A few years ago, on a sunny Fall morning in the midst of the pandemic, we gathered in the empty lot on 50th Street for a B’nei Mitzvah in the KT Sukkah. It was on that auspicious day that one of my greatest fears came true. At the end of the Torah service, the B’nei Mitzvah kid placed the Torah back in the ark and stepped away. I turned to face the kahal and had not noticed it was not fully secure. The Torah tipped forward and in seemingly slow motion fell to the ground and the wooden handles shattered. Everyone joining on Zoom had a close up shot of the Torah lying broken on the cement ground. My jaw dropped and I froze. A member gently approached and invited me to pick up the Torah. Which we did. We then invited the community to a collective 30 day fast, in which 30 of us each fasted for a day, as is the custom when the Torah touches the ground.
First let me say, it was completely my fault. It is entirely my responsibility to spot a B’nei Mitzvah and ensure the Torah is put away properly. I do it every week and this is their first rodeo. It was a very intense, memorable and hopefully not too traumatic experience. For the past few years I have been living with the broken Torah in a portable ark in my office and using it for educational purposes. It has come with me to Torah School and protests in Washington D.C. I even carried this Torah for an entire day on the Pilgrimage for Peace. Recently I reached out to a Torah scribe to inquire about repairing this Torah. With a shameful tone I explained what had happened. To my surprise she responded rather light-heartedly, assuring me this happens all the time! Why else would we have a set of customs for how to respond and repair it?! Yesterday, a package arrived at the office. It was a new set of eitzim, wooden Torah rollers. We are preparing this spring to replace the broken eitzim with this new set. After years of planning, measuring and shopping for just the right replacement, how fitting that the second set of rollers would arrive this week, when we read Parasha Ki Tisa. The week in which we read about the two sets of tablets Moses brings down from Sinai. Infamously smashing the first set, only to journey back up the mountain for a second, whole set. A beloved midrash explains that the broken tablets journeyed in the mishkan along with the whole tablets. How else could it be? The first set was broken but it still had the teachings of the Holy Blessed One engraved upon them. They couldn’t be left behind. Even in our most ancient text, ritual objects are smashed to pieces, and the pieces are gathered up and carried forward. Apparently it happens all the time. Ki Tisa is not a story about what happened. It is a story about what always happens. In the words of Roger Kamenetz, “The broken tablets were also carried in the ark. Insofar as they represented everything shattered, everything lost, they were the law of broken things…” As I contemplate the process of unstitching the parchment from the broken eitzim and rethreading the parchment to the new (very beautiful) eitzim, I am struck by how long it has taken me to do this. Healing and repair take time. It took us years to get the new eitzim, and in the meantime, we honored and continued to care for and use the broken ones (though not during services!). I am also so grateful for the scribe’s reminder that things breaking are not a mistake or a problem. We need not fear it. It's inevitable. Our spiritual practices and sacred stories are meant to cultivate in us an ability to bear rupture and be with that which is broken. If it’s true for the Torah and the tablets, our tradition’s most sacred objects, then certainly it’s true for just about every aspect of our lives. We are broken and whole all at once. The truth is that I should have known this. Every time something breaks, my father is the first to shout, Mazal Tov! And my mother-in-law is always looking to make beautiful mosaics out of broken plates. But somehow it is this specific Torah that has taught me this lesson fully. For which I am so grateful to my B’nei Mitzvah student. Lest you hold this story with shame, know that you have been my teacher as much as my student. I hope we as a community will continue to carry the broken parts along with the whole in our ark, and our hearts. There is a very silly and quite catchy Jewish kids book called It’s a…It’s a…It’s a mitzvah! The main characters are meerkats trying to be their best selves. I have read it countless times with my own kids. The phrase has become a refrain in our household. And yet, what has always bothered me is that it never really explains what a mitzvah is in any satisfying way. Granted, as a rabbi raising Jewish children, I likely have high standards for such an explanation. The book did its job of developing the vocabulary of mitzvah in our household. But I fear that our collective understanding of this central spiritual concept stalls out on an elementary level.
Growing up I was told a mitzvah was a good deed. More traditionally it is translated as “commandment.” How did a commandment become a good deed? It was likely reimagined through secular Yiddish culture. I can imagine this was the result of modern and now postmodern ambivalence about religious obligations from on high. Which I get. And yet, in the transition from commandment to good deed, we lost the essential meanings of mitzvah. Mitzvah comes from the Hebrew root צוי, which mean to join or connect. Joining points to a deeper understanding of what the Rabbis understood all along—that through mitzvot they were devising a system of spiritual technologies (blessings, prayers, fasting, acts of kindness, caring for the sick…) which places agency on the person doing the action. And, if engaged in, connect a person to holiness, to others, and to themselves in deep and essential ways. The root of the word Mitzvah is at the heart of this week’s parsha, Tetzaveh. Twice the Holy One addresses Moses directly, וְאַתָּה תְּצַוֶּה – v’atah tetzaveh…You do this…(Exodus 27:20). Here The Holy One tells Moses to tell the Israelites how to light the lamps of the menorah. Moses is not exactly commanding them to do so. But neither is he suggesting that it would be a good deed for them to do it. Here the word tetzaveh is commonly translated as, “Moses instructs the Israelites…” Which brings us to an important secondary meaning of the root צוי – to order or arrange. In this week’s parsha, we arrive at the truest meaning of mitzvah. A mitzvah is a spiritual instruction. It is a teaching intended to bring order and connection into our lives. Depending on our disposition this might carry with it the accountability of an obligation, something we must do. For others of us, we might do better seeing it as an invitation, an opportunity or even a spiritual practice, something we return to again and again with effort and discipline. It is said that there are 613 mitzvot, though they never appear in an ordered list in the Torah as such. In one telling there are 248 positive commandments and 365 negative commandments said to correspond to the 248 bones and 365 tendons of the human body. For some of us numbers and checklists are extremely helpful. For others confining. Invite them in or let them go. Either way, know that we are each called to love with all our heart, with all our soul, with our whole beings and even our bodies. We learn in Pirkei Avot, doing mitzvot leads to more mitzvot. May we merit to be vessels of connection and may our sacred teachings bring us closer to ourselves, to each other and to a world that is whole. Thank you for your words of support in response to my email last week. I am grateful for this community of care and encouragement.
Frederick Douglass was an escaped slave who became one of the most charismatic and forceful leaders of the American abolition movement. At the age of 20 he made his daring escape, saying “Praying for freedom never did me any good til I started praying with my feet.” We invoked his name on Wednesday morning at Mother Bethel Church, the birthplace of the African Methodist tradition, before stepping off on our Pilgrimage for Peace. It would have been his 206th Birthday. I recited Tefilat HaDerech and Rabbi Alissa Wise gave voice to the famous words of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel which echo the Douglass’: “For many of us the march from Selma to Montgomery was about protest and prayer. Legs are not lips and walking is not kneeling. And yet our legs uttered songs. Even without words, our march was worship. I felt my legs were praying.” Growing up, the spirit and image of Rabbi Heschel marching with Dr. King was almost a logo for the kind of Judaism I was being raised to embody and aspire to. I am so grateful to the organizers from Faith for Black Lives for their vision, faith and commitment. It was a deeply multifaith experience, bringing together Christians, Jews and Muslim Arabs, as well as representative Hindus, Buddhists, Unitarians, Quakers and a deeply spiritual agnostic. I was so moved by the Kol Tzedek members who joined and those who plan to join. Know that we have all been part of it. We hosted lunch on the first day at the Calvary Center and sponsored lunch on the second day at a church in Claymont, Delaware. I spent the last two days on the Pilgrimage of Peace, clocking more than 48,120 steps across some 24 miles. It was sunny and brisk, and unexpectedly restorative. Needless to say, my feet are sore. But my soul is renewed. In a world of automobiles and Amtrak, we are so accustomed to moving at the pace of engines. It was so soothing and connecting to be walking at the pace of diversely-abled human beings. Time slowed. We walked two by two. Sometimes we sang. Most of the time we talked. It was regulating and grounding to move our bodies together, purposefully. We walked through the city, into residential neighborhoods and vast miles of strip mall sprawl. It wasn’t particularly glamorous or green. We stopped at city and state lines to pose for a picture and mark milestones. We found a park with a statue of Dr. King. We knocked on a church and asked if we could come in for lunch. In the evenings, local mosques fed us family style. There was grace and hospitality in abundance. At one point yesterday, I was marching with Rev. Stephen Green. We were holding the pilgrimage banner and he looked at me and earnestly asked, “Do you do long walks often?” I kinda chuckled, thinking he was kidding. When I think of long walks, I think of 2 hours in the Wissahickon or the Woodlands. I shared that this was my first “long walk” so to speak - if by long walk, you mean interstate pilgrimage. He shared a litany of walks he had been part of, most longer than this 150 mile stretch. It was a spiritual practice of his to make pilgrimage. In the Torah, pilgrimage, known as a regel from the root meeting leg, was a central spiritual practice, focusing on the Shalosh Regalim, the three Pilgrimage Festivals of Sukkot, Passover and Shavuot. But then the temple was destroyed, twice, and we remade those festivals to center around our local temples. So much has been possible because of our decentralized diasporic traditions. And yet this long walk connected me to what was when we let go of the practice of making a pilgrimage by foot. The truth is that I actually have done one other long walk. When I was 16 years old I participated in the March of the Living, which involved a foot pilgrimage from the labor camp of Auschwitz to the death camp Birkenau. It was springtime and I took my shoes off to feel the pavement. I remember the birds and the bleak landscape. It too was a very formative long walk. Bringing my young soul to witness a place of so much death and destruction. In addition to the March of the Living, I spent many miles thinking about the people of Gaza. The many videos I have seen of their pilgrimages over the past 4 months, in search of safety. Families barefoot, carrying mattresses and a cooking pot, pulling babies barely clothed. Their faces frightened. Their destination unknown. The ground bombed into rubble and the season turned to winter. The survivors have made these foot pilgrimages many times. From the north to the south. From Khan Yunis to Gaza City to Rafah and back again. Nowhere is safe. Everyone is hungry. There is no fuel so cars can’t drive and people must walk long distances. What a privilege to walk for peace on their behalf. With the spirit of Douglass and Tubman, King and Heschel in our hearts. With the memory of 13 million people in my DNA. And the call of our sacred ancestors who made pilgrimage to the city of peace over and over again. May we merit to bring about a ceasefire and a lasting just peace for everyone in Israel/Palestine. For those who are available this weekend, I encourage you to join the pilgrimage for any amount of time, and especially for the final stretch next Wednesday into D.C. People of all ages and abilities are welcome. There is a wheelchair accessible minibus that follows behind that is available to ride in, carrying snacks, water and willing pilgrims. I hope to join in the coming days with my kids. It is devastating that another week is passing without a ceasefire in Gaza. It feels impossible not to write to you about it. The scale of destruction and starvation is worse than anything we have known since World War II. I want to invite you to take 10 minutes to listen to the personal story of Dr. Tariq Haddad, who has lost more than 100 family members. He is a Cardiologist who grew up in Gaza and recently declined an invitation to meet with Secretary of State Blinken.
My desperate desire for a lasting peace brought me back to a question that Israeli Journalist Gideon Levy asked in an interview in January. He sits on the editorial board of the newspaper Ha’aretz. On January 17, he asked: “The question which bothers me more than anything else…having said what happened on the 7th, as barbaric as it was…Does this give us Israelis the right to do anything we want after the 7th forever, without any limits, no legal limits, no moral limits? We can just go and kill and destroy and destruct as much as we wish? That’s the main question right now.” There are many ways that I have heard Jews and Israelis justify the mass destruction of Gaza. For some it is about safety, for others settlement. But what scares me the most, is the desire for revenge. Gideon Levy’s question raises an ethical question about retaliation. The earliest version of this question is begged in this week's parsha, Mishpatim. Quite (in)famously Exodus 21:23-24 asserts a vision of retributive justice known in shorthand as “an eye for an eye”, וְאִם־אָסוֹן יִהְיֶה וְנָתַתָּה נֶפֶשׁ תַּחַת נָפֶשׁ׃ However if there is a fatal injury, you shall take a life for a life. עַיִן תַּחַת עַיִן שֵׁן תַּחַת שֵׁן יָד תַּחַת יָד רֶגֶל תַּחַת רָגֶל׃ an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a hand for a hand, a foot for a foot. It is always dissonant to read a section of Torah that we decidedly think is unethical or unjust. Most of us were taught from a young age that two wrongs do not make a right. That we do not take an eye for an eye, nevermind a life for a life. And certainly not 30,000 Palestinian lives for 1,200 Israeli lives. Of course we can’t because each human life is irredeemably holy and unique. Because the value of one’s eye or one’s hand cannot be equated. What is the value of a painter’s hand or a bus driver’s eyes? But it's not surprising that the far right wing settler movement is so focused on corporal revenge. Lest we forget they read the bible as both Divine prophecy and instruction manual. Just as I do not believe in a life for a life, I also do not believe that gay sex is an abomination or that we are called to embody the teachings of the book of Joshua and resettle Judea and Samaria. While I have deep love and reverence for Torah, we are the descendents of rabbinic Judaism. For nearly 2,000 years we have understood that when the Torah says take an eye for an eye, what it means is to compensate the person for what they have lost. Try to make them feel whole again. Post-temple Judaism does not believe in revenge wars. The reason I feel so able to wholeheartedly read this passage of Torah, and so many others, is because we are empowered to update it. The rabbis made clear that there are five ways to determine Jewish law. Of course one of them is, “Because it says so in the Torah!” But there is in fact something more powerful, our Svara. Svara is our informed moral intuition and it actually takes precedence over the words of the written Torah because it is a means of making Torah more just. In every generation we are called to make Torah more ethical and more whole. To ensure all its paths are paths of peace A few weeks ago, we began another cohort of our Adult B’nei Mitzvah class. In the second class I unwrapped the Torah and invited the students to come close and ask questions. It is one of my favorite things to do. Whether I am showing the Torah to kids or adults, someone always asks some version of this question: “Does it have the vowels in it?” Or “Does it have the trope marks? If not, how do you know how to read it?” The answer is always no, no matter which Torah you are looking at. Which is why reading Torah is not merely reading, it is revelation. I experience the way a leyner lifts the words off the scroll and sings them into the room as pure magic.
Thank you to everyone who reads Torah at Kol Tzedek. You are of incredible service to this community. And to Char Hersh, for coordinating leyning and make sure Torah can be revealed each week. I do not take any of this for granted. The Torah service is meant to return us to Sinai, week after week, as many as three times a week! Which is a bit ironic, because from what I can tell, Sinai wasn’t much of a Torah service. Sinai was thunder and lightning, shofar blasts and looming clouds. It was Moses on the mountain for what felt like forever. And the people gathered at the foot of Mt Sinai, eager and terrified. Exodus 19:16 reads, וַיְהִי בַיּוֹם הַשְּׁלִישִׁי בִּהְיֹת הַבֹּקֶר וַיְהִי קֹלֹת וּבְרָקִים וְעָנָן כָּבֵד עַל־הָהָר וְקֹל שֹׁפָר חָזָק מְאֹד וַיֶּחֱרַד כׇּל־הָעָם אֲשֶׁר בַּמַּחֲנֶה׃ On the third day, as morning dawned, there was thunder, and lightning, and a dense cloud upon the mountain, and a very loud blast of the horn; and all the people who were in the camp trembled. Based on the description in this week’s Torah portion Yitro, one might expect, or at least imagine, fireworks and a laser light show each week. Meanwhile the Torah service is all pomp and circumstance. It is highly scripted, ceremonial, and sometimes staid. The proscriptive calls and responses followed are by a sea of Hebrew few can understand. How did this become our weekly opportunity to stand again at Sinai? We read in the 8th chapter of the book of Nehemiah (at the very back of a Tanakh), “The entire people assembled as one man in the square before the Water Gate, and they asked Ezra the scribe to bring the scroll of the Teaching of Moses with which the LORD had charged Israel… They read from the scroll of the Teaching of God, translating it and giving the sense; so they understood the reading. Nehemiah the Tirshatha, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were explaining to the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the LORD your God: you must not mourn or weep,” for all the people were weeping as they listened to the words of the Teaching.” This is the very first Torah service. It probably took place a few thousand years after Sinai, likely around 300 years before the common era. Which was itself some 2300 years ago. The echoes of similarity, as Ezra opens the scroll and the people rise (in body or spirit), is eerily familiar. The continuity of practice that spans exile and diaspora is striking. As is the depth of emotion, the people prostrate and weep. But perhaps what is most familiar is the fact that there were Levites working the crowd translating the text. The emphasis on understanding is core to learning Torah. In Nehemiah 8:2 it specifies, וְכֹל מֵבִין לִשְׁמֹעַ, everyone who could listen with understanding, was present. By the time of Ezra and Nehemiah, the people were speaking Aramaic and very few understood Biblical hebrew. It required translators. When I first learned this text, it was a relief to realize that the problem of translation is not merely a postmodern, assimilationist dilemma. We live in a time when listening with understanding is feeling increasingly impossible and urgently needed. It is meaningful for me to imagine that listening in a way that increases our understanding is core to what it has always meant to receive Torah.Torah was never meant to be inaccessible. In fact, it has always required translation and interpretation. There is a midrash that imagines that in the moment when the Holy Blessed One revealed the Torah, it was whispered into the heart of every Israelite so that each person could uniquely understand and receive it. Each week, with hearts full of longing, we sing Bei ana rachetz - דְּתִפְתַּח לִבָּאִי בְּאוֹרַיְתָא - Please open our hearts through your Torah. May we merit to channel the drama of Sinai into our Torah service each week, as Torah is revealed to each of us anew. And may our study of Torah allow us to listen in ways that increase understanding and bring us closer לְטַב וּלְחַיִּין וְלִשְׁלָם, to goodness, to life and to peace. Every Wednesday the Kol Tzedek office is home to an afterschool program called KTTS+. With 15 kids and 3 teachers, it is a raucous time in a small space. So much so that the rest of the staff has learned to clear out and work from home. I, on the other hand, love sticking around so I can waft in their Torah learning.
This past Wednesday I had the joy of joining their closing prayer circle. Together they weave incredible harmonies as they make their way through the Ma’ariv service in their home-made prayerbook. But the highlight is undoubtedly the last song “Towards Justice”, which made it into the standard matbeah (service structure) at the students’ insistence. Written by Eliana Light, the lyrics are an adaptation of the famous words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” To hear these young people singing with all their hearts, “Lord give me the strength to bend the arc of the universe towards justice…with love” buoyed my spirit. Around the Jewish world, this shabbat is referred to as Shabbat Shira because it is the week in which the Israelites sing the Song of the Sea in Exodus 15 as the cross from slavery to freedom. This week’s parsha includes within it one of my favorite verses in all of Torah, describing how it is that the Israelites made it across the sea, it says (three times!) that they crossed b’toch hayam b’yabasha, in the midst of the sea on dry ground. The water swells up and a path emerges. We too are called again and again to find a way forward even when it feels impossible. It is fair to say that this week’s Torah portion is the foundation for all of liberation theology. After hundreds of years of enslavement, the Israelites actually crossed the sea. They found their way to dignity and divinity as free people. This is the story that creates a shared mythology across human time and religious traditions, in more than 70 languages. The message of this week’s Torah portion is echoed in the words of Dr. King and sung in the harmonies of Kol Tzedek Torah School students. Yesterday I had the incredible honor of meeting with the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres, former Prime Minister of Portugal. It was incredible to shake his hand (twice) and thank His Excellency for his time and courage to call for a humanitarian ceasefire. I was part of a delegation of 10 rabbis. We were on his official schedule as “American Rabbis” sandwiched between his meetings with Japan and Montenegro. We came to express our support for his remarks at the G77 supporting a humanitarian ceasefire, to ask him what we can do to make it a reality and to understand his vision for arriving at a lasting peace through diplomacy. In trying to describe his presence, my best adjectives lead me to Yoda. His presence was tender, clear, generous, gracious and honest. I never imagined that there could be life-long politicians who remained so soft and open-hearted. He opened by recounting and apologizing for the painful history of the Inquisition in Portugal and making clear that one his proudest accomplishments was revoking that edict as prime minister. He shared a clear and compelling understanding of antisemitism, including the pernicious role that Evangelical Christians play worldwide in supporting the state of Israel at the expense of Jewish safety. He was so grateful and gracious and told us that “our meeting would help him reconcile his day.” He was flanked by a team of aides who wept as we offered him the priestly blessing: May the Holy One bless you and protect you. May the Holy One shine upon you and be gracious to you. May you feel empowered to work for peace, Shalom. I have been to the United Nations twice this month and have been consistently inspired by its vision and potential.. I am very much still learning about its history, purpose and power which is intertwined with World War II and the Nazi Holocaust. I was relieved this morning when the International Court of Justice, which is part of the United Nations, voted nearly unanimously to demand that Israel do everything in its power to prevent the plausible genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza. The provisions all but call for an immediate ceasefire. To understand their implications and enforcement I recommend this segment on Democracy Now, including KT member Raz Segal. The ruling of the ICJ has significant symbolic impact. I must say it is spiritually devastating to have the highest court of justice rule that the State of Israel, which imagines itself as light among nations, is on the path to committing genocide in the name of Jewish safety and security. If you are in need of space to process this decision, I invite you to join a virtual gathering hosted by Rabbis for Ceasefire Sunday night at 8 pm EST. This will be an opportunity to reflect on the ICJ decision to order provisional measures to prevent genocide in Gaza hosted by beloved and trusted colleagues, Rabbis Dev Noily and Margaret Holub. You can register at bit.ly/ICJGathering. Even after 400 years of slavery, even after 75 years of brutal occupation, the arc of the universe does bend towards justice. May we have the courage, clarity and stamina to partner with the holy one and do our part. Nothing quiets a city like a snow day. The blanket of white flakes concealing layers of grit and litter, and dampening the noise pollution of modern urban life. The blare of sirens is replaced by the crunch of boots. The imprint of shoes, snow angels and sled tracks abound. To quote my 8 year-old neighbor, “Snow is my favorite color!”
I have just returned from my neighborhood sledding hill. I never feel more like a kid than I do when I am sledding. My inner child is elated. The sledding hill was a sea of colorful children in marshmallow like snow suits, joyful and inevitably tearful, and falling all over the place. There was free hot chocolate, snow forts and snow ball fights galore. Being at the park felt like I was inside the pages of a great kids book or a dynamic snow globe. As winter storms and freezing temperatures sweep over much of Turtle Island, Philadelphia has been blessed with an actual legitimate snowfall. Given that in recent years I have been found having a “snowball fight” with the dusting on my deck, this is a complete delight and triumph of the natural world in the time of global warming. But what is the blessing for a snow day? This question appeared in the Kol Tzedek slack this morning. There are so many amazing Jewish blessings to be said over the natural world. A blessing for rainbows? A blessing for a shooting star? A blessing for seeing the ocean after a long period of time? A blessing for an earthquake, a comet, mighty winds or lightning? That said, if you look in a prayer book, you will not find a clear answer about snow. This is clearly a mistake. Maybe we can attribute it to the fact that many of the blessings were written to address the natural wonders of the Land of Israel, and it had a rather temperate climate. But Jews have been living in freezing places like Babylon (modern day Iraq) and Ukraine for thousands of years. You would think it might have been edited in. Some rabbis suggest saying the seasonal blessing that is inserted into the weekday Amidah, Mashiv ha-ru'ah u-morid ha-geshem, thanking God for making the winds blow and the rain fall. Snow is afterall a kind of frozen rain. I suggest saying Oseh ma’aseh v’reishit - thanking God for making all of creation. It is the same blessing you might recite over an awesome storm or a shooting star. It says, the natural world is amazing and wonderful. As I was taking in the snow day today, I thought to myself, this is a kind of nature-imposed Shabbat. A day in which we slow down and find joy right where we are. And then we come home spent and cozy up with a hot drink. Just think of the words of the shabbat zemer Menucha v’Simcha, “Light of gladness, O light of gladness, Peace unto Israel, Sabbath day of bliss, weave thy magic spell, Weave thy magic spell… Blue skies and green fields, blue skies and green fields, Ocean's unceasing tide. Glorious hosts of heaven, beaming far and wide, Beaming far and wide. Mighty whales and dragons fierce, mighty whales and dragons fierce,… God's hand formed them all, sure God’s works abides, Surely God’s works abide.” May this snow day weave thy magic spell, glorious hosts of heaven, mighty whales and dragons fierce, God’s hand formed them all. And may we allow it to inspire our experience of rest and joy on shabbat all year long. We learn in Pirkei Avot (1:18) that the world is sustained by three things: on law (justice), on truth and on peace. Earlier this week, I was teaching this text to a group of Kol Tzedek teens and they noticed the difference between what the world is founded on (Torah, Avodah and Hesed), and what allows it to endure. The teaching ends with a quote from the prophet Zecharia (8:16), "When there is truth and justice, there will be peace in your gates.”
"אֱמֶת וּמִשְׁפַּט שָׁלוֹם שִׁפְטוּ בְּשַׁעֲרֵיכֶם…" They noticed that the order of these three things is significant. Suggesting that a just legal system and truth are necessary for shalom, for peace. Or in the words of the protest chant, “No justice, no peace!” This teaching calls to me as the International Court of Justice begins adjudicating whether Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. This teaching leads me to even greater resolve that no military solution will provide peace and safety for Israelis and Palestinans. That we must do everything in our power to hasten a ceasefire, to save the lives of Palestinian civilians, Israeli hostages and soldiers and prevent the possibility of world war. Which is why I traveled to the United Nations with Rabbis for Ceasefire. On Monday, I was part of a delegation of five rabbis from the U.S. and Israel who met with the Deputy Representative of the United States Mission to the United Nations to implore the U.S. Ambassador to support a permanent and lasting ceasefire. Then on Tuesday, I joined a group of 36 rabbis on a tour of the United Nations. I was so surprised by the beauty of the building and the incredible art exhibits, including a very moving exhibit about the Palestinian Nakba which lined the walls of the lobby. Our tour group was escorted inside the U.N. Security council, the very room where questions of war and peace are discussed, the very room where the U.S. has consistently used its veto to block a ceasefire resolution. Once inside, we unfurled banners, blew a shofar and began reading from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. Not surprisingly, this passionate group of rabbis had planned a yizkor ritual that would easily span more than an hour. Less than 10 minutes in, we were forced to stop because “Demonstrating is forbidden in the United Nations.” We were undoubtedly a prayerful disruption. I do not share this to communicate conformity or alignment about political strategy or policy. There are many important and needed theories of change and strategies for bringing about change. Please know, I welcome your dissent and disagreement. I value your insights and honor your truths. That said, since October 7, I have participated in a swell of direct action in D.C., Philly and NYC, all designed to disrupt business as usual. And it has got me thinking about the role of disruption in liberation struggles. Which is also the theme of this week’s Torah portion. Parashat Vaera includes the narrative of the first seven of ten plagues that Moses and the Holy One inflicted on Pharaoh and the Egyptians to free the Israelite slaves. Moses and Aaron repeatedly come before Pharaoh to demand in the name of G‑d, “Let My people go, so that they may serve Me in the wilderness.” Pharaoh repeatedly refuses. G‑d then sends a series of plagues upon the Egyptians. The waters of the Nile turn to blood; swarms of frogs overrun the land; lice infest all people and beasts. Hordes of wild animals invade the cities; a pestilence kills the domestic animals; painful boils afflict the Egyptians. For the seventh plague, fire and ice combine to descend from the skies as a devastating hail. Still, “the heart of Pharaoh was hardened and he would not let the children of Israel go, as G‑d had said to Moses.” Each of these plagues was a divine disruption, causing profound human suffering. I have personally heard from some angry people who have found themselves in the path of these disruptions. Late to work, late to pick up their children, cab drivers, a person in labor and trying to get to the hospital. The war is not their fault. Just as the Israelite enslavement was not the fault of the ancient Egyptians. On April 16, 1963, in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr, wrote, "First, I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen's Council-er or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate who is more devoted to "order" than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action..." With the death toll in Gaza exceeding 20,000 people including more than 8,000 children, I need to know that I did absolutely everything I could to bring about a lasting peace and stop this war. And that includes talking openly with any and all of you who disagree with me, who are curious, confused and questioning. Please know, I want to sit with you and talk about this. I feel great pride in seeing how many Kol Tzedek members are organizing. Your devotion is itself a spiritual practice. The truth is that it has never been popular to be anti-war. Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel is most famous for having marched in with Dr. King in Selma. It was King who brought Heschel into the Civil Rights movement. But what’s less talked about is that it was Heschel who brought King into the movement to stop the Vietnam War. On April 4, 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr., delivered his seminal speech at Riverside Church condemning the Vietnam War. Declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King described the war’s deleterious effects on both America’s poor and Vietnamese peasants and insisted that it was morally imperative for the United States to take radical steps to halt the war through nonviolent means (King, “Beyond Vietnam,” 139). And so too must we. Disruption is a holy tactic of bringing about justice. Disruption is at the core of our liberation story. I pray our disruptions bring us closer to “a positive peace which includes the presence of justice.” May we have the courage to hear the words of the prophets and the rabbis” “There can be no peace in our gates without justice.” I began my week at the Met, where I had the incredible opportunity to witness the inauguration of Philadelphia’s new mayor and city council, including our own badass member Rue Landau, who boldly raised her right hand and swore on the sacred text of her choosing, “The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America.” Of the many pastors and preachers who spoke (and there were many!), it was the words of Mayor Parker’s pastor, Reverend Dr. Alyn E. Waller, Senior Pastor of Enon Tabernacle Baptist Church, that resonated most.
With his eyes closed and his heart focused, his prayerful invocation echoed the beginning of the Amidah. He began, “Eternal God our Father, God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” and then he continued, “God of Harriet, God of Simone, the God of Cherelle, God of Martin, Malcolm and Medgar…” (You can see his prayerful presence here at 1 hour and 57 minutes.) He located the political moment both in time and place. Philadelphia was a landmark city for freed slaves in the time of abolition. And Cherelle Parker as the 100th Mayor, the first woman, a black woman. The entire ceremony felt like church (and also like Yom Kippur because it ran more than 4 hours) and I was quick to offer an Amen to this pastor’s words. It felt especially poignant to invoke Harriet, Martin, Malcolm and Medgar this week, as we begin reading the book of Exodus. It returned me to one of my most beloved Harriet Tubman quotes, “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” Many rabbis have called attention to the moment in our Torah portion when they imagine that the Israelites become aware of their own enslavement, and therefore the possibility of getting free. Exodus 1 begins with the ominous recounting that a new King rises over Egypt and treats the Israelites ruthlessly. Yet they survived, they endured and they even multiplied. It is not until the very end of Exodus 2 that we learn that the Israelites had been enslaved for generations. Again a King dies and this time it leads to a collective awakening. The Israelites moaned and groaned, they cried out and finally the Holy One heard them. Exodus 2:24 reads, “God heard their moaning, and God remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Which is to say, the God of Harriet, Simone and Martin. Here I understand the language of the Divine as an externalized articulation of human spiritual awareness itself. This is the moment of Israelite awakening, of remembering their human potential and dignity. It is a moment of insight into their own experience of suffering, which is the beginning of liberation. One of the enduring gifts of my sabbatical was the opportunity to sit a longer meditation retreat. Last January, as I entered my second week of retreat, I noticed the presence of both calm and concentration. This felt new in my practice. At which point one of my teachers shared with me the seven factors of awakening. They are: Mindfulness (sati), Investigation (dhamma-vicaya), Effort (vīriya), Joy (pīti), Relaxation (passaddhi), Concentration (samādhi) and Equanimity (upekkhā). She noted I was experiencing some of these qualities, which felt shocking, since I always imagined awakening to be over the mountain and beyond my reach. But she insisted, no, awakening is within your grasp, in fact it is already within you. Apparently it is understood in the Dharma that when any factor of awakening is present, all of the factors are in fact present. Which is to say, if I felt calm, it was also possible to feel equanimity (which most often eludes me). Returning to our parsha, I see this pivotal moment at the end of Chapter 2, as the beginning of our collective awakening through Moses. In the coming verses Moses will experience mindfulness as he encounters the Holy One at the Burning Bush. He will investigate, asking God over and over why him? He will effort to free his people. There will be joy as they sing and dance across the sea. And there will be moments of equanimity at Mt. Sinai, as the thunder and lightening makes way for profound silence and the people respond “Naaseh v’nishmah,” we can do this. One teacher once reminded me, equanimity doesn’t happen on the cushion. It happens when you get a flat tire on the highway. Or in the case of our community, I am hoping it happens as we prepare to move into a new building, while responding to an evolving pandemic and organizing to hasten a ceasefire. This is a stressful time, for so many of us personally and for us collectively. My prayer for us as people and as a community is that we take this parsha and this moment as an invitation to recommit to our own capacity to cultivate awareness and to awaken. To see this as our spiritual path and obligation. To know that the path to liberation begins with curiosity which energizes our commitments, which allows us to settle and focus, which is unexpectedly delightful and sustainable. Cultivating any of these qualities makes all of them possible. Liberation is not in the heavens. It begins right here, in our hearts, and radiates out until every city is a city of shalom. May it be so. Today is one of my family’s favorite days of the year. In addition to being my partner’s half birthday, December 22 is the day after the winter solstice. Which means, the days are officially getting longer. My kids woke up this morning, got dressed, and ran downstairs singing, “Light is returning, even though it is the darkest hour…no one can hold back, back the dawn.” Then they started playing dreidel and remarked it still feels like Hanukkah. This might be related to the fact that we have not yet put away our menorahs. Partly because it's been a busy week and partly because until the days were getting longer, we needed the reminder.
This, as it turns out, is a core human need. So core, even the first human being, Adam HaRishon, had this experience. In Masechet Avodah Zara (8a), Our sages taught: When Adam saw that the days were getting shorter, they said: "Oy, I did the wrong thing and therefore the World is getting darker and is returning to chaos. Death has been decreed upon me!" This midrash recounts the very first human’s encounter with the very first winter. The days just keep getting shorter and they think it’s their fault. Even more so, they fear it's irreversible. Existentially asking, what if light never returns? The midrash continues, “Adam HaRishon therefore spent 8 days fasting and praying. As they finished their fast, Adam saw that the days were getting longer. They realized that maybe the days waxed and waned throughout the year. And they were relieved. So the following year, Adam celebrated the end of the shortening days with 8 days of celebration…” This is yet another tale intended to answer the question the Talmud asks in Masechet Shabbat, “Why Hanukkah!?” It is also an affirmation of my own kid’s spiritual instincts. Even when Hanukkah and the Solstice don’t quite align, there is a human instinct to celebrate the light lasting a little bit longer on December 22. To honor that we have made it through the rigor of waning days. I offer you this long slender poem as a belated Hanukkah gift, with gratitude to Rabbi Mó who shared it with me. How the light comes by Jan Richardson I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden what is lost what is forgotten or in peril or in pain… I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes. Maybe you spin the dreidel tonight, maybe you don’t. But either way, I invite you to savor the extra minutes of day, the diminishing darkness, and to remind yourself that light is returning. May we trust that the light is seeking out what the pain and peril that is so present. And may we have the courage to turn ourselves toward it. |
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