Rabbi Breit's Blog

In a sea of complaints, the Israelites leave captivity in Egypt. When they were slaves, the Torah teaches, they cried out and groaned under a heavy load. But one of the very first liberties they take as free people is to complain in their own words, sometimes snarky sometimes biting, to another person.

To Moses they quip, “Was it for want of graves in Egypt that you brought us to die in the wilderness?” Hungry, they wish they had died in Egypt, at least then they had some meat to eat. Thirsty, they ask Moses if that was his whole game plan — to bring them here to die of thirst?

The complaining is a recurrent theme. Everything is wrong and Moses is definitely the problem. At one point, Moses worries aloud to God that the people are so angry he thinks they might stone him.

We have all been in a community like this, where the group conversations seem all to have the same tone. An entire community can be stuck in conversations of mutual recrimination, unregulated anger, embitterment, complaint, indignation. There’s a concept called the Overton window that communities have a fixed range of politically acceptable discourse in any given population at a given time. Maybe whichever Israelite dared to express optimistic enthusiasm about their trek across the desert was shot down, given a withering look for not getting the “vibe”.

But then there’s a miracle. The sea parts and the Israelites flee across it on dry land. The sea closes over the Egyptians pursuing them.

Or maybe the miracle is what happens next. The Israelites break into songs of praise and gratitude and joy. The text says: az yashir Moshe u’vnei Yisrael, the  Moses and the children of Israel sang. Moses (or maybe it was Miriam! it depends whom you ask) has the bravery to do something totally against type, to make a wild new statement: to burst into song in joy. And the rest of the people join in.

We cannot live our lives waiting for every sea that faces us to part. But maybe we can have the bravery to say or do something completely outlandish — to break into hopeful, grateful song, to shove that Overton window from cynicism towards optimism. Then the people of Israel will sing. Then the people of Israel will live through a miracle. Shabbat shalom.

El Al’s motto is “hachi babayt b’olam”, “most ‘at home’ in the world”. And while I spend most of my time fruitlessly trying to accrue Delta points, it felt deeply true as I nestled into my flight to Tel Aviv last Sunday. I am at home in the world. And in Israel I feel most at home.

I’d started chatting with the folks next to me in the security line as if we’d been friends for years. Where I sat, the flight attendant was busy scolding a passenger for not letting her know she had a nut allergy — “it could be dangerous for you!”, she waved her hands in exasperation like a tired mother and went off to make an announcement to tell passengers not to eat nuts. The security lady’s eyes twinkled at me as she said, “Oh, another Rabbi just passed through my line!” At Arrivals a group of girls in full body panda costumes were whirling in circles singing Hava Nagila to welcome a loved on home. My taxi driver tried to set me up with his son.

Our hotel intensified the feeling that, in Israel, home spills into the public spaces. Displaced residents from the North have been living in hotel rooms across the country, and the Dan Jerusalem had families, seemingly placed at random, throughout the hotel. When I arrived to my room two little pups came sprinting across the internal courtyard to greet me in exuberance. Clothing drying racks were lashed to balcony railings. Several balconies had kids’ toys and one had a mini trampoline. On the way to breakfast I walked past doors with the recognizable colorful Israeli signs, “Mishpachat Goldberg”, Goldberg Family, that usually adorn Tel Aviv apartment doors.

People sticker public spaces with quotes, with mementos, with portraits. The faces of smiling young people are plastered to nearly every wall and window. They are bumper sticker sized and there’s no public space without them. These are the faces of those killed on October 7th or in battle. Being in Israel already charges me with a feeling of quick and powerful connection to the people around me. And I worry I might know someone on one of the stickers. I pause anxiously each time I see them to read a quote or two written by loved ones, “Everything is dear in its time”, “You can be busy with yourself… or do something better!” It’s a surreal activity at a grocery store.

But no feeling really hit me until I stopped at a gas station on a drive up Highway 6. There, in an array of these stickers, was a space. A woman paused, pulled a sticker of a beautiful young woman out of her bag, and delicately stuck it to the window. It said “prettiest girl in the kindergarten”. And the girl in the photo beamed with joy. The woman who’d placed the sticker touched it for a moment, gave it a kiss, and slipped away into the gas station.

Each sticker cries out. Our brother is captive. Our sister has been killed. Each house has lost someone and the walls of the house are very thin. They open up onto the street. The families of those killed in battle sit in tents next to the main road. The entire country is one home in mourning and in wait.

In this week’s parsha we read of the capturing and presumed death of Joseph. He is held in captivity in Egypt as his father descends into wretched sadness. The children of Israel try to comfort their father, but they themselves don’t seem too sad. But in Israel today, there is no way to harm one member of the family without hurting everyone. The entire house is in mourning; sharing a home means everyone feels it together.

Shabbat shalom

(If you’d like to see some of these stickers for yourself, come with me to Israel in June. Or visit http://www.stickersofmeaning.com/, where many have been gathered digitally.)

The high holiday season can be overwhelming. There is a sense, maybe rightly so, that we should each be overcome with awe and fear. Some of us might secretly await a dramatic reset, heralded by a hurricane or claps of thunder. Or maybe we want a eureka moment where we suddenly discover or understand something in a way that makes the season’s significance finally palpable and obvious. We wait for a moment of teshuvah that should somehow strike us as both familiar and astonishing, like the sound of the shofar, unexpected but also we’ve prepared for it all along.

But how do we prepare for something like that? We're meant to take the whole month of Elul to prepare.

This Shabbat, in particular, the hurricane might indeed be coming. But there is another approach to the High Holy Days, one that isn’t about drama and surprise, but about humility, showing up, asking questions, and learning together. And so for the month of Elul, we should show up, ask questions, and learn together (in addition to navigating the hurricane safely).

Our parsha this week, Nitzavim-Vayeilech, opens with the words “atem nitzavim hayom” you are all standing here today. The parsha is insistent that it’s not just the fancy important people; it’s absolutely everyone. So that’s where we start — showing up together.

And then we hear this verse, often quoted in torah study, “Surely, this Instruction which I enjoin upon you this day is not too baffling for you, nor is it beyond reach. It is not in the heavens, that you should say, ‘Who among us can go up to the heavens and get it for us and impart it to us, that we may observe it?’” That’s a provative rhetorical question, demanding we move to the next step, realizing that each and every one of us is educated enough, “good at it” enough, and smart enough to be part of our study of Torah. Come, ask a question, teach, and learn.

The greatest learning, the most impressive resilience, the dazzling feats of renewal and repentance are gleaned through practice, very rarely do they drop upon us all at once. They are found by continuously showing up, asking questions, and learning together.

Whether you come to all our study sessions every week, or you simply don’t think you’re the Judaics studying kind, I invite you this Shabbat to join with our Scholar in Residence, my friend Ben, one of the most humble and thoughtful teachers I have ever known, to do some learning together before the High Holidays. Ben is a JTS-trained scholar of interfaith dialogue and midrash. And we will learn from him and with him Friday night, Saturday morning, and at our nighttime Selichot services. The full schedule can be found here: https://www.bnaitorah.org/hh5785#SIR/Selichot

Shabbat shalom!

There are some beautiful details that only the Torah reader sees. As you listen to the Torah read out loud in services, you might read along in a chumash (a typed and printed copy of the text). But the person looking at the scroll itself sees something vibrant, varied, and beautiful. Here the words are squished together, there they are stretched out, and everywhere each letter slightly different by virtue of the human hand the wrote them.

The spacing of the words, the crowns on the letters, they all draw the reader to attention — to pause even for just a second.  This week’s Torah portion, Va’Etchanan, contains the shma, and in it the ע and the ד are both large and bold. They jump off the parchment as soon as you roll the scroll to that panel. The rabbis have many explanations for why the holy document is written like this: so you don’t read it terribly wrong, reading אחר for אחד — a mistake of polytheism, or to frame our testimony of the shma with עד, the word that means testimony itself.

I see it as a bit of a treasure hunt. A pop of surprise, a feeling like you are interacting with the text that you have found something in it.

When I was a kid my mom used to take me to see Al Hirschfeld drawings. And we had a book of them in the living room. Hirschfeld hid his daughter’s name, Nina, in each and every drawing — etched into the folds of a gown or camouflaged among the shading hatches, sometimes so small or so well obscured that it would take me ages to find it. In every drawing we’d immediately set off to “find the Nina’s”, poring over ink lines to find his tiny mark of love. And when I’d find it I’d get that feeling, like a little wink shared between me and Al; I found the love he’d embedded in his art.

In addition to detail embedded in the art of the shma, this week’s parsha also gives us a powerful promise. Moses explains that God “will scatter you among the peoples, and only a scant few of you shall be left among the nations to which God will drive you. There you will serve man-made gods of wood and stone, that cannot see or hear or eat or smell. But if you search there for Adonai your God, you will find God, if only you seek God with all your heart and soul when you are in distress because all these things have befallen you.”

In the times of our gravest persecution, and we will be persecuted, God is still there, waiting to be searched for, waiting to be found. Sometimes we look for the big evidence -- for miracles or victories or portents and signs. This Shabbat, if God has felt far, may we search with all our heart and soul and be open even to the tiniest of glimpses. Sometimes if you open your eyes and search you'll find a handwritten message, a tiny detail, something that feels like a little wink or a reminder that this too was written with love.

When I was a little kid I was crawling through a big plastic tunnel in a line of kids at some indoor playground. The two boys in front of me were messing around and kept stopping, holding up the line of hands and knees, and my face was stuck adjacent to the second guy’s sneakers and rear end. Now if I’m being generous to little Elizabeth, I should also say I was feeling claustrophobic and a little panicked, trying desperately to exit this trap plastic contraption. But after one very prolonged stop -- I got mad. I jabbed forward with my pointer finger trying to poke this kid in front of me hard in the leg. I missed. I jammed my finger, angry and with force, into the plastic tunnel wall. I sprained my finger and it turned all kinds of purple. Thus at age seven I had the painful searing realization that when you lash out with a vindictive burst to hurt others, you’ll probably just end up hurting yourself. If you're lucky.

In our parsha this week, Balak, King of Moab, angry and afraid of the thriving people of Israel, sends the prophet Balaam to curse the Jews. At first God says to Balaam don’t go, so Balaam doesn’t go. But then Balak comes back with more wealth incentives and so Balaam brings the subject back up with God. It seems like God gives him the go-ahead.

But, in what almost seems like a divine slapstick comedy of the old Yiddish proverb “man plans and God laughs,” Balaam is waylaid on his way to curse the Israelites. His donkey veers off road into the fields with him on it. Then when back on the road, it leans to the side and smashes his foot into an alleyway wall. And then finally it just lays down in the middle of the road. Seems like God is pissed and this isn’t going the way Balaam planned.

The rabbis discuss at length what might be happening here. How can God OK Balaam’s journey and then angrily throw it off course? Some rabbis say it’s because well yes technically Balaam was allowed to go, but that he went with a little too much enthusiasm about cursing the Israelites. Others say God didn’t give ever him the go ahead; he imagined it in a false prophecy he wanted to hear because of the gold paycheck dangled in front of him. But maybe it’s a little something like my jammed finger.

Let’s imagine younger me had better aim. Let’s imagine I’d really jabbed my whole anger into that stranger child’s backside. What then? I would have hurt a stranger, been in trouble, and most certainly not gotten out of that tunnel any faster. If anything I can only imagine my childlike fisticuffs would have caused a delay of tunnel parade. It would have definitely been way worse. There was actually a sort of blessing in my jammed finger. Not only did it teach me that the cruelty you spew out into the world has every chance of coming back and hitting you, but it also spared me from an even worse act of violence.

So yes, it might have really hurt. But what a blessing to have my own intention to curse another backfire so quickly and with such (relatively) minimal consequences. I hope by this age I have learned not to fire angry fingers at the world. But, when we all inevitably get so mad as to forget that lesson, may we be so lucky to have our hateful intentions foiled quickly -- by a jammed finger or a stubborn donkey. Shabbat shalom!

This week’s torah portion, Nasso, teaches us about jealousy. Torat Ha’Knaot, literally "the Torah of Jealousies", is twenty verses of instruction on how a jealous man can confront his wife of her suspected infidelity. The rules of the ensuing ritual, sotah, seem almost witch-like and arcane. Under priestly supervision, the wife must drink water mixed with ink and curses that will cause her some sort of physical harm if she has in fact been unfaithful. But if the inky curses have no effect on her, she is proclaimed innocent. In this ritual and beyond, our parsha is a meditation on jealousy — on avoiding it and confronting it.

In our parsha Moses divides up the Levitical sacred honor and duty of transporting the mishkan, the tabernacle. And each Levite is given his assignment by name. There is no room worry for whose task is whose, who is not doing enough or who is taking on what is not theirs to take. There is no option to pick your own, bigger or more important role; each was assigned by God. The assignment is very clear and specific, leaving little room for jealousy or resentment.

And then later, each Nasi, tribal leader, brings an inaugural sacrifice on behalf of his tribe for the mishkan.  Each Nasi’s sacrifice is identical down the last detail. A student of Torah can’t help but imagine while reading that these two key elements of the people’s stewardship and participation in the mishkan were meant to forestall jealousy.

It doesn’t require projecting much of our own feeling into a text that insists on radical equity, clear and immutable assignments, and describes an entire ritual to face jealousies that cannot be proved or unproven, to understand that the Torah recognizes and acknowledges the lasting impact of jealousy on our psyche and our community and is shaped around it.

But there is only so much rigging of the world system you can do to prevent jealousy. Even in a world that is prescriptively fair and ordered, such as this world of Numbers, things happen. And it’s unfortunately often the people closest to us — spouses, dear friends, family members — who bear the brunt of that green eyed monster, the feeling that something is missing in your life or not as good as it ought to be, the suspicion that something isn’t fair and that another person's greed or laziness or disloyalty is to blame. Maybe you feel you don’t have what you should and you believe it's because someone else has ruined it.

And how much more visceral of a feeling of jealousies that befall us in our world, where responsibilities are not so clear, where equity is not a guiding principle. We know who to blame when a particular beam of the tabernacle goes missing; his name is on it. But who is the one to blame for the war in Israel? Who is the one to blame for inflation? Who is the one to blame for crime? And we certainly don’t live in a world with equal distribution. Even in our own congregation there is vast discrepancy in the wealth each of us has to offer. These things are not in our control.

So what can we learn from Nasso on jealousy? We can learn that we must do our best to set up equal participation in our ritual ife. We must do our best to give clear and fair assignments of responsiblity. And, beyond that, when that fails, we learn  from sotah --the bizarre poison ink water ritual of assuaging a husband's jeaousy towards his wife. On one the hand, we can learn that god’s divine justice is true, that the karmic righting of a the wrongs that provoke jealousy will come. But I prefer a different lesson. For me sotah, and Nasso, teach that sometimes you really need a ritual to come to terms with what makes you sick with envy. You can't avoid it and you can't unfeel it. And you cannot have what others have. But you can confess your jealousy to someone who matters. You can say it out loud: I am jealous and I don't want to be any more. And maybe the person you’re jealous of says: I know you’re jealous and I will help you not to be. And, if you're lucky, maybe a teacher or a rabbi you trust says: and may it be so, and it is so.

Shabbat shalom.

We have met with soldiers, survivors, peaceniks, and Israelis who never expected that their full time job would suddenly become coordinating emergency aid, rescues from armed gunmen, camps for displaced persons, or dozens of funerals.

From her Sukkot travel in Portugal, Chen turned her entire apartment into a command center to collect reports of her wounded, killed, abducted, trapped — her sister, nephews, father, and lifelong friends from her kibbutz home in Kfar Aza — that flooded her phone through fragments of whatsapps and voice messages that end suddenly. She sent rescuers to the trapped and warning to Kibbutz Sa’ad across the street which saved them from the same destruction.

Tech CEOS were using their software and data analysis on piecemeal Hamas Telegram and security cam footage to track Israelis as they were kidnapped or missing, to coordinate aid for the flood of internal refugees, and to collect needed personal protection equipment for the front lines.

Gal, who was badly wounded in previous wars and swore not to serve again, went immediately to his base to drive through battlefields to collect the wounded. He trains PTSD support service dogs and visits grievously wounded soldiers to give them hope and direction on how they can return to life.

Elay, who last summer was a camp counselor at Camp Judaea, told us how he ran from gunshots, how a series of chance decisions, hiding for hours silent in a field of avocado trees, meant he survived a rampaging hunt that killed his friends whose choice to hide in a bomb shelter, flee in their car, or run a different direction left them trapped.

It hurt to hear. And at once each of us felt a spark of joy when, after hearing his story, we realized Lisa’s kids had been his campers last summer and his face transformed for a moment from stoic and still from positively illuminated. He wasn’t a story or a statistic, but family -- a loved one.

This is the biggest message I have from our time here so far. The feeling of enormous love, inter-reliance, and interdependence. We are so interwoven. We should not pretend to be far away.

I have always known Israelis to have enormous will and and even bigger hearts, perhaps hidden under a more prickly exterior. And this has been true everywhere we went. On seeing others suffer, this society has risen up in the most powerful way to help and care for each other.

And each one has thanked us. In the most surreal turn of events, each and every Israeli we met has turned and looked me in the eye and thanked us for coming. It is as if, at a shiva, the mourner who’s family has just been stabbed in the heart took your hands in theirs and with tears in their eyes, thanked you with surprise and gratitude for being with them at this time.

They are worried for us. They read about antisemitism and they want to know how to help.

So I hope to give you a sense of the lesson they continue to teach.

Rabbi Heller talked in a sermon about how dire it is in time of disaster not only to hold the people we care for in our hearts, but also to carry them on our shoulders. Nissimi told us how on Sukkot morning a young father came to him and said, “I promised my girls I’d dance with them on my shoulders today, but I just got called to reserves. Can you please dance with them on yours?” “Of course,” he said, without hesitation. Of course he would put his friends’ children on his shoulders, he would take them to dance, there is no question.

Here  there is no question that when your loved ones need you, your society needs you, you pick up what you can. That sense of love, fortitude, and resilience must continue to guide us. And may we hold it for the Israelis, whose arms are so tired, whose burden continues to grow, so when they lose it, or they forget it, we can give it back to them.

Shabbat shalom.

The rabbis teach that we must increase our joy for Adar. And this year the month of Adar repeats, with the holiday of Purim (a pinnacle of rejoicing) held off until second Adar. So our calendar this year has served us a full extra month to be increasing joy. And it could come at no harder time. It this time in the life of our people, joy may feel hard, disingenuous, or disloyal. But Adar is here. And Purim is coming. And Purim Katan, or “Little Purim”, which we celebrate by having a festive meal or doing something joyous, is tomorrow. So what do you do?

Our parsha this week, Tetzaveh, deals with another tall order, given to Aaron — transforming ones self from slave into the holiest priest of the one God. You could only imagine Aaron turning to God and saying, “This comes at a hard time. I was a slave my whole life. I’ve never been a priest. How do I suddenly become, powerful, resplendent, and holy?” How do we create such revelry and joy when for so many months we have in some part been in near constant mourning?

Our parsha’s solution is to give instruction not about why Aaron should be holy or to wax poetic about what holiness is. It is not about It is the nitty-gritty how. The gorgeous details unfurl verse by verse, dictating the wrap and hem of his clothing, coat, and headdress — the pomegranates, the gold, the bells. The little bells on the hem of his robe are meant to protect him, ringing as he moves from room to room into the holy of holies. We are told detail by detail of the precious stones, braids, and fine twisted linen that should be made into his clothes.

We are given objects to make and actions to do. These objects and actions — sacrificing an animal, anointing himself in blood — make him safe and make him holy. So when we too are not sure how to feel joy, and maybe we've lost track of what joy even is or feels like, maybe we can start back at the fundamentals, the objects and the actions. Maybe you make a fabulous fringed costume (80s themed!) for the megillah reading. Maybe you create a beautiful shabbat meal in honor of Purim Katan. Maybe you bake hamantaschen for yourself and for your family. Maybe you give to the needy. Maybe you send presents to your friends and spend a day decorating the bags and filling them with beautiful fruits, gold, or precious stones. 

Pick an object. Pick an action. This Shabbat, practice joy. Shabbat shalom.

This Shabbat we begin the book of Exodus. We read the story of the children of Israel’s slavery in Egypt, freedom from Pharaoh, and long journey towards the land of Israel. Our communal memory brings up vivid scenes of plagues and a parting sea, maybe with a soundtrack of Paul Robeson chanting in spine-tingling baritone, “Let my people go!” But that’s not what Moses says to Pharaoh. He asks for three days off.

Moses asks for three days of freedom for the people to be given a break to go worship God in the desert. He does not ask for much, only a brief respite from their suffering and a chance to worship God. Pharaoh refuses this reasonable request. Then he slanders their character and crushes their spirit by doubling their workload.

Moses hadn’t even wanted to ask for anything to start with. He didn’t think he could manage it, that the people or Pharaoh would listen. He didn’t want the confrontation and he didn’t want the leadership. He refuses this assignment four times until God really can’t take it anymore and gives him Aaron as support. But finally he agrees, knowing he has the position and the resources to serve his people and his God. And so he musters his courage and accepts his responsibility and the risk and challenges that come alongside it.

When Moses returns home to the children of Israel and tells them God’s plan, the people believe in him. They trust him. And they bow low to the ground. At once, he becomes a leader whether he wanted to be one or not; the people need him and he has been sent to plead their cause.

And so when Pharaoh refuses and his slave drivers come down hard on the people, Moses doesn’t throw up his hands and return to Midian. He doesn't defend himself to his people against their criticisms. He doesn't turn their blame on Pharoah saying something like, "Why are you angry with me? It's Pharoah's fault he's a tyrant!" But he turns his face directly to God. Moses says, “Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why did You send me? Since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and You have not rescued Your people at all.” (Ex. 5:22-23). He holds God to God's own promises and moral standard. This is extraordinary language to use with God. For a man known for his humility, here he is sparking with chutzpah. 

And yet that is just the sort of leadership we need -- an insistence on our own moral standards, a core conviction and knowledge what it is their mission is. Our leaders must be someone who will fight for what they believe in, never too proud to fail, to keep trying again and again, and with little interest in their own status or defending their reputation.

Be humble in who you are and what you think you deserve, but argue without shame or self-effacement when you know your principles have been violated. Shabbat shalom.

My sermon this past Shabbat went through the ways parshat Vayishlach can teach us about grief and prayer. We watch Jacob stand terrified at precipice of grief and danger -- having possibly lost his mother, at risk to lose his wives and children, ready to be annihilated by his estranged brother. There Jacob recites the words: "I am too small for all the lovingkindness and faithfulness that you have shown me, your servant. I crossed this Jordan with only my shepherd's staff, now my family has been split into two camps. Save me" (Genesis 32:11-12).

These words were set to beautiful music by Yonatan Razel, and I said I'd share them after Shabbat. Here is a version of the song sung by Ofir ben Shitrit - https://youtu.be/RYyHpRDqIWg?si=w1ovjo6OSet86kaQ 

I’ve never connected so deeply to our liturgy as I did this past Sunday. In part it was the ruach of Simchat Torah as we whirled in circles and shouted and sang. In part it was the joy of kindergartners visibly delighting in huggable plushie torahs. But mostly it was the feeling of breaking. A part of me had broken apart. Our people have been attacked and our family thrust into war and the sense of safety, bubbly enthusiasm, and joviality I usually live by was gone. But in that space I felt our liturgy move through me more powerfully than ever.

We begin each day with birkot hashachar, the morning blessings. On that morning, wrapped in my tallis, I blessed our God sh’asani yisrael, who made me a Jew. We blessed our God who releases the bound, who strengthens Israel with courage, and crowns Israel with glory. In unison we said “amen” to bless God who has compassion for his people Israel.

We have the power to remind God who God has promised to be. It is how Abraham argues with God. It is how Moses secures us God’s forgiveness. When we bless God, we remind God who God is. You are the one who crowns Israel with glory. As we stood in our sanctuary on Sunday morning, I felt electrified by our communal demand of blessing that God have compassion for Israel.

There are still more prayers of communal grief. On Yom Kippur we read the list of thousands of years of martyrs. On Shemini Atzeret we sing for rain, reminding God of our blood spilled like water. As we stomped and spun around the social hall crying “aneinu, aneinu, b’yom qoreinu”, hear us, hear us, on the day we cry out, I felt less alone in my grief in singing together.

There are prayers that remind us of hope. When we sing “ozi v’zimrat ya vayhi li li’shua” in the Song of the Sea, we remember that God gives us the power of song, and of strength, to save.

There are prayers for channeling our anger. We call out to God in psukei d’zimra, the opening morning prayers, “el neqamot adonai, el neqamot hofiya”, God of vengeance, Adonai, God of vengeance, reveal yourself. My anger is not enough. My anger is not a solution. Please God, let our anger be yours. I do not trust my anger, but I do trust yours.

It is not often that our whole foundation is rattled. Thank God. But what shakes you to your core reveals what is beneath, a bedrock of strength and of purpose. It connects each of us to one another. May it keep us brave, compassionate, and safe.

This Shabbat, when we stand up to pray, before we turn silently to God in the Amidah, give yourself a moment to sing out — sing loudly, with anger or with grief, with hope, with fear, to remind God who God is, and to remind us who we are:

tzur yisrael, quma b’ezrat yisrael
uf’deih khinumekha y’hudah v’yisrael
go’aleinu adonai tzva’ot sh’mo, k’dosh yisrael
barukh atah adonai, ga’al yisrael

Stronghold of the people Israel, arise and help Israel.
Redeem, as You promise, Judah and Israel.
Our redeemer is named God of Armies, the Holy One of Israel.
Blessed are you Adonai, who liberates Israel. Amen.

I don’t know much about crypto currency. I’m not a banker or in tech and I don’t have any interest in bitcoin (though I do have a dear friend who wrote a Modern Love column on it once, which clearly I recommend and is the closest I’ve gotten to the subject). To be honest, I thought crypto was “over” — like bell bottoms or Furbies, a fad we hope not to return again. But then I was informed that crypto companies do other things, like making Smart Contracts (don’t worry, this wont be about computers all the way through).

A Smart Contract is a contract that executes itself. Meaning, if you agree to pay x in exchange for y, the contract itself automatically transfers the money when its conditions are met and that’s the end of that. It eliminates doubt, middlemen, and wiggle room. I imagine some sort of computer animated contract that when signed lights up into golden autonomous magic turning gears a la Harry Potter.

Now I think in general we value the idea of efficiency. And we assume if you agreed to something, you ought to carry it out. I can’t say anything is necessarily wrong with a Smart Contract as long as it isn’t a predatory one. But something about this gave me pause. I think I like the idea of wiggle room. I want a contract, but one of obligation and of compassion, the sort of contract that God made with us.

In Parshat Eikev, Moses reminds the peopleויָ֣דַעְתָּ֔ כִּֽי־ה׳ אֱלֹקיךָ ה֣וּא הָֽאֱלֹקים הָאֵל֙ הַֽנֶּאֱמָ֔ן שֹׁמֵ֧ר הַבְּרִ֣ית וְהַחֶ֗סֶד” , “ “Know that Hashem your God, the God, the trustworthy God, keeps the brit and the chesed”, the covenant and the lovingkindness, with us.

What does this mean? Maimonedes explains chesed as the kindness you didn’t earn and to which you can never be entitled, but that you receive as a gift. God makes a brit with us: if you keep these rules you will get these benefits, if you don’t keep up your end, you will be kicked out. But there is this extra bit, this chesed, where maybe God also says: but that’s not the end of it. You can break it and you can repair it, as you do every year. I will forgive you and I will forgive your debts to me. You can try over and over again. You may not get these blessings, but you will get others. And most of all, I will help you keep the contract; I will teach you and I will guide you and I will send people to help you. It is not a Smart Contract, auto-enforced.

Our relationship with God is governed by rules but also by compassion. We must strive to bring such wisdom to our own relationships with other people — perhaps for a partner, or a child, or a student, or a friend. We might say to ourselves, “OK, if they don’t do x, then they can’t have y,” ie: If you don’t do your homework, you can’t have dessert. If you don’t call me on my birthday, I wont call you on yours. If you talk in class, you miss recess. We value such rules for the sense of structure and consistency that they give and that we crave. These contracts can help the world feel safe, fair, predictable, and navigable. But rules without compassion, without give, drag us down. What if instead I help you redirect your bubbling classroom energy? Or I call you as an act of chesed? What if dessert is something you get because its delicious, not because you earned it?

Writing relational contracts without compassion builds a life of rigidity that makes us brittle, inflexible, and distracts us from the purpose of any relational bond — to love. The first word of our brit is v’ahavta, and you shall love. To do so, we need more than consistent and predictable rules. We also need compassion. So while we may hold fast to our earnestly set expectations, rules, boundaries, and contracts with others, let’s not forget the chesed, the other half of God’s relationship with us, the sense of compassion that holds our contracts in service of love.

The Israelites donated vehicles (carts and oxen) to the Levites to transport the elements of the mishkan, the tabernacle. Moses then divided the carts and oxen up among the three Levite families. But to the Kohathites he gave none “because theirs was the service of the [most] sacred objects, their porterage was by shoulder” (Numbers 7:9).

And so the Israelites moved the miskhan, our most holy structure and God’s home, from place to place. Some things they moved by cart, and some were carried by hand. Why? It seems so much easier, so much more efficient, to toss the items in the cart. Why didn't Moses give any carts to the Sons of Kohath?

We love to complain about schlepping. But carrying things by hand can give you a visceral sense of what matters. Anyone going on a car trip knows they over-pack. Did you need that extra set of just-in-case pants and shoes? Who cares — in the car it goes! Now try to get that in an airplane carry on, and all of a sudden requirements for what is important enough to take with us shoot up. If you carry by hand, you have a real sense that these are your essentials.

What if you had to carry it all in backpack through the woods? Our idea of what is important and valuable shifts dramatically. Everything you bring must matter. If you’re in the midbar, the wildnerness, you want to save your hands for food, water, shelter — the essentials. You’ll starve if you can’t carry food but have your hands full of shiny and frivolous objects. Deep in the desert, you only carry objects that contribute to your survival.

And cars (or carts) also enable us to do a sort of ‘aspirational packing’, I’ll call it, where we might think, “Well I might not play tennis often … but I might on this trip! I could be a star! Pack the whites and sneakers!” We don’t have to really think about where we’re going or what we want to do when we get there. With a big bag, planning is ancillary. But when you’re carrying by hand, you really have to know what you plan to do there so you can bring what you need.

I just went to an Atlanta United game (it was fabulous) and I’m told this is ubiquitous for sports, but I had to put all my items in a “clear bag”. This adds a whole other level of awareness. If everyone can see what you’re bringing — they see what condition it’s in, how you treat it, what you’ve packed it with — you consider your accessories with much greater scrutiny. There were no old candy wrappers and half-working pens packed alongside the essentials on the Kohathite's shoulders.

So imagine your job is to carry your holy objects by hand. Moses wont give you a cart. Everyone sees everything that you carry. They see the condition it is in and how you treat it. What you carry must be essential; it is the thing that is most important to who you are and where you plan to go, the life you build and re-build over and over again. And what you carry is necessary for your survival.

In this springtime many of you are moving -- maybe going on vacation or your child is going to camp or to college. As you pack, in this modern life of cars and schlepping all our possessions around, what do you have that you would still carry by hand? What is important to you? Is it a ritual object? Is it a nostalgic object? Is it a multi-tool? We say things are just things, they don't matter. But we are all attached to what we have. Have you noticed what you do carry around? Is it what is most important to you?

This Shabbat is Earth Day, so here is a lesson from my twenties spent exploring earth.

When I led cycling trips around the globe we had a number of pre-trip tasks to do that I did not particularly like: calling the posh French hotels to confirm our particular American reservations; adjusting and cleaning all the derailleurs so the bikes shifted just right; filling mysterious fluids in the huge boxy Fiat’s engine.

Like most, dare I say all, humans I felt compelled to avoid those tasks. You see, I had coworkers. They could do them. Now let’s be clear, I did do them, but once the trip started, it got harder to find that time. We were all pressed, doing a million tasks a minute — chatting with curious teens about Pointe du Hoc while slicing oranges and directing traffic in a busy roundabout. Passing a flat bike tire on a wheel we’d swapped off a guest’s bike and tossed in the van, we might have each thought to ourselves, “Oh, yeah... I’ll do that later I’m busy now. Or maybe by the time I’m done prepping this picnic lunch my co-leader will have done it!” That would be understandable.

But this was nipped in the bud in our training. Our training leader looked at us and said, “Every task you skip, who do you think will do it? It’s just the two of you out there. Skipping that task is like looking your co-leader in the eye, handing them the flat tire and saying, 'Here. You do it.'"

That stuck with me. Leaving your dirty dishes in the sink for just one more day with housemates? Here, you wash these. Never collapsing those darned Amazon cardboard boxes? Here, you do this. Leaving garbage on the floor? Yeah, that task is for you darling. And it’s even easier to pass tasks to an invisible “other” than someone you know and love. Maybe someone else will pick up that garbage on the trail.

Now you might have some established deals with your loved ones — who is the garbage taker outer and who is the one who makes sure you write down appointments — but with no bargain struck, we just wait for someone else to come and do those things for us.

There’s a beautiful teaching based off Ecclesiastes, from Midrash Kohelet Rabbah, that God took the first human to the Garden and said, “Admire my creation! It is beautiful. All that I have created I have made for you. But be careful that you do not ruin my world, for if you do, there is no one else to put right what you have destroyed.” When it comes to the task we were assigned in Genesis, "לעבדה ולשמרה" to work the land and to protect it, there is no one else coming by to fix it.

We are very lucky to rely on each other; I believe our interdependence and our adaptability are our greatest human strengths. You don't need to do every thing. It is probably a good idea to let the garbageman collect garbage and the arborist trim the trees. But if we all work together to harm nature, there is no other coworker who will sweep in and fix it after us. When there is work to be done and you say "Oh I can't do it" or "I cannot do it today", understand you're looking someone in the eye and saying, “Here, you do this.”

This Shabbat is not only Shabbat but also Rosh Chodesh Iyar. Iyar is also called “the Month of Radiance” (Chodesh Ziv) in the book of Kings because it is when the trees are radiant with blossoms. May we all take a moment to delight in that radiance this Shabbat and then pick up the tasks required to preserve them on Sunday.

Shabbat shalom!

There’s a mathematical limit to how many people you can know well. Well, there’s a theory of one anyway. A British anthropologist, Robin Dunbar, suggests it’s 150. Beyond that size, any social group starts to lose coherence and splinter. Dunbar’s number is based on our cognitive capacity as understood by human brain size and structure. Our ability to know people well and feel comfortable with them takes brain space and time. We learn about the other person, remember facts and feelings about them, and get a sense of their social connections and role in our community.

These relationships are built on and strengthened by regular contact. We can have a shared sense of identity, or purpose, or task. Getting to know people and feel connected with them takes time. In our modern age, we tend to forget that and feel that thousands of friends exist at our fingertips. And while there’s an amusing footnote to Dunbar’s number that suggests Americans in particular might be capable of 290, not 150, close relationships, for each of us there is some limit.

Perhaps it is for this reason that Yitro says to Moses that his trying to meet the needs of every Israelite in the desert, 1 man with 600,000 relationships, is lo tov, לא טוב, — no good. Moses cannot possibly get to know, connect with, or understand this many people. Yitro warns Moses that he will wear himself out, נבל תבלֹ, he will surely wither. But he also says that the people will be worn out too. Without real connection, there’s nothing holding the group together. We need smaller groups.

So that’s just what Yitro teaches Moses to do — divide up in groups as small as 10 so that each and every Israelite is included and every group has the same weight. Then each group needs an individual functioning as point person and leader. Yitro says the leaders should be anshei chayil, אנשי חיל, to lead each group of 10. And the rabbis work to define this Hebrew term. Some say it means capable, or God fearing, or those with many resources. But in the verse before we learn that these leaders are simply the ones Moses teaches how to lead; Yitro instructs והודעת להמ את הדרך ילכו בה , v’hodata lahem et ha-derekh yelkhu va, and you’ll teach them the way to go forward. 

10 people can do a lot of cool things together. If you want to find a smaller group to strengthen your connections at B’nai Torah, or if you want to learn how to lead a group, find out more about our Yitro-approved small groups here: https://www.bnaitorah.org/smallgroups We’ll be hosting a workshop for those leading or interested in leading on February 26 at 10:30 (sign up here: https://www.bnaitorah.org/form/2/26-smallgroup-workshop).

May you find and grow your circle and feel connection, belonging, and friendship, this week and every week. Shabbat shalom!

As a child someone gave me a book of zen koans. Yes this is a little strange, but let’s just accept that it happened. A koan is a stumper question, one asked by a teacher of enlightenment to a student. It’s meant to provoke such advanced meditative reflection that one might gain insight into the deepest reality of existence. You might have heard the more popular, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” A koan may or may not have an answer, but that is sort of beside the point. The point is an epiphany.

I didn’t get “one hand clapping”. I was mildly bothered. This question still registers in my mind as hardly interesting. One hand clapping? Ok, bang a shtender with the one hand … that’s a sound. Or maybe the hand kind of folds on itself and makes a little floppy halfhearted clap. Great. Who cares? The question didn’t grab me. It wasn’t difficult. There was nothing to argue about.

Occasionally someone approaches me and apologizes, “Sorry Rabbi, I have a question.” Apologizes! What! I’m delighted by questions. I’ve been waiting all day for some good ones. Please, ask me. I would be delighted to explain, study, or disagree. If I don’t know the answer, you’ve given me something else to learn. And mostly I’d be delighted to disagree; questions to argue about are my favorite. Because in my experience it’s questions, and arguments, that allow for deep understanding.

The prophet Amos in this week’s haftarah asks, “הֲיֵלְכ֥וּ שְׁנַ֖יִם יַחְדָּ֑ו בִּלְתִּ֖י אִם־נוֹעָֽדוּ?” translated, “Can two walk together without having met?” It is in the context of God discussing God’s relationship with the Jewish people. It’s not a clear question. It feels a little bit like a koan. And this question stuck out to me from the text because even though the haftarah seemed to expect a “no” answer (you’re right Amos, they cannot walk together!) I wasn’t so sure. It’s not obviously a question with an answer. It’s a question posed to make you reflect.

The Hebrew of it makes the question even more dynamic. Can you walk together, yelech, from the same root as halacha, living in God’s path, without meeting first? Meeting here comes from the same word as moed, like the ohel moed, the tabernacle that was the temple for the Israelites in the desert, or moadim, gathering or celebrating a holiday. Is Amos’ question can you live a life with God without shul and holidays? Not necessarily! But a good question invites you reflect and think about your life and your assumptions. And I’ll put my working theory out there, and I invite you to disagree.

And, in truth, despite my belittlement of the “one hand clapping” question, I’ve remembered it for years. Who remembers something boring for years? Someone who in that moment notices for the first time that questions are paths to wisdom. You don’t need answers. In my koan book, I found official approval of something I already know to be true. Answers may be well and good — but what power there is in sitting and mulling over, and arguing about, and never agreeing on, some really good questions. That feels like enlightenment to me. Shabbat shalom!

A dear friend of mine wants to go back to his pre-Covid self. He feels he has lost a part of himself, the part that socialized easily and fluently, charming new friends without effort. “How can I go back to that me?” he asked me in sadness, “Something of me has been lost”. He is not alone. I imagine that each of us has been, at one time or another, caught in such a riptide of wanting to go back, searching for a past situation or a past self that we long for, in need of a richness we once had, and returning to it over and over again in our minds. 

The Israelites were notorious for this throughout the exodus, grumbling against Moses that they missed their food, their homes, even their lives as slaves in Egypt. Though it may have been objectively worse, there is a comfort in what once was. And surprisingly it isn’t only hardship that tempts us to try and go backward. In our parsha we learn that even when the people  flourish in the land of Israel, crowning their own sovereign and living with such prosperity that the king must be warned against amassing too much wealth, they are still explicitly forbidden from going back to Egypt. The kingdom might be thriving, with money to seek riches like a herd of horses imported from Egypt, but in Shoftim we read: “לֹ֣א תֹסִפ֗וּן לָשׁ֛וּב בַּדֶּ֥רֶךְ הַזֶּ֖ה עֽוֹד”, “You must not return back that way again” (Deuteronomy 17:16); they should not go back, even from a place of strength. 

The wording of the verse is insistent, literally translated as something like, “you must not again go back this way again”. Not only is Egypt the past, seeking it only causing regression and harm, but also this isn’t the first time you’ve tried to go back. The wording here implies you’ve tried time and time again. There is a fruitless pattern here, one God warns against getting stuck in.

If, even when we are kings of our own castles, blessed with plenty, we fixate on wanting more, on wanting the past, on what is elsewhere, perhaps we can learn from the rules of kingship set forth in Parshat Shoftim, which teach a king how to best lead and to best serve, how we might find ourselves again. What can we learn from these teachings to help us thrive as we are? When something in you has been lost, if you cannot keep going back for it, what can you do?

There is an alternative to iterative longing. We are taught that a king must be set from among his brothers, not have too many riches, horses, or commitments, study daily, and never look down on his fellow, “לְבִלְתִּ֤י רוּם־לְבָבוֹ֙ מֵֽאֶחָ֔יו” (Deut. 17:20), literally: never exalt his heart up over his kin. So dont לָשׁ֛וּב בַּדֶּ֥רֶךְ הַזֶּ֖ה עֽוֹד, lashuv baderekh hazeh od, go back that way again. Instead: put yourself among your people, connect back with your community. Don’t get distracted by amassing a wealth of things, excess will not help you. Commit to learning something every day. You don’t need to read your way through the entire Talmud, but find a practice of reading and learning to focus you and to give you meaning. And, finally, “don’t exalt your own heart from your kin”. Don’t be a snob, or, more broadly, don’t separate yourself from others. Because when we look at our lives and say “I am missing something” and “I want to go back to me”, we remove ourselves from those currently around us. Instead of looking at everyone else, hearing them, connecting with them, we are longing for something lost and those who aren't there. Our moments of greatest loneliness and need can be healed by paying attention to those around us — listening, giving, meeting heart to heart.

Not surprisingly, our parsha aligns beautifully with the season. In Elul, the month before Rosh Hashanah that we are in now, we spend a lot of time reflecting on kings and kingship. We say that the “king is in the field” during this month, meaning that our divine sovereign has come to be in the world. The rabbis teach that the shofar, blown every morning in Elul, is the sound of God’s coronation. In this way, every day, hearing the shofar, we choose to make God our king, we coronate God again and again. May this sound be for you a reminder of God's torah on sovereignty, of your choice not to return to Egypt, not to be lost going backward over and over again, but to seek all that makes a king thrive — connection, humility, study, and caring for one another. Shabbat shalom!