doors for those who are disabled or homebound, and we need to figure out how to keep those doors open.

Some communities are now installing large screens in their sanctuaries, one to show the digital prayer materials (also shared over Zoom) and another to show the grid of all the faces participating on Zoom, so that those on Zoom can see who’s in the sanctuary and vice versa. Some schools operate that way now, and businesses too. Of course, that’s a major investment.

We don’t yet have answers on how best to do this. (As a recent essay from the Union for Reform Judaism points out, no one does — and they have wise thoughts on why we should be thinking in terms of “multi-access” offerings, not just “hybrid” ones.)  But these are some of the questions that clergy across the denominations and across faith traditions are grappling with.

I know you’re probably eager to know what we’re going to do for the Days of Awe. I am too! The Board is exploring everything from tent rental, to screen(s) in the sanctuary, to whether it’s safe for people who are vaccinated and masked to sing together, to what’s best for our unvaccinated children and their families. Thanks to all who filled out our survey: your answers help us plan.

If you have thoughts about going forward, I welcome them. Please know that I always want to hear from you about what you want and need, or about whatever’s on your mind and heart.

For now, I wish you every blessing during this final week of the Omer, and I hope to see you at Shabbat services (at 10:30 ET this week!) and at Shavuot, starting 7:30pm on Sunday May 16. 

Tradition says that the soul of every Jew who ever was and ever will be were all mystically together at Sinai to receive Torah. That’s what we’ll celebrate on Sunday night: the continuing revelation of Torah, and our togetherness across time and space. We’ll begin with evening services and Yizkor, and then enjoy diverse learning offerings until midnight.

See you at Sinai… and on Zoom at CBI!

Join us for Shavuot!

Dear Congregation Beth Israel members and friends,

Please take a few moments to read and respond to this survey about the High Holidays this year. We ask that you please respond by 5pm on Sunday so that we can move forward knowing what would work best for you.

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel and the CBI Board

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Last year at the start of the pandemic, my hevruta partners and I studied a text from the Piaceczyner (the rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto) about this week’s Torah portion, Tazria-Metzora. His jumping-off point is a verse about houses contracting tzara’at — some kind of contagion — and the need to quarantine such a house for a period of time.

The commentator Rashi explains that there’s treasure hidden in the walls of the afflicted house, and when we knock down the walls, we’ll find the treasure. But the Piaceczyner is puzzled: if there’s treasure, then why does Torah tell us to wait for seven days before we can knock down the walls and find the treasures hidden therein?

His first answer makes me laugh: well, we can’t exactly know why Torah says what it says!

But then he says, if we look deeply we can recognize that in everything that happens to us, there’s a spark of God’s intention for goodness. Even if the situation we’re in is a difficult one, God intends goodness for us in it somehow.

“There may be times when we can’t access schooling for our children, or praying together in community, or going to the mikvah,” he writes. A year ago, my first thought was: that’s us, right now! Our kids are home from school. The shul building is closed. Everything is closed: to protect us from each other, from the virus we might not know we’re carrying.

The Piaceczyner said there would be treasures to be found in quarantine. I couldn’t yet imagine what they would be.

This year, these lines land entirely differently with me.

It’s still true that we still don’t have access to our former infrastructure for Jewish life. Synagogues aren’t meeting in person, Hebrew school isn’t meeting in person… And yet — look at everything we’ve learned over the last year.

Our synagogues are open, even though our buildings are not — because the synagogue isn’t the building, it’s the people and the connections among and between us, and our traditions, and our Source. We’ve learned how to pray together over Zoom, and how to make our home spaces into sacred spaces. We’ve learned how to build community and connectivity online when we can’t safely be in person.

We’ve learned how to educate our children online. Hebrew school is happening: online. Services are happening: online. We’ve learned how to share funerals, b-mitzvah celebrations, shiva minyanim, even batei din (conversions) online.

We’ve learned to find sweetness in glimpsing each others’ households — our dogs and our cats, the children and elders who share our homes — when we gather for learning or prayer. As a member of our Board said to me after Rosh Hashanah services, “Seeing people at their tables and on their couches and with their coffee cups made it feel like we were all in each others’ homes — I felt like I was getting to know people in a different way because I got to see them where they live.” Who could have imagined that, before the pandemic?

We’ve learned how to embrace video, and how to enliven our davenen with art and images. This doesn’t make up for the fact that we can’t embrace, and we can’t sing together in harmony, but it brings a different kind of hiddur mitzvah (beautifying the mitzvah) to our spiritual lives.

And we’ve learned how digital offerings can more easily include those who are immunocompromised, or hospitalized, or disabled, or homebound. We’ve learned how having our digital doors open makes our synagogues more accessible than they ever were before.

The Piaceczyner insists that even when something appears to us to be a plague, God intends goodness in it. We might just need a while to find the hidden treasure in whatever’s unfolding. As we prepare, in time, to return to our former Jewish infrastructure, I want to ensure that we do so in a way that doesn’t lose the new treasure we’ve found.

Here are some of the big questions my colleagues and I are asking:

  • How can we create hybrid offerings so that as some of us feel safely able to gather in person, others can be full participants digitally?
  • How can we continue to embrace the gifts of multimedia and visual art once we’re back in the building again?
  • How can we welcome and include people joining us digitally, without creating a future in which no one bothers to “come to shul” because it’s easier to just stay home?
  • How can we use what we’ve learned this year to help us become more accessible, more equitable, and more inclusive?
  • How can we use what we’ve learned this year to help us build and sustain community across distance, whether it’s the distance between the shul and a hospital bed, or the distance between here and someplace further away?
  • How might our sense of community expand and adapt if people keep participating in services and learning and festival observances online — if you don’t have to be in Northern Berkshire to become a part of CBI?
  • And how can we honor the treasures of this pandemic learning while also honoring the very real losses of this incredibly difficult year?

We don’t know the answers yet: we’re figuring them out as we go. The crisis of COVID-19 offers us an opportunity to dream big and think creatively about what it means to do Jewish together now. I hope you’ll grapple with these questions too, and let me know your answers.

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

The Board of Directors and Rabbi have been working on this proposal for hybrid services this summer. We welcome your feedback, and ask your understanding if and when we need to adapt these plans in response to changing circumstances. Stay safe and get vaccinated when you can! Blessings to all.

Proposed Rubric

for Moving to Hybrid Services

Definitions: 

  • Hybrid services are services where some people are physically present, while others are participating remotely via Zoom. 
  • Digital services are Zoom-only.

CBI may opt to adopt a hybrid services model this summer (June and onward) if:

  • Our primary constituent communities (North Adams, Williamstown, Adams) are designated “green”or “grey” in the MA Weekly Covid-19 Public Health Report that comes out on Thursdays.

When we’re in hybrid mode, we will:

  1. Ensure social distancing and require masks;
  2. Provide hand sanitizer for hand-washing;
  3. Follow all state requirements. Right now the MA House of Worship guidelines stipulate no more than 10 persons per 1000 square feet. Our expanded sanctuary is 2400 square feet and the space within the moveable walls is 630 square feet, so our maximum indoor capacity is 24 people with walls open. We’ll also ask participants to follow state guidelines regarding quarantining after crossing state lines under certain circumstances;
  4. Require participants to sign an attendance list and give contact information, so we know who’s there (in case of need to do contact tracing); 
  5. Ensure that there is still a digital / Zoom option for those who can’t come in person;
  6. Meet outdoors, or — if indoors — with doors and windows open and good ventilation (as of now, some of our service leaders are only comfortable leading outdoors);
  7. Not yet permit food or drink, including kiddush;
  8. Not yet permit singing by anyone other than the (vaccinated, masked, distanced) rabbi, because of the risks posed by singing;1 As of May 2021, this is under renewed discussion. Newly-released CDC guidelines suggest that it is safe for masked, vaccinated people to sing together outdoors, and we’re working on figuring out whether or not that’s safe indoors.
  9. And send out a weekly email on Fridays (after the Thursday weekly public health report comes out) letting people know that we will be offering a hybrid service on Shabbat if that is the case. If there is rain in the forecast, we may alert the community on Friday that services will be back on Zoom.

If one of the three aforementioned constituent communities goes back to yellow or red, we will move back to digital services until that circumstance changes.  If anyone who has been in the synagogue tests positive for COVID, we will revert to digital for 14 days.

If hybrid services are meeting outdoors:

We will need:

  1. Volunteers to set up chairs on the patio (socially distanced / 6 feet apart) and take them back inside afterwards;
  2. A long extension cord and other gear TBD (like a wifi extender, or possibly a very long ethernet cable) so that our internet works on the patio; 
  3. Possibly an outdoor sound system so the rabbi can be heard outdoors at a distance;
  4. The service-leader to bring a laptop or other device that can be used to stream the Zoom service for those who are participating remotely.

If / when we do services outdoors, we will use Mishkan T’filah (the bound books) and ask those who are participating digitally to get the e-book to follow along. 

If hybrid services are meeting indoors:

We will need:

  1. To open doors and windows to ensure as much ventilation as possible;
  2. To set up chairs at appropriate social distance (at least six feet apart);
  3. The service-leader to bring a laptop that can be used to stream the Zoom service for those who are participating remotely.

We are planning to purchase a large screen / monitor for the sanctuary, so that we can lead indoor services either using Mishkan T’filah, or using the screenshare siddur that can be customized each week. If using the screenshare siddur, participants in the room could either follow along on the big screen, or bring their phones / tablets to follow the slides via Zoom. 

Whether indoors or outdoors:

Because singing is still contraindicated, hybrid services may tend toward the contemplative / spoken-word, even when outdoors. (Dr. Fauci suggests that community singing may become safe again in mid/late fall assuming that vaccinations take place at the expected rate.)

We will need someone each week to maintain the contact sheet and take responsibility for giving contact information to the health department if needed. 

We will need to let people know that if they test positive after a gathering at CBI, they need to let us know so that we can alert contact tracers.

And after each gathering, the facility will need to be sanitized before being used again, even if we’re meeting outdoors (we will need to unlock the building so people can use the bathrooms), so we’ll need to have our cleaning service come on Monday mornings.

Approved by the CBI Board of Directors, April 2021.


1. See Is singing together safe in the era of coronavirus? Not really, via NPR. Also: the National Association of Teachers of Singing, in a webinar with Johns Hopkins, said that a choir of all vaccinated peoplemay be able to sing for a maximum of 30 minutes if masked, distanced, and outside… which tells us that even outdoor singing, during our usual 90-minute service, is too high a risk to incur at this time.

Dear all,

I’m looking so forward to celebrating with you at our Second Night Community (Zoom) Seder. Like last year, our seder will be co-facilitated by me and by R. David Markus, and we’ll share it with Temple Beth El of City Island, the community with which some of us journeyed to Cuba before the pandemic began.

During the pandemic I know it isn’t always easy to find the groceries we’re looking for. If you don’t have or can’t find these items, never fear: we will make it work and seder will be beautiful even without these things! But if you can find these things and have them on hand, they will help make the night more special and more real.

Things to have on hand for seder, if you can…

Please remember to RSVP by Wednesday to the synagogue office so we know you’re coming. (The Zoom link will not be the one we use for services, and it will not be posted anywhere, in order to prevent zoom-bombing.)

See you at Seder!

Blessings to all,

Rabbi Rachel

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A slide from Bayit’s Pesach offerings this year.

Many of you have heard me say that on Shabbat HaGadol, the Shabbat before Pesach, it’s customary for the rabbi to give a sermon about how to prepare for Pesach. Traditionally speaking, I’m supposed to give you instructions on how to prepare yourselves and your homes for Passover. You know — here are the five “leavenable” grains, here’s how to remove them from your homes for a week, here’s the halakha on how to properly clean to remove every last scrap of hametz.

As we approach our second pandemic Pesach, the idea of preparing for Pesach feels different than it ever has before. I mean, if you remove hametz, you can do that the same as you always have. And even if you’ve never followed that tradition, you can mark the week by making a conscious choice not to eat bread. A week of mindful eating is a valuable experience and a deep way to connect with our traditions. But that’s not the kind of preparation with which I’m grappling this year.

It’s the inner preparation that’s challenging me. Because the pandemic continues. Last year who could’ve imagined that we’d be here now: preparing for another Zoom community second night seder? Still staying apart to protect each other and ourselves. Many of us still in lockdown mode, or sheltering in place, to prevent the spread of a virus that’s still killing 1200 people each day in this country — about three times as many as last July 4; the equivalent of a 9/11 every three days.

There are three excellent vaccines out in the world now. There is reason to hope that once the population reaches a certain vaccination threshold, we will be able to be together safely again. Elementary schools are even about to re-open! But we are not “there yet.” What does it mean to prepare ourselves for liberation when many of us may still feel constrained: by pandemic, by economic challenges, by racism and all the harm it creates, by the reality of anti-maskers and anti-vaxxers?

The haggadah teaches: in every generation one must see oneself as if one had been liberated from Mitzrayim / the Narrow Place — from tzuris / suffering, from meitzarim / constrictions. How can we see ourselves as if we were going forth from those tight spaces when we are still manifestly living in them? We aren’t liberated from COVID. We aren’t liberated from racism and hatred. We will celebrate Pesach as a community again via digital means, not “in person.” What kind of liberation can this be?

Earlier this winter I worked with a group of poets, artists, rabbis, and liturgists to co-create new materials for the start of seder, recognizing the meitzarim that still bind us so that we can prepare our spirits for the liberation that is not yet quite here. (We’ll use those materials at our community seder on Zoom with Rabbi David and the TBE community — please sign up now, we need your RSVP by Wednesday!) And, there are things we can do practically to prepare our hearts to go free.

Set your seder table with a white tablecloth, if you have one. If not, use a bedsheet… or whatever festive cloth you can find. Make it feel different than on a regular night. It’s too early to have spring flowers where we live, but if you can pick up a bouquet at the grocery store, treat yourself: a symbol of spring, something beautiful and festive. Put candles on your festival table: we’ll light them to bring the light of the festival into the room and into our hearts.

Create a second seder plate memorializing this COVID year: hand sanitizer, a face mask, a vaccination card if you’re fortunate enough to have had a shot. We’ll light a memorial candle for the half a million who have died as we move through the door into this year’s community seder. And you’ll also want a “regular” seder plate symbolizing our ancestral story of freedom: an egg, a roasted shankbone or beet, a sprig of green, haroset, maror. Maybe an orange and an olive.

We’ll harness our sensory experiences to bring us into the festival of freedom. The crunch of matzah, the taste of parsley (or whatever you use for karpas, the green vegetable dipped in salt water tears), the sharpness of horseradish and sweetness of haroset… all of these will spiritually hyperlink us with seders past and seders to come. Our people have celebrated Pesach in narrow straits before. Our rituals give us strength, and they connect us with each other and with our Source.

The journey to Passover begins where we are. Not in some imagined reality where the pandemic never happened, but right here and now. And I know with all my heart that when we gather on Zoom for second night seder, the words and the tastes and the rituals will lift us out of where we are and prepare us for the unfolding of something new. The journey to Sinai. The journey to togetherness. The journey to the better world we’ll build together on the far side of the sea.

This is the d’varling that Rabbi Rachel offered at Kabbalat Shabbat services (cross-posted to Velveeteen Rabbi)

“וְעָ֥שׂוּ לִ֖י מִקְדָּ֑שׁ וְשָׁכַנְתִּ֖י בְּתוֹכָֽם׃ / Let them make Me a sanctuary that I may dwell within them.” (Ex. 25:8 – in this week’s Torah portion, T’rumah.)  

The word mishkan (the portable dwelling-place for God) shares a root with the word Shechinah, the divine Presence. We build sacred space so God will dwell in us. I talk about this verse every year, because I love it. But this year, what jumps out at me is its juxtaposition with what follows.

Immediately after this verse, Torah tells us to make an ark to hold the tablets of the covenant. Cover it with gold. Put rings on the sides, and poles through the rings. And keep it that way. The ark over which the divine Presence would rest needed to be ready to go at a moment’s notice.

Wherever the people go, holy words and presence go with them — which is to say, with us. As beautiful as the mishkan was (as beautiful as our beloved shul building is) God’s presence doesn’t live there. God’s presence goes with us. Our texts and traditions go with us. Holiness goes with us.

Our ancient ancestors needed perseverance to make their way through the wilderness. I imagine that their perseverance was fueled, in part, by this verse and its assurance that God goes with us wherever we go.

After the Temple fell, our sages called the Shabbat table a mikdash me-at, a small sanctuary. I keep returning to that image during this COVID time. God’s presence is with us at our Shabbes tables tonight. God’s presence is with us when we bless and light candles together-apart, when we bless and break bread together-apart, when we daven together-apart.

The poles were kept in the rings of the ark to teach us that the life of the spirit goes with us wherever we go. God goes with us wherever we go. Holiness goes with us wherever we go. And like our ancient ancestors, we need perseverance to get us through.

Yesterday NASA landed a new robotic rover on Mars, named — as you probably know — Perseverance. Some of you may have watched on the news or online as NASA engineers got word that the rover had safely landed, and celebrated from afar.

I read in the Washington Post earlier this week that “Hitting the 4.8-mile-wide landing site targeted by NASA after a journey of 300 million miles is akin to throwing a dart from the White House and scoring a bull’s eye in Dallas.” It’s honestly incredible.

As is being able to see images from our neighbor planet in realtime. As is the dream that the science this little robot will do — sampling regolith and soil, testing for microbes — will bring us one step closer to someday landing human beings on Mars.

I hope I’m around to celebrate that day — and to see how Judaism will evolve once it becomes interplanetary! Will Jews on Mars turn toward Earth to pray, the way we now orient toward Jerusalem? How will we navigate the fact that a Martian “day” is different from an earth day in calculating Shabbat?

(Although I haven’t researched this, my instinct is to say that Shabbat should be every seventh day, local time, even if that means it’s not coterminous with Shabbat on earth. But that’s another conversation.)

I’m confident that when there are Jews on Mars, we’ll figure out how to build Jewish there…. and that we’ll find this week’s Torah portion resonant when we do.

Because God’s presence is with us when we shelter in place at home now. And God’s presence will go with human beings to Mars someday. And the same spirit that enlivens our Shabbes tables here will enliven us there.

Holiness and hope aren’t geographically limited. They go where we go. And the perseverance that got us through the wilderness is the same perseverance that will take us to the stars.

The poles stayed in the rings on the handles of the ark because God goes with us wherever we go.

As we approach one year since our awareness of the pandemic began, there’s something poignant about the name of this little rover. Perseverance is the quality we need to reach that dream of human beings on Mars.

It’s the quality we need to mitigate climate change and ensure safety and care for our fellow human beings — especially in times of crisis like Texas is experiencing now. And it’s the quality we need to make it to the other side of this global pandemic.

The Hebrew word for Perseverance is הַתמָדָה, which contains within it the root t/m/d, always. As in the ner tamid, the eternal light kept burning in the mishkan, the eternal light that burns now in synagogues around the world.

The ner tamid is a perennial reminder of divine Presence, and holiness, and hope burning bright. The ner tamid perseveres, as our hope perseveres, as our life of the spirit perseveres.

May we take hope and strength from the Mars rover Perseverance. May we find our own perseverance strengthened as we approach the second year of this pandemic. And may we feel the flame of hope burning bright within our hearts — the holy sanctuaries where God’s presence dwells.

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

2021-01-28

In this week’s Torah portion, Beshalach, we read the Song at the Sea. “I will sing to God…” Our commentators note that this verse is in future tense: not “I sing,” but “I will sing.” Hold on to that; we’ll come back to it.

The rabbi of the Warsaw Ghetto, the Piazeczyner, notes that many of our psalms are called songs. They name themselves that way, in the opening phrase. The name “songs” seems to imply praise and thanksgiving, but often these psalms contain sorrow and fear. So why don’t we call them laments? Why do we call them songs, even when they express something painful?

Talmud teaches us to call them songs because that name reminds us to seek the spark of good within the pain. Phrased another way: a “song” is something that’s authentic. Song doesn’t just mean happy-clappy, it means expressing the heart. Sometimes what we have to express is sorrow and fear, but that expression opens us to a spark of good within whatever’s unfolding.

And… the Piazeczyner notes that it can be difficult, almost impossible, to truly sing while enduring suffering. “In order for a person to sing, their essential self — heart and soul — must burst into song.” And sometimes, we just can’t get there.

I underlined that phrase in my book because it speaks to me so deeply. It can be difficult, almost impossible, to truly sing when we’re suffering. Some of us may be finding it difficult to sing in month eleven of the pandemic. Tired of staying home, fiercely missing other human beings, fearful of new and more contagious variants, grieving more than 433,000 dead so far.

Some of us may be finding it difficult to sing because we’re lonely or worried about loved ones. Or because we’re still shaken by the violent storming of the Capitol building earlier this month, or distressed by conspiracy-minded voices that blame recent years’ wildfires on Jewish-funded space lasers. (I wish I were kidding about that.)

Sometimes, the Piazeczyner says, when the suffering is so great that our hearts feel crushed, we can’t find even a spark of rejoicing. That’s how he understands the kotzer ruach, constriction of spirit, described in our parsha a few weeks ago. We were so crushed by our suffering that we couldn’t even hear that things were going to get better.

And yet this week our story takes us to the Sea of Reeds. We’re leaving Egypt. We’re singing the Song at the Sea. How did we get from “unable to even hear hope” to “crossing the Sea toward liberation”? For me, the answer is in singing our own real songs.

If we can really inhabit the song of our hearts — even when it’s a fearful song, or an anxious song, or a grieving song — then we can be real with each other and with God. And it’s in that being-real that we find the spark of hope that gets us through.

There’s a debate about how the Song at the Sea was originally sung. Was it a call-and-response, in which Moshe sang each line and we sang it back? Or did we sing all together? Probably this debate arose because both of those were traditions, and somebody wanted to know which one was “right.” But in typical fashion, our sages turned that debate into a deep teaching.

In Egypt, our sages teach, we sang praises as a call-and-response. We couldn’t muster praise on our own, but we could repeat it. (So yes: call-and-response is correct.) When we crossed the Sea, we all sang together. Our own hearts sang out. (So yes: singing in unison is correct too!) Tradition even teaches that our song then-and-there arose from direct personal experience of God.

Sometimes all we can do is repeat someone else’s words. We repeat the words of our prayers, we mirror someone else’s hope. At other times our own song pours forth. Both of those are authentic spiritual life. And when we’re willing to be real, we open to our own song. That’s how — even when still in Mitzrayim — we became able to envision that things would someday get better.

That’s why “I will sing to God…” is written in the future tense: it speaks to the future song that we know we will someday be able to sing.

Someday we’ll be able to safely gather in person. Someday we’ll be able to safely sing together in person. Right now we may still be in Narrow Straits, but let’s be real with each other: that’s how we open the door to hope. Someday songs of praise will sing forth from our hearts when we sing together, when we dance together, when it’s safe to be together, on the far side of this Sea.

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

Shared with gratitude to my hevruta R. Megan Doherty for studying the Aish Kodesh with me this week.

Image source: R. David Markus.