I am currently reading the Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari’s new book, Nexus, which is about artificial intelligence, and it is as much a cautionary tale for the future as well as a fascinating history of shared human ideas.

One of the principles that is essential to understanding the great potential and very real dangers of AI is the concept of “intersubjective reality,” which is a mutual understanding by a group of people that certain ideas are valid. Money, for example, which we all agree is real, is actually a shared idea: we all believe that particular papers and certain plastic devices represent currency. It is so real that we have created whole systems and governments and commercial organizations which depend on this idea. Law, philosophy, and of course religion all fall into the category of intersubjective reality.

Harari spends a certain amount of time talking about the development of Judaism over the last couple thousand years as an example of how intersubjective ideas must be self-correcting in order to maintain their viability. When the Second Temple, a very real thing which was very, very important to the Jews, was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 CE, Judaism successfully self-corrected, transitioning from a centralized, hierarchical tradition based on sacrifice of animals and produce, to the democratic, book-centered collection of stories and wisdom and rituals and halakhah / Jewish law which we know today. It was a fabulously successful paradigm shift which enabled Judaism to continue to thrive, even as the Jews were forced out of Jerusalem and Israel. This self-correction that our sages put in place created this new intersubjective realm, and enabled us to live in a refashioned Jewish reality. That is why we are here today celebrating calling a young man to the Torah as a bar mitzvah, something which was likely NOT done before the Romans destroyed the Temple.

One of the essential principles of our tradition, what enabled us to make that jump from a single worship center in Jerusalem to synagogues all over the world, wherever the Jews are located, is the idea that we carry our ancestors with us wherever we go. When we began the Amidah for Shaḥarit earlier this morning, we invoked Avraham, Yitzḥaq, Ya’aqov, Sarah, Rivqah, Raḥel, and Leah. And we will do so again in a few minutes. We connect ourselves to those ancient folks whenever we read the Torah. We continue to tell their stories, and cite midrashim about them which help guide us through our lives.

And this idea of carrying our ancestors with us is drawn from the Torah itself. In Parashat Vayḥi, as our father Ya’aqov prepares to die, he requests that he be buried not in Egypt, but alongside his father Yitzḥaq and grandparents Avraham and Sarah in the cave of Machpelah, back home in Israel (Bereshit/Genesis 49:29-32). And indeed, when Ya’aqov dies, Yosef takes him back to Israel for burial. And not only that, but Yosef is accompanied by all the senior dignitaries of Egypt, including chariots and horsemen, and of course all of Ya’aqov’s family (50:7-9).

A few hundred years later, when the Israelites flee slavery in Egypt, the Torah notes that Moshe takes the bones of Yosef with him as they depart (Shemot/Exodus 13:19). A midrash found in the Mekhilta tells us that the act is a symbolic one. In carrying Yosef’s remains, Moshe acquires Yosef’s strength of leadership, his ability to provide food and spiritual guidance as well as his capacity for forgiveness.

And, metaphorically to this day, we have carried our ancestors with us. We tell and retell their stories; we live their values; we share their wisdom. And, particularly following the Roman destruction and dispersion of the Jews from our land 2,000 years ago, we have had an extensive journey through many places and continents and cultures, all the while carrying our people with us. And we draw on their spiritual leadership as well.

And somewhat less metaphorically, we have carried all of Jewish life with us as well. The books, of course, but also the rituals and customs, the collective behaviors of Jewish life, our mitzvot. The intangibles and the tangibles: tefillah/prayer as well as the Torah scrolls and tallitot and tefillin and ḥanukkiyot and ḥallah covers and seder plates and kiddush cups and all the ritual paraphernalia which our people have used to help us fulfill and maintain our spiritual framework for two millennia.

While the wisdom of the Jewish bookshelf has sustained us both in times of darkness and light, these physical objects have given us material reassurance, something to literally hold onto in times of need. I remember sitting next to my father as a little kid, playing with the tassels hanging from his seemingly ancient tallit, which he had received when he became bar mitzvah. I recall reading Torah on the day I was called to the Torah as a bar mitzvah, clutching the silver yad in my hand anxiously, holding on for dear life. When we grasp our ritual objects, when we drape them or wrap them or polish them, we are lifting up our ancestors once again; we are drawing on their spiritual leadership and making it our own.

And that is one reason why we are zealously traditional about ritual items here at Beth Shalom. That is why we have historically expected boys and men to wear a kippah, and if they are benei mitzvah, tallit and tefillin at appropriate times. Our ritual garb, which we have carried with us, consists of essential, physical items which announce and maintain our commitment to being Jewish.

And yes, use of those items was, not too long ago, only for men and boys. But think of how immensely wonderful it is that we live in a time in which women can choose to array themselves in these items as well! To opt in to carrying our ancestors in a tangible way. As R. Yehoshua ben Levi tells us multiple times in the Talmud, women too are part of the mitzvah. And we at Beth Shalom are proud that we have many women who take on these rituals.

It is worth knowing that there has been some recent discussion at our Religious Services Committee about our expectations for the use of these ritual items. Let me assure you that as guardians of the bones of Yosef, and consequently his spiritual leadership, that we will not let go of this expectation for men. But we are still considering how we can encourage more women to do so. Not require, most likely, because there are many women for whom this will not be comfortable. Our goal is to raise the bar in terms of fulfillment of mitzvot, and hope that more will reach higher. And so in the coming months I hope that you will hear and see more on this subject as we clarify our language and goals.

In the wake of the heartbreaking destruction in Los Angeles, I heard an interview with the Cantor Ruth Berman-Harris (here beginning at 2:00 min) of the Pasadena Jewish Temple and Center, a Conservative synagogue whose building was totally destroyed by fire. She, along with her husband and a few congregants, went into the smoke-filled building, after the power had gone out, to rescue the Torah scrolls. And she said something which struck me, that the Torah scrolls are the “heartbeat of Jewish life.” She did not say, the text of the Torah, or the wisdom contained therein, or all the commentary that has flowed from Torah over the last few thousand years, but the scrolls. She pointed out that through all that Jews have faced - pogroms, antisemitism, and even natural disasters - we have always strived to save the scrolls themselves, even though we know that the words are indestructible.

The interviewer asked, “Are they heavy?” And of course she responded yes. But what she did not say was that they are heavy with tradition; they are heavy with the presence of our ancestors. They are heavy with history and culture and language and philosophy and all that we carry with us.

And the journey, the same journey of Yosef and Moshe Rabbeinu and the 40 years in the desert and every place where we have been since, has been a long, hard journey, and we are still carrying it all. And we have not yet arrived. We are still traveling what Yuval Harari might call an intersubjective journey, but the results are very real. And that is why, even as we self-correct, we cannot loosen our grip.

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During our recent visit to New York, we were fortunate to see the Broadway revival of Thornton Wilder’s landmark play, Our Town. It’s one of those plays which are foundational to the American theatre (think Death of a Salesman, A Streetcar Named Desire), beloved by high school drama teachers and community theatre groups. This version starred an old buddy of mine, Jim Parsons, with whom I used to do cheap warehouse theatre in Houston, back when I was a chemical engineer and he worked at Whole Foods. It’s a pleasure to see how Jim, who is and always was a magnificently talented actor, has made it.

Our Town is an unusual play. Through two acts it meanders innocently through the lives of a couple families in the fictional town of Grover’s Corners, New Hampshire, a place similar to where I grew up in Western Massachusetts, where everybody knows each other and lives have a predictable arc and expectations. The “Stage Manager” (Parsons’ role) narrates through the play, sometimes as a participant, but usually directing traffic perfunctorily, and with a subtle dose of humor.

It is the third act, however, which takes place entirely in the Grover’s Corners cemetery in a conversation with its deceased residents, which features the hard-hitting moments that make the play a classic. I will come back to that.

Something that was quite surprising about this production was that the very first word we heard when the lights went down, though, was in Hebrew: “Shema.” In what was apparently an attempt (perhaps completely gratuitous) to recast Grover’s Corners as a multicultural, multi-religious place, “An ‘Our Town’ for all of us,” as the New York TImes review put it. A brief minute of the Abraham Jam’s multi-faith musical pastiche, “Braided Prayer,” played, with Hebrew, Arabic, and English prayers intertwining. It was a bizarre moment, unexpected and a bit jarring, considering Wilder’s faithful portrayal of small-town New England in 1938 (the Stage Manager mentions all the churches in town, but somehow fails to note the existence of a synagogue or mosque). Nonetheless, hearing the most central statement of belief in Jewish life at the start of the show, the literal imperative to listen up, certainly pricked up my ears.

As some of you may remember, I have an ongoing, extremely irregular sermon series called, “I’m a Fundamentalist,” in which I remind us all of the essential pieces of Jewish life. Past “Fundamentalist” installments have featured Shabbat, kashrut, tefillin, tallit, and God. Today’s topic is berakhot, often inaccurately rendered as “blessings.”

But first, a word from Parashat Vayyiggash. Perhaps one of the most emotive moments in the Torah is when Yosef is standing before his brothers in this parashah, revealing himself many years after they were convinced that he was dead. Yosef can suddenly no longer stand the deception, and breaks down (Bereshit / Genesis 45:3):

וַיֹּ֨אמֶר יוֹסֵ֤ף אֶל־אֶחָיו֙ אֲנִ֣י יוֹסֵ֔ף הַע֥וֹד אָבִ֖י חָ֑י
Yosef said to his brothers, “I am Yosef. Is my father still alive?”

Now, what is curious about Yosef’s question is that he knows his father is still alive because the brothers have told him so earlier. (That is why the JPS translation in our ḥumash says, “Is my father still well?”) But Yosef is not really asking if his father is still alive. Rather, as the 16th-century Italian commentator Seforno says, Yosef is thinking, אי אפשר שלא מת מדאגתו עלי, it is impossible for my father Ya’aqov not to have died from worrying about me.

Implied in Yosef’s question, הַע֥וֹד אָבִ֖י חָ֑י / ha’od avi ḥai, is the idea that while Ya’aqov may still have been “alive,” he could not possibly have been “living.” That is, he could not appreciate life without his favorite son. His meals must have been tasteless, his relationships with his other family members must have seemed incomplete, his nights sleepless.

There is merely living, and then there is living, in boldface - experiencing life as joyous and meaningful and filled with passion and wholeness and understanding.

In the third act of Our Town, Wilder lays out before us the idea that we do not understand and appreciate the moments of our lives, the day-to-day shuffle, the relationships, the brief interactions we all have as we wander from one day to another. The dead survey the living and ask, “Why don’t they get it? Why do they not appreciate how wonderful life is - what a pleasure to enjoy a sunny day, to converse with friends, to take in all the sensations that surround them?”

One of the dead characters, who in the first two acts had been the conductor of the church choir, puts it bluntly:

That's what it was to be alive. To move about in a cloud of ignorance; to go up and down trampling on the feelings of those about you. To spend and waste time as though you had a million years. To be always at the mercy of one self-centered passion, or another.

It’s a sucker-punch to the gut. The Stage Manager concedes that only “the saints and the poets” might realize the value of life while they live it. And we in the audience are suddenly ashamed - ashamed because we know it’s true. We simply do not have the wherewithal to value what we have, as we muddle through our daily grinds, to understand that someday it will all be gone.

But wait! Maybe Wilder was not entirely correct. Because we, the Jews, have a tool for that job, a ritual device for awareness: Berakhot. Statements of praise.

How do you turn eating an ordinary sandwich into a holy moment, in which you appreciate your food, what it took to bring it to your table and all the people involved in the process? By reciting:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְ‑יָ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם הַמּוֹצִיא לֶחֶם מִן הָאָרֶץ
Barukh attah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, hamotzi leḥem min ha-aretz.
Praised are you, Lord our God, Ruler of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.

How do you turn the moment of joy at seeing a rainbow in the sky into a reminder of gratitude for God’s having created the world and maintained it? By saying,

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְ‑יָ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית וְנֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָּם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ
Barukh attah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, zokher haberit vene’eman bivrito vekayam bema-amaro.
Praised are you… who remembers the covenant, is faithful to it, and keeps His word.

And how do you turn admiration of incredible people who are filled with wisdom for which ordinary mortals like me yearn (think Einstein, Marie Curie, Stephen Hawking) into an acknowledgment that God occasionally imparts such brilliance to human beings? By saying:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יְ‑יָ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, שֶׁנָתַן מֵחָכְמָתוֹ לְבָשָׂר וָדָם
Barukh attah Adonai, Eloheinu melekh ha’olam, shenatan meḥokhmato levasar vedam.
Praised are you… who distributes His wisdom to flesh and blood.

There are of course berakhot for performing mitzvot, like putting on a tallit or lighting Shabbat or Hanukkah candles. But there are also berakhot for sights, sounds, smells, for traveling, for seeing an old friend, for hearing good news or bad news, for beholding breathtaking sights and being in the presence of a human king or queen. There is a berakhah for seeing trees in bloom, and one for witnessing the restoration of a destroyed synagogue. The one that makes everyone snicker is that which you say after leaving the bathroom, but it’s not a bad idea to be grateful that all your organs still work, don’t you think?

In short, what the framework of berakhot offers is awareness of what we are experiencing right now. Most of us are not saints and poets, but we have many opportunities every day to step away from ourselves and our egos, to take a breath and exhale a note of gratitude for what we feel, what we sense, what we understand. It’s never enough, of course - life is simply too rich to appreciate it all. But if you do this with regularity and intent you may find that your life feels more whole, more grounded. You can find these berakhot in any weekday siddur, as well as on Sefaria. (If you get the Sefaria app, you can easily access these on your phone, so they will be with you 24/6!)

I mentioned earlier that, while it is common to translate the term “berakhah” as a blessing, one of my liturgy professors at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Debra Reed-Blank, insisted that this is an inaccurate understanding. When we recite a berakhah, we are not “blessing” anything, not the bread or the rainbow or the wise person, and certainly we would not have the chutzpah to be blessing God.

Rather we are making statements of praise. God, we say, you are praised for giving us all this wonderful stuff, these holy moments, these pleasant scents and lofty vistas. We offer praise for maintaining the holiness in humanity, for compelling us to be filled with gratitude, for the ability to appreciate what we have. Gratitude and praise are intimately intertwined.

One of the joyous Psalms of Hallel includes a line which we sing with gusto on holidays, verses which very much presage the third act of Our Town (Psalm 115:17-18):

לֹא־הַמֵּתִים יְהַלְלוּ־יָ-הּ וְלֹא כָּל־יֹרְדֵי דוּמָה: וַאֲנַֽחְנוּ נְבָרֵךְ יָהּ מֵעַתָּה וְעַד־עוֹלָם הַלְלוּיָה
The dead cannot praise God, nor any who go down into silence. But we will praise God now and forever. Halleluyah!

We who are alive can offer words of praise, and that is a fundamental piece to living Jewishly. Perhaps, when the director of this revival (not a Jew, I think) chose the opening word of the play to be “Shema,” “Listen!”, he was subconsciously telling us, “Listen up, folks, and find this framework of praise through which we make every moment count.”

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As many of you also know, I go to Israel a lot; this was in fact my third trip since the Hamas attack of 10/7/2023, and I have lost count of how many round-trip tickets I have purchased since my first visit in 1987, but I am certain that it is well over 50. This trip was short; even though I woke up in Pittsburgh on Sunday at 4:30 AM to get there as quickly as possible, I was on the ground for less than 4 days to return in time for Shabbat.

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I always love visiting Israel. I remarked to a colleague as we were boarding a bus on Tuesday morning, and we observed an olive tree in the parking lot outside the bus window, how the landscape of Israel – the trees, the stone, the desert – just makes me feel all gooshy inside. It makes my tears well up in Zionist fervor and my heart burst with yearning. And as much as I love visiting Israel, leaving the land of our matriarchs and patriarchs, the ancestral land of the Jewish people, always makes me sad.

Here is the good news: Israel is functioning. Life seems relatively normal. The restaurants are bustling. The museums, the cultural offerings, the universities, the shopping centers all appear normal. There are traffic jams, of course, but for the first time in many years, I actually did not bother to rent a car, since I was traveling only between the airport, Jerusalem, and Tel Aviv, and I traveled easily by rail. It's fast and convenient and relatively inexpensive - you can get from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv in 36 minutes for a mere 25 sheqel - about $7!

And more good news is that Israel has largely disarmed Hizbullah, and with the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, Iran has lost a major surrogate, significantly changing the balance of power in the region. Also, Israel is now in control of the peak of Mt. Hermon, a strategic move of tremendous importance.

But it is not all good news. After 437 days of war, 437 days of captivity for 100 human beings, posters of whom are still on seemingly every wall and fence, and the ubiquitous stickers and memorials of the murdered and martyred filling public places with quotes and photos and hearts and anguish, the sense of general misery just underneath the surface is still palpable.

While reconnecting with colleagues is an essential part of these rabbinic conventions, a major piece is also professional development. We were given a choice of multiple “tracks” to pursue on Tuesday and Wednesday, and I chose the track on the theme of “shared society” in Israel, an examination of initiatives that help bridge the gaps between Israel’s Christians, Muslims, and Jews. This track brought us to places in Israel that are far, far off the beaten path, places to which I had never been, and that is saying a lot: the long-neglected desert development town of Yeruḥam, the largest Bedouin city in the world, Rahat, the mixed Jewish/Christian/Muslim cities of Lod and Ramleh.

In choosing this track, I had hoped to dive deeper, with the help of our Israeli colleagues, into the ways that Israelis of different religions and cultures seek ways to live together, to build bridges, to listen to each other's stories, to share the holy, ancient ground, and in turn to bring some inspiration back to all of you. It became quickly clear to me that there is much more work to be done. Alas.

In Lod, we heard tales of abused and murdered women, organized crime, and denial of city services to Arab residents. In Beersheva, we heard that Jewish and Arab students at Ben Gurion University of the Negev were having trouble relating to each other in the context of war. In Ramleh (n.b. not Ramallah, in the West Bank), we heard the director of a cultural center which fosters dialogue across ethnic lines admit that the hope he had prior to October 7, 2023 was much diminished.

And there were a few bright spots: in Yeruḥam, the town had succeeded in building a school for Bedouin residents in the adjacent unrecognized village of Raḥma, and we met a Bedouin woman advocating for greater opportunities for people like her.

In Rahat, we were graciously welcomed by the Imam of the grand Al Nor Mosque, Sheikh Jamal Al Ubra, even as he told us that he had lost many, many relatives in Gaza during the war. In Lod, we heard about how the abused women were helped out of bad situations and ushered into new lives.

And I was left with the feeling of Israel not as a shared society, but as a torn country, not only at its borders but also in its heart.

So, even as I lamented the great challenges I saw and heard, I found comfort in two things: first, that the initiatives for dialogue and cooperation were ongoing. They have not ceased, despite the desperation all around. Second, I was inspired by my rabbinic colleagues, who gave us words of ḥizzuq, of strengthening one another in the face of so much dysfunction and failure.

From my Israeli colleague Rabbi Amirit Rosen, who serves a Masorti congregation in Jerusalem, who organized the visit to Yeruḥam, Beersheva and Rahat: Rabbi Rosen spoke of how although religion is often perceived to divide people, it can also unite. She told an anecdote of how that same Imam had eulogized our colleague Rabbi Michael Graetz, who had dedicated his time to interfaith dialogue, and died a few weeks ago. At the funeral, Sheikh Al Ubra referenced the story of Yosef, whom we will encounter next week in Parashat Vayyeshev, found in both the Torah and the Qur'an, about how his brothers in a fit of anger throw him into a pit, and eventually sell him into slavery. But at the end of the story, Yosef and his brothers are reunited, and they all embrace and weep with joy.

And, from my American colleague, Rabbi Jeff Arnowitz, who serves Westchester Jewish Center just north of NYC, who spoke of the difference between Shabbat candles and Ḥanukkah candles: Rabbi Arnowitz cited a passage of the Mishnah that is read on Friday nights in some congregations, often referred to by its opening words, “Bameh madliqin.” The mishnah teaches us what may be used for Shabbat candles and what may not be, and the suggestion, said Rabbi Arnowitz, is that the quality of the light depends on the quality of the oil. He then extended the metaphor to say that the quality of Shabbat, which for those of us who take it seriously can have a dream-like quality, a time apart from reality, depends to some extent on the experiences of the reality which surrounds it. Reality shapes our dreams, and bad realities, said Rabbi Arnowitz, make for bad dreams.

But Ḥanukkah, he went on, goes the opposite way. The message of Ḥanukkah, on which we kindle lights to ward off the darkness, is that the dreams of Ḥanukkah shape our reality. If we dream of a better future on Hanukkah, as we increase the light every night, then our reality will ultimately reflect that dream. So we have to keep dreaming, keep working to bring light in the dark.

In Parashat Vayishlaḥ, from which we read this morning, one of the most striking moments in broken Biblical relationships occurs. As the estranged brothers Ya'aqov and Esav are reunited, Ya'aqov offers half of his possessions for rapprochement. And Esav, a brute of a man who is ruled by his appetites, and from whom we have been taught to expect the worst, replies in a moment that reflects the most sublime aspiration of people. Esav says, יש לי רב אחי / Yesh li rav aḥi. “I have plenty, my brother.” (Bereshit / Genesis 33:9)

These two brothers, twins, who have been struggling with each other from the time that they were in the womb, suddenly have no more need to fight. Each has enough. And it took multiple parshiyyot, many years, and an abundance of struggle to reach that point of satisfaction with what they have. The 16th-century Polish commentary Kli Yakar, by R. Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz, points out that, notably, it is Esav who is, as with Pirqei Avot 4:1, sameaḥ beḥelqo - happy with his portion.

In the short term, we should all keep praying for a hostage deal and an end to the war. In the long term, we should also pray that we all might find enough on that tiny, crowded land.

And as we prepare ourselves for Ḥanukkah, Ḥag haUrim, the Festival of Lights, I hope that we all keep our dreams bold and focused on peace, and on bringing the hostages home, because that will ultimately bring the light-filled reality which we all so desperately need.

Rabbi Amirit Rosen, in summation of the commitment to, if not the achievement of, an equitable, shared society in Israel, pointed out that we must continue the dialogue, we must continue to hold the values of peace and understanding before us, even if we are not yet there, “even if nobody is listening.” Those are the dreams onto which we must hold fast, so that the reality of a truly shared society in Israel will eventually come.

We are not there yet; we are not even ready. But we can, and we must, dream.

And even more curious, the WSJ article suggests that TikTok influencers may have something to do with the sales bump, although the article also mentions “rising anxiety” and “a search for hope,” and notes that, by the way, American society is still trending towards secularism. Notably, much of the growth in Bible sales appears to be among Gen Z and college students. Millions more copies of the Bible are being sold than just a few years ago. It is not clear if Tanakh sales (that is, the Hebrew Bible) have increased.

Just a brief explanation of terms first: “Tanakh” stands for Torah, Nevi’im, Ketuvim - the five books of the Torah, the books of the Prophets, and the Writings, which include all the miscellaneous books like Job and Esther and Psalms and so forth. We generally prefer to use the term “Hebrew Bible” or “Tanakh” rather than “Old Testament,” because “Old Testament” has a whiff of Christian supersessionism about it. That is, some Christians espouse the belief that God took the covenant away from the Jews and gave it to the Christians, so the “New Testament” has replaced the “Old Testament.”

Furthermore, much of what Jews do today, while having a basis in the Torah, is quite different from the ancient Israelite religion described therein. After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans in the year 70 CE, a group of scholars known as “rabbis” set to the task of re-envisioning Judaism as a non-hierarchical, non-sacrificial tradition based on prayer and study and the performance of mitzvot. That is what is enshrined in the Talmud and other rabbinic literature, and that is what we practice today. Put another way, with the expulsion of the Jews from our homeland in the first and second centuries, our sages forced an evolution of Jewish practice - a paradigm shift - making it text–based and democratic, and replacing the dynastic leadership of kohanim (priests) with scholars who interpreted the Tanakh for our contemporary circumstances.

So, we might ask, “Is a dramatic jump in Bible sales today a good thing? I am all for greater knowledge of, if not practice of religion. There are many positive benefits for religious observance, both for individual physical and spiritual health as well as for our society.

However, we Jews generally do not fall into the category of “Bible-thumpers” - that is, we understand that while the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, and particularly the Torah (the letter “tav” in the acronym “Tanakh”), is the foundational document for Judaism, the real key to understanding the Judaism of today is actually in the pages of the Talmud and other rabbinic literature, rather than the Torah. Those who quote the Bible without context, in whatever tradition, are missing essential parts of the story.

***

Just curious: is anybody else feeling anxious right now? Is anybody here searching for hope? Yeah, me too. So how many of us are looking in the Torah for answers?

We do not thump our Bibles because the Tanakh does not describe the Judaism we know. If we were to “thump” anything, it would be the entire rabbinic bookshelf, starting with 63 tractates of Talmud, and then the many, many medieval commentaries and collections of midrash and halakhic responsa literature and all of the Jewish discourse of the last two millennia.

And that is not to discount the fact that there are many great stories in the Bible, Jewish and Christian, as well as in the Qur’an, the Bhagavad Gita, and other such traditional holy books. And we should learn from them. Among the greatest values which we might learn from what we read today in Parashat Vayyetze is the power of forgiveness, from the moment when Ya’aqov and his father-in-law Lavan agree to part ways amicably, having talked through their disagreements. We also learn in these chapters of Bereshit / Genesis, from the foibles and failings and imperfections of Avraham, Yitzḥaq and Ya’aqov, that while humans often aim for perfection of our behavior and our choices, that life rarely works out the way we hope or expect.

And usually, the simplicity of Biblical stories, however human, belies the complexity of our lives. Consider, for example, the beginning of Parashat Vayyetze, when Ya’aqov is fleeing from his brother Esav after having taken the latter’s blessing from their father Yitzḥaq. He stops for the night to rest, and he has a dream about angels going up and coming down a ladder, which stretches into the sky from a base which is, in Hebrew, מוצב ארצה / mutzav artzah - fixed in a stable way to the ground. And there are angels climbing up and down this miraculous ladder.

And then God appears, and says (Bereshit / Genesis 28:15),

וְהִנֵּ֨ה אָנֹכִ֜י עִמָּ֗ךְ וּשְׁמַרְתִּ֙יךָ֙ בְּכֹ֣ל אֲשֶׁר־תֵּלֵ֔ךְ וַהֲשִׁ֣בֹתִ֔יךָ אֶל־הָאֲדָמָ֖ה הַזֹּ֑את כִּ֚י לֹ֣א אֶֽעֱזׇבְךָ֔ עַ֚ד אֲשֶׁ֣ר אִם־עָשִׂ֔יתִי אֵ֥ת אֲשֶׁר־דִּבַּ֖רְתִּי לָֽךְ׃

Remember, I am with you: I will protect you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”

Does that sound familiar? We have been saying these words as part of the prayer for the hostages held in Gaza now for 430 days. We have pleaded with God to bring those folks home, and, sadly, the only news we have had recently is of hostages who are already dead. The news of the death of Omer Neutra, an American citizen who grew up attending a Conservative synagogue on Long Island and had been a leader in his USY chapter, hit me hard. He was killed on Oct. 7, 2023, but we, and his family, did not know that until this week. Omer was one of us. He could have been any of our bright, smiling kids who chose to serve in the IDF. He was family.

For Ya’aqov, God fulfills his promise. For Omer Neutra, not so much.

It would be easy for me to say, “Look for the angels, and God’s promise to protect us wherever we go and bring us home to our land will be fulfilled.”

But of course we know that life does not always work like that. Our lives are far more complex. Sometimes promises are not fulfilled. Sometimes things do not go the way we hope. Sometimes, reality crushes our dreams.

The 12th/13th-century Provençal commentator Radaq, Rabbi David Qimḥi, cites a theory about the meaning of the dream. He says,

מוצב ארצה וראשו מגיע השמימה, באותו מעמד היו יחד העליונים עם התחתונים ומלאכי א-להים עולים ויורדים בו, העולים הם משה ואהרן, והיורדים הם המלאכים העליונים

מוצב ארצה וראשו מגיע השמימה, at the revelation of Mount Sinai the angels and the Jewish people were of the same spiritual level, even though Moses and Aaron are described as ascending towards heaven, whereas the angels were descending towards earth.

Radaq is telling us that Ya’aqov’s dream is a vision of receiving the Torah at Mt. Sinai, and that even though THAT scene, which of course will be hundreds of years after Ya’aqov, is depicted as people going up and angels coming down, the suggestion is that the ladder is actually making it possible for all to be on the same level. That is, as people we are fixed on the Earth, but we aspire to stretch ourselves heavenward, like angels. We seek to be holy; we yearn to be near to God; we desire to bring our physical in line with our spiritual.

In other words, the challenging nature of our lives, our anxiety, our missing the mark or not achieving desired outcomes, is a call to reach higher. That people can, always, reach higher, to climb the ladder of spiritual growth and complexity. To look for those angels, to seek God’s promise of protection, even though we know we may not find them.

Sometimes, we need to be just grateful for being מוצב ארצה / mutzav artzah, fixed to the ground. And sometimes we may need to be מגיע השמימה / magia hashamaimah, striving for loftier goals, extending ourselves upward.

The way that we have done this as Jews has always been to read and study and even disagree about our holy texts, to seek out the complexity of the lessons they teach, to look past the simplicity of the plain text to the deeper and higher meanings to be gleaned therefrom.

I would never pooh-pooh a person’s choice to buy a brand-new Bible, nor of course to read it, which is even more commendable. But I would then challenge them not simply to read, but to strive to see the complexity within, to seek out the wisdom which might help us navigate a range of circumstances. And that requires more than watching a TikTok video. It necessitates deeper, holier, more thoughtful work.

Shabbat shalom! May we soon see the safe return of all the hostages, and peace in the land of Israel, unto all the inhabitants thereof.

If you squint a bit, you can see in Thanksgiving hints of Sukkot and Pesaḥ. It’s a harvest festival, with appropriate themes and foods, and if you’re doing it right, there should be a seder-like attempt to have a discussion around the table about the things for which we are grateful.

 But one essential message of Thanksgiving, on top of the gratitude, is that of leadership through social capital. Allow me to explain.

I have learned in my 17 years as a rabbi that the foundation for navigating all of the complexities of life and individuals and groups is investing in knowing people. Hearing their stories. Being with their families. Listening to them and understanding the challenges they face. Being there in moments of joy and grief, sickness and health and mourning. And never being complacent; always seeking to build, to make connections, to establish bonds. And by the way, that is as true for everybody else as it is for rabbis.

Parashat Ḥayyei Sarah opens with our matriarch Sarah’s death. Seeking a reason for her seemingly sudden demise (at the age of 127), Rashi cites a midrash blaming the episode of the Aqedah, the troubling story of the Binding of Isaac which we read last week, as being the emotional blow which killed her. In the opening verses of Ḥayyei Sarah, Avraham “eulogizes and cries” for Sarah. 

And then, Avraham gets up from shiv’ah, and apparently concludes his mourning. And then what does he do? He looks to the future. He acts. He expresses a kind of soft leadership.

He negotiates with the Hittites for a burial place, an episode which references the way business negotiations are conducted to this very day: not simply an exchange of money and goods, but a discussion, including respectful statements of honor and friendship and trust. And then he sets himself to the task of finding a wife for Yitzḥaq. He sends his servant Eliezer, who begins his journey with the first words of prayer mentioned in the Torah (Bereshit / Genesis 24:12), and then proceeds to find Rivqah, who graciously offers water and food and lodging, and after much formality and camel-feeding, the match between Yitzḥaq and Rivqah is sealed. The episode concludes (24:67) by reporting that וַיִּנָּחֵ֥ם יִצְחָ֖ק אַחֲרֵ֥י אִמּֽוֹ, that Yitzḥaq “found comfort after his mother’s death.”

In other words, Avraham’s response to his grief is mourn appropriately, but not excessively. Not to wallow, or to lash out, or really any other sort of emotional response following his initial crying. Rather, it is to build, to make connections. To establish bonds. To think about creating the future for his family and his people. And the result is that the actions that Avraham and Eliezer had undertaken assuaged the grief of Yitzḥaq, and presumably Avraham as well.

I know that for many of us, the world might feel like it is crumbling. Deep polarization of American society, the ongoing war in Israel, craziness on the national stage, the ICC issuing an arrest warrant for the most prominent Jewish leader in the world, and so forth - all of these things can easily lead to a feeling of hopelessness about our future. Many of us are yearning, if not mourning, for the past. Some of us are literally crying; I have not been afraid to admit to you all that over the last 414 days my tears have been just below the surface, and rising up more frequently than in any previous year of my life. 

In this context, how might we be inspired by Avraham in this parashah?  How might we look to the future and build, like Avraham in the wake of Sarah’s death?

Issues of military conflict and ceasefires and shoring up democracy must be left to the people in real positions of power. But we who are not elected officials or UN ambassadors or think-tank guys or nationally-syndicated columnists have power as well. And that power is something to which I have returned over and over again. It is “social capital,” an idea put forward by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam. In brief, social capital is the intangible glue which binds people together, a measure of the interconnectedness of our society. We acquire it by meeting and interacting with people who are outside our usual range of acquaintances: by playing on teams - bowling leagues and bridge nights and pickup soccer, by joining neighborhood watch and beautification organizations, by joining PTOs and getting involved in aid organizations such as food pantries, book clubs, by volunteering for arts organization, even by rubbing elbows with visitors at kiddush. And it is good for us as individuals and for our society, particularly when these interactions do not involve politics or religion or the things which divide us.

And, as Putnam describes in painful detail in his book on the subject from 2000, Bowling Alone, many indicators show that our social capital in America peaked in about 1965, and has been on the steady decline since. Without social capital, we do not feel connected to each other, leading to many social ailments, from flouting traffic laws to reduced trust in one another to increased frequency of government scandals. David Brooks, in an interview last week on PBS, spoke about the “hyper-individualism” exhibited in America over the last 60 years, and its many corrosive effects.

So here is some good news about the fact that you are here today: faith-based communities, such as synagogues, are an excellent source of social capital. Just by being here today, whether you have been attending Shabbat morning services at Beth Shalom for forty years or you are a first-time visitor, you are taking part in a fundamentally healthy activity that not only helps fulfill the mitzvot of daily prayer and keeping the Shabbat, but is also helping you to connect to others and build social capital. (Here is a good moment, BTW, to plug Beth Shalom’s Ḥavurah program, which we established two years ago and are about to launch a new iteration, including the Shabbat dinner on Dec. 13th.)

So here is the challenge: as I pointed out two weeks ago, one of the pitfalls we face is that it is just too easy today to never leave your ideological comfort zone, to break bread only with those with whom we agree. And that is really not good for society. And so we need to think beyond the synagogue walls. The Talmud, by the way, teaches us in Massekhet Berakhot (34b) that a synagogue must have windows, to help us focus our prayers not on ourselves, but on what is outside.

And so we need to make even more connections. We need to seek out and build social capital with people not like us. And we need to find ways to meet and bond without focusing on what divides us. As a synagogue, for example, we could establish a relationship with a church or mosque or gurdwara or even an atheist society, and meet to discuss anything but politics or religion.

And just to address what may be an elephant hanging out behind me on the bimah, many of us may feel burned by former allies this past year. But we are too tiny a people to be able to afford staying cloistered within our community as Jews. We the Jews, a people representing 0.2% of the world population, cannot remain isolated. And so we must continue to reach out.

There is, in the observance of Thanksgiving, a collective sense of Americanism which says something positive about our nation: that we set aside a day to gather with family and friends regardless of politics or religion or ethnic background or any of the ways in which we are inclined to divide ourselves. It is a day on which, I hope, we all acknowledge some gratitude for what makes this nation unique, and the values that we share.

בֶּן זוֹמָא אוֹמֵר… אֵיזֶהוּ גִבּוֹר, הַכּוֹבֵשׁ אֶת יִצְרוֹ, שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר (משלי טז) טוֹב אֶרֶךְ אַפַּיִם מִגִּבּוֹר וּמשֵׁל בְּרוּחוֹ מִלֹּכֵד עִיר. 

Ben Zoma said: Who is mighty? The one who subdues his evil inclination, as it is said (Proverbs 16:32): “The one who is slow to anger is better than the mighty; and he that rules his spirit is better than he that takes a city.” (Pirqei Avot 4:1)

Ben Zoma’s words teach us that leadership is not about might. It is not about the loudest voice, or the strongest army, or the most rational foreign policy. It is rather about moderating ourselves. It is about keeping our emotions in check, not responding in anger or grief or frustration, but rather about the soft leadership of personal connection.

 Perhaps on this Thanksgiving, as you are considering those things for which you are grateful, you might ask those gathered around the table to consider how you might create better, stronger bonds with other Americans, how you might reach out to people not like you to build a healthier, more resilient society. And perhaps you might consider how, like Avraham, we all might lift ourselves up from our current malaise to act, to build, to lead.

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Wednesday, Nov. 6, was not only the day after the election; it was also my brother’s birthday, so I gave him a call to chat. He lives with his family in Florida, where his wife grew up. In expressing his dejection over the way that the presidential election went, I was extraordinarily surprised to hear them both express that they were thinking of leaving Florida due to the way the political landscape has shifted there. And they are not alone - you may have seen a recent article in the New York Times about Americans moving for political reasons, to states and even neighborhoods where people agree with them. Polarization is happening not only in our hearts and minds.

And then of course I thought about Parashat Lekh Lekha, at the beginning of which our hero Avraham Avinu (our father Abraham) is told by God to leave his homeland and start anew. Why? Because he was living in a place where they worshiped idols, where, as perhaps the most famous midrash in the Jewish canon reports, his own father sold idols for a living. In order to start his new family, and the monotheistic tribe that would eventually become the Israelite nation, and then the Jews, could only be launched in a place free of idolatry.

But wait a minute! The land of Canaan, to where Avraham and his wife Sarah relocated, was also an idolatrous place! The Canaanites surely had as many idols as the Chaldeans. And yet, that is where they built their new home, and of course that place would ultimately be renamed for Avraham’s grandson Ya’aqov, who eventually was given the name Yisrael - the one who struggles with God.

So why leave Ur, at the eastern end of the Fertile Crescent, in the first place? Why abandon your family and homeland to begin a life where idolatry also flourished? There must have been something else in play. Perhaps it was because, in order to launch this new nation, Avraham needed to be among others - NOT the people who raised him and whom he knew so well.

I was also reflecting on a commentary I heard about Migdal Bavel, the Tower of Babel, which appeared in Parashat Noah last week. We often think of that story as being about human arrogance, of trying to reach God by building a huge tower, for the purposes of “vena’aseh lanu shem,” so that the builders could “make a name” for themselves (Bereshit / Genesis 11:3). But one 18th-century Moroccan commentator, the Or HaḤayyim, Rabbi Ḥayyim ben Moshe ibn Attar, teaches us that the story is rather about diversity of thought. He wrote:

When the Torah reports that the people spoke one language and were of one mind about all important issues, the meaning is that they literally congregated together without spreading out at all. To prevent becoming scattered they built a single city. They built the tower as a landmark so that if any of them strayed too far from home he would be able to orient himself by seeing the tower from a distance. The "name" the Torah speaks of is the "name" of the tower, i.e. its visibility from afar, its significance. It was this very reluctance to comply with God's intention to populate various parts of the Earth which annoyed God… God therefore had to resort to some stratagem to frustrate their plan without interfering with their basic freedom of choice. God achieved this by confusing their uniform language. (Comment to Bereshit 11:1)

The Or HaḤayyim is telling us that Migdal Bavel was a symptom of the people’s reluctance to see anything beyond their immediate vicinity, their immediate family, the people around them, who all spoke the same language, lived the same culture, and agreed on everything.

This story is placed in the Torah just before we meet Avraham and launch him from Ur to Canaan. One conclusion that might be drawn from the proximity of these passages is that monotheism needed to be in a diverse environment, a place where multiple languages were spoken and a range of ideas could be found. It had to be created as an option in a place where Avraham was a stranger, a newcomer, thereby challenging the people of the land to think differently, to try out this new approach. 

The alien concept of one God had to be sown in an environment where it was not the norm, and yet the people would also be potentially open to it. And that was not Ur. Avraham’s father Teraḥ, according to the midrash, could not wrap his brain around why Avraham had destroyed the idols in his shop and then cynically attributed the act to the biggest idol. That is all you need to know about Ur. The place where monotheism could take root was, rather, the place where people would struggle with God. It was Yisrael.

The greatest gift that God has given us is the ability to talk through difference, to work together even when we speak different languages.

The order to “lekh lekha,” to “get thyself out of town,” is hence more intellectual than it is geographical. 

In all the anxiety and hand-wringing leading up to this election and in its wake, I am left with one particularly galling concern, and that is that we are failing to listen.

We are all so dedicated to singularity of thought, to purity of purpose, that we cannot see anything other than the towers we have built in separate camps, in separate cities. We heed only those voices which sound like our own, and we go to great lengths to ignore those which contradict our world view. We agree with those around us that we must “fight,” we must “win,” we must continue to raise our voices in protest, but not in dialogue. And so there is so much shouting, but little listening; so much fist-pumping, but little reasoned thought; so much playing to the id; but little desire to breach the divide between people.

Consider that our national elections are determined only by what amounts to a handful of voters in a few states. Everybody else is so set in their ways, unwilling to be swayed by the argument of somebody with whom we disagree. A couple of hundred thousand people, maybe 0.1% of the population of this nation, a tiny sliver, is effectively making the decisions for us.

I watch arguments go by online and I see that we are just talking past each other. There is no real engagement. So too on national television and radio, where the more shouting there is, the more anger and insult and seething and discomfort, the more we love it. We just cannot handle, or even imagine, respectful, thoughtful interaction with people with whom we disagree.

And let’s face it: people are really hurting, and they are seeking consolation, and they are seeking answers, and not always in the right places. We are all searching for a mashiaḥ, an anointed one, who will save us from all that ails us.

There is an expression in Israel, made famous by the singer-songwriter Meir Ariel, which captures the resilience of the Jews in the face of adversity throughout our history:

עברנו את פרעה, נעבור גם את זה

We survived Pharaoh, and we will also survive this.

Now is not the time for Lekh Lekha, of getting up and moving like Avraham Avinu, our father Avraham. Now is not the time for gerrymandering ourselves, either geographically or in our hearts, for huddling close to our respective towers of Babel.

It is rather the time to move in the spiritual sense. How do we make a better world, a better United States, a better Israel? By turning away from Migdal Bavel. By listening to each other, by talking through disagreement respectfully rather than demeaning one another. By seeking first to understand. By not reverting to the uniform jargon of one team or the other. By acknowledging that we cannot solve the problems we face until we hear each other’s voices and agree to work together to at least attempt to solve the very real challenges we face.

Every Shabbat morning at Congregation Beth Shalom we read, in the Prayer for our Country, that we must have the “understanding and courage to root out poverty from our land.” Of course we will disagree about what the best way to go about this is. But when I see the number of homeless tents along the bike trail downtown, when I consider the fact that a huge portion of Americans are just one unfortunate accident away from being destitute, when I see the ways in which we are killing each other physically and metaphorically, I remember that pointing fingers helps nobody. Assigning blame to this group or that, accusing one another of various -isms, or drawing lines of any kind only enables these problems to fester. 

To have that understanding and courage to root out poverty, to improve our educational system for all, to ensure our bridges do not fall down, will require us to see the humanity of all around us, and to work across ideological and cultural differences for the common good.

If you are pleased with the outcome, do not gloat. If you are disappointed, do not despair. Instead, listen. Listen. And seek to understand. Forget the towers we have built, and seek out the company and opinions of the people who do not speak your language.

That is indeed how we will move forward together. That is how we will leave Ur and make it to the Promised Land.

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Psalm 137:1-6

עַ֥ל נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זָכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן׃
By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat, sat and wept, as we thought of Zion.
There on the poplars we hung up our lyres, for our captors asked us there for songs, our tormentors, for amusement: “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

אֵ֗יךְ נָשִׁ֥יר אֶת־שִׁיר־ה' עַ֝֗ל אַדְמַ֥ת נֵכָֽר׃
How can we sing a song of the LORD on alien soil?

אִֽם־אֶשְׁכָּחֵ֥ךְ יְֽרוּשָׁלִָ֗ם תִּשְׁכַּ֥ח יְמִינִֽי׃
If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you, if I do not keep Jerusalem in memory even at my happiest hour.

Last year on Shemini Atzeret, which fell on October 7th, 2023, I came to the realization that this festive day will, for the rest of my life, feel quite different.

Before then, it was already the most ironic holiday of the Jewish year, mostly because it is not clear whether it is the eighth day of Sukkot, or a holiday unto itself.

On the one hand, the word “shemini,” literally, “eighth,” refers to the fact that it follows the seventh day of Sukkot, clearly suggesting that this day is the eighth day of the festival*. In the Torah it is referred to as an “‘atzeret,” from the shoresh ע-צ-ר, that is, a day of stopping, the final day of a long festival. In our liturgy, whenever we mention Shemini Atzeret, we refer to it as “zeman simḥateinu,” the season of our joy, which is the same term we use for Sukkot. Whenever we mention the Shalosh Regalim, the three pilgrimage festivals, we count exactly three: Pesaḥ, Shavu’ot, and Sukkot. Absolutely nobody in the world ever counts Shemini Atzeret as the fourth festival. 

But on the other hand, the Talmud (Sukkah 48a) describes this day as a “regel bifnei ‘atzmo,” a pilgrimage festival unto itself. And you may know that we are done with our Sukkot obligations - leshev basukkah, to dwell in the sukkah, and Arba’at HaMinim, the four species which comprise the lulav and etrog - after 7 days. If Shemini Atzeret were actually a part of Sukkot, then we would still be doing these things. So you could easily make the case that it is not really part of Sukkot, that it is in fact a unique festival.

To complicate matters even more, there is the further challenge, occurring only in Diaspora, that this holiday somehow became two holidays: Shemini Atzeret and Simḥat Torah. There is no Simḥat Torah found in the Torah; that was layered onto Shemini Atzeret by the rabbis, and then in Diaspora what should be the second day of Shemini Atzeret (for complicated reasons not worth getting into right now) became Simḥat Torah. 

By comparison, in Israel, there is only one day, as the Torah suggests, which they call Simḥat Torah. So Shemini Atzeret does not even really exist there.

Which of course brings us to the major challenge regarding Shemini Atzeret, which is that nobody really knows what the purpose of this holiday is. There are exactly three midrashic perspectives on this day, and the best-known one is that it is about the king who throws a seven-day party, and just as his guests are packing up to leave, the king pleads with them, “Wait! Just stay for one more day.” (And remember, whenever midrash mentions a theoretical king, it is actually speaking of God.)

If I were cynical, I would call this the festival of irony. Ironically, ancient Hebrew has no such term, and although as a literary device can be found in the Tanakh (e.g. much of the book of Jonah), that was clearly not the intent of this curious eighth day.

But the irony of this day took a quantum leap in 5785. This is now not only a festival day, but truly a day of memory. It is now the yahrzeit of the 1200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7th, 2023, Shemini Atzeret 5784, and will always be remembered not only as that day, but also the day which launched the most brutal and tragic war of Israel’s 76-year history.

This new level of irony is painful. 

And yet, it also sort of makes sense, at least in Diaspora. This is a day on which we recite prayers of Yizkor, of recalling the names of those whom we have lost. And so it is absolutely appropriate to make this day a permanent day of memory.

I have kept, as have many of us, Israel in front of mind for the entirety of the last year, as Psalm 137 laments: יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זָכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן. We have sat and wept as we have thought of Tziyyon. There have certainly been days over the past year when I have indeed wondered if we might be in Babylon after all.

The Tosefta is a collection of material that comes from the authors of the Mishnah from the second century CE, but was not included in the Mishnah itself. There is a passage (Tosefta Sotah 15:11-15) which addresses the question of how much we should mourn for the Beit HaMiqdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, and at the time that it was written, this was very much an ongoing concern for the Rabbis and for the Jewish people at large. Nearly 2,000 years later, we are still in some sense grappling with the loss of the Temple, and there are many ways in which our ancient collective grief is still playing out:

From the time that the last Temple was destroyed, the number of ascetics proliferated in Israel, who would not eat meat or drink wine. 

R. Yehoshua joined them. He said to them, “For what reason are you not eating meat?” They said to him, “Shall meat be eaten, when every day the sacrifice was offered up on the altar, and now it has ceased?” 

He said to them, “Let it not be eaten. And for what reason are you not drinking wine?” They said to him, “Shall wine be drunk, when every day they would pour the libation offering on the altar, and now it has ceased?” He said to them, “Let it not be drunk.”

He said to them, “And if so, neither should bread be eaten, for from that they would bring the two loaves and the showbread. Nor should water be drunk, for from that they would perform the water libation on Sukkot. Nor should figs and grapes be eaten, for from them they would bring the first fruits on Shavu’ot.” 

They were silent.

R. Yehoshua went on: “My children, it is impossible to mourn excessively, and it is impossible not to mourn at all. Rather, thus said the Sages: One may plaster their house with lime, but leave a small amount unplastered as a remembrance of Jerusalem. One may make all the preparations for a feast, and leave a small amount of food as a remembrance of Jerusalem… As it is said, אִֽם־אֶשְׁכָּחֵ֥ךְ יְֽרוּשָׁלִָ֗ם תִּשְׁכַּ֥ח יְמִינִֽי׃ ‘If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither; let my tongue stick to my palate if I cease to think of you…’ (Psalm 137:5-6).

“And all those who mourn her in this world [even in moderation] will celebrate with her in the world to come, as it is said (Isaiah 66:10), 

שִׂמְח֧וּ אֶת־יְרוּשָׁלַ֛͏ִם וְגִ֥ילוּ בָ֖הּ כׇּל־אֹהֲבֶ֑יהָ שִׂ֤ישׂוּ אִתָּהּ֙ מָשׂ֔וֹשׂ כׇּל־הַמִּֽתְאַבְּלִ֖ים עָלֶֽיהָ׃

Rejoice with Jerusalem and be glad for her, ‘All you who love her! Join in her jubilation, All you who mourned over her.’

יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ We have sat and wept, sat and wept for all the dead of the past year. We have mourned those butchered in their homes by terrorists. We have grieved for those subjected to the most horrible sexual violence. We have suffered along with those who lost husbands and wives, children and grandparents, Holocaust survivors and tiny, fresh-faced children, Americans and Thai and Filipinos and French and Russians and Ukrainians and Cambodians and Canadians and Tanzanians and Sri Lankans and Brazilians, Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Christians, Buddhists and more. We have watched in pain as the news of tens of thousands of dead Palestinian non-combatants has echoed over and over on our screens. We have yearned for the return of the hostages; we have wept as brave soldiers fell in the line of duty.  

And yet, as the Tosefta teaches us, we can still get up from the trench of mourning to celebrate a holiday. We can mourn, and we can still have joy. עֵ֥ת סְפ֖וֹד וְעֵ֥ת רְקֽוֹד׃, teaches Qohelet / Ecclesiastes. There is a time to mourn and a time to dance. Those of us who remember and mourn the loss of this day one year ago, and everything that has unfolded since, as Rabbi Yehoshua suggests, will not only merit the rebuilding of Jerusalem in the world to come, but should also celebrate on Simḥat Torah and yes, even the highly ironic festival of Shemini Atzeret.

A year ago, on Simḥat Torah, those of you who were here may recall that we were somewhat subdued. We sang, but did not dance, instead simplifying the seven haqafot to merely carrying the scrolls around the room. 

Tonight, in defiance of those who have sought to kill us, עוד נחזור לרקוד. We will dance again, but with one small change. The next-to-last haqafah, the sixth haqafah, will be marked with a few somber tunes, and no dancing. It is worth noting that the text from the “Hoshia’ Na” piyyut which we say for that haqafah is as follows: 

עוֹזֵר דַּלִּים הוֹשִׁיעָה נָּא. פּוֹדֶה וּמַצִּיל הַצְלִיחָה נָא. צוּר עוֹלָמִים עֲנֵנוּ בְיוֹם קָרְאֵנוּ

May the One who helps the weak save us.
May the One who redeems and rescues grant us success.
May the eternal Protector answer us in the hour of our calling.

In what amounts to a crescendo of the festive month of Tishrei, we implore God and count on each other at this time to protect us, to help the weak, to redeem and rescue, and even as we dance and sing joyously once again this evening, we continue to live in our grief and indeed in our resilience. 

May this season of joy and grief, of pain and repentance and forgiveness and most of all irony, bring us all strength and constancy to stand together as we move forward.

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***

* In the two places in the Torah (Lev. 23:36 and Num. 29:35) where this day is mentioned (other festival passages do not mention it at all), it seems to be attached to Sukkot at the end, just like the seventh day of Pesaḥ, which is a Yom Tov day just like the first day.

You may recall that our theme for 5785 is “Centering Judaism.” On Rosh HaShanah I spoke about the joy at the center of living Jewishly and about Conservative Judaism being at the center of American Jewish life. On the evening of Yom Kippur, I spoke about Israel as the spiritual, cultural, and physical center of the Jewish world.

Today we are going to talk about living a centered life, as described by Maimonides.

There has been much consternation in the Jewish world over the last several years, particularly since the Charlottesville march in 2017, and perhaps peaking with the anti-Israel encampments which popped up on college campuses last spring, regarding the place of Jews in America, and our future in this land. I will freely admit that I have been struggling for months with a deep-seated discomfort that had never before struck me, that maybe America is not actually different. Maybe what has happened to Jews in virtually every place that they have lived and thrived and even joined the cultural elite throughout history: eventually the welcome mat is rolled up, and the Jews move on. Or worse.

And the challenge that I have had, week after week after painful week over the last year, is to remind all of you that hope remains before us, that we can continue to live and thrive and be proudly who we are, regardless of what is taking place in the world. And I will strive to continue doing just that.

And, along with the fact that you all know that my Zionism is firm and unwavering, I am also extraordinarily proud to be an American, and grateful that this nation has been not merely a haven, but also a fertile garden of growth and flourishing for the Jewish people.

But of course, Di Goldene Medine, this land which some of our ancestors believed to have streets paved with gold, has not been without its challenges. We arrived on these shores first in 1654, although it took two years to get official permission from the Dutch government to stay legally. George Washington famously sent a letter to the Jews of Newport, Rhode Island in 1790, vowing that the government of the United States would give “to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” And waves of immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe later cemented the presence of Jews in the American tapestry. Nonetheless, there was always an undercurrent of antisemitism, sometimes submerged, but of course it never really went away. I know that many of us, including myself, are still reckoning with the fact that it is now resurgent. 

And even knowing that, we have thrived here. And that is because America is a nation where the center dominates the extremes. There is clearly Jew-hatred on the fringes of American society. But the vast middle has always held it at bay.

Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer, President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, recently gave a stunning address to a room full of American rabbis, titled “Our Golden Age.” He spoke about the fact that Jews have had a sort of covenant with America, one which enabled us to commit to the American project wholeheartedly. 

“American Jews offer a prayer for America, oftentimes deeply rooted in sincerity. We have participated in its political culture as insiders rather than outsiders.

“Beyond what we did because it was our Jewish commitment, we American Jews also helped America think of itself in that way. It’s not a coincidence that one of our American Jewish tradition’s greatest poets, Emma Lazarus, is the author of the poem that shows up on the base of the Statue of Liberty, who envisions America as a place for the fulfillment of biblical ethics. When she says, ‘Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,’ it’s not hard to hear that as the American equivalent of the Bible’s 36 times that it mentions your responsibility to the widow, the orphan, and the stranger. We gave that to America. We saw it as part of what it meant to be Jewish in America, and we bequeathed it to America itself.”

Here at Beth Shalom, we of course offer that prayer for America as a part of our Shabbat morning service every week, and we continue to lean into that covenant. And Emma Lazarus’ poem is still there, still inscribed on the most potent symbol of America as a welcoming place to people from all over the world, including us.

And the hopeful note that I can provide is that we have to continue to look to that golden middle, the non-extreme, non-radical center where we are still welcome, where truly honest and inclusive democracy is still the reality.

As Jews, we incline toward that great American middle. And you might say that we have a religious imperative to do so.

I think that some of you know that my favorite night of the Jewish year, even more so than sharing the bimah with my daughter for Kol Nidrei, is the Tiqqun Leil Shavu’ot, which is held on the first night of Shavu’ot at the JCC. It is an opportunity to learn from rabbis and scholars from across the community. And my favorite part of the evening is what happens after the official program ends at 1 AM. At that point, a group of hearty souls from our congregation continue to learn Torah into the wee hours, starting with a discussion at my house, where I have typically taught something from Rambam, Maimonides, one of the most powerful voices on the Jewish bookshelf, who speaks to us from 12th-century Egypt.

Rambam wrote a tractate as part of his halakhic magnum opus, Mishneh Torah, called Hilkhot De’ot, the laws of human dispositions. And one of the essential ideas of Hilkhot De’ot, which we have learned on my back porch at 2 AM on Shavu’ot is the idea of the Golden Mean: that in all characteristics of our personalities, we should strive to be in the middle, rather than at the extremes. Rambam writes (De’ot 1:4), [SUMMARIZE - don’t read the below]

הַדֶּרֶךְ הַיְשָׁרָה הִיא מִדָּה בֵּינוֹנִית שֶׁבְּכָל דֵּעָה וְדֵעָה מִכָּל הַדֵּעוֹת שֶׁיֵּשׁ לוֹ לָאָדָם 

The straight path: This [involves discovering] the midpoint temperament of each and every trait that man possesses [within his personality.] This refers to the trait which is equidistant from either of the extremes, without being close to either of them…

For example: he should not be wrathful, easily angered; nor be like the dead, without feeling, rather he should [adopt] an intermediate course; i.e., he should display anger only when the matter is serious enough to warrant it, in order to prevent the matter from recurring. 

Similarly, he should not desire anything other than that which the body needs and cannot exist without, as [Proverbs 13:25] states: "The righteous man eats to satisfy his soul."

Also, he shall not labor in his business except to gain what he needs for immediate use, as [Psalms 37:16] states: "A little is good for the righteous man."

He should not be overly stingy nor spread his money about, but he should give charity according to his capacity and lend to the needy as is fitting. 

He should not be overly elated and laugh [excessively], nor be sad and depressed in spirit. Rather, he should be quietly happy at all times, with a friendly countenance. 

The same applies with regard to his other traits.

And, Rambam concludes by assuring us, “This path is the path of the wise.”

The goal is to find the Golden Mean of all of our personality traits. You should not be too happy nor too sad. You should not be too hotheaded nor too passive. And if you find yourself approaching the extremes of any characteristic, you should correct your behavior to be in the middle. 

Rambam’s framework of course accounts for individual differences in personality, and encourages continuous introspection and re-assessment. It does not mean, of course, that you can never be angry or laugh so hard you bust a gut. But the goal is ultimately to be temperamentally stable, to average out to a healthy middle path.

On this day of Yom Kippur, a day on which we are obligated to consider our behavior and course corrections for the coming year, we should absolutely be thinking about Rambam’s strategy. Have I yelled too much at my kids? If so, maybe I need to dial it back. Have I been insufficiently responsive to my spouse? If so, perhaps I need to work on our relationship. Have I given enough tzedakah? Am I honestly purchasing and consuming what I truly need? Is the pursuit of my wants obscuring what constitutes true happiness and crowding out what is meaningful and joyful? These are all worthy questions for this day.

And writ large, I think we can also expand Rambam’s vision not only to personal traits, but also those of the society in which we live. We live in a society that seems so angry: two attempts on the life of a former president; campus protests which emphasize not free speech and the exchange of ideas but hateful graffiti and threatening chants; the ever-present binary notion that you are either with me or against me. Rambam, if he were magically transported eight centuries forward to today, would surely survey the landscape and sadly shake his head. 

We should continue to look to the middle, to support the center, and to avoid the extremes to which we are being pushed by algorithms, media and public figures. As I have said in the past, we are not Orthodox, and we should avoid orthodoxies of all kinds. To that end, here are a few suggestions:

I know this is going to be really difficult in the next few weeks, but it might not be such a terrible thing if we were all to try to be a little less obsessed with the news. If you have managed to beat back the temptation to be constantly connected to what is going on elsewhere at all times, mazal tov! For all the rest of us who are obsessing, not merely following, but obsessing about one thing or another, let me remind you that excessive reading/watching/posting about the news actually probably will not help anything or give you any more control. But it might make you more anxious. So find that golden mean and consider cutting back if necessary.

As cartoonist David Sipress recently put it in a New Yorker cartoon,  “My desire to be well-informed is currently at odds with my desire to remain sane.”

Something which observers of American society have noticed in recent years is that, as religion has retreated from a position of primacy, political engagement has filled the void it has left, and probably not for the better. Our politics, like religion, have become tribal. Just as our religious commitments engendered a certain amount of loyalty and contention, the same is now true of our politics. And while religious intermarriage has become the norm, we are busy dividing ourselves into immiscible political groups with a widening chasm between them.

This cannot be good for the future of America. 

Now, I cannot very well stand before a roomful of Jews and suggest that we care less about politics. But I can remind us all, as I did on the first day of Rosh HaShanah, that the tools of Judaism will help keep us sane as our politics turn ever crazier. Reciting words of prayer in synagogue, relaxing with family on Shabbat and during holiday meals, learning the wisdom of the Jewish bookshelf - these things will not only pull you away from the nonsense of the news cycle, but also might give you a longer, more reasoned perspective. Let’s keep Judaism as our religion and prevent politics from consuming us all.

Another related thought: social media. The Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued a warning back in May 2023 that it can be harmful to children and adolescents. But guess what? It may not be that good for adults either. Social media has altered the way we think and the way we interact with others. The Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari has just published a new book on this subject, in which he discusses how the algorithms of social media are destroying us. I have spoken about this before and I do not need to go into the details, but if you find yourself always on Facebook or Instagram, you might want to consider finding a way of limiting your usage (like, for example, taking a break from it on Shabbat!), and spending more time with real people in person. 

I have found that even people who are deeply divided over politics are much less likely to despise people with whom they find themselves in actual conversation, in each others’ presence and in real time. So put down your phone, close your laptop, and get out there and talk to people!

One way of doing so, by the way, is by joining Beth Shalom’s ḥavurah program. A ḥavurah is a small group within the congregation - no more than 20 people - who meet regularly to participate in shared activities: having dinner together, or a discussion, or going to a show, or for a pleasant walk in Frick Park, or any other social activity. We launched this program about a year and a half ago, and we are hoping to build it by inviting more folks in. This is a big congregation, and one way to build a greater sense of connection within the congregation is to meet in smaller subsets. The more of us who participate in a ḥavurah, the more interconnected and the stronger Beth Shalom will be. You’ll be receiving more info about the next opportunity to join some time this fall.

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I know that many members of this congregation were at the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh’s commemoration of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack this past Monday evening. As you may know, at Beth Shalom we have the custom of marking yahrzeits not on the secular date, but according to the Jewish calendar, and that date is the 22nd day of Tishrei, which is the festival day of Shemini Atzeret. We will do so on that day, and then we will make the transition to Simḥat Torah in the evening, the most joyous day of the Jewish year. 

It is worth noting that on Sukkot, and some years on Shemini Atzeret, we read the book of Qohelet, Ecclesiastes, the book that attempts to answer the question of how we find meaning when we are weary of the world. And the most famous passage in Qohelet is the opening of Chapter 3, the “Catalogue of Times.” You know this best from the Pete Seeger song made famous by the Byrds, “Turn, Turn, Turn.” But the original goes like this:

לַכֹּ֖ל זְמָ֑ן וְעֵ֥ת לְכׇל־חֵ֖פֶץ תַּ֥חַת הַשָּׁמָֽיִם׃ עֵ֥ת לָלֶ֖דֶת        וְעֵ֣ת לָמ֑וּת        עֵ֣ת לָטַ֔עַת        וְעֵ֖ת לַעֲק֥וֹר נָטֽוּעַ׃…    עֵ֤ת לִבְכּוֹת֙        וְעֵ֣ת לִשְׂח֔וֹק        עֵ֥ת סְפ֖וֹד        וְעֵ֥ת רְקֽוֹד׃

A season is set for everything, a time for every experience under heaven:   …

A time for being born and a time for dying,

A time for planting and a time for uprooting the planted;...

A time for weeping and a time for laughing,

A time for wailing and a time for dancing;...

Most of the time of our lives is spent in the middle: the time between being born and dying; the time between planting and harvesting, when our crops are growing, and again between harvesting and planting once again, when the land lies fallow. Rambam’s Golden Mean may be found in the everyday struggle to keep ourselves whole and healthy and consistently moderated.

Perhaps Qohelet, in pointing to all of the seemingly oppositional times, is reminding us that the ONLY way we can handle all of the complex happenings that life throws at us is by hewing to the center, by keeping the extremes at bay, by seeking a middle path. 

And while we of course must wail in mourning at the appropriate time, we must always remember that we will someday dance again.

Reality surely falls in the middle, and that is where we need to be - to be centered, to be balanced, to be sensitive to all the possibilities of life.

***

Yizkor Coda

As we transition to the service of Hazkarat Neshamot, recalling the souls, I am going to share with you part of a brief story from Israel from last December. You may recall that there were three Israeli hostages held in Gaza who were tragically killed by IDF troops during an operation. One of the three was Yotam Haim, and his mother Iris wrote an account for the collection, One Day in October. Here is a brief piece from her essay:

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One day during the shiv’ah, a woman approached me and said, “Iris, I’m the wife of the commander of that battalion, and all his soldiers are completely devastated; none of them are functioning; they just want to die.” I said to her, “No, I have to speak to them right now!” She said to me, “But they’re in Gaza,” so I decided to record a voice message for them. I took the phone and sent them a message, spontaneously - I didn’t sit and plan it, or write it out, I just recorded whatever came out of my mouth, and this is what I said to them:

“Hi, this is Iris Haim, Yotam’s mother, and I wanted to tell you that we love you, we love you very much, and we’re not angry, and we’re not judging, and what you did - with all the pain and regret - was probably the right thing to do at that moment. I beg you not to think twice when you see a terrorist; you have to kill him and not be afraid that you’ll kill a hostage. And as soon as you can, please come here to us; we want to see you so much, to look you in the eye, and to give you a big hug.”

And the soldiers came; they came as soon as they got out of Gaza. They came, these sweet soldiers with bowed heads, and they sat here with us, and we hugged them, and we told them that we were not angry. We were not there, we do not know what happened there, and we had heard about all kinds of tricks and ploys that Hamas tried in Gaza - how they would pretend to be hostages and speak in Hebrew, then attack. We were not angry at them. We just hugged them, and we cried together, and we told them about our wonderful Yotam.

The circumstances of Yotam’s death were especially challenging, but his family was able, in their grief, to muster some compassion for the young men who made a horrible mistake.

Yotam was 28, and the rest of the essay speaks of who he was and the great joy he brought to his family and friends. 

No matter when those whom we love leave this world, and no matter how, we always must remember their lives as a gift to us, whether a few precious years or many, many decades. And living a centered life reminds us that we must cherish what we receive, the precious memories we have, even when we grieve.

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• Many people whom we thought were friends to the Jewish people have abandoned us

• Don’t take down your mezuzah; don’t be afraid to be loudly and proudly Jewish and Zionist 

• We must respond to the reality of evil by being present and living our values

• We cannot allow those who seek Israel’s destruction here in America to promote lies about her

• We must be unified in our support of Israel

• Anti-Zionist Jews have opted out of Jewish peoplehood

• We cannot let go of our hope for the future

• We must continue to pray for peace and the release of the hostages

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I am particularly proud that we have never for a moment here at Beth Shalom forgotten the hostages, or the brave soldiers who are still fighting against the proxies of Iran in the north and south of Israel, or the tens of thousands of displaced Israelis who cannot yet return to their homes in the north or south..

Why all the energy devoted to defending Israel and our connection to her? Why have I spent so many hours haranguing you all on things you should already know? Because the State of Israel, and the idea of Israel as the center of the Jewish world is under attack, militarily and ideologically. 

Our support of our relatives and friends in Israel must be guided by the sense of unity of the Jewish people. It is essential for us to remember that we, the Jews, are a people supported by the Talmudic notion of “Kol Yisrael arevim zeh bazeh.” Every Jewish person is responsible for one another. We are intertwined in a tightly-knit tapestry of individuals bound together by not only a common cultural, intellectual and religious heritage, but also a common destiny. And that destiny has for at least 2,000 years been tied to one tiny piece of land in the Middle East, the land from which we derive the name of our nation.

It is extraordinarily important to remember that, during our two millennia of homelessness following the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem - two millennia of wandering and persecution in Diaspora - we never gave up on that vision of return. And in the wake of the Holocaust, we achieved that dream. The Jews will never again have nowhere to go. But in order to maintain that haven, a tiny slice of land in a rough neighborhood, we will have to depend on our allies. 

Events of the past year have demonstrated over and over again that when the Jewish people are being attacked from all sides - that is, all sides of Israel and in the streets and cultural icons and college campuses of America - we must continue to stand with her and defend her.

Our theme for these High Holidays is Centering Judaism, and over Rosh Hashanah I spoke about putting joy at the center of Jewish life, and how the Conservative movement and Beth Shalom are at the center of the American Jewish landscape. This evening we are going to talk about the spiritual, cultural and physical center of the Jewish world, which is Israel - that is, the land, the idea, and the State and its people.

I’m going to share with you now the true story of an Israeli hero, and one which embodies essential values of the State of Israel. His name is Yousef Zeadna, and it was published in a collection of 40 stories of heroes called, יום אחד באוקטובר, One Day in October. It was just published in English.

[NOTE: I read the story of Yousef Zeadna in its entirety here. You should get a copy of the book and read it, but in brief, Mr. Zeadna is an Israeli Bedouin Muslim driver who saved 30 people at the Nova Festival on October 7. It is a harrowing and touching story which points not only to the admirable qualities of Mr. Zeadna, but also about his pride in being a citizen of the State of Israel.]

I have read and re-read Yousef’s story, and I cry every time. 

It sends the message of bravery, of course, and a commitment to save lives, and of course a dedication and love of the State of Israel and national pride from a place where many of us might not expect it.

But all the more so, it teaches a story about Israel which you are unlikely to hear in the news, or from the anti-Zionist quarters of this world, and that is the story of Israel as a unified, democratic nation that respects and takes care of all of its people, regardless of their religion.

And in considering Yousef, I am proud to say that the extended family of the Jewish people includes him and lots of others like him as well. He is a proud son of the State of Israel, and we should likewise be proud, and grateful, to have Yousef Zeadna along with us.

***

Why is Israel the center of the Jewish world?

We are going to consider Israel as the center of the Jewish world from three angles: spiritual, political, and cultural.

Spiritual

There is incontrovertible evidence that we came from that land, and the State of Israel’s founding document, Megillat haAtzma’ut, the Declaration of Independence, opens as follows:

ERETZ YISRAEL was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

For the last 2,000 years, we have prayed facing Jerusalem. We have invoked Israel and Zion in prayer and song and story. We pray every single day for gathering the Jews from all corners of the world, when we gather the four corners of our tallitot before reciting the Shema. Whenever we recite the Amidah, we remember that it is in place of the sacrifices which our ancestors offered in the Temple in Jerusalem. Whenever we pray for rain, as we do from Shemini Atzeret to Pesaḥ, and when we pray for dew, from Pesaḥ to Shemini Atzeret, we pray for those things not for here in Pittsburgh, but for Israel.

“Everywhere I go,” said Rabbi Naḥman of Bratzlav in the 18th century, “I go to Eretz Yisrael.”

Political

Following the Age of Enlightenment, which shaped the modern concept of nationhood, our political awakening as a people came in the late 19th century with the flowering of Zionism.

But we should not forget that there has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel, going all the way back to Roman times. There were Jews who visited and returned to the land in various waves throughout history. During the rabbinic period, from the second through fifth centuries, there was a healthy intellectual exchange between schools of thought in Jerusalem and Baghdad. Yehudah HaLevi, who wrote so powerfully of his yearning for Israel in Spain in the 12th century, eventually made the journey across the length of the Mediterranean around the year 1141, only to die soon after arrival. The kabbalists descended from Spanish exiles made a home in Tzefat in the sixteenth century under Ottoman rule. The false messiah Shabbetai Tzevi was promoted in the late 17th century by Jerusalem-born Nathan of Gaza, who, having been rejected by the rabbis of Jerusalem, moved to Gaza and declared it a holy city for Jews.

The modern Zionist movement, driven by the desire for self-determination in our historical homeland, is only the latest and largest wave of return. Theodor Herzl and his allies knew that there was only one possible home for the Jews, the indisputable center of the Jewish world. The Jewish State had to be established in Israel, the Jewish homeland. And it is ultimately due to the political efforts of those whom Herzl inspired that the State of Israel came into being in 1948.

Cultural

OK, so suppose for a moment I’m a contemporary Diaspora Jew. My sense of Jewish history is, well, less robust than it should be. Here I am, thousands of miles away, and sure, if I wanted to, I could get on an El Al flight tomorrow and sign up for Israeli citizenship and reap all the benefits of living in the center of the Jewish world. But I’m happy here! So why should I support a foreign country with a government I sometimes disagree with? Why should I support a war effort which after a year has failed to return the hostages and failed to destroy Hamas and resulted in tens of thousands of innocent people killed?

Why? Because, in addition to our ancient connection to the land, Israel is central to our Jewish identity today. Because the single largest Jewish population in the world is there. Because Israeli cultural and religious offerings now dominate the Jewish landscape: food and music and art and spiritual life, not to mention the great thinkers and inventors and companies. Because Israeli Jews are our cousins and aunts and uncles and siblings and friends and former camp counselors. Because Israel is a beacon of democracy and religious freedom in a decidedly non-democratic corner of the world. There is no democracy under Hamas. There is no religious freedom under Hizballah.

And an additional cultural reason that we need Israel to be there, and to be strong, is that the last year has reinforced for us like no other in recent history that the Jews need a haven. Antisemitism is not going away; it is clearly back in fashion. I’ll only cite for you the most recent thing that happened in Pittsburgh: two banners hung from bridges with Nazi symbols and antisemitic slogans. In case you missed it, this happened just two weeks ago. Here.

The most disturbing personal moment I had in the past year occurred at a meeting held at the JCC between a few rabbis and a few local Christian ministers who are known for their anti-Israel positions. Some of you have heard me tell this story already, but it bears repeating. This discussion was generally cool-headed, even if our opinions on Israel might have placed us on different planets. At one point, one of the ministers said, “You know, you Jews use that antisemitism defense a little too much.” This is a pastor who is well-known and visible in Pittsburgh, and who also in a recent public appearance alongside a visiting rabidly antisemitic Palestinian Lutheran minister, made a public statement of Christian supersessionism, in which he said, to great applause, that God has taken Israel away from the Jews and given it to Jesus.

He was also standing with me and a whole bunch of interfaith leaders on the stage at the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial on October 28th, 2018, lamenting the antisemitic attack in our neighborhood. I am not sure he really understands how antisemitism works.

It’s not as though the early Zionist thinkers woke up one day in the 1890s and thought, it’s time to move back to Israel solely out of a love for Jewish peoplehood. On the contrary: what inspired Theodor Herzl to convene the First Zionist Congress in 1897? It was the trial of Alfred Dreyfus, a French army captain wrongly convicted of spying, which played heavily on native French antisemitism: the ideas that Jews were liars, that they were disloyal, untrustworthy, always seeking to undermine the non-Jews. Herzl, like many others, realized that the only way for the Jews to truly be free and safe would be to have our own country, and the place for that would have to be Israel.

And once that idea caught on in the Jewish world, Zionism became central to the contemporary Jewish identity. Yes, there have always been notable Jewish detractors, some of whom, like certain Haredi groups, actually live there and reap the benefits of the realization of Herzl’s vision. But the vast majority of us still support the Zionist project, because we know.

• We know that no matter how much the anti-Zionist group Jewish Voice for Peace might claim that they are speaking for the Jews, we know that they do not. 

• We know that no matter how many younger American Jews might be deceived by TikTok, that no matter how many times anti-Israel activists baselessly cry “Genocide!” and “Apartheid!”, the reality is that Israel must be permitted to defend her people, like any sovereign state.

• And we also know, as the story of Yousef Zeadna demonstrates, that Zionism is a big tent, and Israel is multi-cultural, multi-racial, and multi-religious. And furthermore, Israel is a thriving liberal democracy, committed to the rule of law, and although she is not perfect, Israel certainly respects its minority populations more so than any of her neighbors. 

Israel is a small country. And the total Jewish population in the world is about 17 million, out of 8 billion people. That’s less than one-quarter of 1%. The words of the 1st-century sage Hillel come back to me: Im ein ani li, mi li? If I am not for myself, who will be for me? History has not been kind to the Jews. Especially in this time of creeping autocracy and illiberal movements around the world, it is up to us to rally around Israel as the center of the Jewish world, the place that will help maintain us and our identity, and guarantee that there will always be a haven from antisemitism.

Allow me to quote Rabbi Elliott Cosgrove of Park Avenue Synagogue, from his new book, For Such a Time as This (pp.181-2):

Supporting Israel is… fundamental to what it means to be a Jew today. It is why we have the flag on my bimah,... it is why we recite the prayer for Israel, it is why I am a proud Zionist, it is why I am politically engaged on behalf of Israel, and why I ask that my congregants be as well, particularly now in our post-October 7th world.

(I will be interviewing Rabbi Cosgrove, who has a Beth Shalom family connection, during the Pittsburgh Jewish Book Festival here in November.)

Here are some things we must remember moving forward:

• Israel is at war with real enemies who are still planning and still have the capability to kill Israelis and Jews. The safety of the Israeli public, and world Jewry, is paramount. And, along with the United States and all lovers of freedom and democracy, Israel is on the front lines of defending against the anti-Western, anti-democratic, terrorist-supporting Iran, whose marauding mullahs are not friends to Israel or the Jews, or to any freedom-loving people.

• Israel’s quest to defend herself against Hamas and Hizballah is not “aggression;” they are not attacking Gaza or Lebanon, and any media outlet or public voice which declares it to be so is mischaracterizing this war to denigrate Israel.

• Be proud. Yes, Israel makes mistakes. Yes, some Israeli politicians are odious. Yes, war is hell, and far too many people have become casualties of war. No, we are not all going to agree on the path forward. But we should all support Israel understanding that the challenges facing the Israeli government are great, and the stakes are high. Be proud of what Israel and the Jewish people have accomplished, even despite the ongoing challenges.  

• It is up to us to defend Israel against the “From the river to the sea” protesters. You should make sure you know which river and which sea, because the possibility is that they do not. And anybody who tears down hostage posters, or gives glory to the martyrs of Hamas, or calls for “global Intifada” is effectively calling for the death of Jews. We need to be vigilant about those people, their motives, their funding, and the potential damage they can do. And we must continue to challenge their attempts to turn America against her most important ally.

We must stand with the people of Israel, because they are us. Because it is the center of the Jewish world.

And, because Israel fills me with hope. Even with all we have faced in the past year, even with all the challenges we have faced as a people throughout our history, even with all the ways in which the Zionist imperative to self-determination in our historical homeland has been besmirched by antisemitic activists, the existence of the State of Israel is a modern miracle built by pioneers who could no longer afford to wait for the coming of mashiaḥ, and it inspires me with Jewish pride. 

In an interview broadcast this week on PBS with Sapir Cohen, a young woman who was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Oz and then released in November, she stated that she defied the psychological torment of her captors, who were telling her that she was living on stolen land and that nobody wants the Jews. And she said, “But when they saw that we are a very strong group, and they came [again] to say the same things, [they realized that] it doesn’t work anymore… And then I realized what it means to be united, how much you can be strong when you are united.”

Israel stands as a beacon to what is so valuable and essential about democratic nations: the willingness to stand up for what is right, for minority rights, for freedom of religion, for equal opportunities for all citizens, for the rule of law. Is Israel perfect? No. Is she engaged in a war for her survival? Absolutely yes. And we should stand proudly as a united Jewish people, proudly with Israel.

Gemar hatimah tovah! May you be sealed for a 5785 that is full of meaning, wholeness, and peace.

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Way back in the ‘90s, before I was a rabbi, and still working for a huge engineering/construction firm in Houston, I met an Israeli senior colleague, a fellow chemical engineer who had spent many years building and managing the oil refinery in Ashdod. He belonged to one of the Modern Orthodox synagogues in Houston, and when I identified myself to him as Jewish, he asked me where I davened. I told him that I belonged to a Conservative synagogue. He responded with a smile, saying, “Ah, yes! The intellectuals.”

I had no idea at the time what he meant. I also had no idea that in a few years I would myself be heavily invested in learning the foundational texts and ideas of the Conservative movement. But I did know that as a lifelong Conservative Jew, I was proud of the tradition in which I had grown up, and, intellectual or not, my Conservative congregation was my community.

Occasionally, I hear some wise guy make a sideways remark about Conservative Jews or Reform Jews which goes something like this: “There are no 3rd generation Conservative Jews.” And I am happy to say that this gives me the opportunity to state proudly and for the record that I myself am a third-generation Conservative Jew, and my children are 4th-generation Conservative Jews. Some of you may know that we have members of this congregation who are 5th-generation members of Beth Shalom, so that makes them 5th-generation Conservative Jews.

But of course, let’s face it: we, meaning the Conservative movement, are new to the party. Judaism, the way that we understand it today, is a tradition of rituals and texts going back at least 2,000 years, and the Israelite religion from which it emerged is at least another thousand years older. 

The contemporary movements, including Orthodoxy, Hasidism, Reform, Reconstructionism, and us, are rooted for the most part in the 19th century, when Jews were first allowed into universities in Europe. In Jewish terms, that is pretty new. There are of course contemporary critics who say that these movements are on their way out. 

But an idea that will never go away, thanks to the Enlightenment, is that there is an ideological center to the Jewish world. And right now, I am confident as a lifelong Conservative Jew that we occupy that space.

Growing up in mostly-rural Western Massachusetts in the ‘70s and ‘80s, there were two things about our Conservative synagogue that my family could identify that made us different from Orthodoxy. The first was that my mother could lead services and serve as a regular gabba’it, the person who calls people to the Torah. We were egalitarian - that is, we treated men and women equally with respect to halakhah, Jewish law. 

The other thing of which I was aware is that the Conservative movement officially permitted driving to synagogue on Shabbat if you did not live within walking distance, even though driving a car clearly violates the principles of Shabbat. Now, given that we lived about 20 miles away from our Conservative synagogue, it was a good thing that we felt we could drive without being judged by our rabbi and congregation as being somehow in violation.

But of course there was much more of which we were unaware. SO much more. Conservative Judaism, including our approach to ritual, prayer, halakhah/Jewish law, customs, lifecycle events, holidays, and even Jewish learning, is shaped by Jewish history, Jewish philosophy, contemporary and innovative interpretation of Jewish text, and of course by external sources - Western literature and culture. Yes, the depth and richness of how we came into being cannot be captured in a single volume of history, let alone a sermon. But I am going to take a few moments to remind us of some of the key reasons that we are located here at the center of Judaism, and why Jewish life needs the Conservative movement at its center. 

***

There is a moment in the book of Bemidbar/Numbers, Parashat Beha’alotekha, when - no big surprise here - the Israelites are complaining about being out in the desert, with no good food like they had back when they were slaves in Egypt: the meat, the cucumbers and melons and onions and all manner of tasty, filling things. Moshe is agonizing over what to do, and you can almost hear him holding his head in his hands in frustration as he says the following (Bemidbar 11:13):

מֵאַ֤יִן לִי֙ בָּשָׂ֔ר לָתֵ֖ת לְכׇל־הָעָ֣ם הַזֶּ֑ה כִּֽי־יִבְכּ֤וּ עָלַי֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר תְּנָה־לָּ֥נוּ בָשָׂ֖ר וְנֹאכֵֽלָה׃

“Where am I to get meat to give to all these people, when they whine before me and say, ‘Give us meat to eat!’”

The 16th-century Italian commentator, Rabbi Ovadiah Seforno, describes Moshe’s subtext as follows: “They are accusing me not about the meat, but about failing to fulfill their desires.” That is, they are not really talking about the food. Seforno is actually psychoanalyzing the Israelites here. They are unsatisfied with what they have, and the lack of meat and potatoes is merely a convenient target for a much larger problem.

I stumbled upon this gem from Seforno this past summer, and for reasons unknown an advertising slogan from a fast-food chain popped into my head. Now, I do not eat fast food, and I have never eaten in this place in my life, and, as you all know, I’m a vegetarian, but the slogan is, “We have the meats.”

And, OK, so it’s not kosher. But it’s the truth! We, the Conservative movement, we have the meats! We have what you desire: a thoughtful, contemporary approach to Judaism which reflects who we are today and what we face when we leave the synagogue. Ours is not a lightweight tradition - it is occasionally tough and requires some figurative chewing. But it is savory, complex, and heavily textured. We wrestle with tradition and text in a way that is meaningful and satisfying.

Being Jewish today is very different from how it was in medieval times, and even for our great-grandparents. While for much of our history, most Jewish people would have more familiarity with Jewish text than with secular subjects, today the opposite is true. Most of the adults in the room have studied at university, and many of us have letters attached to the names on our resumes like MD, JD, PhD, etc. We know a lot about a lot of things, not just the material that we have received from our tradition. And so we filter our Jewish experience and understanding through Western philosophy and American history and culture. 

Given that, I believe that there are three essential principles which guide us here in the center of Judaism:

Tradition

First, we are committed to tradition. What we have received from our ancestors guides us: the words of liturgy/prayer that they crafted, the holy collections of wisdom which they handed down to us, the customs and rituals and holiday foods and sometimes curious activities which they valued. We are “conservative” because we conserve these things; we do not easily let go of our tradition. And we practice these rituals and customs; they are not simply gathering dust in a museum.

History

Second, we have a historical view that enables us to see how our traditions have developed. That was one of the features of the 19th-century Enlightenment: Jews began to learn about our tradition using the external tools of modern scholarship. So we began to understand that the Mishnah uses Greek words because its authors spoke Greek and lived in a Hellenistic context. And we learned that the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible, can be analyzed as a human work which displays literary seams and linguistic hints at schools of authorship. And we learned that contemporary philosophy can help us in understanding ourselves and our relationship with God.

Change

Third, we are zealously committed to keeping Judaism in line with who we are and how we live today. Judaism has never existed in a vacuum. We acknowledge that Jewish practice has always changed throughout our history and must continue to do so. So, while women were not thought of as equal to men during the rabbinic period, today they certainly are, and in the Conservative movement we have worked within the traditional halakhic system to enable full egalitarian participation in Jewish life. The slogan coined by Rabbi Mordecai Waxman in the 1960s (actually, I’m told that it’s his wife Ruth who came up with the term) is “Tradition and Change.” It’s still a good slogan. 

We consider our Judaism carefully and thoughtfully, and we are firmly based in our historical tradition. We have the meats!

So just to give a few examples of how these principles - tradition, history and change - play out in what we do here at Beth Shalom, consider the following:

Prayer / tefillah:

I already mentioned being egalitarian - counting women and men as equals. But here is something you may not be aware of. Check out p. 37 for a moment, and look at the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th berakhot on the page:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-להֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם שֶׁעָשנִי בְּצָלמוֹ.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-להֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעולָם שֶׁעָשנִי יִשרָאֵל.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה' אֱ-לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם שֶׁעָשַׂנִי בּן-(בַּת-) חוֹרין.

Praised are You, God, who has made me in His image.

…, who has made me an Israelite.

…, who has made me a free person.

These are among the list of berakhot, the morning statements of gratitude which we recite every morning; we said them first thing at 9 AM today here (in case you missed it!). 

In an Orthodox siddur, they are phrased in the negative, based on language found in the Talmud (Menaḥot 43b):

… who has not made me a gentile.

… who has not made me a slave.

… who has not made me a woman.

These berakhot were crafted to acknowledge in ascending order the different levels of commandedness in the ancient world: non-Jews are obligated to very few mitzvot; Jewish slaves somewhat more, free Jewish women a few more, and free Jewish men all 613.

And it is easy to see that in a current context, the wording of these traditional berakhot is insulting. 

So in 1946, the language of those berakhot was changed to reflect who we are, rather than who we are not. Rabbi Morris Silverman “positivized” all three, based on a traditional formulation found elsewhere in the Talmud.

And so, in a bold statement of positivity, we in the center of Judaism begin each day by saying I am proud to be a free Jewish person, made in the image of God. 

And when I recite these words in prayer every morning, I am also grateful that we uphold tradition and also account for where and who we are today, that my movement made this subtle, yet impactful change. Words of prayer count, and what we say matters.

Complexity

I’ll never forget a very special moment I had as both a parent and a rabbi. It was when my daughter was in 1st grade, and we were walking home from school together. When I picked her up, she clearly had something on her mind. 

“Abba,” she said, “I don’t think I can be Jewish when I grow up.” 

This was a puzzling statement, particularly for a 6-year-old, but I figured I would go with it non-judgmentally. “Why not?” I said.

“Because we learned in school today about the Big Bang. And since that means that God did not create the world, then I can’t believe in the Torah. And so I can’t be Jewish.”

OK, Abba, I thought to myself. You can handle this. She’s only 6, and you have several advanced degrees. But of course I could not launch into a full lecture about Biblical criticism and the fact that the universe being 14 billion years old does not necessarily impact Jewish practice and theology, or that there are shiv’im panim latorah, 70 faces to the Torah. So I managed to eke out something like this:

“The Torah tells us the Jewish story, and your science teacher tells you the science story. Do you think you can live with two different stories, even if they do not agree with each other?”

“I think so,” she said, tentatively.

I recognized for the first time the sense of doubt in her eyes. We went on to talk about other things, and the issue never came up again. But of course she’s still Jewish, and, like the rest of us, she has learned to accept that sometimes we can keep potentially-conflicting ideas in our heads without needing to resolve them.  

The tension that we may feel between Jewish observance and text and modernity is completely normal and expected, and we can live in this tension. I would actually go a bit further to say that the tension is a good thing - it keeps us on top of our game. Complexity is healthy. 

That is what makes us Conservative Jews. Bring on the meats!

Zionism

There are plenty of other examples which I could give you, but the one other I want to address today is the State of Israel. The Conservative movement is the only movement that was proudly Zionist from its inception, and Beth Shalom has been a Zionist congregation from as far back as 1921. And, given what I have already told you, this also means that we continue to wrestle with what it means to be Zionist.

Being a Zionist does not mean that one must be universally, uncritically supportive of every decision of the Israeli government. It does not mean that one must pick up and move to Israel to be spiritually fulfilled as Jews. 

All it means is that we believe zealously in the right of the Jews to self-determination in our historical homeland. And we in the Conservative movement acknowledge that being a Zionist has a range of possibilities, but they do depend on acknowledging that the Jews have a right to live in the State of Israel, and that we are not “colonizers.” We are a people who were exiled from our land by the Romans two millennia ago, and the miraculous return to the land and the establishment of a modern State is something we must continue to support and to struggle with.

The language used by the Conservative movement to refer to the State of Israel in our siddurim is “reishit tzemiḥat ge-ulateinu,” the dawn of the flowering of our redemption. We acknowledge that the human role in fulfilling our ancient Jewish yearning for return to our land is just a foreshadowing of the ultimate Divine redemption, the future time of peace for which we pray at every opportunity.

Lihyot am ḥofshi be-artzeinu, to be a free people in our land, is just a hint of that ultimate peaceful redemption. We will continue to seek peace in that land, and ultimately for the whole world.

***

Ḥevreh, I am proud to be committed to the principles of Conservative Judaism, and even more so to be your rabbi here at Beth Shalom, the center of Conservative Judaism here in Pittsburgh. (You should all kvell for a moment about the community you all have built here.)

But we also have to acknowledge that there is a practical matter that we must deal with if we are to continue to be that flourishing center of Conservative Judaism. We cannot run on momentum; we cannot run on fumes. Rather, we must continue to grill, broil, sous-vide, whatever, to create a banquet offering the meats.

We have to concede that, as successful as our congregation is, the subset of Jewish people who want all the things we offer is continuing to erode, and the landscape has changed. Jews have more options today, including of course the option to opt out entirely from Jewish life. Our congregational umbrella, the United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, is contracting; many congregations are not growing; the incoming class of first-year rabbinical students at the Jewish Theological Seminary (my rabbinic alma mater) is 10 people (one of whom is our own Maddie Herrup!) but it should be more like 30. 

Nonetheless, there will always be a need for congregations like ours, which feature serious engagement with halakhah and Jewish text alongside a contemporary, egalitarian practice, sensitive and responsive to modernity.

So our task will be, regardless of what is happening elsewhere, to continue to do what we do, to provide the intellectually and ritually rigorous-yet-modern commitment to Jewish life, but to do it better, and smarter, and in a way that is sustainable for generations to come. We cannot allow our Jewish standards, including by the way our commitment to Israel, to dissipate, but we will have to be creative about administration - our building, our potential to share programming and expenses with other local Jewish organizations, and so forth. 

What makes this synagogue different from all other synagogues is still our greatest stock in trade, and we must continue to rally around the center of Judaism. And we must also look to the future with a thoughtful approach as to how we do so. We’re still here, and we have the meats.

On the eve of Yom Kippur, Kol Nidrei, we will discuss the role of Israel as the center of the Jewish world. And on Yom Kippur day, “Stuck in the Middle with You: Living a Centered Life.”

Shanah tovah!

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Shanah tovah! Welcome to 5785! 

I think that, no matter how you slice it, 5784 was a pretty awful year for the Jews. So I would like everybody to take a big, deep breath in, hold it for a second, and let it go. 

Now, once again.

Take a moment to reflect back. Think about what has transpired in Israel over the past year. Think about what has taken place in this country, on college campuses, in public protests which often included anti-Jewish speech. Think about the graffiti, the intimidation, the horrible, painful language coming from Israel’s critics. Think about the hostages, most of whom were Jews held captive only because they were Jews, and some of whom were murdered for being Jewish.

And ask yourself a question: what can you do to make this next year, 5785, be a better year for the Jews, if not for the world?

Allow me to suggest a tool which is right under your nose: Judaism. Our is an ancient framework, which is your birthright, and will make you a better person and improve our world. Our tradition brings real value to our lives: in times of happiness, in times of grief, through the quiet moments and the noisy ones, through the dull and exciting parts of our days. 

And yes, you have heard me say this before. But that’s my job!

In this most tumultuous time, when so many of our assumptions about living here in America have been upended, now is the time to make Judaism – Jewish practice, Jewish life, Jewish text, Jewish peoplehood – a focal point; that is, to “center” Judaism. We have so many pursuits that it is often easy to forget the one at our fingertips which brings us the full palette of benefits which Judaism offers. Given all that we have faced in the past year, now is the time to recommit, to up your game.

Over these holidays, I will explore the theme of “Centering Judaism.” 

Today (the first day of Rosh HaShanah) we will focus on the joy found at the center of Jewish life. 

Tomorrow, the value of Conservative Judaism as the ideological center of American Judaism.

At Kol Nidrei, we will explore the significance of Israel as the center of the Jewish world.

And on Yom Kippur day, the supreme importance of being in the center, of moderation in all things.

***

Over the course of the last year, I received what I consider to be the best compliment I have ever received in my rabbinic career. It came, strangely enough, in the context of shiv’ah, from a member of this congregation, who was among the bereaved. He told me that he really appreciated that, in doing my work as your rabbi, I display the joy in Jewish life. 

I slept well that night.

Radiating joy is a central plank of my mission as your humble spiritual leader. The world, after all, is full of plenty of awful stuff, and I want your Jewish experience to be uplifting. In fact, it is almost mandatory to find joy, even when that is difficult, and to do so in the grounded, meaning-filled context of our ancient rituals and wisdom. 

And let’s face it: we are suffering from an overload of pain and misery and awfulness. Nearly every organization that has an objective - political, fundraising, even commercial - likes to hit the “Fear” button. Think of the messages with which we are continually bombarded: “Illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs!” “Evil men are controlling women’s bodies!” “Unemployment is at record levels!” “Obesity is at record levels!” “Global warming is threatening humanity!” “Antisemitism is at record levels!” I am of course guilty of leaning into that last one. (Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get us!)

One way that we have historically responded to all the misery of Jewish life is through humor. 

There is a classic rabbinic story of a certain Mr. Goldberg, who brings his dog Rokhl to synagogue. Rokhl wears a kippah and a tallit and holds a siddur open as she sings joyously along with the congregation. At kiddush, the rabbi comes over to Mr. Goldberg, who is sitting with the dog Rokhl, while the two of them are quietly enjoying some gefilte fish and khreyn. The rabbi says, “I’m absolutely amazed by your dog! She knows how to read Hebrew and daven! She should be on television!” 

“You tell her,” said Mr. Goldberg. “She wants to be a doctor.”

Let’s face it: most of us do not look to the synagogue to find moments of joy. Some of that has to do with the fact that the most well-attended synagogue services of the Jewish year are on these High Holidays, when we are not emphasizing joy so much as sin and punishment and confession and of course fasting and afflicting our souls and introspection. And sure, those things are important. I would not want to be a part of a religious tradition that only embraces the joyful, because where is the depth in that?

An outside observer who only shows up for these days might be misled to believe that we emphasize the self-denial and soul-affliction far too much, at the expense of the joy. On the contrary: we cannot sacrifice the joy in Jewish life on the altar of atonement and contrition. 

Something that the pious dog Rokhl knows that some of us often miss is that yes, while the synagogue is a place in which we pray for our souls on these holy days, it is also the center of Jewish joy. Here we not only celebrate lifecycle events, holy, happy moments like benei mitzvah and baby-namings and aufrufs, but we also mark the most jubilant days of the year, Simḥat Torah and Purim and Sukkot and Ḥanukkah. And we do it all in the context of community, of bringing people together for a holy purpose.

And then there’s the joy of engaging in the intellectual give-and-take of Judaism. While one negative stereotype that many people have about religion is that it encourages “blind faith” or requires you to check your reason at the door, the exact opposite is true of Judaism. Our tradition trains us to think, investigate, and challenge, and as I am sure you know, there is a certain delight that Jews take in arguing. Ours is the tradition of “maḥloqet leshem shamayim,” disagreement for the sake of Heaven (see Pirqei Avot 5:17).  

And for those who commit to it on a regular basis, what initially seems like a jumble of curious ancient stories and inscrutable Aramaic phrases ultimately becomes a great source of pride and joy.  

Perhaps you have had this exact experience: Somebody hands you a study sheet featuring a piece of Jewish text. At first read it sounds weird, ridiculous, or even like total gibberish. Then as you parse, debate, discuss and read commentary, there’s the “Eureka!” moment, when you  realize the true depth and meaning, the brilliance and relevance to your life. Contrary to your initial reaction, you suddenly understand what all the hubbub’s about and what you’ve been missing. If you have never experienced this sort of joy, I hope that you do some day soon.

A totally different kind of joy is that which I experience every Friday morning at 10:30 AM, when I sing Shabbat songs with the children in our Early Learning Center. We welcome Shabbat with excitement and song and dance. There is nothing quite like the unadulterated joy of 4-year-olds bopping up and down to Yismeḥu HaShamayim - may the Heavens rejoice! They of course do not understand that those words are used as we welcome the Shabbat Queen every Friday evening for Qabbalat Shabbat, but I sincerely hope that the joyful experience will stick with them as they learn and grow. 

In short, Jewish living helps us navigate the fear and misery and pain in this world by offsetting it with so many touchpoints of joy.

(And, in case you did not know, the Talmud describes Yom Kippur as one of the happiest days of the Jewish year, because it was one of two days in the ancient world when women would go out into the vineyards in search of husbands!)

So here is a suggestion as to how to thwart the angst of the moment: find the joy, and place it at the center not only of your Jewish observance, but also at the center of your life. And you should do this in proud spite of every miserable thing that is happening in this world.

And here are some ways in which you might do this:

First and foremost, and if you have been listening to me at all over these last nine years, you know this: You need more Shabbat in your life. 

You need a break from all the chaos of your week, and Shabbat is the biggest source of joy for me, despite the fact that I “work” every Shabbat! It is a time that is set aside for family and community, for disconnecting from the awfulness of your screens and reconnecting to the people in front of you, whose importance is far greater than anything going on in Washington, or at Costco, or on Instagram.

Shabbat is 25 complete hours, from chanting the joyous psalms of Qabbalat Shabbat on Friday evening as the sun sets, until dark on Saturday night when we mark the return to the week with fragrant spices, a bold, multi-wicked candle, and a luxurious cup of wine. 

You might think that setting aside all this time from the cut-and-thrust of the week will make you lose out; that you otherwise need to do chores, to shop for widgets, and so forth. But let me assure you: subtracting that day from the other six does not reduce time; rather, it serves as a multiplier! If you separate yourself from work and commerce for a day, you will actually make the rest of the week more productive. 

We endeavor to make our Shabbat services enjoyable, with a healthy dose of singing. Not only on the fourth Friday night of the month, on which we usually feature our Hod veHadar instrumental service, but every Shabbat morning we enjoy singing together as a community. And I’ll tell you this: it does not matter if you know Hebrew or not, it does not matter if you can carry a tune or not. We all could use a little bit more music, a little bit more singing, and, of course, your voice. You can even just hum along if that’s all you can muster. Trust me: it will bring you joy and set your heart at ease.

Here is another easy way to add some joy to your life: creating a sense of gratitude for all the beauty around us. Many of us know that there are berakhot / blessings that we say before and after eating, and yes, these are important for acknowledging the essential gratitude we all should have for being able to eat and be satisfied.

But did you know that there is a blessing for when you see a rainbow? 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, זוֹכֵר הַבְּרִית נֶאֱמָן בִּבְרִיתוֹ וְקַיָּם בְּמַאֲמָרוֹ

Barukh Attah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, zokher haberit, ne’eman bivrito, veqayam bema-amaro.

Praised are You, God, who remembers the covenant and is faithful to it, and who keeps Your word.

Or for seeing beautiful natural sights: lofty mountains, sprawling valleys, gorgeous rivers and oceans and deserts: 

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, עוֹשֹה מַעֲשֹה בְּרֵאשִׁית

Barukh Attah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, oseh ma’aseh bereshit.

Praised are You, God, who continually does the work of Creation.

Or for happy moments:

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’ אֱ‑לֹהֵינוּ מֶלֶךְ הָעוֹלָם, הַטּוֹב וְהַמֵּטִיב

Barukh Attah Adonai, Eloheinu Melekh ha’olam, hatov vehametiv.

Praised are You, God, who is good and creates good.

There is even a berakhah - and I am not making this up - for after using the bathroom! It’s gratitude that all your organs and bodily holes still work! OK, so I’m just checking to see if you are still paying attention, but truth be told, I’m grateful for this every day!

And there are plenty more. You can find them in any weekday siddur, and if you want help finding them on a mobile phone app, call me. But the larger point is that there are moments and occurrences throughout your day that take you back to joy, back to gratitude, and back to God. And you should take advantage of them.

And finally, I urge you to learn more, to expand your palette of Jewish knowledge. Start small: you don’t have to jump straight into Talmud or reading Rashi in the original. Read a book on a Jewish subject. Find a weekly devar Torah that you can read with your family at Shabbat dinner. I’m happy to point you to some resources - we are fortunate to be living in a time when there are many which are easily accessible - please call me at the office or shoot me an email. 

To study ancient texts is to analyze and dig deep into the most important questions of our lives: business ethics, the holiness embedded in sexuality, our obligations to our family members and neighbors, and so forth. Digging into the Jewish bookshelf is the most important mitzvah, the most essential opportunity for holiness in Jewish life. And it comes with a certain amount of delight. When we do so, we find ourselves, we understand our relationships and how we fit into the world. There is just so much there that is of ongoing usefulness on the Jewish bookshelf, material you can use every single day as you go about your life.

Even just a few minutes a week can help bring you back to the value of Jewish text, and the wisdom found therein which can help make our lives more meaningful, and indeed more joyful.

In short, what I am suggesting is to break out of your regular routine to find some joy in Jewish life. One reason we, the Jews, are still here, after centuries of dispersion and oppression and all manners of grief, is that we are able to balance our lives out with the joy which our framework provides. It would give me great personal satisfaction to help you do so as well.

As a footnote, I would like to make note of one way in which centering Jewish joy will play out in the coming weeks. I hope you are aware that there is a community memorial for that black day of October 7th, 2023 this Monday - please know that you have to register for this on the Federation’s website. As is our custom in the Jewish world, we generally mark yahrzeits according to the Jewish calendar, and as you may recall, the Hamas attack one year ago fell on Shemini Atzeret, the festival day at the end of Sukkot. And we will do so during the Yizkor service on that day.

But Shemini Atzeret is always followed by Simḥat Torah, with jubilant dancing and singing with abandon. And this year will be no exception. So it is unfortunate that Shemini Atzeret, a festive day, will henceforward be saddled with the deep, deep grief associated with the contemporary pogrom of one year ago. But then we will pick ourselves up from our grief, and we will sing, and dance, and be merry as we celebrate the Torah, the wellspring of our joy. 

And in doing so, we will acknowledge that, as painful as life is, as miserable as current events are, we are always compelled to center joy.

Shanah tovah! 

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It is our annual opportunity to search deeply within our souls to find the festering residue of transgressions of the past year, and to request forgiveness personally from those whom we have wronged, and from God.

One of the more charming rituals of this period, often performed on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, is referred to as Tashlikh, the casting away of sins. We throw bread or pebbles, representing our accumulated misdeeds of the past year, in a symbolic action meant to help us achieve atonement.

I suspect that, as some of us performed this ritual on Thursday, we were thinking as much of casting away the pain and grief and disillusionment which many Jews have felt over the past year. 5784 was a rough year for the Jews, and we are hoping that the new year of 5785 will be a better one.

“Teshuvah,” which I translated above as “repentance,” literally means “return.” It reflects our desire in this season to return to a place of wholeness and comfort, although over the past year most of us have felt violated like never before, and true return seems very far from our current reality.

On October 7th, 2023, thousands of terrorists entered Israel and murdered, tortured, and raped Israeli citizens, Americans, British, French, Canadians, Thai, Filipinos, and others. 1200 people, mostly Jews, but also Muslims, Christians and Buddhists were murdered that day, including hundreds of young people at a music festival.

The terrorists entered homes and bomb shelters, shooting at point-blank range, gleefully tossing grenades and setting fires. They took 251 hostages back with them to Gaza, including in some cases the bodies of victims who had already been murdered.

The operation was a stunning failure of the State of Israel to protect the people within its borders, and would also prove to be a devastating blow to the people of Gaza, who have been exploited by the terrorists as human shields.

And then, something very strange happened: after Israel was attacked by Hamas, and even before the Israel Defense Forces entered Gaza to pursue the terrorists, Jews were attacked all over the world. A coalition of Harvard student groups blamed Israel for the terrorist operation. Antisemitic incidents on college campuses and in the streets of America skyrocketed.

Here in Pittsburgh, anti-Jewish graffiti appeared on Jewish buildings, and anti-Zionist groups called for an immediate ceasefire, which many supporters of Israel read as offering a green light to Hamas to re-arm and attack again.

Calls were heard for “global intifada,” referencing the homicidal attacks on Jewish Israelis by suicide bombers and the like in past decades. In a shocking affront to decency, posters on Murray Avenue displaying Israeli hostages held by Hamas were repeatedly torn down by activists.

Many Jewish Americans, who had been allied with an array of groups supporting social justice in this country, suddenly found themselves alienated by their friends, who were denouncing Israel as the aggressor, using inflammatory and unjust terms such as “genocide” and “ethnic cleansing” to describe a just war for survival. The Jews, a majority of whom love and support the State of Israel, and have Israeli relatives and friends and former camp counselors, felt suddenly betrayed, and alone.

Tomorrow, on the first anniversary of the attack on Israel, and over the entirety of this holiday season, we will surely seek not only being cleansed of sin, but also healing from the onerous feelings of sorrow and abandonment of the past year.

And we are thinking at this moment of the 101 hostages who remain captive, perhaps two-thirds of whom are still alive. We are thinking of the tens of thousands of Israelis who have been displaced by the war, both in the north and the south. We are thinking of the brave soldiers on Israel’s front lines, defending Israelis and the free world from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran.

And we are thinking of our own situation right now on the ground in Pittsburgh and all over this country, wondering if the historically welcoming arms of America have begun to turn a cold shoulder.

Another beloved ritual of Rosh Hashanah is the sounding of the shofar, an instrument made from a ram’s horn. The 12th-century sage Maimonides teaches us that the triumphant blast of the shofar calls us to “wake up!” And when we hear it, we seek return in this season, and pray and ask for forgiveness. But we will surely find it challenging to forget the pain of the past year, and to return to a better, less anxious time.

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(A version of this piece appeared in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 10/6/2024.)

I was procrastinating a few nights ago, as rabbis occasionally do in the month of Elul, and for some reason I was struck with the notion of checking out on Google Maps the house where I lived when I was in elementary school. And then I kind of “wandered” through North Adams, Massachusetts, which is the smallest city in the state, following the path which I used to take when walking to school every morning. The streets looked much smaller and the houses more modest than they seemed when I was in first grade.

Not only did we live close enough for me to walk to school, but we also lived within walking distance of our Conservative synagogue. When we moved to Williamstown after a few years, we had to drive on Shabbat, because the synagogue was now 20 miles away. We were regular Shabbat-morning attendees; we went to shul because that is what Jews do.

 “Because that is what Jews do,” is a curious justification, and I have heard many members of our people use this explanation for why we continue to cling to arcane, sometimes counter-cultural modes of behavior. The noted sociologist Marshall Sklare, in his landmark study of American Jews in the late 1950s (The Jews: Social Patterns of an American Group), determined that Jews were most likely to maintain traditional religious activities when they did not conflict with American culture - that is, they would practice Judaism if it did not seriously impinge on their relationships with non-Jewish friends, neighbors, and co-workers.

Regardless of what we practice or why, there is certainly a set of expectations that our tradition puts upon us, the 613 mitzvot of Jewish life. That is in fact what we are celebrating today as we welcomed a bat mitzvah, an inheritor of those expectations, into our covenant.

One way of reading, “Because that’s what Jews do,” is actually, “Because that’s what God expects of us.” Now, of course, that definition does not work for everybody, especially because we have such a diverse palette of understandings of how God works.

But there is a tension in Jewish life (I know, hard to believe, right?) regarding how we approach mitzvot, and they can be summarized more or less with the following dichotomy:

1. We perform mitzvot because we are called to do so by God.

2. We perform mitzvot because they reflect our values.

One might say that all of contemporary Judaism - different movements, different synagogues, different approaches to Jewish life, flow from our adherence to one or the other, or perhaps both of these statements. In the first case, the motivation is completely external, and in the second, it is internal. And we, the Jews, fall out in different places on this continuum.

There is no passage in the Torah that exhibits the challenges posed to modern Jews more than a couple of verses in Parashat Ki Tetze, from which we read today. The verses in question are as follows (Devarim/Deuteronomy 22:6-11, p. 1116), including the following mitzvot:

• Shilluaḥ haqen - must shoo away the mother bird before taking her nestlings

• Ma’aqeh - must build a parapet on your roof so people won’t fall off

• Forbidden mixtures: mixing seed of different species together in your garden; plowing with an ox and a donkey together under the same yoke; sha’atnez - wearing a garment which combines wool and linen in the same fabric

כִּ֣י יִקָּרֵ֣א קַן־צִפּ֣וֹר ׀ לְפָנֶ֡יךָ בַּדֶּ֜רֶךְ בְּכׇל־עֵ֣ץ ׀ א֣וֹ עַל־הָאָ֗רֶץ אֶפְרֹחִים֙ א֣וֹ בֵיצִ֔ים וְהָאֵ֤ם רֹבֶ֙צֶת֙ עַל־הָֽאֶפְרֹחִ֔ים א֖וֹ עַל־הַבֵּיצִ֑ים לֹא־תִקַּ֥ח הָאֵ֖ם עַל־הַבָּנִֽים׃ שַׁלֵּ֤חַ תְּשַׁלַּח֙ אֶת־הָאֵ֔ם וְאֶת־הַבָּנִ֖ים תִּֽקַּֽח־לָ֑ךְ לְמַ֙עַן֙ יִ֣יטַב לָ֔ךְ וְהַאֲרַכְתָּ֖ יָמִֽים׃ כִּ֤י תִבְנֶה֙ בַּ֣יִת חָדָ֔שׁ וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ מַעֲקֶ֖ה לְגַגֶּ֑ךָ וְלֹֽא־תָשִׂ֤ים דָּמִים֙ בְּבֵיתֶ֔ךָ כִּֽי־יִפֹּ֥ל הַנֹּפֵ֖ל מִמֶּֽנּוּ׃ לֹא־תִזְרַ֥ע כַּרְמְךָ֖ כִּלְאָ֑יִם פֶּן־תִּקְדַּ֗שׁ הַֽמְלֵאָ֤ה הַזֶּ֙רַע֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר תִּזְרָ֔ע וּתְבוּאַ֖ת הַכָּֽרֶם׃ לֹֽא־תַחֲרֹ֥שׁ בְּשׁוֹר־וּבַחֲמֹ֖ר יַחְדָּֽו׃ לֹ֤א תִלְבַּשׁ֙ שַֽׁעַטְנֵ֔ז צֶ֥מֶר וּפִשְׁתִּ֖ים יַחְדָּֽו׃

If, along the road, you chance upon a bird’s nest, in any tree or on the ground, with fledglings or eggs and the mother sitting over the fledglings or on the eggs, do not take the mother together with her young. Let the mother go, and take only the young, in order that you may fare well and have a long life.

When you build a new house, you shall make a parapet for your roof, so that you do not bring bloodguilt on your house if anyone should fall from it.    

You shall not sow your vineyard with a second kind of seed, else the crop—from the seed you have sown—and the yield of the vineyard may not be used. You shall not plow with an ox and an ass together. You shall not wear cloth combining wool and linen.

In these few verses, we see the entire conundrum in a nutshell. Consider the ma’aqeh, the parapet on your roof. This is entirely practical! You don’t want people falling off your roof, because then you’ll be liable for injury or God forbid, death. One of our essential values is to protect the safety and welfare of others. Great! Piece of cake. I love that mitzvah.

But then there are the forbidden mixtures. Why should anybody care how I plant my garden? Sure, it makes sense to keep the zucchini in one row, and the tomatoes in another. But if I want to mix up a bunch of seeds and then just toss them into the earth, why not? And I sort of understand not yoking together a donkey and an ox, because there is no way a donkey can keep up with an ox. But what difference does it make what my clothes are made from?

And the hardest is the mother bird. (I must say that I have never had the opportunity to fulfill this mitzvah, because (א) I’m a vegetarian and I don’t eat baby birds, and (ב) it’s much easier to buy kosher meat in the supermarket than to find it in Frick Park and slaughter it myself, particularly because I am not trained in the laws of kosher slaughter.)

Nonetheless, this mitzvah displays the essential challenge. Some argue that shooing away the mother, so she will not see her children taken, is a reflection of the much-better-known mitzvah of Kibbud Av va-Em - honoring your mother and father. Some say that it is an act of mercy, which we should fulfill because it is our duty to be merciful, a Jewish value. Others might say that it is particularly about Tza’ar Ba’alei Ḥayyim, not causing animals to suffer. Still others say that we should perform this mitzvah for none of these reasons, but rather merely because God said we should do it.

In the Talmud, when our ancient scholars were faced with an unresolvable challenge on an item in halakhah / Jewish law about which they disagreed, there is a phrase that appears, and in some cases is called out by God in a Divine voice for all to hear: Elu ve-elu divrei Elohim ḥayyim. “These and these are the words of the living God.” In other words, both positions - these, and these - even though they disagree with each other, are valid.

It’s what the kids today refer to as a “both/and.” Sometimes, we do Jewish things because they reflect our values and how we conduct ourselves in this world, and sometimes we do them because, well, it’s a mitzvah, and because that’s what Jews do.

We are all fortunate to be here today as we celebrate two lifecycle events: a forthcoming wedding, and calling a young woman to the Torah as a bat mitzvah, an inheritor of the obligation to perform the mitzvot of Jewish life. It is of course worth noting that we the Jews continue to celebrate these milestones in the synagogue, with traditional words of prayer, integrated into our regular services. 

I am sure that there are some in the Jewish world who might ask themselves, well, why? Why bother investing all the time and money and energy in preparation, including forcing our children to go to Jewish school and hiring a tutor to spend months coaching them on reading from the Torah and the words of our ancient prophets and leading parts of the service? Why bother with the invitations and kippot and catering?

And of course, one answer is, “Because that’s what Jews do.” But just as important is the idea that (א) we value learning and understanding the words of our tradition and sharing them together as a community in public, and (ב) that we want our children to participate in all of that and give it to their children, so we should make it special, and (ג) that all of this is not only worthy of celebrating as a community, but fundamental to who we are as Jews. It’s a both/and/and/and. 

Elu ve-elu divrei Elohim ḥayyim. These and these are the words of the living God.

Sometimes we need to remind ourselves why we do what we do. But we also can’t let go of the “do” - it is not enough to merely discuss “why.”

A final thought: you might have noticed that the Talmud mentions not just God (Elohim), but rather Elohim ḥayyim, “living God.” Why, when reckoning disputes over Jewish law or why we do what we do, must we remember that God is living? 

It is a suggestion, lest we forget, that God is present in our lives, in our joyful and grievous moments, and all the more so in moments of disagreement. In the heat of argument, we must always remember that even when we disagree, the person or people with whom I disagree are, in fact, still people, and it is up to us to maintain the holiness in the interstices between each other. All of our relationships, good and bad, solid and broken, and yes, in the context of disagreement, are guided by the holiness infused in the space between; that is where God lives, and that is where the living God binds us together as people.

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My kids went back to school last week, as did yours. And of course university students have returned to classes as well. 

There has been much speculation and hand-wringing over the summer regarding the return to campus. Will anti-Israel activists re-establish encampments? Will Jewish students feel threatened once again? Will universities, many of which have put in place new policies regarding the ways in which students and faculty exercise their rights to free speech and/or academic freedom, enforce their own rules for the benefit of everybody?

And, from where I sit as a congregational rabbi, and as the father of a high school senior who is about to apply to some of the universities where campus chaos was especially troubling last year, I must confess that these questions have induced a certain amount of anxiety in my own life. Frankly, we are not off to a good start.

At Cornell, my alma mater, on the first day of classes, the administration building (Day Hall) was tagged with graffiti that read, “Israel bombs, Cornell pays,” and “Blood is on your hands.” The student-run daily newspaper at Columbia, the Spectator, started the school year by running two opinion pieces, attributed not to particular students but to anti-Israel groups: (1) “Welcome to the People’s University for Palestine,” by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, and (2) “On Being Jewish at Columbia,” by Columbia/Barnard Jewish Voice for Peace. The latter piece urged arriving Jewish students to consider joining the anti-Zionist group. “Don’t let the media scare you into seeing antisemitism around every corner,” they said. “The real threat to student safety is not pro-Palestinian protests but police and Zionist violence.”  

On the Columbia Spectator’s website, I saw nothing, in the interests of respectful, open dialogue from young future leaders at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, nothing that would indicate nuanced intellectual engagement on the topic. 

Also this week, I watched a Zoom focus group organized by the pollster Frank Luntz featuring two dozen college students from across the country speaking about their experiences on college campuses last year. The focus group was promoted to Jewish clergy so that we could learn what students want to hear from their rabbis on these High Holidays. And it was indeed a riveting conversation.

Among the important items gleaned from the focus group were that two-thirds of these students felt their administration was not supportive enough for Jews on campus. Most admitted that they were very cautious about keeping their Jewish identity to themselves among strangers, and all the more so their support for Israel. They confessed to being uncertain of what kind of reaction they would get when speaking honestly about these things. 

Virtually all had experienced some kind of verbal abuse; one had actually been physically accosted by an anti-Israel protester. They all felt that there had been effectively no consequences for students involved in these protests, and about one-quarter of them had been in classes when professors had openly expressed anti-Israel views. 

One student, from Stanford, had been in a classroom where the professor divided the class into “colonizers” and “colonized” people. Others indicated that professors had canceled classes to tell their students to go to the encampment protests, suggesting “that was the right thing to do.”

I’ll come back in a moment to what the group said about what they want to hear from their rabbis, but first, a public service announcement from the Torah:

Parashat Re’eh, from which we read today, is about the centrality of the land of Israel and our connection to it as an essential part of what it means to be Jewish and to be in relationship with God. One passage found therein suggests that there is a particular location in Israel which is the only permitted center of Jewish worship (Devarim/Deuteronomy 12:5):

כִּ֠י אִֽם־אֶל־הַמָּק֞וֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַ֨ר ה' אֱ-לֹֽהֵיכֶם֙ מִכׇּל־שִׁבְטֵיכֶ֔ם לָשׂ֥וּם אֶת־שְׁמ֖וֹ שָׁ֑ם לְשִׁכְנ֥וֹ תִדְרְשׁ֖וּ וּבָ֥אתָ שָּֽׁמָּה׃

But look only to the site that your God will choose amidst all your tribes as God’s habitation, to establish the divine name there.

We know that place to be Har HaBayit, Mt. Moriah in Jerusalem, the place where the First and Second Temples stood prior to their respective destructions by the Babylonians (586 BCE) and the Romans (70 CE).

But wait! Doesn’t Jewish worship take place all over the world? If we are davening here in Pittsburgh, doesn’t that mean that we are violating this principle? Many of us have been taught that God is everywhere, but the Torah tells us that God’s “habitation” is in Jerusalem. What gives, Rabbi?

There is a Talmudic principle in play that applies here:

וְהַיְינוּ דְּאָמַר רַבִּי חִיָּיא בַּר אַמֵּי מִשְּׁמֵיהּ דְּעוּלָּא: מִיּוֹם שֶׁחָרַב בֵּית הַמִּקְדָּשׁ אֵין לוֹ לְהַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא בְּעוֹלָמוֹ אֶלָּא אַרְבַּע אַמּוֹת שֶׁל הֲלָכָה בִּלְבַד.

Rabbi Ḥiyya bar Ami said in the name of Ulla: Since the day the Temple was destroyed, the Holy One, Blessed be He, has only one place in this world: just the four cubits of halakhah around each of us.

An “amah,” a cubit, a standard Biblical measure, is the length of the forearm from elbow to the tips of the fingers. Yes, it varies from person to person, but it is generally about 18 inches. The “arba amot shel halakhah,” four cubits of Jewish law, is therefore a circle with a radius of about 6 feet over which we have personal, halakhic control.

In other words, we establish the center of worship, we establish God’s name, and acknowledge God’s presence wherever we go. We effectively carry it with us, in the areas of our own personal control, that is, just the six feet around us in any direction.  

For nearly two millennia, since Romans razed the city of Jerusalem and exiled the Jews, we have carried our Beit haMiqdash, our “Temple” with us all over the world. We have carried it across continents and centuries, through wars and persecutions, expulsions and cataclysms. These arba amot shel halakhah have sustained us through joyous and grievous times, through periods in our history when we had no control, no protection, and no friends outside of our family and community.

And we still carry with us today that sense of that portable spiritual home. Even when we are not in Jerusalem or Israel, which will always be “home” for all Jews in some sense, we have with us at all times the connection to our people, our history, our culture. 

So what did the students in the focus group want to hear from their rabbis? Their answers were all over the map, but they crystallized around a few themes, none of which will surprise you:

• Resilience

• Community/support/togetherness

• Hope

• The feeling that, “you are not alone.”

• One student cleverly suggested that we should have “faith, not fate.”

The students also identified the sources of support that they have, the places they go when they want to feel safe and supported, where they go to feel like the world is not conspiring against them: mostly Jewish spaces on campus, where they can feel like they are among friends, where they can safely share their feelings, their views, their pride in being Jewish and connected to the State of Israel.

And here’s the secret weapon that the Jews have: we carry another Jewish space with us wherever we go, the one marked out by those arba amot. That is the source of our resilience. That is the source of our strength. 

And wherever we physically gather as a community - in synagogues, at Hillel, and so forth - the arba amot is multiplied by the number of people in the room with us, creating a center of protection, of togetherness, of faith that surrounds us and protects us.

That is why the synagogue is rabbinically described as a miqdash me’at, a “little Temple.” It’s not the big Beit haMiqdash in Jerusalem, but a little, portable one.

That is one essential reason why we are still here - because we have amassed our arba amot shel halahkah for the benefit of our people as long as we have wandered this Earth. 

It is very hard to be optimistic about the future, particularly when the universities like Columbia University, which have been the engines of Jewish success and acculturation in America, feel unsafe for Jews. It is hard to be optimistic when Dr. Shai Davidai, the Columbia Business School professor who has said (e.g. on this podcast with Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch) that Columbia is rife with antisemitism from bottom to top. It is hard to be optimistic when Avril Haines, the Biden administration’s Director of National Intelligence, released a statement in July that the Iranian government is using online agents posing as activists and even funding anti-Israel protests to sow discord at places like Columbia and elsewhere.

But let’s face it: our people have thrived despite the adversity we have faced in Diaspora; we have carried our mini-Temples with us for 2,000 years, for much of that time without much optimism. We have survived because, when we were not in control of Jerusalem, we retreated to the personal areas of control which we have carried with us, and to our communal spaces, such as this one. 

In our miqdash me’at, Congregation Beth Shalom, we called a young man to the Torah as a bar mitzvah on this Shabbat as a statement of pride, of faith, and of optimism. We have our secret weapon, and we are using it to continue being who we are, to continue to lean into the idea of faith, not fate, to continue to thrive and celebrate and build, and to establish God’s name and acknowledge God’s presence here in Pittsburgh, in the State of Israel, and wherever we are.

That fills me with hope, and I am hopeful that our students on college campuses all over North America will draw on that sense of connection as they face whatever comes their way.

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Americans have a very strange way of greeting one another: we ask, “How are you doing?” As we all know, this is not actually a question regarding your state of mind, or how you feel about current events, or even what is really happening in your life. On the contrary: it’s not usually an actual question, and a true answer to this non-question is not usually expected.

People ask me every day how I am doing, and I think some of them really mean it. And I must say, I’m reflecting a general sense of unease that we all must feel right now. The current situation is still definitely mixed.

Consider the graffiti which appeared on Monday morning, on the former New Light building at Forbes and Beechwood, and at the Federation building.

Now, on the one hand, we might easily dismiss this as the work of a powerless, aggrieved individual who has no outlet but to deface property in order to intimidate Jews. Or we might read it as a deeply antisemitic act reflective of wider trends in American society. We might be inclined to brush this off as a tiny manifestation of the continuum of the world’s oldest hatred, something which we will never manage to defeat, or as a harbinger of a rising tide of anti-Jewish activity which may lead to a much worse future for the Jews in Di Goldene Medine, the Golden Land to which my great-grandparents came.

The range of these conceptions are reflections of two major trends in Jewish modernity: Judeo-optimism and Judeo-pessimism. These are terms coined by the President of the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, Dr. Yehuda Kurtzer. He discusses them in a recent Hartman podcast:

“Some years ago at Hartman I taught about the difference between two ways to envision the future. The difference between what I call Judeo-optimism, those of us that would believe, since the Enlightenment, that the conditions of liberal democracy could actually one day make possible the thriving of Jews in liberal societies, those that would insist that we just haven’t built the right liberal democratic systems yet. And on the other hand, Judeo-pessimism, like some of those early Zionist thinkers, and like many Israelis today, who think that the whole promise of liberalism and emancipation is a lie, and the only option that we have to envision how we will be safe and secure in our future is if we put that responsibility in our own hands.”

I have spent much of my life as a Judeo-optimist. That is, I grew up in a liberal environment in small-town New England where, even though the Jewish population was small, the sense of inter-connectedness between each other and with our non-Jewish neighbors was fairly strong. We were different, but not outsiders, and for the most part did not feel “othered” through antisemitic sentiments and behaviors. When I spent my first summer in Israel as a teenager (on the Alexander Muss High School in Israel program, from which my daughter just returned three days ago), I did not see Israel as a haven from a hostile world, but rather as a statement of Jewish success and pride following the Holocaust. We have joined the family of nations, and built a strong country in hardscrabble circumstances in our ancestral homeland.

As some of you have observed, I have spent much of the last year, and perhaps to a lesser extent the last seven years since the rally in Charlottesville, re-assessing my Judeo-optimism. This has been an extremely difficult time to maintain a positive view to the future regarding the place of Jews in America, much less the rest of the world, given everything that has taken place since.

And to some of you it might seem like, rather than talking about these things with my therapist, I have processed them here with you in public, from the bimah. But there is a reason that some refer to psychotherapy as, “the Jewish science”: this is what we do. We are good at talking, at parsing words, at determining motives, at assessing arguments. These things are baked into our text and our culture. 

Of the many aspects to the current conflict that have been swirling around in my head over much of the past year is the challenge of hope. Hope has receded from the minds of many, and it seems that pessimism reigns supreme. Two-state solution? Moribund. Hizbullah? Well, they will inflict a lot of damage, what with the 150,000 or so rockets they have pointed at Israel. But we are already at war, so the logical move would be just to take them out right now, despite what will surely be heavy costs. Iran? They will have a nuclear weapon next week. The rest of the world? They are not our friends. American university campuses? Well, they have been a key engine of Jewish success in America, but now, well, who knows?

Pessimism.

Just a few minutes ago we announced the new month of Av, which will begin on Monday. As this is the month which features the day on which we commemorate the darkest moments of Jewish history, in particular the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem (by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and the Romans in 70 CE), the rabbinic wisdom (Mishnah Ta’anit 4:6) about the month of Av is, “משנכנס אב ממעטין בשמחה” - from the time we enter Av, our joy decreases.

And so too, at least for the first nine days, does our hope. In the 3rd chapter of Eikhah, the book of Lamentations which we will chant a week from Monday night, we read the following (Eikhah 3:29):

יִתֵּ֤ן בֶּֽעָפָר֙ פִּ֔יהוּ אוּלַ֖י יֵ֥שׁ תִּקְוָֽה׃

Let him put his mouth to the dust—
There may yet be hope.

It’s a line which resonates with me every year on Tish’ah BeAv, particularly due to the association of the word tiqvah, hope, and its association with the rebuilding of the Land of Israel and the establishment of the State of Israel in our time. Tiqvah suggests optimism; that the yearning of the Jewish people of 2,000 years of wandering and persecution will some day come to an end. However, this verse is, at first glance, one of desolation: perhaps there is hope, but surely the sufferings of the Jewish people will continue as we lick the dust under the boot of Babylon or Rome or the Crusaders or whomever. 

And yet, a mere two verses later (v. 31),

כִּ֣י לֹ֥א יִזְנַ֛ח לְעוֹלָ֖ם אֲדֹנָֽי׃

For the Lord does not reject forever.

Desolation is only temporary. Redemption is not just a possibility, but an eventual reality. We just have to hang in there until this moment passes.

I’ve made this observation in this place before, but it bears repeating: the difference between an optimist and a pessimist in Israel is that the optimist is learning Arabic, and the pessimist is learning Chinese. We the Jews are especially talented at catastrophizing: we see ourselves, as the 20th-century Jewish philosopher Simon Rawidowicz put it, the “ever-dying people.”

One of the greatest catastrophes of the current moment is not just that the prospects of peace in the Middle East seem further away than ever, but rather the loss of hope. Judeo-pessimism has, it seems, won the battle. One symptom of this is that Israelis are quite concerned for American Jews at this moment. The campus chaos and marauding Hamas supporters in the streets of American cities have convinced many Israelis that we are the ones who are unsafe; the growing anti-Israel voices in Congress have led them to the conclusion that now is the time to move to Israel. When Judy and I were in Israel a few weeks back, multiple friends and relatives asked us seriously about this. 

A whole generation of Israeli and Palestinian children is growing up with no hope. אולי יש תקווה - perhaps there is hope, but likely not. The hope of the late ‘90s, shattered by the Second Intifada, has left us bereft. 

And so it will be up to us to turn “perhaps” into “definitely, but not just yet.”

And let’s face it: I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know how to turn pessimism back into optimism. I do not know where we will find the hope.

Israel is at this moment bracing herself for war. Perhaps the only hint of optimism found therein is that the chance to seriously degrade Hizbullah would be good for Israel. But let us not forget that Hamas, even after these 10 months of fighting, is still firing rockets from Gaza. Hizbullah is a much more formidable enemy.

I am somewhat heartened that our mayor and a bunch of local politicians signed onto a statement following the latest graffiti incident, calling it a deplorable example of antisemitism. But I am also not deluding myself into believing that such political statements make any difference to those who hate Jews. I fear that this is too little, too late, particularly following the failure to quickly take down illegal anti-Israel encampments on public property.

It may yet be too early for us to speak about hope - not while there are still 115 hostages held in Gaza, and 130,000 displaced Israelis, and 12 dead Druze kids in Majdal Shams, and IDF soldiers still battling terrorists in Gaza, and on and on. Maybe we can only pray for their safety right now, and pray for an end to the current hostilities. Maybe when the hostages come home we can speak of hope.

When we announced the beginning of Av, we referred to this coming month as “Menaḥem Av,” the Av which brings comfort. It is a reminder that, although the first nine days of this month are about destruction, the remainder, as we move toward the coronation days of Rosh HaShanah, highlight comfort and rebuilding. Our consolation is coming. Hope will return, and maybe with it some optimism.

So how am I? Ask me again after Tish’ah BeAv.

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The Torah is not an orderly book. Anybody who has looked closely at the jumble of stories, laws, verse fragments, occasionally conflicting instructions and so forth found therein quickly sees that it is a pastiche of materials drawn from different sources. 

Sure, when you are looking at the Hebrew text from a distance - neat columns in handsome script on parchment - it seems organized, and while we absolutely cannot deny its essential holiness and its supreme role in our lives as the foundational text of the Jewish bookshelf, we also must concede that it is occasionally messy. And, lest you think that later Jewish texts are more organized, let me assure you that our tradition is not at all systematic. (I always have to chuckle when people talk about their rejection of “organized religion,” and I think to myself, “You call THIS organized?!”)

And in that regard, the Torah is something like our lives: an attempt to calm the forces of chaos, a valiant effort to impose some order on our daily existence, which always features the unpredictable.

In thinking about just the last two weeks on the national stage, we are confronted with a certain amount of what you might call “unprecedentedness.” An attempted assassination of a former president and current presidential candidate, resulting in the death of an innocent bystander. A current president and presidential candidate ending his run and anointing a third presidential candidate, who is also the sitting vice president. An address of a joint session of Congress by the Prime Minister of Israel, accompanied by violent protests outside featuring the burning of American flags and outright support of terrorist organizations. 

It’s been quite a wild ride. Nobody will look back on the summer of 2024 and think, “That was some smooth sailing.” And, of course, the summer is hardly over. I have some deep concerns about what might take place at the Democratic National Convention, particularly outside, but perhaps inside as well.

Parashat Pineḥas is, from start to finish, entirely about imposing order on chaos. The parashah opens (as Noa mentioned) with God upholding the zealous actions of Pineḥas, who murders an Israelite, Zimri ben Salu, and and his non-Israelite partner in flagrante delecto. Then there is a census, the second in this book of Bemidbar, which is focused on defining who gets what pieces of land when they enter Israel. And then there is the matter of God’s ruling regarding Benot Tzelofḥad, the daughters of Tzelofḥad, who, as it turns out, can inherit from their father since they have no brothers. And then we get to the most frequently-read passage of the Torah throughout the year: the list of sacrifices for the entire yearly cycle of holidays.

Each of these things, even the introductory bit about the, shall we say, complicated actions of Pineḥas, is effectively about defining a framework. One might ask, since there was a census at the beginning of Bemidbar, why did they need to do it again? One answer, suggested by the text, is that there was a plague to cleanse the community of those who had sinned like Zimri, so they needed to recount.

But maybe this census comes from a place of anxiety. Have you ever recounted, let’s say, place settings before a dinner party, just to make sure you have the right number? Or gone over the numbers on your tax return a second or third time? Of course you have, because you want it to be right. The whole point of this journey bemidbar, in the wilderness, is to prepare to inherit the land of Israel. These forty years are an attempt to bring order to chaos, to create a framework for Israel that brings together land, peoplehood, and matters of the spirit. So they are anxious about getting it right.

It is very hard for us not to feel challenged today by all of the turmoil in the world, and all the more so that in our own lives. I think it is difficult to make the case that things are worse than they have ever been. After all, we live in a world in which we were able to create a vaccine for a deadly virus in under a year. We have improved agricultural technology so that we can feed far more people than we ever could. We may not be able to prevent hurricanes, but we know when and where they will hit. Infant mortality, though certainly not eliminated, is much lower than it ever was. There are so many ways in which we can demonstrate that human existence is much less deadly and much more enjoyable than it has ever been. Some day, maybe, we will cure cancer and Alzheimer’s and find a workaround for global warming.

But for many of us, the sense that we are backsliding, that the stability of the world order is unraveling, that the hard lessons learned from the ravages of the great wars of the 20th century are being forgotten, is difficult to ignore.

Part of that may be that we simply have so much more information than we used to. Consider the following: If you follow pretty much any news source, you will be served a steady diet of upsetting news about horrible things going on in the world. If you type the name of any disease into a search engine, you will be served a series of the most horrible pictures of people suffering from that affliction. We hear on a daily basis how this thing is bad for you or that activity is destroying the Earth. 

No wonder rates of anxiety and depression continue to rise, especially among young adults.

Our challenge is sorting out what are the things over which we have control from those over which we do not. I’m sure you have heard of the “Serenity Prayer,” (originally attributed to 20th c. American Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr). In its most widely-known form, it goes like this:

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

and Wisdom to know the difference.

There is a rough analog from the Jewish bookshelf, sometimes mis-attributed to the 11th-century Spanish poet Shelomoh Ibn Gevirol, but actually from a 15th-century anonymous wisdom collection known as Mivḥar Peninim (17:2):

רֹאשׁ הַשְׂכֵּל הַהַכָּרָה בֵּין הַהֹוֶה וְהַנִּמְנָע. וְהַנֶּחָמָה בְּמָה שֶׁאֵין הַיְּכֹלֶת

Intellectual pre-eminence consists of discriminating between the probable and improbable, and being reconciled to the uncontrollable.

In other words, we have to be mindful of what may happen, even though we can neither predict nor control the future, so we must accept and manage what comes our way.

What we learn implicitly from Parashat Pineḥas, and, one might say, much of the Torah’s attempt to shape our lives through ritual, through law, through the values we see in our ancestors, through the mitzvot which highlight the holiness in our lives and in our relationships with others, is that despite the fact that there will always be chaos, despite the fact that we have little control over  what is to come, we can manage the future by holding onto the framework that our tradition gives us.

And in practice, we learn from Jewish history that, in times of upheaval, in times of destruction and exile and dispersion and persecution and genocide, we have persisted. That is why we still mark Tish’ah BeAv by chanting the book of Eikhah, Lamentations, and kinot, poems of lament from throughout our history. We do so to recall that, although some things might seem really awful today, if we compare to, let’s say, destruction of Jerusalem and exile at the hands of the Babylonians, well, maybe it’s not so bad after all.

In surveying Jewish history, I see what must be obvious, even though it may be hard to prove scientifically: that we are still here, davening in (of all places) Pittsburgh in 2024, 1954 years after the Romans destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem and ended the sacrificial practices described in Parashat Pineḥas, because we managed the chaos by clinging to our traditions. It must be because we still gather for prayer in our ancient tongue, in place of those sacrifices; it must be because we still retell our origin story as we read the Torah through each year; it must be because, as Aḥad Ha’Am put it, “More than Jews have kept Shabbat, Shabbat has kept the Jews.”

We have continued to bring a semblance of order to our lives even as mighty empires rose and fell, even as we traveled across oceans and continents and eras to arrive at the present moment.

As I have grown in my rabbinate, I understand this more and more: what keeps us as Jews, and helps us manage the turmoil, is that holy framework to which we have been clinging for thousands of years. And we must continue to hold on, for the benefit of our children and their children, and all the generations who will follow, so that whatever happens, we will still be here to support one another and bring Torah to the world.

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I just returned from a two-week trip to Israel, and on this trip I managed to visit two of my favorite cemeteries. Yes, it’s true that while I love the people of Israel who are alive, I also have a few favorite Israeli burial places. One of them is the cemetery of Kevutzat Kinneret, which is located on the Kinneret, the Sea of Galilee, at the lower southwestern shore. (For the record, my other favorites include the Trumpeldor Cemetery in Tel Aviv, where Arik Einstein and Aḥad Ha’Am are interred, and of course the cemetery in Tzfat with all the Spanish Kabbalists.)

I particularly love the Kinneret cemetery not only because it’s a spectacularly beautiful location, built on a slight hill overlooking the water, but also because of a few of its notable long-term residents: Berl Katznelson, one of the leading lights of the Labor Zionist movement, and the person for whom Kibbutz Be’eri is named; Rahel Bluwstein, also known as Raḥel haMeshoreret, Raḥel the Poetess, perhaps best known for her poetry about the hard life of the early ḥalutzim / pioneers; and, of course, Naomi Shemer, the greatest composer of Israeli popular music, who had an essential hand in creating the sound of 20th-century Israel.

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One of Shemer’s best-known songs, and one to which I continually return, is Al Kol Eleh, a song which many of us know well. Shemer composed it in 1980 in the wake of the tragic death of her sister’s husband, and it reflects the messiness of life: the honey and the bee-sting, the sweet and the bitter. Al kol eleh - for all these things - we are grateful*. 

Like many Israeli pop songs, there are Tanakhic references in the text, and one in particular resonates at this time: 

הֲשִׁיבֵנִי וְאֲשׁוּבָהּ \ אֶל הָאָרֶץ הַטּוֹבָה

Hashiveini ve-ashuvah / El ha-aretz hatovah.

Return me, and I shall surely return / To the good Land [of Israel]

The reference, which I am sure many of you recognize, is well-known in Jewish life because we say it every time we put the Torah away: 

הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ ה' ׀ אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם׃

Return us, Adonai, to You, And we shall surely return; Renew our days as of old.

It’s a verse from the end of the book of Eikhah / Lamentations (5:21), the next-to-last verse, which, on the evening of Tish’ah BeAv (which, BTW, is just over a month away), we repeat after chanting the last verse. It is actually a very powerful moment, because everybody sings along in the mournful tones of Eikhah trope, sitting on the floor in the half-light. In its original context, the verse speaks generally about redemption following destruction: with God’s encouragement, we shall return as a nation - to the land from which we were exiled by the Babylonians, to a state of peace and satisfaction and freedom, to a repaired relationship with the Qadosh Barukh Hu. 

And of course it is worth noting that we still chant the last verse of Eikhah (5:22):

כִּ֚י אִם־מָאֹ֣ס מְאַסְתָּ֔נוּ קָצַ֥פְתָּ עָלֵ֖ינוּ עַד־מְאֹֽד׃

For truly, You have rejected us, Bitterly raged against us.

Not so nice, right? But we still say it, even though we repeat the next-to-last verse after that, to remind us that we take the bad with the good; that return is still possible even in the context of rejection.

Shemer uses it more personally: I shall surely return el ha-aretz hatovah / to the good Land, meaning that after one’s life is disrupted by tragedy and deep personal grief, my life shall return once again to normal. But of course the bee sting and the honey will always be there side-by-side; we take the pain and the sweetness together as we move through our lives. Al kol eleh - for all these things I am grateful, and through all of these things, God, shmor na li, protect me.

This is the human condition. This is the messiness of our lives.

Perhaps one of the most fascinating plot lines of the Torah includes the episode we read today of Moshe erupting in anger and striking the rock for water in Midbar Tzin (Bemidbar / Numbers 20:1-12). The Israelites are thirsty and complaining once again; God instructs Moshe and Aharon to speak to a particular rock, which will yield water to drink. But Moshe is fed up with all the grumbling, and is overwhelmed by his anger, so he lashes out at the ungrateful Israelites and strikes the rock. Water flows, but God immediately says, effectively, “Sorry, Moshe, but you did not do what I told you to do. So you will not enter Israel with the rest of the people.”

The episode is particularly troubling because it just seems so arbitrary and even petty. This is Moshe Rabbeinu, our teacher Moses, who led the people out of Egypt. For cryin’ out loud, he was up on Mt. Sinai for 40 days taking dictation from God, panim el panim, face-to-face! And for just a little bit of anger, he is barred from completing the journey?! What about second chances? What about teshuvah / repentance? What about God’s supposed forgiving nature? It doesn’t add up.

And, as will unfold in later passages, we see that Moshe is tremendously hurt by this. He pleads with God to be able to enter Israel. And we feel for him.

So perhaps there is a hint of another purpose here. What is the Torah trying to teach us?

Maybe the message is, as with Al Kol Eleh, that we take the good with the bad. Moshe never gets his wish; but on the other hand, he will always be Moshe Rabbeinu. He will always be the most beloved leader on the Jewish bookshelf. But even Moshe Rabbeinu is human, and so are we.

One of the most striking observations about my visit to Israel is that life goes on even through deep pain and anger and loss. This is a country at war, where one enemy in the north and another in the south are still targeting Israelis with rocket fire and drones and sometimes infiltration; where air-raid sirens sound every day; where there are 130,000 people displaced from their homes; where soldiers continue to fall in battle. The political fissures that have re-emerged in recent months show the fabric of Israeli society fraying; accusatory fingers are pointed in all directions. There are posters everywhere and pleading demonstrations constantly, all over the country to remind everybody of the 120 hostages remaining in Gaza. Last motza-ei Shabbat we went to the hostage vigil in Tel Aviv; there were thousands of people, including family members of hostages both on and off the stage. It was powerful and moving.

Once upon a time, a pleasant stroll through Kikar Dizengoff in the center of Tel Aviv brought the joy of people-watching and pride in a thriving city, the first contemporary Jewish city. The whole area was recently given a face-lift, and traffic patterns have been changed to discourage car traffic and encourage pedestrians and cyclists.

But two weeks ago, a Shabbat walk through Kikar Dizengoff brought me to tears. The fountain in the center has become a memorial to October 7th. It is surrounded by photos and mementos and posters and stickers created by families who lost loved ones. It is absolutely heartbreaking. 

And yet, the periphery of the plaza is alive and bustling with restaurants and bars and, well, life. It’s a perfect metaphor for Israel and Israelis right now: on the exterior, we’re all OK; we’re just trying to get on with life. But our hearts are dark and heavy and in mourning. This is a society that is not well, and everybody can feel it. The beaches are crowded - mostly with Israelis, as the tourist numbers are way down - but playing in the surf is just a cover for the deep anguish which everybody feels. You cannot escape it.

Al hadvash ve’al ha’oqetz, al hamar vehamatoq. For the honey and the sting, for the bitter and the sweet. Al kol eleh. For all these things. This is the messiness of life. The grief comes with the joy. The redemption comes alongside the rejection, before and after. 

My daughter Hannah is studying right now at the Alexander Muss High School in Israel, a longstanding Jewish/Israeli studies program of which I myself am an alumnus (I was there in 1987). It’s a six-week program based in Hod Hasharon, a suburb of Tel Aviv. 

Although she is in a place where the likelihood (at least right now) of rockets falling is quite slim, I wanted a better understanding of the safety situation, so I downloaded to an app which gives notifications for terror activity throughout the country. Though I knew these were happening regularly, I had no idea of the frequency of attacks - which are daily in the north, sometimes with barrages of hundreds of Hizbullah rockets, and even a few which are still being launched by Hamas in Gaza. Thank God, most of them are shot down by Iron Dome, and of course they are often targeting areas that have been evacuated.

But the point on some level is to acknowledge that even through all the apparent normalcy of people going about their lives in Israel, this is not normal, and while the devastation in Gaza is far greater, nonetheless many Israelis are still suffering from this war on a daily basis. We cannot become complacent; we cannot allow ourselves to look past the actual human toll.

So we take the devash with the oqetz; we recognize that nobody can be comfortable until all the parties reach an agreement to move forward in safety and security, to bring the hostages home. Al kol eleh - for all these things, I continue to pray, and I hope to soon be grateful.

הֲשִׁיבֵ֨נוּ ה' ׀ אֵלֶ֙יךָ֙ וְֽנָשׁ֔וּבָה חַדֵּ֥שׁ יָמֵ֖ינוּ כְּקֶֽדֶם׃

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*While the song became associated with the settler movement in the wake of the uprooting of Yamit in the Sinai in 1982, that was not Shemer’s original intent, since the song was written two years earlier.

As an adult and as a rabbi, I see the summer quite differently today. It is a time of wonder, and what better environment in which to seek out holy moments in prayer?

Wonder, Rabbi? You mean, like, I wonder why it was suddenly so unbearably hot this week?

Not quite. Summertime is a time of wonder because we spend more time outdoors over longer days. The Earth is verdant and rich; the gardens are filled with flowers and vegetables, and ants and bees and weeds and all manner of creepy-crawlies. Some of us take vacations, spend more time with family, and relax on the evening on the back porch and just take in the summer sounds and scents. If we are fortunate to have some time off, we hike and swim and loaf. It is a time to appreciate God’s Creation in all of its blossoming glory.

When I was a cantorial and rabbinical student, I spent a few summers as a Jewish Environmental and Nature Education Fellow at Camp Ramah, and one of the essential messages that we were taught to share with campers is that the wonder is there for all to see if you seek it out. One of my teachers, Dr. Gabe Goldman, suggested that we shout out a phrase from Psalm 104 when we encountered something interesting outdoors: מָה־רַבּ֬וּ מַעֲשֶׂ֨יךָ / Mah rabu ma’asekha! How great are Your works, O God! 

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And yet, our tradition has conflicting views on our obligations to the natural world. Bereshit / Genesis presents two approaches to the human relationship with Creation. In the first story of Bereshit, when humans are created at the end of the sixth day, they are given the mission of (1:28):

פְּר֥וּ וּרְב֛וּ וּמִלְא֥וּ אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְכִבְשֻׁ֑הָ וּרְד֞וּ בִּדְגַ֤ת הַיָּם֙ וּבְע֣וֹף הַשָּׁמַ֔יִם וּבְכׇל־חַיָּ֖ה הָֽרֹמֶ֥שֶׂת עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃

“Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth.”

Compare all of that mastering and ruling with the second story (2:15),

וַיַּנִּחֵ֣הוּ בְגַן־עֵ֔דֶן לְעָבְדָ֖הּ וּלְשָׁמְרָֽהּ׃

[God] settled the Human in the garden of Eden, to till it and tend it.

So we are, from the outset, either conquerors, destined to master the environment and use it for our purposes, or perhaps to engage as more integrated partners in development.

And of course, while the Torah is particularly sensitized to the agricultural cycle that our ancestors lived by, the ancient rabbis of the Talmudic period went out of their way to reinterpret Judaism to some extent away from this cycle, and even, one might argue, from appreciation for the beauty found in Creation. Consider Pirqei Avot 3:7:

רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן אוֹמֵר, הַמְהַלֵּךְ בַּדֶּרֶךְ וְשׁוֹנֶה, וּמַפְסִיק מִמִּשְׁנָתוֹ וְאוֹמֵר, מַה נָּאֶה אִילָן זֶה וּמַה נָּאֶה נִיר זֶה, מַעֲלֶה עָלָיו הַכָּתוּב כְּאִלּוּ מִתְחַיֵּב בְּנַפְשׁוֹ

R. Shimon says: If one is walking on the road and learning and he interrupts his learning to say "How beautiful is this tree! How beautiful is this furrow!" Scripture reckons this as if he is liable for his soul.

Now, the purpose of that mishnah is actually to discourage the interruption of Torah learning with idle chatter, but the fact that the example given in Pirqei Avot is precisely about trees and gardens is indeed telling. The beauty of Torah outweighs all, even God’s most precious physical works.

Here is a question, a quick mini-poll for us all: How many of us have found spiritual inspiration while outdoors: walking through lush woods, surveying the view from a mountaintop lookout, beholding a vast ocean or a gorgeous valley or colorful fall foliage?

I must say that some of my most fulfilling prayer experiences have been in outdoor spaces - davening in the desert, meditating on a mountain. Somehow, the feeling of being enveloped by God’s Creation makes God feel closer. 

As I was working on these remarks on Thursday evening at dusk, I was watching the fireflies in my front yard, hovering and flashing. I have always been captivated by fireflies, from a very young age, when I remember catching them with my father and putting them in a jar with holes in the top. I think this week is approaching peak firefly season, or maybe it was the heat that made them especially active.

But the hypnotic power of these bugs, so small and yet so awesome, leads me to a place where I can temporarily blot out the misery of the world, the brutal bloodletting of the news cycle, the obsessive scrolling to which many of us fall victim. 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel’s most famous theological expression is “radical amazement.” It is his attempt to describe how we react to God: God’s power is so far beyond words, beyond comprehension, that all we can do is react with wonder. And let’s face it: in today’s world, in which the most valuable currency is data, in which everything is measured and catalogued and displayed for all to see and archived forever, we could all use a little bit more wonder, a little bit more awe.

Among the benefits of experiencing awe, as measured in a series of academic studies, include increased humility (and thereby less narcissism, arrogance, and entitlement), a more balanced understanding of our own strengths and weaknesses, and better immune health. One such study

...involved taking a group of military veterans and a group of youth from underserved communities on a white water rafting trip to study the effect of nature (which people commonly report feeling awed by) on the wellbeing of those individuals. For everyone symptoms of PTSD went down, while scores of general happiness, satisfaction with life, social wellbeing, and how connected people felt to their community, all improved. 

In today’s haftarah, we read about the prophet Zechariah’s dream of a return to Israel from the Babylonian exile in the late 6th century, including his vision of the gold menorah in the rebuilt Beit haMiqdash, the Temple in Jerusalem, destroyed some 60 years earlier. It contains a line that many of us know well from a popular tune written by Debbie Friedman in the early 1970s. It’s from Zechariah 4:6:

וַיַּ֜עַן וַיֹּ֤אמֶר אֵלַי֙ לֵאמֹ֔ר זֶ֚ה דְּבַר־ה’ אֶל־זְרֻבָּבֶ֖ל לֵאמֹ֑ר לֹ֤א בְחַ֙יִל֙ וְלֹ֣א בְכֹ֔חַ כִּ֣י אִם־בְּרוּחִ֔י אָמַ֖ר ה’ צְבָאֽוֹת׃

Then he explained to me as follows: “This is the word of GOD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit—said GOD of Hosts.”

It’s a great song, but Friedman’s additional lyrics, which emphasize a peaceful future that may be achieved through ruaḥ / spirit, suited the American political context in which she composed the song, perhaps more than the original context.

I hear something different in the words of Zechariah. 

It is through radical amazement, through responding in awe to God’s infinite power and majesty, that we acknowledge that our own attempts to control the world and each other are ultimately fruitless. It is only through finding the awe in the everyday, through seeking out qedushah/holiness in the ordinary, that we ultimately achieve better outcomes as individuals and as a society. When we understand that true might and power are derived from that awe-filled relationship between us and God, then we can set about restoring the world to a state of qedushah, when we will return metaphorically and physically to the Land of Israel.

“Awe,” wrote Heschel,

enables us to perceive in the world intimations of the divine, to sense in small things the beginning of infinite significance, to sense the ultimate in the common and the simple; to feel  in the rush of the passing the stillness of the eternal. (God in Search of Man, p. 75.)

I am happy that we often have a healthy turnout on Shabbat morning during summer. I know that all of us here today know that God does not take a vacation. But maybe there is something else in play here: perhaps those of us who devote a beautiful summer Shabbat morning to recite words of tefillah, to hear words of Torah, to spend a few minutes together with friends and neighbors and family, relishing in the sense of community, understand that summer is a time of awe, a time when we might just catch a hint of what Heschel is talking about, even inside a (thankfully) climate-controlled building.

The holy moments of prayer and Torah, of gathering and remembering Shabbat, of seeing ourselves in relationship to community, highlight the sense of awe that we might find, say, when we take a peaceful walk in Frick Park on Shabbat afternoon, or when we might see the fireflies when they come out around havdalah time on Saturday night.

Find some more awe-filled moments. It’s good for you, and for the world.

I do not know why, as I get older, I am always moved to tears at the sight of old veterans in uniform, honoring their fallen comrades. As a young man, I was never particularly interested in the armed forces, and I must confess that I did not fully appreciate what they do, and how those who have fought for our country, and in particular paid the ultimate price, have protected our freedom, our democracy and our world.

Our tradition highlights shalom, peace, as an essential value. You know that we invoke peace at the end of every Amidah and most recitations of the qaddish. But shalom, the absence of war, is never so simple; as we know, peace has a price, and sometimes the cost is that of a just war, fought justly. Having never lived through a war like WWII, a just war if there ever was one, I reaped the benefits of shalom here in America without a sense for what it took to achieve and maintain it.

Perhaps that is what makes memorial ceremonies like the one last week so moving: that we know that war is absolutely horrible; that we know it causes pain and grief and hardship for all. As Jews we recognize this in multiple ways throughout the ritual cycle of the Jewish year. One of the terms we use for those who give their lives for a cause is qedoshim, holy ones, and something that I detect at commemorative moments is the sense of holiness which permeates these solemn ceremonies.

The shoresh / root of the word qedoshim is קדש, q-d-sh*, which fundamentally means “set apart.” What is holy is what is set apart from the ordinary. And we are surrounded, of course, by ordinariness; God has assigned us a daily mission: to extract some holiness from the mundane.

Consider some of the other uses of this root: 

One of the most curious words in Jewish life is “qiddush.” It is a context-dependent term. The literal meaning is “sanctification,” that is, the ritual process of granting holiness to something that is ordinary. 

Perhaps the best-known use of the word is how we hear it when we pronounce it with its Yiddish accentuation: “KID-ish.” When we say “KID-ish,” everybody knows we’re talking about having some refreshments and schmoozing after services on Shabbat morning. 

But KID-ish is called that because it starts with qiddush: reciting a berakhah over wine which includes a text related to the sanctity of the day. Doing so is not actually about sanctifying the wine, but rather the holiday. We declare Shabbat, the second holiest day of the year, holy by observing it, by setting it apart from the rest of the week. 

You might also say that eating and talking to your friends in shul is not just “KID-ish,” but also “qiddush,” sanctification, because we sanctify time in many ways. We do so of course through prayer, and through holiday observances like dining in the Sukkah or eating a matzah-and-horseradish sandwich, by studying and arguing about words of our ancient tradition,  and we also sanctify time by refraining from other actions such as by not spending money or working or cooking on Shabbat. Some of those things are mundane activities, made holy by intention.

And there are others words in this family: “Qiddushin” is the term for sanctifying the relationship of two loving partners in marriage. “Qedushah” is when we acknowledge God’s presence in our lives and strive to lift ourselves higher to emulate angels during the Amidah. “Sifrei qodesh, kelei qodesh, Yerushalayim, ir haqodesh,” holy books, clergy, and the Holy City of Jerusalem are all acknowledgements of the vessels around us which transmit holiness, that is, the setting apart of special items to acknowledge the spiritual role they play.

There is a story in the Talmud, Massekhet Shabbat (119b) about the Shabbat angels:

תניא ר' יוסי בר יהודה אומר שני מלאכי השרת מלוין לו לאדם בע"ש מבית הכנסת לביתו אחד טוב ואחד רע וכשבא לביתו ומצא נר דלוק ושלחן ערוך ומטתו מוצעת מלאך טוב אומר יהי רצון שתהא לשבת אחרת כך ומלאך רע עונה אמן בעל כרחו ואם לאו מלאך רע אומר יהי רצון שתהא לשבת אחרת כך ומלאך טוב עונה אמן

Shabbat 119b:3

A Baraita taught that Rabbi Yossi bar Yehudah said: two ministering angels escort a person from the synagogue to his/her home on Friday evening: one good and one bad. And when s/he comes to his house, if s/he finds that the candles are lit and the table is set and his bed is made, the good angel will say: "May it be the will of God that it should be this way next Shabbat as well." And the bad angel is forced to answer "amen" against his will. And if it isn't [like this], the bad angel will say: "May it be the will of God that it should be this way next Shabbat as well." And the good angel is forced to answer "amen" against his will.

R. Yossi bar Yehudah suggests not only that observing Shabbat increases the holiness in the world right now, in real time, but also impacts future holiness. One good turn deserves another, you might say.

We have the potential every day to raise the holiness around us by finding it in the everyday stuff of our lives. 

Just as a glass of wine is not necessarily holy, reciting a berakhah over it at a certain time helps us focus on that holy moment. Just as soldiers engaging in battle might not see themselves as holy, particularly while performing acts that might seem exactly the opposite, so too may their actions ultimately raise the holiness quotient of the world, and we might only realize this or understand it in retrospect. Just as opening a book from the Jewish bookshelf might be interesting or entertaining, but may also eventually help us find our way through a challenging time. 

And of course, on this day of Yizkor, of remembrance, we find the qedushah in recalling the ordinary activities of those whom we have lost: the quirky jokes your brother made, the small kindnesses your father modeled for you by holding the door open for the person behind you, the special recipes your grandmother prepared for family gatherings, sitting next to your mother in shul, the special moments you shared with your spouse. The lives of our parents, our grandparents, our spouses, our siblings, even our children consisted of ordinary actions. And yet, our memory of those things makes them eternal, makes them extraordinary.

Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo, invoking Heschel, put it so well in a piece he wrote a few years back for the Jerusalem Post: 

For Judaism, God is to be found within the mundane – in holy deeds. Judaism is, as Abraham Joshua Heschel states, “the theology of the common deed” (The Insecurity of Freedom). God is concerned with everydayness, with the trivialities of life, which can be raised to high levels without ever leaving the common ground. It is not concerned with the mysteries of heaven, but with the blights of society and the affairs of the marketplace. It is there that we find God. “In doing the finite we are able to perceive the infinite” (Man Is Not Alone).

God’s presence in our lives is demonstrated not with great, astonishing miracles. I’m sorry to say that there will likely never be a bat qol, a heavenly voice, alerting you to the holiness of the moment. Rather, it is the qol demamah daqqah, the still, small voice, murmuring imperceptibly as we scroll through the ordinary interactions of our everyday routines, that reminds us to seek holiness. 

And when we recall those seemingly meaningless bits of life - walking to school with a parent, having coffee with a friend, catching up with your sister at Rosh Hashanah dinner, playing a board game with your family on a lazy Shabbat afternoon - the dust of memory which sticks with us when they are gone, that is what grants them an eternal place in the bond of life. And when we invoke their memory - recalling his saying, her sense of humor - we pay it forward; we pass on that holiness. We sanctify them.

It is through ordinary acts that we ensure the eternality of those whom we remember on this day. It is through making holiness in the context of the mundane that we sanctify our lives, and all life. It is through fulfilling mitzvot in their names that we perceive the infinite.

* A brief word about transliteration: If you have read anything by me, you know that I am very particular about transliterating Hebrew into English, and I use a system that is not only for pronunciation, but also for accurately representing the Hebrew aleph-bet with its English equivalents. It is unfortunate that Hebrew schools do not teach that the Hebrew letter qof (ק) is actually the origin of the Latin q; when you examine them side-by-side you see the resemblance. Yes, a q is somewhat confusing for English-speakers when it appears without a u, but once you make that connection, it is helpful in reinforcing the Hebrew spelling. The letter “k” is descended from the Hebrew kaf (כ), and in the ancient world as well as in some dialects of Hebrew these letters are actually pronounced differently.

An unsettling incident unfolded this week in New Jersey, where a high school yearbook erased the Jewish Student Union from its pages. On the page where the JSU’s photo and names of club members were supposed to be, there were no names, and an unrelated photo of Muslim students appeared where the JSU photo was supposed to be. This literal erasure was quickly seized upon by the mayor of East Brunswick, New Jersey, Brad Cohen, and the local Jewish Federation, among others. There were a smattering of similar yearbook incidents throughout the country.

Now, think for a moment how you might react to this news. Do you find it troubling? If so, why? 

Maybe one reason that this might be upsetting is because of your sense of being part of a collective, the Jewish people. That is, you know that as a Jew you share many things with other Jews: a sense of belonging, aspects of culture, a common history, an ancient language which is now spoken (in its modern reincarnation) by half of our people, a shared literary and ritual tradition.

Maybe this story upsets you because, even though it is a relatively minor slight, it cuts quite deeply into our sense of connection to the Jewish people.

Now, the Torah is somewhat confused on the difference between a people and a nation. The terms “Benei Yisrael” and “am Yisrael” are used interchangeably, but they are not the same. “Benei Yisrael” is plural: it suggests, like the plural English word people, a whole group of individuals, and it specifically suggests that we are all children of Ya’aqov - that is, a family. But when we say “Am,” a singular word, we are suggesting not just the people themselves, but everything else that comes along with nationhood. The Torah frequently refers to “Amkha,” Your nation, connoting our relationship with God. 

I would like to propose that the reason so many seemingly minor incidents, which have increased in frequency and intensity over the last eight months, are so painful is because of our sense of being a part of Am Yisrael, the nation of Israel, rather than simply Benei Yisrael, the people of Israel. October 7th and its aftermath is forcing us to define ourselves in the context of nationhood. Let me explain.

Parashat Bemidbar is entirely about the people of Israel. It opens with identifying the tribes and their leaders, then continues with a census of men eligible to serve as soldiers, lays out the structure of the Israelite encampment, and then describes the roles of the Levi’im (Levites). It’s almost as if it is written by a bureaucrat: numbers and administrative duties.

One might say that the sense of Am Yisrael, of the nation of Israel, is here muted by the simple, clerical character of the text.

Thank God for the Qedushat Levi, Rabbi Levi Yitzhaq of Berdichev, who, in noting the total of 603,550 that the Torah counts in the census, tells us that this number corresponds to the number of letters in the Torah. Every single letter counts; so too, as people, each of us belongs, each of us is important as an essential piece of the collective Jewish nation. The loss of a single Jewish person is a great loss to our nation. We are all interconnected.

Now, let’s face it: We have always lost Jews. Throughout Jewish history. Consider the expulsions and wars throughout our history, which were never bloodless. Consider the forced and intentional conversions, the pogroms, forced conscriptions, the Holocaust, and of course the forces of assimilation.

It is, in fact, absolutely amazing that we are still here. It is a tribute to our resilience.

And given that history, it is not entirely surprising that the modern period awakened a contemporary Jewish sense of nationhood, which in turn yielded the Zionist imperative: to seek self-determination in our historical homeland, the one from which we were exiled for a second time 2,000 years ago, the one which we always face in prayer, the one which we invoke in our liturgy multiple times every day. וַהֲבִיאֵֽנוּ לְשָׁלוֹם מֵאַרְבַּע כַּנְפוֹת הָאָֽרֶץ וְתוֹלִיכֵֽנוּ קוֹמְ֒מִיּוּת לְאַרְצֵֽנוּ. “Bring us safely from the four corners of the Earth, and lead us in dignity to our land.”

The Jewish story is different from that of any other nation. The French were never exiled from their land. The Chinese did not need to approach the UN for statehood.

Thanks to the Babylonians and the Romans, we were scattered among all the nations of the world. And we held onto the dream of return for two millennia in our rituals, our prayers, our Torah conversation. The Babylonians effectively created religious Zionism in the 6th c. BCE; the anonymous author of Psalm 137 wrote (v. 1):

 עַ֥ל נַהֲר֨וֹת ׀ בָּבֶ֗ל שָׁ֣ם יָ֭שַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִ֑ינוּ בְּ֝זָכְרֵ֗נוּ אֶת־צִיּֽוֹן׃

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept as we thought of Zion.

And in the current moment, the dramatic rise of anti-Jewish activity around the world elevates the need for Zionism. We are not disparate, unconnected groups davening in Pittsburgh or Buenos Aires or Kiev or Singapore. We are a nation with a homeland. 

Three weeks ago, the Federation’s celebration of Yom HaAtzma’ut (Israel’s Independence Day) began with a pride-filled march from Beth Shalom to the JCC. About 300 folks marched, including many members of this synagogue. We were arrayed in blue and white and holding Israeli flags aloft.

As we came to the intersection of Murray and Darlington, we encountered a group of eight members of Jewish Voice for Peace, silently holding aloft posters displaying dead children in Gaza. JVP is an anti-Zionist organization.

Their position (which you can find on their website) is that Zionism is a 19th-century, colonial movement that places European Jews at the top of a nationalist hierarchy and by definition dispossesses and displaces Palestinians. In describing the State of Israel, they freely use terms like apartheid, genocide, racist, etc. They also feel quite strongly that anti-Zionism need not overlap with anti-Semitism.

Now, while it may be true that political Zionism emerged in the latter half of the 19th century in Europe, it is absolutely not a European movement. On the contrary: Zionism was brought into being by people who saw no future for the Jews among other nations, whether in Europe or anywhere else. The manifesto of the BILU in 1882, called for establishing a Jewish national home in Israel, following major pogroms in Russian cities. It opens with Hillel’s words from Pirqei Avot (1:14): אם אין אני לי מי לי? If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Then it says the following:

Sleepest thou, O our nation? What hast thou been doing till 1882? Sleeping and dreaming the false dream of assimilation. Now, thank God, … the pogroms have awakened thee from thy charmed sleep. Thine eyes are open to recognize the cloudy structure of delusive hopes. Canst thou listen silently to the flaunts and the mockery of thine enemies?

What motivated Theodor Herzl to convene the First Zionist Congress in 1897? It was his experience as a journalist covering the antisemitism of the Dreyfus affair in the mid-1890s. Herzl saw that even though Jews had gained citizenship in European nations, he was convinced that they would never be truly French or German or Hungarian, and that the Jews needed their own state. And of course, he was not alone.

And Zionism was already baked into the Jewish psyche. We had never abandoned that dream; modern political tools made Jewish self-determination through the establishment of a nation in Israel a possibility. The flowering of Jewish redemption had arrived.

The Zionist mission was never “colonization” or “displacement” or “dispossession” or “genocide” or any such post-modern epithet. The goal was fulfilling the ancient dream of return, an essential plank of Jewish nationhood.

Anti-Zionism denies that we are a people with a shared destiny, a shared culture and ritual and yes, a homeland. And given all of what has happened in the last eight months, we know now more than ever since World War II, that we need that homeland.

Zionism is, in fact, integral to what it means to be a Jew. Anybody who denies this is, as they say today, gaslighting. You don’t have to live in Israel to be Jewish, but we cannot allow the world to forbid us the right to do so. We need Israel like the French need France and the Chinese need China.

(Another claim of anti-Zionist groups like JVP is that the very existence of the State of Israel creates antisemitism. This is a baseless and offensive charge; it is blaming the victim. There was certainly no shortage of anti-Jewish activity prior to 1948, or even 1882.)

If there is anything to be learned from the current moment, it is that the BILU and Herzl were right. When the new encampment at the Cathedral of Learning was established this week, one of the protestors’ demands was for Pitt to sever its relationship with Hillel. After the encampment was vacated, they retracted this particular demand, but added that it was “endorsed by concerned members of our Jewish community who wish to see it replaced with genuine Jewish community spaces unconnected to a violent state.”

Anti-Zionism is a denial of who we are as a nation. And that is fundamentally antisemitic. The Jews who claim to be anti-Zionist are myopically denying their historical roots; while they may claim membership in the Jewish people, they dismiss those elements of our shared heritage which make us a nation. They have opted out.

One final thought: You don’t have to be anti-Zionist to criticize the Israeli government. Israelis do it all the time, and you know that I have no great love for the current coalition; a new round of elections cannot come soon enough. But I am a zealous supporter of the Jewish nation in the wider sense, and committed to the essential truth that the multi-cultural, multi-religious, democratic State of Israel is an essential part of who we are today. 

Am Yisrael Ḥai. The nation of Israel lives and thrives.

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