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This time of year there’s a lot of spookiness in the air. I wish it were from Halloween. Instead, it’s from election season. As an Ohio voter, I can tell you that the ghoulishness of attack ads has reached a level of inhumanity that many, myself included, find repulsive. It’s hard to know what’s scariest: the possible election outcomes? Or the fact that millions of eligible voters will not vote?

Photo by Jennifer Burk

This week, we read from Parashat Vayera, one of my very favorite Torah portions. In one section, we see our patriarch, Abraham, negotiating with God over the existence or destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, two cities ravaged with corruption. We read:

בראשית י״ח:כ״ג-כ״ה

(כג) וַיִּגַּ֥שׁ אַבְרָהָ֖ם וַיֹּאמַ֑ר הַאַ֣ף תִּסְפֶּ֔ה צַדִּ֖יק עִם־רָשָֽׁע׃ (כד) אוּלַ֥י יֵ֛שׁ חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים צַדִּיקִ֖ם בְּת֣וֹךְ הָעִ֑יר הַאַ֤ף תִּסְפֶּה֙ וְלֹא־תִשָּׂ֣א לַמָּק֔וֹם לְמַ֛עַן חֲמִשִּׁ֥ים הַצַּדִּיקִ֖ם אֲשֶׁ֥ר בְּקִרְבָּֽהּ׃ (כה) חָלִ֨לָה לְּךָ֜ מֵעֲשֹׂ֣ת ׀ כַּדָּבָ֣ר הַזֶּ֗ה לְהָמִ֤ית צַדִּיק֙ עִם־רָשָׁ֔ע וְהָיָ֥ה כַצַּדִּ֖יק כָּרָשָׁ֑ע חָלִ֣לָה לָּ֔ךְ הֲשֹׁפֵט֙ כׇּל־הָאָ֔רֶץ לֹ֥א יַעֲשֶׂ֖ה מִשְׁפָּֽט׃

Genesis 18:23-25

(23) Abraham came forward and said, “Will You sweep away the innocent along with the guilty? (24) What if there should be fifty innocent within the city; will You then wipe out the place and not forgive it for the sake of the innocent fifty who are in it? (25) Far be it from You to do such a thing, to bring death upon the innocent as well as the guilty, so that innocent and guilty fare alike. Far be it from You! Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?”

What a poignant question. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice? Abraham’s challenge of God is audacious, chutzpadik even. He is questioning whether the exercise of God’s power can be just if innocent people suffer alongside the guilty.

Most people in Abraham’s position wouldn’t speak out against God. Most people, honestly, wouldn’t speak out against another person making this kind of choice. This interaction between Abraham and God makes me think about how alert and attentive we have to be when those in authority (those we trust, and those who claim to represent us or our values, or simply those who end up being in power) act in ways that trouble our moral conscience.

In Judaism is About Love, Rabbi Shai Held writes,

In one of the most remarkable stories in the Torah, God is moved to respond to the rampant corruption and lawlessness of Sodom and Gomorrah. But before taking action, God makes a choice to consult with Abraham. Alarmed at the prospect of God acting unjustly, Abraham protests, demanding to know whether God will “sweep away the innocent along with the guilty” and asking indignantly, “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” “Far be it from You,” Abraham twice boldly admonishes God (Genesis 18:23, 25).…God does not merely tolerate Abraham’s argument, God actively seeks it out…God wants Abraham to train his descendants to do what is just and right, but Abraham cannot teach what he himself has not yet learned. Abraham needs to learn how to stand up for justice and how to plead for mercy, so God places him in a situation in which he can do just that. God wants a teacher and a prophet who will not always acquiesce and submit. The God of the Bible actively wants protest (Held 57).

God, then, invites Abraham into this negotiation specifically to teach Abraham that he must stand up for justice and plead for mercy if he is to be an exemplar for future generations. God makes space for Abraham’s protest--a staggering choice, given God’s supposed omnipotence. And, breathtakingly, it is Abraham’s moral intuitions and his pushing back against God that unlock their future relationship, making the early covenant between God and Abraham so poignant. We could interpret this as Abraham, in this part of the story, being prepared to teach his moral descendants (us!) a moral tradition that puts courage over obedience.

Abraham’s challenge seems like an essential expression of his faithfulness. What if we measure our commitment to our country and our community beyond who our leaders are, but in how seriously we hold them accountable to the ideals they claim to represent? What if this is indeed our purpose as members of civil society?

In the Jewish tradition, we have a lot of teachings that could be symbolized by concentric circles. In the Babylonian Talmud, the rabbis teach:

Anyone who had the capability to effectively protest the sinful conduct of the members of his household and did not protest, he himself is apprehended for the sins of the members of his household and punished. If he is in a position to protest the sinful conduct of the people of his town, and he fails to do so, he is apprehended for the sins of the people of his town. If he is in a position to protest the sinful conduct of the whole world, and he fails to do so, he is apprehended for the sins of the whole world (Shabbat 54b).

This talmudic passage invites us to consider that we have responsibility. First, in our innermost circles, we have to have a reckoning of what we tolerate among the people closest to us. In our broader community, we have to call ourselves to action when we see wrongdoing in our institutions and our neighborhoods. In the wider world, we have to wonder what responsibility remains in our hands when harm feels beyond our immediate reach to resolve, but it is not beyond our ability or capacity to influence for the better.

Capacity is tricky. It’s a finite resource, and we all have a different amount of energy and power. The talmudic passage here connects responsibility to our ability to intervene. When we think about the United States, we know we cannot control every governmental decision or political outcome or injustice. But we have to consider, honestly, if we are doing what is within our power. Jewish moral responsibility requires recognizing what is wrong and considering what we can do about it.

Today, Israeli voters are coming out in long lines (with record high voter turnout) to participate in their civic duty. Some statistics estimate that as many as 80,000 Israelis living abroad have returned to Israel to vote. Early voting has already begun in the United States, ahead of Election Day this coming Tuesday. There’s a lot on the line in both elections, as there always seems to be.

Our civic duty includes evaluating what standards of justice should govern those entrusted with public power; how we hold leaders accountable when their actions are in conflict with the values they profess; what responsibilities citizens have to protect the processes that make democratic accountability possible; and, what does it mean to remain committed to a country while honestly confronting its failures?

Israel and the United States have different styles of democracies, different histories, and different immediate challenges. But even in their difference, we might apply a Jewish ethical framework to both: power is not exempt from moral scrutiny, and citizenship entails responsibilities that go beyond personal preference.

In the Sodom and Gomorrah story, Abraham’s relationship with God is sustained through argument. What a powerful example this is for us! Our silence is not a gift; our acquiescence is not a sign of loyalty. We can be committed to our democracy without defending every decision made by our government or our people. Love of country need not mean unquestioning loyalty to that country’s leadership.

I hear so many in my circles wrestle with the feeling of political homelessness, meaning they feel out of place in the political affiliations in which they previously felt at home, often due to antisemitism. The reasons to feel that way are real, but I hope those who feel politically homeless don’t choose to step out of the system. Expecting perfection from an elected representative or a political party and not finding it is not reason enough not to vote.

When confronted with options on the ballot that feel lackluster or insufficient, I pray we may consider which candidates or policies seem concerned with human dignity and health and safety, and which ones will keep our children safe. We may not have the same end result from that calculation. We all carry different fears, different motivations, different experiences that shape us into who we are as humans and, then, as voters. But if there’s an option that restores your faith in humanity, do some research and see if that’s a candidate who might earn your vote, a candidate whom you might help hold accountable as your elected representative.

Photo by Smithsonian

If you’ve read my articles or heard my sermons, you know I love democracy. For recent evidence, please take a look at my Yom Kippur morning sermon, “Don’t Give Up the Ship.”

Our American democracy depends on people (including us!) fulfilling our responsibilities even when the outcome is not necessarily the one we wanted. There’s already a lot of suspicion being thrown around on the part of our presidential administration about the legitimacy of this election and whether its results can/should/will be certified. The folks over at Protect Democracy have a handy guide that helps explain what happens after we cast our votes. In short, when we cast our ballots, that represents our choice; respecting the lawful counting and certification process after that protects the integrity of everyone’s choice. This is an essential component of the democratic system. As citizens, we have a responsibility to have a working understanding of these processes, recognizing when they are threatened legitimacy, and supporting lawful accountability.

Think back to that talmudic teaching. Responsibility in our civic duty involves attending to the less-visible mechanisms that preserve the American people’s ability to participate in collective self-government.

We often talk about elections as if democracy were a single day: we cast our ballots, wait for the results, and discover what kind of future awaits us. But democracy is sustained by countless decisions, many of them made far from the voting booth. It depends on people who carry out their responsibilities even when the stakes are high and the outcome is unwelcome. The work of citizenship, like Abraham’s work of justice, cannot be reduced to whether we get what we want.

Just before the Sodom and Gomorrah story, the Torah portion begins with our matriarch, Sarah, laughing when she overhears a prophecy that even in her old age she will conceive and bear a son. She laughs because the promise seems absolutely impossible. That laughter response is a reaction that reflects the distance between what she hoped for, and what her lived experience taught her to expect.

So, Abraham shows us we must challenge injustice. Shabbat 54b reminds us we are responsible for using all that is within our capacity to fight for justice. And Sarah reminds us that we may not always be able to imagine how the future might unfold, and we can’t guarantee that our efforts will produce the outcome we long for.

This is emotionally exhausting, and it’s the reality of the election season. We fear what might happen (or not), we feel exhausted at the repeated political struggle and the shifting power dynamics, the tides of authoritarianism, and we feel ever tempted to imagine one election will fix everything (or worse, we imagine that nothing we do matters).

Judaism does not teach us nor mandate false optimism. We don’t know everything that is possible, and uncertainty is not reason enough to abandon our responsibility. Hope is critical to the work. It is the willingness to keep working toward justice without certainty that we will see it fulfilled with our own eyes.

Abraham’s legacy here is that he was willing to speak when the outcome was uncertain, to insist that power answer to justice, and to take seriously his responsibility to the world beyond himself. That is what he was called to teach his descendants (again--that’s us). It is what our tradition continues to ask of us. We cannot guarantee what this election season will bring. We cannot know how quickly our society will move toward justice, or how much work will remain for the generations that follow us. But we can decide what we will tolerate, what we will challenge, and what we will teach those who come after us. We do not need certainty that justice will prevail in order to insist that it must.

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Our ancient ancestors were quite wise in crafting the arc of this time of year. From work of the head and heart, we move into a festival whose primary goals are to rejoice in the festival, host and be hosted, and spend time in nature. We are supposed to spend time in sukkot, temporary hut-like shelters, where the roofs have to be permeable enough to see the stars and feel rain drops.

Sukkot is a festival where we bear witness to the changing of the seasons, as it marks the fall harvest. We decorate our sukkot with natural materials that, by the end of the weeklong holiday, are crispy and frizzled and browner than when we started.

Each of our festivals has an accompanying sacred text. During Sukkot, we read the book of Ecclesiastes, or Kohelet. It’s a perfect scroll to read during the holiday, because it features an elder teaching the wisdom he has gleaned throughout his life. His major takeaways? Life is short, so enjoy it while you can, because you can’t take it with you.

I had the chance to teach about Kohelet in our synagogue’s sukkah, and the conversation was intergenerational and really meaningful. Hearing folks reflect on Kohelet’s teachings that everything in life has its season, that we should soak in joy even if it’s fleeting, that all life is vanity, that human mortality is certain…it was a robust and interesting conversation that really stuck with me. It felt deeply human to wrestle with these ideas about our lives in general and what it means to be alive.

As a chronically online millennial, I feel like I’ve heard lots of different takes on the current state of AI and its usage. I’ve developed my own opinions, which are evolving and changing as I continue to explore and learn more. Lately, coverage in the news has varied from “look at this modern marvel and how much time it saves us” to “AI is going to be the end of humanity” and everything in between and beyond.

Yesterday, I heard an interview about AI that stopped me in my tracks. On the New York Times podcast, “The Daily,” Rachel Abrams spoke with Cornell math professor, Steven Strogatz. I almost didn’t listen to the episode, because I have AI-talking-head fatigue. I’m so glad I did, though!

In their conversation, Dr. Strogatz talked about the way that artificial intelligence has been able to solve math puzzles that humans have been wrestling with for years and, in some cases, generations. He shared about the delight and seduction of using a brain to solve a puzzle or a problem, and how he cherishes that sense of satisfaction that comes after the deep thinking. This really resonated with me!

Ultimately, the conversation was a reflection about how AI is changing the scene for mathematicians, and the wonder and grief these technological developments have caused. At one point, Dr. Strogatz described a couple of the mathematicians that he’s known and admired, and he spoke of them with such heart that even though I’d never heard of them, I found myself quite moved.

As he spoke about the grief that AI’s successes are causing within the math community, he said we’re losing “the satisfaction that we get from solving problems, and the joy that we get as a community to work on things together…all that, the human stuff. There’s a certain kind of hard-boil kind of person who says that’s not that valuable….a sensitive person acting in good faith gets it.” I love his framing here, and it resonates so deeply with me. Grappling with ideas and trying to discover a new learning is something that drives me, and I find it of such high value.

Photo by Marissa Lewis

Then, towards the end of the interview, he does something absolutely incredible. He starts talking about the way he’s been thinking about the meaning of life, and what’s the point of it all. On his journey to understand this, he was reminded of the song, “Turn, Turn, Turn,” by The Byrds, the lyrics of which come from Ecclesiastes. Dr. Strogatz says he had never read the book before, so he started exploring.

Strogatz noted Ecclesiastes’ writer’s description of a very dark-seeming conclusion: that there is no point, everything we do is in vain and accomplishes nothing. The writer of Ecclesiastes, Strogatz says, teaches that he saw that the race is not always to the swift, like the fastest person doesn’t necessarily win. The battle is not to the strong.

At this point, Dr. Strogatz starts choking up. As he teaches the interviewer about his learnings, he tells her:

“In other words, people don’t get what they deserve. Life is unfair. Time and chance happen to us all. There’s a lot of randomness. No matter how strong or fast we are, it’s true for all of us…Who wants to live in a world like that?

You’re a blip, you only live a short time, so what are you going to do while you’re here? This is where we are in math. What’s the point? If the AI can do math better than any human being, sure, I could sit there and learn from it, but I want to discover things too. I want that thrill.

…So you could see why I'm looking to this ancient wisdom. And as I understand it, the lesson is that your life is precious because it's short, that you have to make the most of it while you're here. So there's another line in there that says, everything is beautiful in it's time. But if everything is beautiful in its time, we get to have a turn where we're in love, we're creative, we do what's meaningful, we get to walk our dog, whatever. We do have a time. Otherwise, we're dust, right? We're ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The beautiful part is the in-between.”

At this point, Rachel, the interviewer, starts crying, too. Naturally, so do I.

So Rachel asks him, “Are you saying AI is going to make you more religious?”

He says, “It sure seems like it, doesn’t it? But I don’t think it’s about God. I think it’s about people. Because that I do believe in.”

She said, “You’re appreciating what makes us human more, what makes our time here special.”

Laughing, in gratitude, he says, “This was supposed to be a math show!”

Listen. I love that this mathematician happened upon this ancient wisdom. I love his framing. I love that he connects Kohelet to his own quandaries of feeling like a human being on the verge of being displaced by artificial intelligence. I love that sometimes our sacred texts surprise us in their relevance.

Mostly, I love being human. And so today I offer this prayer of gratitude:

Source of life, thank you for my life, body, and soul.
Thank you for my mind, which animates me with a sense of curiosity and purpose.
May I make the most of my time between ash and ash, dust and dust.
May I have the wisdom to know when it’s a good season, and the resilience to make it through the rest.
May I perceive and hold the wonders of this life, even in my human fallibility.

Amen!

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When I was 15 and learning how to drive, someone taught me the right way to merge onto a highway, to park alongside a curb (we called it maneuverability, instead of parallel parking), and to yield at an intersection. Someone also taught me a way to hold my keys between my fingers to protect myself if I ever found myself along walking somewhere from my car.

Photo by Filip Szalbot

Many of you are familiar with this way of holding keys. For many, it’s become second nature. You lock the car, you wedge your keys between your fingers like a bonus set of tiger claws, and you pay attention to where you’re going, scanning for any possible attackers. (As an aside: when I showed my husband a draft of this piece, he told me he had never heard of this way of holding keys.)

Ultimately, self-defense experts are split on whether the claw grip (with keys between fingers) or hammer grip (with the key sticking out the bottom of the fist) is more effective.

Either way, keys are great, because you usually have them on you. In a recent meeting, my colleague was talking about a product that’s a scrunchie that unfolds into a stretchy lid to help prevent someone slipping a drug into an open cup. It’s marketed as a great gift for girls who are high school seniors, so they can be safe when they get to college.

There’s a whole economy of similar safety gear: pink canisters of key-chain pepper spray, rape whistles, strobing flashlights that have high decibel alarms to get attention and stun attackers, and even tasers are marketed particularly to women.

This week, it’s been hard to escape coverage of the so-called “Cornell 7,” the group of seven former Cornell students accused of drugging and gang raping a fellow Cornell student in 2024. The brave Jane Doe has come forward with this lawsuit, claiming that in addition to the violence she experienced, the university failed to protect her. Some chilling details have emerged, including the fact that at almost 2:00 a.m., one fraternity member sent a message to the group chat suggesting that a woman was upstairs and available for sex. The woman in question, Jane Doe, alleges she was already intoxicated and was further drugged by the men.

There’s a notion in certain circles that women are dramatic, that the way we socialize with each other is filled with more “drama” and intensity than circles of friends that are all men. To be fair, we get great examples of this in reality tv (including in my guilty pleasure show, The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City) where women appear screaming at each other in basically every episode.

However, while this may look like drama, what it actually is is accountability. Women tend to hold their friends accountable. We tend to hold each other to a high standard, and when we are let down by each other, in many social groups it is common to call that out (or call each other in). This is different from how men’s groups are seen in our culture, where guys are “chill” and don’t have any “drama.” I would like to suggest that perhaps we don’t have enough circles of men who are holding each other accountable in their group.

When the text message to the group chat was sent that a drugged woman was available to be raped, what was the reaction in the group chat? Did the rest of the fraternity brothers say, “hey man, that’s not okay.”? Or “is she able to give consent?” They did not. Instead, they allegedly texted, “shop still open?”

In the Talmud (BT Sanhedrin 75a), the rabbis discuss a case where a man sees a woman and becomes enamored.

מַר רַב יְהוּדָה אָמַר רַב: מַעֲשֶׂה בְּאָדָם אֶחָד שֶׁנָּתַן עֵינָיו בְּאִשָּׁה אַחַת, וְהֶעֱלָה לִבּוֹ טִינָא. וּבָאוּ וְשָׁאֲלוּ לָרוֹפְאִים, וְאָמְרוּ: אֵין לוֹ תַּקָּנָה עַד שֶׁתִּבָּעֵל. אָמְרוּ חֲכָמִים: יָמוּת וְאַל תִּבָּעֵל לוֹ. תַּעֲמוֹד לְפָנָיו עֲרוּמָּה: יָמוּת וְאַל תַּעֲמוֹד לְפָנָיו עֲרוּמָּה. תְּסַפֵּר עִמּוֹ מֵאֲחוֹרֵי הַגָּדֵר: יָמוּת וְלֹא תְּסַפֵּר עִמּוֹ מֵאֲחוֹרֵי הַגָּדֵר.

The man’s lust was so great he became deathly ill. They came and asked the healers what should be done with him, and the healers said that he would have no cure until he has sex with this woman. The sages said: let him die. The healers said that she should at least stand naked before him. The sages said: let him die. The healers said that she should at least speak with him from behind a fence, so he could at least get a small amount of pleasure from their encounter. The sages said: let him die.

I admire the team at the Cornell Daily Sun who have been blowing the lid off this story. Here’s the thing: I don’t expect these men to be held accountable. After all, look at who’s on our Supreme Court. Look at our president. If we see them as indicators of majority culture, we’re not living in an American society that cares about women’s safety. Instead, we’re living in a society where men who have been credibly accused of sexual assault go on to the most powerful positions in our democratic system. Consider as well the fact that there has still not been a reckoning for the Epstein Files. Rape culture is a blight on us all.

The rabbis in Sanhedrin 75a give us something simple: your desire does not give you a claim on another person’s body. Even if it feels like an emergency. A person isn’t an “open shop.” A person is a person.

For years, I have understood the keys between my fingers as a symbol of prudence, because it was a small thing I could do to protect myself in a world were I need protecting. But I’ve also known for a long time that there’s something else we need to focus on: what are we teaching the people who might hurt me, or someone else? Our children should not have to grow up believing that safety is something they can achieve if they’re careful enough, if they have the right accessories, if they hold their keys the right way. The burden of preventing violence should not rest on the person most vulnerable to that violence.

We must teach our children to protect each other from becoming the kind of person who would harm someone else by modeling this behavior. We must teach them to interrupt jokes, to be brave enough to speak out in person and in the group chat. We need to teach our children that when someone is incapacitated they are vulnerable and not an opportunity. We need to teach them that friendship means refusing to let someone else a friend become cruel.

We need to teach our children to say, “No. That is not okay.” with their full voices.

I pray for healing for Jane Doe and for everyone whose lives have been changed by sexual violence. And I also pray for the day when accountability is so expected, and so deeply woven into our culture, that when a message like “shop still open?” comes through, it is met with voices saying: No, man. We don’t do that here.

Together may we carry the burden of making one another safe.

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In June 1813, during the war of 1812, US Navy Captain James Lawrence fell mortally wounded in battle in the waters off Boston. As his men tended to him, Lawrence commanded, “Don’t give up the ship.” Lawrence’s dying order so inspired his friend, Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, that Perry had the words sewn onto a blue battle flag. During the naval battle of Lake Erie on September 10th, 1813, that banner flew from Perry’s flagship, the USS Lawrence, named for his fallen comrade. Perry’s force won a decisive victory over the British at Lake Erie, turning the tide of the American forces. “Don’t give up the ship” became a battlecry for the US Navy.

The Battle of Lake Erie by Edward Percy Moran

What is the ship that we, today, in 2026, are being told not to abandon? There could be so many things that make us want to give up. In this moment in our Jewish and American history, the outlook is complicated. Since its founding, American democracy has been in many ways a unique environment for the Jewish people. A pluralistic democracy has never existed perfectly, but what we’ve seen throughout American history is an environment in which Jews have generally been free to pursue success and community. Jews have been important contributors to American civil society for generations.

Recently, rising trends in antisemitism and political violence, as well as an erosion in trust in our democratic institutions, have demonstrated that the health of our democracy is weakening. As we start this new Jewish year, we cannot give up on the possibility that our institutions can actually serve justly. We cannot give up on the work. And most importantly, we cannot give up on each other.

This is difficult, because it is very tempting to give up. We greet this new Jewish year during midterm election season, and it’s hard to escape the hatred and vitriol contained in political ads right now. The accusations and claims serve to further polarize us in a society that already feels dangerously split. A year ago, I stood on the bimah of the Silver Sanctuary and preached about the rise of authoritarianism. Don’t worry--that’s not our focus today. But since then, our progress towards authoritarianism seems to have advanced. What I notice in conversations is a growing feeling that our institutions are irredeemably corrupt, that courts don’t matter, that Congress doesn’t matter, that facts don’t matter, that elections don’t matter. That nothing we do will change anything. This scares me, because once people believe that, they stop participating.

Last year, former federal attorney Joyce Vance published a book entitled, Giving Up is Unforgiveable: A Manual for Keeping Democracy. She writes, “Hopelessness is where autocrats try to push you so that you’ll stop opposing them….Refuse to give up. Don’t let anyone convince you that democracy isn’t worth fighting for because it contains flaws, even serious ones. Without democracy, we wouldn’t have a shot at fixing them” (Vance 79). She goes on to say, “The most important piece of knowledge to carry with you is that you are not powerless. That’s a myth, constructed by the very same people who understand that an autocrat’s biggest vulnerability is a well-informed, engaged citizenry” (Vance 139).

I think many people feel disenfranchised and even apathetic about what is happening in society right now. There’s a sense of despair, which I fear is morphing in real time into a form of surrender, instead of engagement. This is where the process of teshuvah comes in. This year, I want us to think about teshuvah, sacred return, as a way of refusing resignation. Rabbi Shai Held teaches in the name of Rav Kook that “What we confess on YK is not our lack of worth, but precisely the opposite: we take responsibility for the fact that we insist on living as if we were worthless, and as if the hour did not need us” (Held 38).

This reframes our liturgy slightly. Consider the vidui, or confessional section of our service throughout Yom Kippur. There, we confess our sins, side by side. Al cheit shechatanu l’fanecha: for the sins we have committed before you, God. Then together we recite a litany of sins, some of which apply to us directly, some of which do not, but we say them because we support our neighbors, adding strength to their voices. If we take this teaching from Rav Kook seriously, we can amend our al cheit list to go beyond, “I did something bad.” Al cheit shecahatanu: For the sin we have committed by failing to believe our voices mattered. For the sin we have committed by failing to understand our neighbors’ dignity mattered. For the sin we have committed by failing to believe that the institutions of our society were ours to protect. For the sin we have committed by failing to believe that the hour needed us.

Teshuvah can be our antidote to fatalism. After all, teshuvah is based on the premise that things can be different because we flawed and imperfect human beings can choose to act differently. If nothing could change, teshvuah would be meaningless. To believe in teshuvah is to believe in possibility, in the conviction that the future is not predetermined, that we can build a better future together.

“The path to autocracy[, Joyce Vance says,] is littered with battered and broken institutions. It’s important to acknowledge their problems and commit to improving them, but not abandon the institutions altogether” (Vance 39). Vance is teaching us that one answer to broken institutions is to demand that they become worthy of the ideals they claim to uphold.

Judaism has a complicated relationship with authority and communal structures. Since our ancient days, our tradition has held evidence of arguments with those in power, pushing back and trying to correct course. Abraham negotiates with God, Moses challenges Pharaoh, the prophets challenge the kings, and the rabbis go on to argue with one another constantly. Our tradition does not require us to trust systems simply because they exist. Instead, Judaism sees structures of communal life as existing to serve just causes, and therefore we have an obligation to hold them accountable.

In Joyce Vance’s book, she teaches that, “In Federalist [paper] 51, James Madison aptly characterized justice as the goal of having a government in the first place: “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society. It ever has been and ever will be pursued until it is obtained, or until liberty be lost in the pursuit.” (Vance 33). Justice is the end of government. The entire point.

This past March, I traveled to San Francisco for the annual gathering of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. At the CCAR convention, one of the many dynamic speakers we learned with was Aaron Dorfman, who runs the transpartisan organization A More Perfect Union. Their vision is of a resilient American democracy that sustains thriving Jewish life, and the work of A More Perfect Union is to mobilize the American Jewish community to protect and strengthen American Democracy.

A More Perfect Union is trying to face the many threats to democracy with courageous action. As the separation of powers is undermined and more power becomes centralized in the executive branch, we are bearing witness to the authoritarian hallmarks of the closing of civic spaces, with individual civil liberties blatantly under attack. Overall we see a discrediting of democracy and normalization of authoritarianism.

One thing that Aaron Dorfman pointed out was the troubling lack of unified uproar about these dynamics from Jewish organizations across the country. Powerfully, Dorfman reflected that it’s hard to love something that feels broken. On the left, this tends to manifest as a lack of engagement. On the right, this tends to look like a refusal to admit that anything is broken.

When our founders came together and wrote down the concept of “a more perfect union,” in the preamble to our Constitution, they did something so wise. There cannot be a perfect union. The same way none of us as individuals can achieve perfection. We are flawed and we make mistakes and we are imperfect. And we have teshuvah as a way of working to improve ourselves.

There is a Jewish teaching that comes from our sages that encourages us to participate in the work of teshvuah on a broader, communal scale. It’s a teaching that offers us hope as a discipline. Our sages teach us that Rabbi Tarfon1 would say:

לא עליך המלאכה לגמור, ולא אתה בן חורין ליבטל ממנה

“It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to neglect it.”

You are not responsible for fixing everything. But you also can’t walk away and abandon the work. Joyce Vance sees democracy as a practice, and it dovetails so beautifully with Yom Kippur. In society and in life, we make mistakes, we learn, we return, we keep practicing.

In Bereshit Rabbah, we read a stunning midrash on the beginning of Parashat Lech Lecha. In the aftermath of the Tower of Babel, as humanity exists in a state of chaos, God says to Abram, “lech lecha--go forth from your land.”

In the midrash, Rabbi Yitzchak says that God sending Abram out of his homeland to see the promised land may be compared to a man who was traveling from place to place when he saw a burning palace. The traveler wondered aloud, “Is it possible that this palace lacks a person to look after it? This palace is on fire!” The owner of the building looked out and said, “I am the owner of the palace.” Similarly, because Abraham our father said, “Is it possible that this palace has no master, no one to look after it?,” the Holy Blessed One looked out and said to him, “I am the Master of the Universe.” … Hence, God said to Abram, Lech Lecha.

Photo by Ivan Prokhorov

This midrash is fascinating. Here, Rabbi Yitzchak wants us to imagine our ancestor, Abraham, looking out at a world already on fire, a world built to burn. A world of confusion and chaos and brokenness. He thinks to himself, wow, nobody is guarding this palace! God breaks through, and reveals Godself to Abraham. Perhaps we can understand this similarly to the burning bush. Both Moses and Abraham pause and notice that something is aflame. They turn their attention to destruction, and in so doing, they encounter the Holy One of Blessing.

What do we do when we notice the palace is burning? We might think: someone else should really do something. Someone should sound an alarm. Or, we might think that it’s always been like this, so we can just let it burn. Or, we might think that the people running the palace caused the fire, so we can walk away. Or, perhaps we might even dare to think: the palace was never my responsibility to begin with.

Friends, this midrash about Abraham, and this connection to Moses noticing the bush that burned unconsumed, teach us that our job is to stop, and notice, and take responsibility. To bring it all together in our own day, the democratic project of our society is a palace that none of us built alone, but it is still ours to tend.

We borrow our democracy, and our world, from the generations that follow us. The world has always been burning. Our job is to stop walking past it. Our ancestors are proof that progress is possible, not guaranteed.

And to my young people here in this sacred space today, know that you matter too, already--not just in the future. Gloria Steinem, of blessed memory, once said to a group of kids, “You know what is unjust and what needs to be fixed. Children are born knowing. Kids say two things: ‘that’s not fair’ and ‘you’re not the boss of me.’ The entire social justice movement is based on those principles.” You have the power to move us forward, to guide us and steer us towards our pursuit of justice.

It would be disingenuous to stand before you on this holiest day of the year and preach about democracy but not insist that we have to apply the principles universally, including to Israel. Our Jewish ethics encourage us to consider something beyond the idea of American democracy. We have to consider dignity, freedom, and humanity human values. Just as our American democracy is facing serious challenges, so too is Israel’s. The normalization of settler violence in the West Bank and the dehumanization of Palestinians force us to confront the uncomfortable truth that loving a country does not allow for suspending moral judgment about what that country does.

In Judaism, love and criticism are expressions of the same covenantal commitment. We don’t abandon an institution because it fails to live up to its ideals; we demand that it live up to them. If democracy matters because human beings deserve dignity, we cannot defend democracy only when it protects certain people. Can we love our institutions enough to tell the truth about their failures?

Our prophet Jeremiah challenges us, here. We read,
שִׁמְעוּ־נָ֣א זֹ֔את עַ֥ם סָכָ֖ל וְאֵ֣ין לֵ֑ב עֵינַ֤יִם לָהֶם֙ וְלֹ֣א יִרְא֔וּ

אׇזְנַ֥יִם לָהֶ֖ם וְלֹ֥א יִשְׁמָֽעוּ׃

Hear this, O foolish people, Devoid of intelligence, That have eyes but can’t see, That have ears but can’t hear! (Jer. 5:21)

Yom Kippur requires us to see what we have not wanted to see, what we have concealed from ourselves. We must tell the truth about ourselves. I suggest that democratic citizenship starts with the same spiritual discipline: keep your eyes open; resist letting repeated cruelties seem ordinary or normal; persist in a quest to discern what is true; and do not resign yourself to moral numbness in the face of political exhaustion. Remember that authoritarianism thrives on overwhelming people until they feel powerless, and disinformation serves to manipulate that exhaustion.

Our work this Yom Kippur, and this election cycle, is to practice, not perfect.

During his presentation, Aaron Dorfman provided several ways to engage that serve as an antidote to feeling disenfranchised and apathetic: We should make our commitment to democracy explicit. We should protect the vulnerable through mutual aid and nonviolent protests. We should build and rebuild relationships and commit to solidarity, because relationships weave friction for authoritarianism. We should vote like our lives depend on it, because for many of us, that’s not hyperbolic. Following Joyce Vance’s wisdom, we should vote because our participation is an assertion that we are engaged and believe our voices matter.

Don’t give up the ship. The palace is burning, but you aren’t powerless. You don’t have to finish the work, but you can’t abandon it, either. We practice hope when we believe that what we do still matters. This is exactly what the work of teshuvah asks of us.

On Yom Kippur, we confess the ways we’ve fallen short. This year, we acknowledge naming the sin of believing we didn’t matter, of thinking our government is wrecked beyond repair, that our neighbors are too divided, our politics too poisoned, our perspectives too politically homeless, our problems too large for anything we do to make a difference. Rabbi Tarfon insists we recognize that there is still work that we, ourselves, humble and imperfect as we are, can do to make a difference. The ship is out at sea. The palace is on fire. The republic is unfinished. Israel is unfinished. We are unfinished.

What an incredible invitation to responsibility we have received!

Here we are, inheritors of a world we did not create, a world we will one day pass to the people who have come after us. We cannot and will not hand them a perfect world. But if we work at it, we can hand them a world in which people still believe that justice is possible, that truth matters, that institutions can be repaired and are worth saving, that our neighbors can exist together, that ordinary people like you and me have the power and the obligation to shape what’s next.

On this holy day, we acknowledge where we have given up too soon. May we return to courage, to practice, to the knowledge that we are among those who have been entrusted to keep the world afloat. Don’t give up the ship!

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When I was in elementary school, my extended family experienced a generational turnover as the matriarchs and patriarchs of the eldest generation passed away. Realizing that life is short and family means the world, my dad’s cousin invested in a home in the mountains of upstate New York where the entire extended family could convene. Most of that side of the family already lived in the greater New York area, so they’d go up throughout the year for long weekends and holidays. As the Cincinnati Muhlbaums, we’d make the sacred pilgrimage for Fourth of July and winter break. We’d pack all the cousins into the basement on couches and mattresses for a giant multifamily sleepover. As the family grew, so did the property, with a few extra rooms eventually built over the garage.

The drive there took about 10 hours from home. We’d pack the car to the gills and drive through Ohio, Pennsylvania, and finally arrive in this tiny town, called Walton. The big outings there were the Big M supermarket and the CVS, which we visited every time we were in town because it was, like all good outings, something to do.

Every meal was family style, the pants were always stretchy, and we knew no trip was complete without hours and hours of Rummikub at the kitchen table and a viewing of the Godfather or some other movie that we probably shouldn’t have been watching as kids in the living room. The winding road to Walton felt like a homecoming. We could sense in our bodies when we were getting close; we’d pass the familiar landmarks like the Breakstones factory and the neighboring dairy farm, and then we’d be heading up the steep gravel driveway to our home away from home.

Our time in Walton meant everything to me. There, I was with my favorite people, spending time together, enjoying the mountain views and each other’s company. The cell phone service was terrible, so there was an emergency landline and, in the early days, no devices to distract us from our quality time together. When Vlad and I got together, one of the familial rites of passage was for him to come to Walton and meet the whole family, which I prepared him for by making him a powerpoint with everyone’s pictures and information about them. He passed the test, and soon everyone we spent time with in Walton danced at our wedding.

A couple of years ago, following some other family transitions, my dad’s cousin said farewell to the Walton house. My generation has launched, and many of us have our own partners and kids now. The older generation has different needs than they did 25 years ago. Relationships have shifted and merged, and the era of our time in Walton is over. We made our last visit before the pandemic, not knowing it would be the last visit, not knowing we’d eventually move away from the New York area, not realizing that the house would soon find a new family to love it and make memories there.

There are certain moments when I’ll smell the fragrance of the kitchen there, or sit at a table that reminds me of that kitchen table where I spent so many hours telling stories and playing Rummikub, and it’s like a punch to the throat. I can imagine those sweet years together with my cousins, the memories we made together, growing up together. I miss that Walton home, the house itself, and the immersive time spent there with people I love.

Nostalgia is a seductive, heart-tugging feeling. The word comes from nostos--return home, and algia--longing. In her book, The Future of Nostalgia, theorist Svetlana Boym says that nostalgia “is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has ever existed. Nostalgia is a sentiment of loss and displacement, but it is also a romance with one’s own fantasy. Nostalgic love can only survive in a long-distance relationship” (Boym xiii). Put differently, that sense of longing can never be truly satisfied.

Nostalgia begins as the pain of wanting to return home. It’s powerful because there is something beautiful and human in the yearning to return. What a gorgeous, complicated feeling to connect to Kol Nidrei, a night that is itself saturated with longing, memory, repetition, and return.

Nostalgia allows us to remember the past fondly, but it can become problematic for us when we confuse remembering the past with understanding it. Boym distinguishes between restorative and reflective nostalgia: “Nostalgia is not always about the past… Fantasies of the past determined by needs of the present have a direct impact on realities of the future. Consideration of the future makes us take responsibility for our nostalgic tales” (Boym xvi). Restorative nostalgia, then, wants us to go back to the way things used to be, while reflective nostalgia encourages us to sit with the complexity of what was.

Tonight, as we begin Yom Kippur, we think about how nostalgia and teshvuah interact. Nostalgia could be an obstacle to teshuvah, because indulging in the yearning for the past through rose-colored glasses can cause us to misremember in significant and impactful ways. If teshuvah and nostalgia are to connect, we need it to be through the restorative lens.

This summer, I read Yesteryear, the New York Times bestselling debut novel by author Caro Claire Burke. The story follows Natalie Heller Mills, a millionaire homesteading trad-wife personality who lives one life online and a different in reality. The version she presents to her fans is of a loving mother and beloved wife who bakes bread, churns butter, and lives an idealized 19th century existence on the homestead. Her reality is a bit grittier; she is surrounded by a staff of nannies and producers, has a difficult relationship with her husband, her in-laws, and her children, and reality. She is a tough character to like, or even tolerate. One morning, in the story, Natalie wakes up to find herself with no electricity, no running water, children she doesn’t recognize, and brutal farm chores. In her misery, she can’t discern if she has time traveled or if she is part of some elaborate reality television hoax.

The book is a dark satire that explores what it means to be internet famous, to be a woman in modern American society, and the dark side of traditional values. Natalie Heller Mills is a great character, because she is terrible. She’s mean, she’s manipulative, and she’s condescending. The entire time I was reading the book I just kept thinking: she has learned nothing from this experience. She misses any chance she gets throughout the plot to show remorse or to show emotional growth. Instead, she turns those moments into another reason to long for an imagined earlier life.

If we aren’t careful, nostalgia can make experience meaningless. If every painful thing we go through simply becomes evidence that things used to be better, then our suffering or the challenges we withstand don’t teach us anything. The tragedy of the protagonist, Natalie, is that she keeps returning to the same story about the past, even as she experiences loss, disappointment, and conflict. She doesn’t allow any of that to fundamentally change her, or to evolve. At no point does she seem to integrate her experiences into wisdom. Instead, in her warped accounting, she adds them to her list of evidence that the past was somehow better.

This, I propose, is the opposite of teshuvah. Teshuvah holds that our experiences, and reflecting upon those experiences, can transform us into who we are becoming. As Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg teaches1 in the name of the early-nineteenth-century Hasidic teacher Rebbe Nahman of Breslove, ‘if you believe you can damage, believe you can fix. If you believe that you can harm, believe that you can heal” (Ruttenberg 46). Put differently, as we do the work of teshuvah, we have to believe that healing is possible.

Rabbi Ruttenberg goes on to teach the steps to repentance created by Maimonides, or Rambam. Rambam holds that to do the work of teshuvah, we follow these steps: naming and owning the harm we have done, starting to change our behavior, making restitution and accepting consequences, offering a genuine apology, and making different choices in the future. One thing that strikes me about Rambam’s steps is that none of these steps involve pretending the past didn’t happen. Perhaps more importantly, in this conception of teshuvah, none of the steps involves returning to an earlier version of ourselves, because the point of teshuvah isn’t to return us to who we used to be. Teshuvah has us reflect on what we have gone through to teach us about who we have been, and who we need to become.

A few weeks ago, I heard an interview with actor Jason Segel. He was sharing a story about going to an event, where he knew he was going to see someone he hadn’t seen in a long time, someone who seemed to be handling the challenges life threw him better than Segel was. Segel said, “I’ve had a twisty-turny life and some rocky moments. And this guy I was going to see had just worn it all a lot more lightly than I had. And I was talking to my therapist, Barry, about it, and I said, You know, I think I feel a little bit embarrassed. I feel embarrassed to walk into this room, and he has worn it all so lightly, and I’m showing up covered in scars. And without missing a beat, [his therapist] said, ‘what a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old not covered in scars.’”

This took my breath away, when I heard it in the interview. What a shame it would be to show up anywhere at 45 years old not covered in scars. We know that scars, whether physical or emotional, are evidence that we have lived. What’s beautiful about our scars is that they can be evidence that we’ve experienced things that have changed us.

But that isn’t a guarantee! There is a difference between having scars and learning from the wounds that caused them. This is what was so frustrating to me about the character in Yesteryear, because she had years of experiencing and hadn’t accumulated any wisdom about herself or her experiences.

I think part of the beauty of the work of the High Holy Days is that teshuvah is what happens when we let experience become wisdom. In some ways, we get drawn into the temptations of nostalgia because it feels protective or safe to us. We might romanticize the past because the past really was beautiful, or it could be because the past feels safer than the present. It’s easier for us to grapple with, because it’s already done. Think about it. If you can convince yourself that people used to be kinder, that society had some golden age that was better, it takes the pressure off asking yourself how you are participating in the culture you inhabit today. This is where nostalgia becomes an obstacle to teshuvah. It can allow us to be the hero of our own past, and not glean the wisdom we should have learned from what we’ve been through.

Nostalgia lends itself towards sugarcoating, because nostalgia can say “this was beautiful.” and have that be the whole idea. Memory, however, can say, “this was beautiful, and painful.” Memory holds space for the contradiction that nostalgia wants to remove. In Yesteryear, the sugarcoating of the past was both historically inaccurate and it prevented the moral growth of the character. We can’t afford to sanitize the past, because if we do so, we eliminate the evidence that we need to change and grow and repair. Teshuvah requires an honest memory, to remember what we did, what was done to us, what we failed to do. We should remember the moments when we were courageous and bold and wise, and we should also remember the moments when we absolutely were not. Teshuvah needs the whole story.

Yom Kippur is a bit paradoxical. Tonight begins the pinnacle of aseret yamei teshuvah, the last ten days of repentance, which followed the month of Elul. Yom Kippur requires energy looking backward in order to move forward. We confess, we remember, we name, we replay, and we tell the truth. This isn’t nostalgia, and it isn’t Judaism’s way of making us live in the past. We do this because we can’t actually make teshvuah for a past we refuse to see clearly. Nostalgia makes us look backward because it wants us to go back. Teshuvah makes us look backward because it wants us to go forward differently, with wisdom.

Let’s return for a moment to Svetlana Boym. For her, “The object of longing is not really a place called home but this sense of intimacy with the world; it is not the past in general, but that imaginary moment when we had time and didn’t know the temptation of nostalgia” (Boym 251). Nostalgia is a kind of yearning for homecoming. Teshuvah literally means return. Both nostalgia and teshuvah, then, are forms of returning, but they imagine a different destination. When nostalgia pulls us to go back in time, teshuvah pull us a different direction. Teshuvah is the sense of being brought home to the person I can become. So the home we seek on Yom Kippur is bigger than the past, because it is the possibility of becoming more whole, more ourselves.

In a kind of Yom Kippur pep talk, Rabbi Danya Ruttenberg says, “Repair is possible. Atonement is not out of reach. What is needed—and this is, of course, a big deal—is the willingness to do the work. What is needed is the bravery to begin. On the other side of that bridge, on the other side of transformation [she says], is another more whole, more full, more free way of being, one that we can’t fully imagine from here. A way that we must simply bring into existence, step by step. The Talmud teaches, in the name of Rabbi Hama Bar Hanina, ‘great is repentance, for it brings healing to the world’”(Ruttenberg 202).

It is impossible for us to return to a life untouched by what has happened to it, and we shouldn’t want to. We cannot become unscarred. Our work is to become someone made wise by discerning what the scars mean, and what we have learned along the way. The past cannot be a home to which we can return, but if we work hard, it can be a teacher from whom we can learn.

This Yom Kippur, I pray the work of teshvuah brings us, with all of our imperfection, home to ourselves.

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We begin at the foot of Mount Sinai. Moses has just received revelation on the mountain. The Hebrews have shpilkes: they’re worried that it’s taking Moses too long to come back, so they approach Aaron. “Come make us a god,” they say to him. And Aaron complies immediately, collecting the people’s gold to melt down into an idol, a famous golden calf. “This is your God, O Israel, who brought you out of the land of Egypt,” he tells him. They celebrate with a festival, offering sacrifices and dancing joyously. God, all-knowing, says to Moses, “Your people have acted basely. They have been quick to turn aside from my commandments through idol worship. Let me be,” says God, “so that my anger may blaze forth against them and consume them, to destroy them, and then I’ll make of you, Moses, a great nation.” Moses pushes back, telling God to stop, so that the Egyptians can’t slander God and say it was with evil intent that God redeemed them. “Turn away from your blazing anger,” Moses says to God. “Renounce your plan to punish your people.” To emphasize: both God and Moses other the people, blaming the other for their people’s failure.

Moses then takes the tablets of the pact, written by God, down the mountain. Joshua, who was with Moses, hears the sound of people making a ruckus. He thinks it’s a war cry in the camp. Moses, though, understands immediately--it isn’t the sound of triumph or defeat, but the sound of song. Moses becomes so enraged, seeing the golden calf and the worshipping of this false god, and in his rage he shatters the tablets at the foot of the mountain.

Photo by Ramiro Pianarosa

Moses is so mad. One Hebrew phrase that means anger is kotzer ruach, which we might say means a short temper. More precisely, kotzer ruach is shortness of breath. When we are angry, our chests feel tight and it is hard to breathe. It’s as if our anger sits heavily on our chests and constricts the space air needs to let us breathe.

This summer, I found myself reading two books that, though written independently of one another, entered into a beautiful conversation in my mind. The first was Rabbi Shai Held’s Judaism is About Love, a thought-provoking exploration of how we might understand love’s place in our religious practice. (As an aside, you can join Rabbi Klein and me for a monthly dialogue about this book at temple).

The second book was Valarie Kaur’s See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. This powerful book explores Kaur’s experience as a Sikh documentarian following 9/11, the violence she and her family members experienced, and the power of showing up for our neighbors. On the dedication page of See No Stranger, she writes, “your breathlessness is a sign of your bravery. It means you’re awake to what’s happening right now: the world is in transition.” That sentence stopped me, because it reminded me of the phrase kotzer ruach. Is the breathlessness of anger also a sign of our bravery? Is there something that bridges between anger and love? What do we do with our anger so that it does not separate us from one another?

I want to explore that question this morning through one of Judaism’s most famous commandments, a verse found in our Yom Kippur afternoon service, Leviticus 19:18
לֹֽא־תִקֹּ֤ם וְלֹֽא־תִטֹּר֙ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י עַמֶּ֔ךָ וְאָֽהַבְתָּ֥ לְרֵעֲךָ֖ כָּמ֑וֹךָ אֲנִ֖י יְהֹוָֽה׃
You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against members of your people. V’ahavta l’reiacha kamocha, Love your fellow as yourself: I am God.

We tend to hear this as a beautiful, universalist, even sentimental teaching. We should love our neighbors! We should be kind. We should treat people well. But Rabbi Held helps us navigate this commandment in a deeper way. For Held, love is more than a feeling: it’s a mitzvah, a sacred obligation, an action. It’s something we are expected to do. This is complicated, because, as Held teaches, “The Torah issues three dramatic love commands. We are charged to love our neighbor, a fellow member of the covenant between God and Israel, in both emotion and action; to love the stranger…in both emotion and action; and to love God, who created the world, redeemed us from slavery, and gave us the Torah as an act of love and commitment, in both emotion and action.” (Held 10). Importantly, love in each of these commands requires emotion and action, a tension that our sages wrestle with throughout the generations. Can you command love? And if so, what kind of love could be commanded? It feels like our tradition is guiding us to cultivate a particular way of living.

Maimonides understood this commandment as being fundamentally about action, not feeling. He included visiting the sick, comforting mourners, preparing a body for burial, and preparing a bride for her wedding as actions that fall under the category of loving our neighbor. Following Rambam, then, the command to love the neighbor kamocha, as yourself, doesn’t necessarily mean “love this person as intensely as you love yourself, but “as you yourself would want to be loved” (Held 112). “The first step to acting on the mitzvah of loving our neighbor [Held says,] is to be open to learning and understanding their own individual needs. To put the matter differently, the commandment is not to treat others as we would wish to be treated but as they would. Or, if you prefer, we could say that the guiding principle of ethics is not “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but rather “do unto others as they would have you do unto them” (Held 114).

I love the idea that it could mean learn what it means for another person to be loved, and act accordingly. This invites us to imagine beyond how each of us as individuals would want to be treated, and to focus instead on what the person before us needs. Love, then, requires curiosity.

Photo by Priscilla Du Preez

Dr. Avivah Zornberg teaches that the re’a is not necessarily our friend. In Torah, the neighbor could be someone we envy, a person we oppress, a person upon whose property we might trespass. “The re’a is, at base, [Zornberg says,] simply one in whose company one finds oneself. This is the other whom we are commanded to love”(Zornberg 174).

Just a few verses later, in the same chapter of Leviticus, we read about the ger, the stranger: “The stranger who resides with you shall be as your citizen; you shall love each one as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.” With this verse, we start to see the concentric circles of Jewish obligation expanding. We start with ourselves in the center, then our families, then our neighbors, and then the strangers. We are told emphatically in torah that we love the stranger specifically because we know what it means to be a stranger. We’ve been the stranger, and we’re capable of being strangers again.

This is where Valarie Kaur’s teaching becomes so powerful, to me. The touchstone phrase that runs throughout See No Stranger is this Sikh teaching: you are a part of me I do not yet know. Kaur here asks us to resist the urge to make assumptions about the categories that shape people’s lives. For example, an immigrant is more than just an immigrant. A prisoner is more than just a prisoner. Under any category is an individual human being whose life is more complex, more mysterious, and more sacred than any category we could assign to them. You are a part of me I do not yet know.

The idea, here, is that even when someone refuses to acknowledge our humanity, we still encounter them with a sense of wonder, a drive of curiosity. Kaur says, “No one should be asked to feel empathy or compassion for their oppressors. I have learned that we do not need to feel anything for our opponents at all in order to practice love. Love is labor that returns us to wonder….I do not owe my opponents my affection, warmth, or regard. But I do owe myself a chance to live in this world without the burden of hate” (Kaur 140). Our loving act, then, our labor of love, our practice of revolutionary love, is in holding as our central focus that the person before us is a part of us we do not yet know.

Anger can make us want to gerrymander the boundaries of belonging. When someone we know hurts us, we may decide that they no longer belong in our inner circle. We write them off, drawing a boundary, reducing them to someone other than us, foreign to us, even alien to us. Anger drives us to say: you are not me. Valarie Kaur reminds us: you are a part of me I do not yet know.

This is a perfect tension to wrestle with on Rosh Hashanah. Anger is something that sometimes matters deeply to us.

Sometimes fury is evidence of love! We get angry because we care; we are outraged because the world should be different; we are furious when someone’s humanity has been violated. Love can be the source of our anger, but anger by itself is not sufficient. Moral anger, Held says, “needs to be balanced--with love, and laughter, and small acts of gentle kindness” (Held 73). Kaur takes this to another level. She says, “Divine rage can make people uncomfortable: it can feel disruptive, frightening, and unpredictable. There are those who wish to police such rage in the name of civility. But civility is too often used to silence pain that requires people to change their lives. Rather than taming public expressions of moral outrage, perhaps it is up to the rest of us to train our ears to “hearing beyond what we are able to hear,” in the words of theorist Judith Butler, so that we can discern the truth of the pain of injustice and confront our own complicity and responsibility” (Kaur 134).

The goal is not to become less angry. Instead, the goal is to be more intentional about what our anger does, and how it may serve us. Can we channel our anger to make us more attentive to suffering, to work to pursue justice, to feel courageous enough to protect someone who is vulnerable?

If our anger makes the world smaller, or reduces our capacity for curiosity, or turns humanity into our enemy, we need to take notice. If our anger makes us say, like God and Moses, “your people,” as a sign of othering, we need to pay attention.

At this High Holy Day season, we think about our own relationships, the way things bond and mend, the way things break. Love is a part of that. Love goes beyond being nice to each other and avoiding conflict. Love requires us to care enough about another person’s well-being, and even flourishing, so much that injustice becomes intolerable. The command to love your neighbor appears in the same chapter of Leviticus that tells us we have to pay our workers fairly and on time, that we have to make food available for the needy, to judge honestly, and to refuse to exploit those who are most vulnerable in our society. Love is, then, the engine of justice. And sometimes, our quest for justice is fueled by fury. We need the anger, but we also need a way to keep that anger from consuming us. I think that the way back is wonder.

We call this season aseret yamei teshuvah: the ten days of repentance. One of the spiritual practices of this holy day is to recognize that even people who have hurt us are more than the worst thing they have done. And, as importantly, to recognize that we are also more than the worst thing that we have done. How can we stand before God and ask God to see us differently, if we’re unwilling to see ourselves differently?

And, if we believe about ourselves that a person can become more than the version of ourselves we have known, we get to extend that possibility out into the world and believe it about other people too. We don’t give our trust unearned, and we don’t give unlimited access to ourselves, and we don’t give up the need for accountability. But we hold space for the idea that none of us should be reduced to a single moment in time, nor a single category label, nor a single failure.

Remembering a difficult but meaningful season of communal work, Valarie Kaur says, “I saw the practices of revolutionary love at work--we wondered, grieved, and fought; we raged, listened, and reimagined the future. All of this was anchored in breath” (Kaur 216). In our morning liturgy, we sing Psalm 150. There, the psalmist invites a loud, bombastic approach to praising God.

We praise God through blasts of the shofar and the playing of the harp, through drums and lutes and the crashing of cymbals. And then, in a brilliant final verse, the psalmist writes, “kol haneshamah tehalel-ya--let all that breathes praise God.” It is as if the Psalmist is making space for the fact that sometimes, we might be ready to pray aloud, to offer praise to the Holy One of Blessing with our full voices, to sing and shout and fight for justice. But sometimes, we might only be able to breathe, to just try to catch our breath, and that is praise enough.

Photo by Daniele Franchi

The Sikh teaching Kaur helps us understand is that there are parts of ourselves we can only encounter through encountering another: you are a part of me I do not yet know. The stranger is someone who possesses a humanity we have not yet learned to see. For Held, love is fundamental to Judaism because the flourishing of an other is bound up in our own relationship to God and to the world. The purpose of loving another is to discover that the boundary between us was never as absolute as we may have imagined. We aren’t all the same. But as humanity, we are connected by our very breath.

Throughout the month of Elul, I found myself captivated by the idea of allowing what we learn and notice to change us. Now that we have officially reached the new year, I feel this resonating with an even deeper sense of urgency and purpose. Perhaps the deepest meaning of “love your neighbor as yourself” is that loving you, through emotions and actions, changes my understanding of who I am.

And this year, I charge all of us with a practice: notice “your people.” Notice when your language, or even your internal monologue, shifts from we to they. Notice when you’ve stopped seeing the human being, and see only their category instead. Notice when your anger makes you say, “those people,” or “not my people.” And when you notice it, don’t respond with shame for yourself. Instead, breathe. And then ask one question: what don’t I know yet? Invite yourself to see the person beyond your understanding of them in the moment. What might you learn if you allow yourself to wonder? Maybe the answer will be that you need a stronger boundary, or that you need to speak up, or that you need to apologize, or even that you need to let go of hatred because schlepping it is actually only hurting you. Maybe, simply, you will realize that the person before you is human.

This isn’t easy! That’s why we call it a spiritual practice. Kaur tells us that love is labor. Loving another person changes our understanding of who we are. When we encounter another person’s humanity, the boundaries of our own humanity shifts. The stranger teaches me something about myself. The neighbor teaches me something about myself. You are a part of me I do not yet know!

This season, may we make our circles of concern a little larger. May we fight for justice without surrendering our capacity to see humanity. May we look at the other and wonder if, perhaps, they were ours all along. In this new year, may we become people whose capacity for love is larger than it was before. May we become people who can hold the heat of our anger without being consumed by it. May we be people who meet the stranger and discover something about ourselves by discovering something about them. And when we find ourselves breathless, from anger or fear or grief or even hope, may we remember: kol haneshamah tehalel yah: every breath is an opportunity to praise, to return, to remind us that we belong to each other. Shanah tovah!

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When I was a kid, I got a personal cassette player. I didn’t have that many cassettes, though I did go on to have a very large CD collection. We lived in Louisville for a while, before moving to Cincinnati. For a few years, we’d take a family vacation road trip, and we’d venture down to Tennessee, to one of my favorite places: The Great Smoky Mountains. We’d spend some time together as a family, enjoying the great outdoors and also enjoying one of the best theme parks that exists: Dollywood. In the gift shop, after perseverating over the various sweatshirts and trinkets that were displayed, I finally picked my souvenir: a Dolly Parton cassette tape that I could listen to on my little walkman in the car. Which I did, the whole ride home.

From a young age, I was mesmerized by Dolly Parton. In recent years, she’s been a fixture of our family. My kids refer to the woman in the back of the books that they receive in the mail from her Imagination Library as Jolly Partner. We even took them a couple years ago to Dollywood. But when I was a kid, part of what made me feel so transfixed about Dolly was frankly her appearance.

Ron Galella/Getty Images

They say the higher the hair the closer to God, and between her fabulous wigs, her body augmentation, her makeup, and her long fake nails, she was as entrancing and sparkly as a disco ball.

In 2001, Dolly Parton gave an interview with Terry Gross, which re-aired after Dolly’s death a few weeks ago. In that interview, she joked about how important it was to promote her then-latest album, saying, “I need the money, ‘cause you know it costs a lot to make me look this cheap.” Later in the interview, and perhaps more poignantly, she said, “I think people have come to know me as I am. And some people will never accept the fact that I’m a serious writer and a serious singer, and the ones that do accept it, they know it for a fact and they overlook the image, which I’ve enjoyed playing in the image…I think people would really be more disappointed if I dressed down ‘cause they’re so used to seeing me be the way that I am. I think that that would bother them more. So if I dressed down as plain and as real as some of this music is, I’d - I would definitely look like a farmer’s daughter.”

What do we think we can learn about a person by looking at them? And what happens when we become so accustomed to looking at appearances that we forget that a face is not a product, but a person?

Put differently, we perceive a certain thing based on someone’s appearance. Here’s someone with a unique talent, an extraordinary personality, and an incredible work ethic. Mentally, subconsciously, we have to fight what society has acculturated us to believe about her--that she’d be some unkind stereotype of a dumb blond, some happy-go-lucky unserious person, only known for her beauty. Instead, we remember her as an incredibly talented musician and entrepreneur, a genuine rags-to-riches success who generously used her wealth philanthropically to care for impactful causes across decades. Her literacy work alone impacts 3 million children monthly. She will be remembered by her face, and beyond her face.

And perhaps this is part of what makes this conversation especially resonant at this time of year. Because the High Holy Days ask us to look at faces; not literally at first, but spiritually. We look at ourselves, beyond the surface. We look at the people we have hurt. We look at the people who have hurt us. We look at the faces of people we love and ask whether we have really seen them. And, in our tradition, we imagine God looking back at us.

Think about faces for a moment. We love faces. We love to see the face of someone we love. We love an interesting face. Babies love to grab at noses and ears and eyes and mouths as they learn how to use their hands to learn about the world around them. Humans are wired to look at other faces and glean something from them. As New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino1 puts it, “the face is traditionally how we come to know each other, the first glimpse we have of a person’s temperament and soul and life history and disposition…you can tell if a person is tired. You can tell if they’re sick. You can tell their emotions. Do they laugh a lot? by their laugh lines. [A face is] a marker of allowing us to see if we can even trust a person.”

Tolentino argues that with the societal prevalence and accessibility of certain cosmetic procedures, we’re entering a world in which faces don’t communicate the way they used to, and we’re losing the ability to read each other. She said, “The face is being presented to us as a consumer guide…rather than a human repository of disposition and life… The face is [no longer] something that … [you can look to for reliable] human information--[We no longer] want human information and experience to show up on your face. It’s being reconfigured as a kind of object.”

This is an interesting cultural moment, isn’t it? We each have a face. We also have the standard set by the professionally beautiful, the celebrities, reality stars, social media influencers, those whose faces become the ones to whom we consciously and unconsciously compare ourselves.

Crucially, because so much of what we take in of our own culture is now held in the palms of our hands and consumed as content, this dovetails powerfully with the age of AI. As artificial intelligence takes on a larger and more powerful impact in our American society, it alters how we perceive each other, and what we understand of each other. As Tolentino puts it, AI “programmatically positions what is specifically human as inferior for being human, for being bounded, for being imperfect. When, in fact, our boundedness, our imperfection, our kind of imminence--that’s the best thing about us. That’s what makes us actually human.”

This is profound. We are passively accepting AI’s influence on us, and in this regard, it’s impacting how we perceive our very humanity and that of those around us. Our imperfection is what makes us human! I don’t need “perfect” writing and “perfect” content; I crave human interaction, even when it’s messy and flawed and filled with mistakes.

Consider our most famous prophet for a moment. Moses describes himself to God as having a heavy mouth and heavy tongue. Our tradition has long understood this to mean that Moses had some kind of speech impediment, which we might think would pretty obviously disqualify him from the role of being God’s mouthpiece, God’s voice among the Hebrews. But our tradition does something powerful! Rather than disqualify Moses for his imperfection, he is held up as our prophet extraordinaire. In fact, Moses is someone God singles out face to face.

In Exodus 33:11, we read
וְדִבֶּ֨ר יְהֹוָ֤ה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה֙ פָּנִ֣ים אֶל־פָּנִ֔ים כַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר יְדַבֵּ֥ר אִ֖ישׁ אֶל־רֵעֵ֑הוּ
GOD would speak to Moses face to face, as one person speaks to another.
And in Deuteronomy 34:10, we read
וְלֹא־קָ֨ם נָבִ֥יא ע֛וֹד בְּיִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל כְּמֹשֶׁ֑ה אֲשֶׁר֙ יְדָע֣וֹ יְהֹוָ֔ה פָּנִ֖ים אֶל־פָּנִֽים׃
Never again did there arise in Israel a prophet like Moses—whom GOD singled out, face to face.

Now, of course, one of the reasons we’re still reading Torah this many centuries later is because the characters are delightfully, compellingly flawed. If the Torah was filled with perfect people making the right choices all the time and having an easy breezy relationship with each other and with the Holy One of Blessing, it would be, in a word, boring. Instead, our sacred texts are filled with failure, imperfection, flaws, and mistakes. The people in our texts--and God, by the way!--are messy, and that’s good! We learn from their imperfections.

Moses was imperfect beyond his heavy tongue. One of the first things we see him do is kill an Egyptian, after all. He is quick to anger, frustrated by the burden of shepherding his people, and temperamental. But he’s also known for his humility, and he really tries to do right by the people and by God. He’s imperfect, and perfectly human. While normally God speaks to prophets through dreams, or in partnership with a messenger, with Moses God speaks panim-el-panim, face-to-face, ka’asher yedabeir ish el-re’eihu, the way a person speaks to another.

Moses is already worthy of speaking with God simply by being himself. He does not have to fix everything that is imperfect first. He doesn’t resolve his speech impediment and then become a prophet, nor does he stop getting angry, or stop making mistakes, or stop being fully human. God meets him face-to-face as he is. This is one of the great gifts of this season: we come before God as people in progress, imperfect and still worthy.

The idea of the holiness of beholding another’s face goes beyond Moses and God. We are taught that humanity is created b’tzelem elohim, in the image of God. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we look like God, nor that God has a body the way we have bodies. Instead, we can understand the phrase to mean that humanity is a reflection of God in the human realm. What a sacred, and heavy, thing it is to be made as a reflection of God in this world. Our very humanity, our very imperfection, is bound up in the holiness of the source of all being.

And there may be no better time of year to remember this than Rosh Hashanah, when we return to the beginning—to B’reishit, to creation, to this foundational and extraordinary claim that every human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. Our traditions at Rosh HaShanah call us to remember something we spend much of the year forgetting: before we are successful or unsuccessful, beautiful or unattractive, impressive or ordinary, before we have accomplished anything at all, we already possess a sacred worth. We do not earn our b’tzelem Elohim. We are born with it.

In his book, Judaism is About Love, Rabbi Shai Held teaches about envy. He says, “The worm of comparison and competition eats away at our capacity for generosity of spirit”(Held 115). If we assume “that self-worth is something we need to achieve, most often by comparing ourselves with others….envy is, at one and the same time, demeaning of ourselves, distrustful of God, and hostile to others…to make our worth dependent on some merely human standard is to fall into the trap of idolatry” (Held 119).

Ultimately, and unfortunately, we live in a space of comparison. We’re predisposed to subconsciously calculating how we’re doing in life, in our relationships, at work, at home, with those around us. If we agree with Rabbi Held that we assume “self-worth is something we need to achieve,” this complicates our relationship with being made already with inherent value, even with all of our flaws, precisely because we are the reflection of our Creator.

This season can be difficult, if we really do the work of the High Holy Days. Doing a true, genuine accounting of our souls can be depleting. As Rabbi Held teaches, “Just as we manage to love ourselves despite our shortcomings, we should find ways to love others despite theirs. …For some of us the reverse is true. We condemn ourselves for behaviors we’d readily find ways to rationalize in others. Sometimes learning to judge ourselves favorably is an obligation too” (Held 123-4).

It’s worth highlighting that there is a difference, between cheshbon hanefesh, the sacred accounting of the High Holy Days, and the endless accounting we do the rest of the year. The soul work is not the same as keeping score! Our work is to wonder, for example, who am I becoming? What do I need to repair? What kind of person do I want to be when I stand at the threshold of next year? That’s part of the work of teshuvah, our sacred path of returning to closeness with God through repentance.

Throughout the High Holy Days, we imagine ourselves being seen by God with a kind of terrifying completeness. There is no cosmetic procedure, no carefully curated online presence, no rhinestone dress that can conceal us from the Holy One. God sees the whole person, each of us for all of our flaws and imperfections.

One of Dolly Parton’s best known songs, and one that was turned into the first book Imagination Library kids receive, is called Coat of Many Colors. Released in 1971, this song captures an image from Dolly’s childhood. Her mom made her a coat out of rags, scraps from old clothes, things that a family of means would probably dispose of.

But she took those rags, stitched them together with love, and made Dolly a treasured coat, something that despite its humble materials reminded her of Joseph’s famous coat of many colors. Dolly’s coat was made from scraps. Its beauty came precisely from the fact that it carried evidence of the life from which it came: worn fabric, remembered clothing, the hands of a mother stitching disparate pieces together. That might be another way we can think of ourselves on these Days of Awe. We arrive here carrying scraps. Some are beautiful. Some might embarrass us. Some, I bet, we wish we could hide. But teshuvah requires us to take what we are and, with honesty and love, to embrace all of those pieces, and stitch together a new version of ourselves as we enter the new year.

Photo by Erik Mclean

This is the entire project of these ten days of repentance: to have those conversations with our loved ones where we speak our truths, seek forgiveness from those we’ve wronged, and forgive those who have wronged us. To have interactions that let us see things differently. To bring more of God’s presence into the world through sacred connection with other humans, meeting each other panim el panim, vulnerably face to face. We carry our misdeeds with us as we move forward and grow from our mistakes. We embrace our spiritual imperfections. We embrace that which makes us beautifully and imperfectly perfectly human.

This holy day season, as we bare our souls before the Holy One of Blessing, we bring the authentic truths of our hearts and souls with us. Rosh HaShanah invites us to begin a new year by becoming more fully ourselves. That includes our mistakes, our regrets, our complicated relationships, our imperfect bodies, the parts of ourselves we are still learning to love. We bring them before God, human face to divine presence. These days of awe invite us to learn to see better: to view ourselves with compassion, to see the people we love with generosity, to see the stranger as a person whose face contains a whole universe we do not yet know. And to see, beneath our differences and imperfections, the image of God. May this new year teach us to look past the surface, to stop keeping score. May we understand we do not have to earn our worth, and neither does anybody else. And may we have the courage to put down the mirror of comparison, lift up our eyes, and meet one another panim el panim, face to face.

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I want to begin with a midrash, a rabbinic tale that introduces us to Lilith. In the Alphabet of Ben Sira, we read this story:

Alphabet of Ben Sira 23a-b

When the first man, Adam, saw that he was alone, God made for him a woman like himself, from the earth. God called her name Lilith, and brought her to Adam. They immediately began to quarrel. Adam said: “You lie beneath me.” And Lilith said: “You lie beneath me! We are both equal, for both of us are from the earth.” And they would not listen to one another.

As soon as Lilith saw this, she uttered the Divine name and flew up into the air and fled. Adam began to pray before his Creator, saying: “Master of the universe, the woman that you gave me has fled.” God sent three angels and said to them: “Go bring back Lilith. If she wants to come, she shall come, and if she does not want to come, do not bring her against her will.”

The three angels went and found her in the sea at the place where the Egyptians were destined to drown. There they grabbed her and said to her: “If you will go with us, well and good, but if not, we will drown you in the sea.”

Lilith said to them: “My friends, I know God only created me to weaken infants when they are eight days old. From the day a child is born until the eighth day, I have dominion over the child, and from the eighth day onward I have no dominion over him if he is a boy, but if a girl, I rule over her twelve days.”

They said: “We won’t let you go until you accept upon yourself that each day one hundred of your children will die.” And she accepted it. That is why one hundred demons die every day. They would not leave her alone until she swore to them: “In any place that I see you or your names in an amulet, I will have no dominion over that child.” They left her. And she is Lilith, who weakens the children of men….

Lilith is so fierce! This story starts with her insistence for equality. By the time we get to this medieval story, our tradition’s view of Lilith has transformed; in earlier passages, she’s a dangerous demon. She wasn’t historically a feminist figure, but later Jewish feminists reclaimed her story, reframing a tradition that had once been used to portray female independence as dangerous.

The Ben Sira story shows the consequences that happen to a woman who refuses to submit. The feminist reclamation of Lilith’s story helps us consider a powerful question of this demonic figure: why was her refusal considered monstrous?

Today, Gloria Steinem died at the age of 92. She was a leader of second-wave feminism, and her activism transformed the lived reality for women in America and around the globe. Her work, together with her partners at the National Women’s Political Caucus and the Women’s Action Alliance, as well as in her extensive media work, helped women consider what it means to relearn our experiences in the world, and to better understand the systemic structures underneath them. For example, second-wave feminism allowed space to see a woman wanting a career as something other than unnatural, a women wanting sexual autonomy as something other than immoral, and a woman who refuses to be subordinate as something other than difficult. Steinem’s work helped people see that the problem isn’t the woman! It’s the system that requires her submission.

Photo by Bettye Lane/Photo Researchers History/Getty Images

As a millennial woman, it would be incredibly easy for me to take much of this for granted. While the gender-based pay-gap persists and American systems fail women every day, with nefarious plans to continue stripping us of our rights, second wave feminism impacted the culture with strength and assertiveness, allowing me to participate in society in roles I find incredibly meaningful and fulfilling.

One of the things I love about how Lilith is portrayed in the Ben Sira story is that she acknowledges that we are all made of the same stuff, so hierarchy between genders is, to put it anachronistically, artificial. Likewise, modern feminism challenged the assumption that hierarchy between men and women is simply the natural order.

As Steinem famously put it, “We are linked, not ranked.” It’s as if she was in conversation across centuries with the Lilith of old: Lilith insists that because she and Adam are created from the same earth, they are linked, not in hierarchy against each other.

Equality isn’t something we have to manufacture, because it’s inherent in our very creation.

Photo by Jenny Warburg

In 1972, renowned feminist scholar, Judith Plaskow, wrote The Coming of Lilith, a powerful and foundational text that is credited with the modern Jewish feminist reclamation of Lilith. The original story looks like when a woman refuses hierarchy, she becomes dangerous (and, in our story, has to be punished). Jewish feminist midrash, participating in a tradition that goes back to our earliest days as a people with a sacred text, asks questions and interprets the inherited text. The text has always been ours (yes, including women!) to inherit, and feminist midrash creates another onramp for people to engage with our textual traditions. In this case, the midrashists wondered what if Lilith wasn’t dangerous--what if she was right?

I love how feminism was able to work within the Jewish structures that existed to use our people’s cherished tools of midrash, argument, and reinterpretation to come to a new understanding of the story.

Lilith becomes a symbol of the woman who refuses to accept how she is described. I think this is one of the reasons why I personally find her story so captivating. As women, we’re often told we’re difficult, or angry, or bossy, or hysterical, or take up too much space, or, God forbid, are shrill.

Gloria Steinem, as the face of feminism, was constantly subjected to scrutiny about who she was and how she appeared, with judgment about her relationships, her femininity, her age, and her personality. The dominant culture resisted her ideas and tried to judge feminism by whether its women were sufficiently likeable.

I hate that, to be clear.

She persisted, as is feminist tradition.

Neither Lilith nor Steinem is a perfect heroine. Lilith’s story clearly didn’t end with a happily-ever-after; she is demonized, turned into a monster. This is in and of itself part of a cultural effort to control and demonize (here, literally!) female power and authority. The compelling feminist reading is about systems of power, which is exactly how Steinem did her work. Her feminism became more attuned to how gender identity intersects with other forms of hierarchy within society (like race, class, and sexuality). The goal of her feminist advocacy wasn’t for women to act more like men, or to be allowed to. Instead, I think her feminist legacy is that we are obligated to question the structures and systems that encourage ranking human beings in the first place.

For centuries, the figure of Lilith was a warning about what happens to women who refuse to submit, who don’t acknowledge their place in the hierarchy. With Jewish feminists, Lilith became a question instead: what if the empowered woman isn’t the villain, and is instead someone to teach us something about the world she inhabits? After all, we are linked. We aren’t ranked. In our own day, perhaps Lilith, standing on Gloria Steinem’s shoulders, is a warning to those who seek to oppress us. As legislators and judges work in earnest to limit our power and to disenfranchise us, Lilith is a reminder that you might put a glass ceiling above us, but we’ll bring our own sledgehammers.

May Gloria Steinem rest in power, and may her memory be for a revolution.

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A couple of years ago, I was at a conference where I had the opportunity to do a Jewish mindfulness walk through a botanical garden. It was facilitated by a rabbinic colleague who felt deeply passionate about the connections between nature and our spiritual wellbeing, and it was a powerful experience. The facilitator provided us with source sheets and a self-guided tour. Normally, a source sheet would be my ideal learning tool, but on this particular day, the most poignant torah came from an unexpected place.

As I moved from the first greenhouse of the botanical garden into the second, I found myself behind some giggly teenagers. They were very excited about something they had found growing underneath a giant tree. I listened in, because they seemed truly delighted by whatever the plant was. Once they moved on, I stepped up to the area and saw these tiny little compound leaves. A person walked by with a smile and said, “you should reach out and gently touch those leaves.” Imagine my surprised delight as I stroked the leaves and they curled up against my touch! Apparently, I had found mimosa pudica, also called the sensitive plant. I learned more about the plant, because obviously this was captivating.

Mimosa Pudica photo by Suyash.dwivedi - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=82784027

Similar to a Venus flytrap, the sensitive plant has mechanoreceptors that react to touch stimulation. The movement is very energetically costly, and it actually gets in the way of photosynthesis, because even a strong breeze can cause its leaves to fold inward, thus causing it to be less efficient at catching the sun’s rays.

I loved finding this tiny plant and its sensitive leaves. I loved that someone before me had noticed the plant, so that I might notice it, too. As I got ready to move to the next section, I made sure to point out the tiny leaves to another nearby person, so they might delight in it as well.

Last week, we read Parashat Ki Teitzei. In this passage of Deuteronomy, we receive over 70 mitzvot. It’s a dense and rich portion, filled with laws that demand that we pay attention to the world around us. It’s poignant to read this passage at this season, because we are in the month of Elul, a season of spiritual preparation for the high holy days. In chapter 22, we read:

If you see your fellow Israelite’s ox or sheep gone astray, וְהִתְעַלַּמְתָּ֖ מֵהֶ֑ם v’hitalamta meihem do not ignore it; you must take it back to your peer. If your fellow Israelite does not live near you or you do not know who [the owner] is, you shall bring it home and it shall remain with you until your peer claims it; then you shall give it back. You shall do the same with their donkey; you shall do the same with their garment; and so too shall you do with anything that your fellow Israelite loses and you find: לֹ֥א תוּכַ֖ל לְהִתְעַלֵּֽם lo tuchal l’hitaleim you must not remain indifferent. If you see your fellow Israelite’s donkey or ox fallen on the road, do not ignore it; you must raise it together (Deut. 22:1-4).

Most of us aren’t running into oxen on the road these days. But there is some eternal wisdom here. What is it that we have trained ourselves not to see? What is it that we feel is easier to ignore? These verses of Ki Teitzei call us to pay attention. This is beyond helping injured animals, by the way. Today, one could argue that we see more than we should. Our phones give us access to the world, to people’s inner monologues carefully curated for internet consumption, to a constant barrage of videos and images and texts that far exceed our human capacity for deep understanding. In that online overstimulation, we become desensitized to seeing what’s right in front of us. These mitzvot acknowledge that we humans have the capacity to actively choose to ignore something, to actively practice indifference.

And I feel confident that every person reading this can probably think of at least one moment in their life where they choose l’hitaleim, to ignore someone in need before their very eyes. Maybe you have walked past a person begging on the street. Or driven by a person holding a cardboard sign on a highway exit ramp.

The word l’hitaleim doesn’t just mean to ignore something. More specifically, it is a reflective verb that means to conceal yourself. Do not conceal yourself from the need in front of you. As we do the work of Elul, we might ask ourselves, what have I become so accustomed to that I no longer really see it? This could be large scale societal issues, like homelessness, antisemitism, political cruelty. It could be something closer to home, like loneliness. It could be something as personal as the people you live with. What, or even whom, have you hidden yourself from?

At this time of the Jewish year, we might consider how these questions and their answers push us to recover our moral perception, of ourselves and of our society. In verse one, the phrase was lo tuchal l’hitalem. You cannot conceal yourself.

Think for a moment with me about all the different ways people disappear. First, there’s the literal: someone becomes invisible to us. Perhaps they leave the room, or they move out of town. We no longer physically see them. But there are also those who become socially invisible. Those whose needs are tangible, the homeless, the hungry, the poor. Easy to avert our eyes, easy to ignore. Next are those who are politically invisible, those whose stories fade from society’s notice. These folks might have a quick headline in our relentless news cycle, but attention fades when the story falls out of circulation. Communities with gun violence like school shootings, people who are attacked by ICE officers regardless of their immigration or citizenship status, or trans people whose rights are constantly under attack. Without special attention or focus, these politically invisible groups lose power and, with it, their civil rights. Perhaps relatedly, someone may also become invisible because we’ve decided they’re not our problem anymore, or because their story has become too familiar, too tired.

Whom have you made invisible in your own life? The answer may surprise you as someone intimate to you, someone close in your life. And an Elul framing for this question could be, who might I encounter differently if I stopped assuming that I already knew their story? How might we cultivate genuine, transformational empathy?

There’s another section of Ki Teitzei that helps here. In chapter 24, we read,

וְזָכַרְתָּ֗ כִּ֣י עֶ֤בֶד הָיִ֙יתָ֙ בְּמִצְרַ֔יִם

V’zacharta ki eved hayita b’Mitzrayim Remember that you were a slave in Egypt and that Adonai your God redeemed you from there; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment. When you reap the harvest in your field and overlook a sheaf in the field, do not turn back to get it; it shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow—in order that Adonai your God may bless you in all your undertakings. When you beat down the fruit of your olive trees, do not go over them again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow. When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.

וְזָ֣כַרְתָּ֔ כִּי־עֶ֥בֶד הָיִ֖יתָ בְּאֶ֣רֶץ מִצְרָ֑יִם עַל־כֵּ֞ן אָנֹכִ֤י מְצַוְּךָ֙ לַעֲשׂ֔וֹת אֶת־הַדָּבָ֖ר הַזֶּֽה׃
V’zacharta ki-eved hayita b’eretz Mitzrayim; al kein Anochi m’tzavcha la’asot et-hadavar hazeh Always remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt; therefore do I enjoin you to observe this commandment (Deut. 24:17-22).

This passage does more than tell us emphatically to remember that we were slaves. It commands what we remember what it felt like to be dependent, powerless, and vulnerable.

This is one of the guiding narratives of our people. The Exodus story is a story of our formation, our peoplehood. We are called repeatedly to remember that we were strangers in the land of Egypt, that we were slaves, that we were disempowered. This becomes part of our Jewish family’s ethos. Jewish memory is supposed to create empathy.

But our memories are so complicated. The history of the Jewish people is one of great success and also terrible trauma. What if our collective memory makes us feel more frightened? What if our historical suffering makes us more defensive? What if remembering our vulnerability of old leads us to protect only those who find a place in our symbolic tent of belonging?

Photo by Shane Rounce on Unsplash

This is part of the work of Elul. Ki Teitzei points us towards something powerful. We have to notice what, and who, is in front of us. We have to remember what it feels like to be vulnerable. And then, and this is the key, we have to let what we have noticed and remembered change what we do.

This year, as we prepare our souls for the high holy days, I pray we do so with a sense of deep curiosity about ourselves and the people around us. I hope we find meaningful ways to engage in community, uplifting the humanity of those around us. And maybe this is why I keep thinking about that tiny sensitive plant. What struck me most was not simply that the plant moved when I touched it; it was that I almost walked right past it. I was there intentionally looking for wisdom and connection with something beyond myself. I had a torah source sheet in my hand; I was on a mindfulness walk. And still, the most meaningful teaching of the day was something I would have completely missed if I hadn’t been paying attention, or if those teenagers hadn’t noticed it first. Someone saw something small and delighted in it. They drew my attention to it. I touched it, and it responded. And then, almost instinctively, I became the person pointing it out to someone else.

Maybe that is what it means to resist l’hitalem, concealing ourselves from what’s in front of us. Not simply to refuse to ignore suffering, but to cultivate a way of moving through the world in which we are willing to be interrupted, and moved, by what we encounter. Elul asks us to become more sensitive, more responsive. And by the way, just like how the plant’s moving leaves cause it to use up more energy, this may not be easy work for us either. But what if we become more responsive? To notice the person we have stopped seeing before our eyes, to notice the story we have stopped hearing, to notice the suffering we have learned to scroll past, to notice even the people closest to us, whom we may think we already know.

And then, like that little mimosa plant, to allow what we notice to move us.

Because noticing something and doing nothing is one possibility. But our tradition asks something more of us. Lo tuchal l’hitalem. You cannot conceal yourself. You cannot pretend you did not see. You cannot make yourself disappear from the responsibility that comes with having encountered another human being.

So in these weeks before the High Holy Days, our spiritual practice is simply this: notice more. Notice what you have learned not to see. Notice whom you have made invisible. Notice where your own defenses have made you less responsive. And then let yourself be changed by what you see. And perhaps, just as importantly, help someone else see it, too.

This Elul, may we be more attentive, more curious, and more responsive to the world around us. May we have the courage not to conceal ourselves from what is difficult to see, and may what we notice move us toward greater compassion, greater courage, and greater love.

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Last week, we welcomed the month of Elul, the month that leads us on a journey of spiritual preparation for the High Holy Days. Elul is a beautiful moment in our year. The season has not really started to change in earnest, though we might notice the sun setting ever so slightly earlier than it did in June and July. We set our sights on the year to come, and we recall our deeds of the year that has been.

There’s a tradition to recite the words of Psalm 27 daily from Rosh Chodesh Elul through Shmini Atzeret. This practice invites us to consider the words of the psalmist:

לְךָ֤ ׀ אָמַ֣ר לִ֭בִּי בַּקְּשׁ֣וּ פָנָ֑י אֶת־פָּנֶ֖יךָ יְהֹוָ֣ה אֲבַקֵּֽשׁ׃

In Your behalf my heart says: “Seek My face!” O Adonai, I seek Your face. (27:8)

As we prepare our souls for the High Holy Days, we seek a closeness with God. To get there, we have a month of introspection and reflection. It’s as if our sages want us to understand that in order to cleve to the divine, we must understand ourselves, and draw near to our own souls, first.

Last week, we read from Parashat Shoftim. There, we see how our ancestors planned to create a society that could provide some stability. Our portion begins,

You shall appoint magistrates and officials for your tribes, in all the settlements that Adonai your God is giving you, and they shall govern the people with due justice. You shall not judge unfairly: you shall show no partiality; you shall not take bribes, for bribes blind the eyes of the discerning and upset the plea of the just. tzedek tzedek tirdof justice, justice shall you pursue (Deut. 16:18-20).

Torah helps us understand that how a society structures itself impacts whether or not justice is possible.

Photo by Tingey Injury Law Firm

Of course, many of our sages have wondered why we see the repetition of tzedek. Our tradition holds that there are no redundant words in the torah scroll, so their must be a purpose behind the word being repeated. Given the portion coinciding with Rosh Chodesh Elul, I got to thinking about what this might teach us this year. Elul and Parashat Shoftim are asking us to pursue two kinds of justice at once: justice within ourselves, and justice beyond ourselves.

There is a spiritual practice called cheshbon hanefesh, the accounting of the soul. In this Elul practice, we consider our many deeds and actions throughout the year that has been. We reflect on the way we’ve treated our loved ones and the strangers in our midst. We reflect on our missteps, our mistakes, our regrets. We see where we’ve fallen short, what we can repair, and maybe even what we can’t.

We could be very spiritually sophisticated about our own shortcomings, our own failures, and remain entirely incurious about the world we contribute to.

This year, inspired by the second tzedek, we might also choose to engage this season in cheshbon hachevrah, an accounting of society. In our portion, judges get appointed, bribes get forgiven, and we learn how to listen to witnesses. Put differently, there are clear boundaries around power, to help keep society just. As a part of cheshbon hachevrah, we ask: am I a good person? Is my society healthy? Are my institutions pursuing justice, or set up so that they run fairly?

If the first tzedek is personal, the second is collective. This is a mandate to look twice, and not rely on a quick passing glance. This is our reminder to be attentive. Are we humanizing the accused? Are we humanizing the statistics?

One of the things we love about visiting Chautauqua is coming together with people from different hometowns, different communities, different streams of Jewish living. My guess is that we represented a diverse set of perspectives and opinions by the lakefront. Luckily, God commands pursuing justice, not requiring agreement.

We have a tendency to confuse being certain with being right, or even being righteous. Cheshbon hanefesh is our way of taking notice of that, and working hard to aim for internal justice and beyond. What would change in our lives if we took the dual command tzedek tzedek tirdof seriously?

This time of year, we are commanded to hear the call of the shofar. The shofar is a natural instrument, hollow so that breath can move through it. As my teacher, Rabbi Sheila Peltz Weinberg teaches in one of my favorite pieces of wisdom about the shofar, “The shofar must be naturally bent or bowed. It cannot be linear. The process of returning to our soul is certainly not a straight line.”1

Photo by Megs Harrison

The sound of the shofar is our awakening, our call to action. In Elul we hear the shofar as our wakeup call. This year, consider it a summons outward as well. Wake up to each other. Wake up to the world we’re making together. Wake up to the places where justice is absent.

Let’s return to our Psalm. In the last verse of Psalm 27, we read:

קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְ֫הֹוָ֥ה חֲ֭זַק

וְיַאֲמֵ֣ץ לִבֶּ֑ךָ וְ֝קַוֵּ֗ה אֶל־יְהֹוָֽה׃

Wait for Adonai--Fill your waiting with hope in Adonai;

Let your heart be strong and of good courage, and wait hopefully for Adonai.

This phrase חזק ויאמץ is such a powerful one. It’s a phrase I’ve been turning to for encouragement over these last several months. Chazak means strong and firm, and amatz deals more directly with courage: be strong of heart.

Taken together, this phrase emphatically encourages--literally, it gives us courage--because it reminds us of the strength we already have within us. The Psalmist’s repetition is not redundancy, but insistence. It tells us to keep hoping, keep strengthening our hearts. Our tradition gives us the charge: חזקו ואמצו: be strong and resolute. We must be strong enough to face the truth of who we are, to begin again, to take the next right step. We must be resolute enough to keep going when the way is hard, to persevere in the long arc of justice and healing, to hold onto hope even when we stumble or fail.

I pray that this Elul is a month filled with meaningful and purposeful reflection. May the intertwined practices of cheshbon hanefesh and cheshbon hachevrah lead you to a year of self-improvement and the repair of our society and our world. Together, may we be strong and resolute as we great the new year ahead, and may we always go from strength to strength.

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Even the word “outbreak” is enough to catapult many of our minds back to the dark days of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath. It hasn’t been that long, in the span of human existence, but for those of us with small kids (some of whom we call “covid babies”) it’s been an entire lifetime. Most days, the passage of time has afforded many of us the luxury of forgetting the sharpness what those days were like in their fullness. The fear, the refrigerated trucks, the suspicion of people who violated our physical spaces or coughed in public.

Photo by Isaac Quesada

This week, Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared before Congress, and many of us feel like the emotional scars we thought had largely healed (or, at least, started healing) since the height of the pandemic have been reopened.

Even in the face of the ongoing public health crises underway today, Fauci’s testimony isn’t really just about Fauci. This moment is a test of what a society remembers, and what happens when memory becomes a political weapon.

This week, we read from Parashat Eikev, which comes from the book of Deuteronomy. In this portion, Moses repeatedly tells the people of Israel to remember. Here’s one critical passage, from Deut. 8:11-18:

הִשָּׁ֣מֶר לְךָ֔ פֶּן־תִּשְׁכַּ֖ח אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ לְבִלְתִּ֨י שְׁמֹ֤ר מִצְוֺתָיו֙ וּמִשְׁפָּטָ֣יו וְחֻקֹּתָ֔יו אֲשֶׁ֛ר אָנֹכִ֥י מְצַוְּךָ֖ הַיּֽוֹם׃

Take care lest you forget Adonai your God and fail to keep the commandments, rules, and laws that I enjoin upon you today.

פֶּן־תֹּאכַ֖ל וְשָׂבָ֑עְתָּ וּבָתִּ֥ים טֹבִ֛ים תִּבְנֶ֖ה וְיָשָֽׁבְתָּ׃

When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in,

וּבְקָֽרְךָ֤ וְצֹֽאנְךָ֙ יִרְבְּיֻ֔ן וְכֶ֥סֶף וְזָהָ֖ב יִרְבֶּה־לָּ֑ךְ וְכֹ֥ל אֲשֶׁר־לְךָ֖ יִרְבֶּֽה׃

and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered,

וְרָ֖ם לְבָבֶ֑ךָ וְשָֽׁכַחְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ הַמּוֹצִיאֲךָ֛ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרַ֖יִם מִבֵּ֥ית עֲבָדִֽים׃

beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget Adonai your God—who freed you from the land of Egypt, the house of bondage;

הַמּוֹלִ֨יכְךָ֜ בַּמִּדְבָּ֣ר ׀ הַגָּדֹ֣ל וְהַנּוֹרָ֗א נָחָ֤שׁ ׀ שָׂרָף֙ וְעַקְרָ֔ב וְצִמָּא֖וֹן אֲשֶׁ֣ר אֵֽין־מָ֑יִם הַמּוֹצִ֤יא לְךָ֙ מַ֔יִם מִצּ֖וּר הַֽחַלָּמִֽישׁ׃

who led you through the great and terrible wilderness with its seraph serpents and scorpions, a parched land with no water in it, who brought forth water for you from the flinty rock;

הַמַּאֲכִ֨לְךָ֥ מָן֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר לֹא־יָדְע֖וּן אֲבֹתֶ֑יךָ לְמַ֣עַן עַנֹּֽתְךָ֗ וּלְמַ֙עַן֙ נַסֹּתֶ֔ךָ לְהֵיטִֽבְךָ֖ בְּאַחֲרִיתֶֽךָ׃

who fed you in the wilderness with manna, which your ancestors had never known, in order to test you by hardships only to benefit you in the end—

וְאָמַרְתָּ֖ בִּלְבָבֶ֑ךָ כֹּחִי֙ וְעֹ֣צֶם יָדִ֔י עָ֥שָׂה לִ֖י אֶת־הַחַ֥יִל הַזֶּֽה׃

and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me.”

וְזָֽכַרְתָּ֙ אֶת־יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֔יךָ כִּ֣י ה֗וּא הַנֹּתֵ֥ן לְךָ֛ כֹּ֖חַ לַעֲשׂ֣וֹת חָ֑יִל לְמַ֨עַן הָקִ֧ים אֶת־בְּרִית֛וֹ אֲשֶׁר־נִשְׁבַּ֥ע לַאֲבֹתֶ֖יךָ כַּיּ֥וֹם הַזֶּֽה׃ {פ}

Remember that it is Adonai your God who gives you the power to get wealth, in fulfillment of the covenant made on oath with your fathers, as is still the case.

After the people have eaten, and prospered, and settled down, and felt safe and secure, there is a danger that they will forget God; it is, after all, God’s might that has led them to this stage of their journey as a people. And then, we see, the fear goes beyond forgetting God. The people cannot forget their journey, because they will start to believe it is by their own hands and deeds that they have prospered.

Parashat Eikev teaches us that remembering something is not the same thing as preserving a flattering version of the past. The people of Israel are commanded to remember the whole journey. They have to recall their hunger, the dangers of the wilderness, their true dependence on God, their fear and uncertainty along every step of the way. In this passage of Torah, the point of this remembrance is to cultivate humility, and to cleave to the covenant with God. Torah understands that if we don’t remember, we grow arrogant, and ascribe credit to ourselves that is undue.

COVID was, and continues to be, an experience of extraordinary vulnerability. Upon COVID’s arrival, we were immediately humbled, as we were made aware that a microscopic organism could upend our global economy, our schools, our families, our funerals. Everything. And now, it seems, just a few years later, America is engaged in a fierce struggle about how that experience should be remembered.

In his opening framing to the proceedings this week, Rand Paul (R-KY) revealed his own perspective on what happened during those days, and caused listeners to think critically about whether Dr. Fauci is a trustworthy scientist or a villain. Were the public health restrictions set by many governors and other leaders an act of communal responsibility, or an abuse of power?

Deuteronomy’s concern is that memory should produce humility and responsibility. Forgetting brings haughtiness and arrogance. For us, in 2026, looking back in time a few years to the height of the pandemic, I wish I could shout from the rooftops that the danger isn’t just in misremembering COVID; the real danger is that we forget how little we knew.

We Jews have lots of practice in holding multiple truths at once. In this case, consider the following: Do we have the capacity to hold space for the truths that public health officials can have communicated well at times and poorly at others, that scientific guidance can change as evidence changes, that governments can overreach, that the people can benefit from scientific expertise? If we can find all of those to be true, we don’t have to turn the pandemic into some sort of epic play with a single hero and a single villain.

Those days were terrible. Millions of people died. Millions more were sick, and many still suffer symptoms. Healthcare workers showed up for us in ways that came at a high cost to their home lives, their family members, and their sanity. The sick died alone, and the bereaved were forced to mourn in isolation. Shiva minyans happened on zoom and conference calls. We are still uncovering the lasting effects to our society, our psychology, and our collective and individual wellbeing.

Deuteronomy is, in and of itself, a way of remembering. We get Moses’ retrospective, and it often doesn’t align with earlier passages of Torah. In Eikev, Moses implores us to tell the story again because what we remember from the past determines how we live now. Our society inherits a history and continually retells it, and how we retell what happened to us becomes a part of who we are.

In Deut. 8:2, we read,

וְזָכַרְתָּ֣ אֶת־כׇּל־הַדֶּ֗רֶךְ אֲשֶׁ֨ר הוֹלִֽיכְךָ֜ יְהֹוָ֧ה אֱלֹהֶ֛יךָ זֶ֛ה אַרְבָּעִ֥ים שָׁנָ֖ה בַּמִּדְבָּ֑ר לְמַ֨עַן עַנֹּֽתְךָ֜ לְנַסֹּֽתְךָ֗ לָדַ֜עַת אֶת־אֲשֶׁ֧ר בִּֽלְבָבְךָ֛ הֲתִשְׁמֹ֥ר מִצְוֺתָ֖ו אִם־לֹֽא׃

Remember the whole way that Adonai your God has made you travel in the wilderness these past forty years, in order to test you by hardships to learn what was in your hearts: whether you would keep the commandments or not.

Zacharta et kol haderech: remember the whole way. Remember the whole way, even if it doesn’t vindicate you, even if it doesn’t make you look good, even if it doesn’t reinforce what you already believe.

Photo by Ömer Faruk Yıldız

Dr. Fauci’s appearance before Congress brings up a lot for me, and maybe it does for you, too. A Jewish response Here? Remember the whole way. Remember what we knew, and what we didn’t. Remember the people who died. Remember the scientists and healthcare workers who sacrificed for our survival, under impossible circumstances. Remember the political failures. Remember the heroism. Remember our own vulnerability.

This is the teaching of Eikev: we remember not for nostalgia, but for humility.

What kind of people will our remembering make us?

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This week, I had the honor of officiating at a funeral for a man who died at the age of 93. He knew his adult grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. He was beloved by his family, perhaps most especially by his late spouse of 65 years.

It happens that he was a passionate musician, playing jazz saxophone and clarinet, though that wasn’t how he made his living. Born at just the right age to be drafted to serve in Korea, he opted to enlist in the Air Force instead, where he joined the United States Air Force Band.

When we gathered by his graveside, we were joined by members of the USAF Honor Guard, who were there to perform military honors. In recent years, many of the Honor Guard delegations I’ve partnered with for similar funerals have played a recording of Taps, sometimes while holding a speaker shaped like a bugle. But at this particular ceremony, we heard Taps played live on the bugle. It wasn’t perfect, which made it perfect.

What follows the playing of Taps, a melody that tugs on my heartstrings each and every time I hear it, is the ceremonial removal of the flag from the casket, and an intricate folding ritual. Each fold is inspected carefully by the members of the Honor Guard. The flag is then saluted solemnly, and then one member of the guard slowly approaches the next of kin to present them with the flag folded preciously into a triangle. One such flag sits atop my parents’ mantel, and it was presented when my grandfather, of blessed memory, died.

The person presenting the flag to the next of kin then says, “On behalf of the President of the United States, the United States Air Force, and a grateful nation, please accept this flag as a symbol of our appreciation for your loved one’s honorable and faithful service.” After one more slow salute, the honor guard steps slowly to the side.

The entire ritual is only a few minutes long, but it is stark in its silence. People often start to fidget part of the way through, as the flag is carefully folded in its particular way. Every now and then, folks turn to each other and whisper.

At this particular funeral, it was unseasonably cold, and the sky looked spooky, the weather befitting late September more than mid-July. Nobody seemed to fidget. Everyone was captivated by the ceremony. I found myself transfixed by the texture of the embroidered stars on the flag, by the way the flag morphed as it was turned carefully and folded over itself time and again. Perhaps most of all, I was struck by the way these two servicemen honored a veteran they had never met. Their role at the funeral was to show up and pay their respects through the traditional ritual. They didn’t know the man who died, nor his family. But their intentional movements, their precision, and their careful attentiveness to the tradition were incredibly moving. Their presence elevated the ceremony, and connected this man’s life to that of his country.

Photo by Luke Michael

This week, we read Parashat Va’etchanan, a robust portion full of famous passages. In some regard, Moses spends the entire section of the Torah reminding the children of Israel that they are part of something larger than themselves. This week, we read a passage known as the Shema and V’ahavta, from Deuteronomy 6.

שְׁמַ֖ע יִשְׂרָאֵ֑ל יְהֹוָ֥ה אֱלֹהֵ֖ינוּ יְהֹוָ֥ה ׀ אֶחָֽד׃

Hear, O Israel! Adonai is our God, Adonai alone.

וְאָ֣הַבְתָּ֔ אֵ֖ת יְהֹוָ֣ה אֱלֹהֶ֑יךָ בְּכׇל־לְבָבְךָ֥ וּבְכׇל־נַפְשְׁךָ֖ וּבְכׇל־מְאֹדֶֽךָ׃

You shall love Adonai your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.

וְהָי֞וּ הַדְּבָרִ֣ים הָאֵ֗לֶּה אֲשֶׁ֨ר אָנֹכִ֧י מְצַוְּךָ֛ הַיּ֖וֹם עַל־לְבָבֶֽךָ׃

Take to heart these instructions with which I charge you this day.

וְשִׁנַּנְתָּ֣ם לְבָנֶ֔יךָ וְדִבַּרְתָּ֖ בָּ֑ם בְּשִׁבְתְּךָ֤ בְּבֵיתֶ֙ךָ֙ וּבְלֶכְתְּךָ֣ בַדֶּ֔רֶךְ וּֽבְשׇׁכְבְּךָ֖ וּבְקוּמֶֽךָ׃

Impress them upon your children. Recite them when you stay at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you get up.

וּקְשַׁרְתָּ֥ם לְא֖וֹת עַל־יָדֶ֑ךָ וְהָי֥וּ לְטֹטָפֹ֖ת בֵּ֥ין עֵינֶֽיךָ׃

Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them serve as a symbol on your forehead;

וּכְתַבְתָּ֛ם עַל־מְזֻז֥וֹת בֵּיתֶ֖ךָ וּבִשְׁעָרֶֽיךָ׃ {ס}

inscribe them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

We are reminded first of our people’s special relationship with God: God is one, and the only God. But because of what follows, because of the rules that come after that special statement, we can read the Shema as both a statement of individual belief and as a covenantal call.

We are to take the rules to heart, to teach them to our children, to repeat them over and over, all day long, wherever we go. We are to put symbols holding these words on our bodies and on our homes. In some ways, this is a reminder that Judaism is about what we feel, and what we believe, and also what we do. What we faithfully do.

I found myself thinking about this commandment to love God, and the rules that follow it, as I watched the Honor Guard do their work. The military ritual was so effective because it communicated the profound notion that we remember service by serving in return. This is mirrored in the way we Jews bury our dead. We consider this mitzvah as an act of chesed shel emet, or true kindness, because our dead loved ones can never repay us for this final act of love.

By Deuteronomy, Moses knows he won’t cross the Jordan to get to the Promised Land. He spends his final days teaching the people how to remember, how to bind memory and law to their hands and their homes and their hearts. Military honors do something similar, I think. They remind us that gratitude goes beyond emotion and becomes a discipline. The ritual of remembrance is multifaceted and multi-sensory, as it combines the visual of the folded flag, the haunting notes of Taps, and the deliberate silence. The ritual insists that a life of service is carried forward.

At the funeral, I took in the ritual alongside the sacred call of the Shema, with an understanding that we are to listen carefully to the stories of those who came before us, and to carry forward the obligations they leave in our hands. And we listen for something else, too, something powerful: signs of the enduring hope that one day the courage we honor in those who serve our country will be matched by humanity’s courage to pursue peace instead of power.

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Some of these animal worlds are clothed, and some are not. They almost never acknowledge opposable thumbs, though almost all the characters can grip like people. And please don’t get me started on the food chain paradox.

In identifying these unusual elements of these characters and their worlds, invariably one of us will respond with something along the lines of, “oh, you mean in this documentary about Australian cattle dogs?” or, “I’m really enjoying this documentary about a frog and a toad who are best friends.”

In pretending that these fictional worlds are documentaries, we both acknowledge the joy of imagination while making space for there to be temporary truths that we can enjoy. While we turn the pages or watch an episode, we can pretend we are a part of the scenes before us, as incongruous and far-fetched as they might be. We can suspend our disbelief, and tune into the pretend documentary whole heartedly.

So much of how we enjoy these worlds is connected to the perspective being presented to us. For example, while it would be fun, I’m not sure the talking dogs show would be as charming from the perspective of the cattle their breed might work in an actual documentary, even if the narrator were David Attenborough. But every now and then, we get a chance to explore a story from a different perspective, and it engages our imaginations in beautiful ways.

This week, we begin the book of Deuteronomy with Parashat Dvarim. Deuteronomy is a fascinating piece of our Torah. Likely intended to stand alone, it has certain stylistic elements that set it apart from the other books of the Torah. It is characterized by a sharped focus on monotheism and loyalty to God through the covenant. There’s a theme of teaching throughout Deuteronomy, as Israelites are told to learn the teachings and pass them to their children. It’s a more sermonic, didactic book, and its style is well-suited to be presented aloud. Unlike other law codes, which are typically impersonal, the laws presented in Deuteronomy are addressed directly to the people.

This week, as we read Parashat Dvarim, we encounter the prologue to the rest of the book. We find Moses in the plateau of Moab, in a scene set immediately preceding his death. He will begin with an orientation to where they’ve traveled throughout their wilderness journey, then he will highlight his own part in Israel’s developing history. He will recount familiar narratives from previous books of Torah, though his version will be different.

From my favorite documentary (ha!) about Moses, The Prince of Egypt (1998)

What we have, then, is a set of familiar stories, but instead of being told in the third person, we get Moses’ own view on what happened. In this tell-all, Moses gets his chance to reframe history. His stories are similar enough to the earlier versions for us to see them as the same story, but different enough to catch our attention.

We might wonder, which version is the documentary? Ultimately, it’s all contained within our sacred scroll, so we join our sages in the tradition of delighting in the discrepancies and seeking meaning in those places that capture our imagination. To me, this isn’t an opportunity to fact check Moses’ retelling of the journey; instead, it’s our chance to wonder why Torah would preserve both versions, and what we might come to understand by the preserved differences.

Let’s take a look first at the appointing of judges. In this week’s portion, Moses shares his lament at being overburdened by the community. He says,

“אֵיכָ֥ה אֶשָּׂ֖א לְבַדִּ֑י טׇרְחֲכֶ֥ם וּמַֽשַּׂאֲכֶ֖ם וְרִֽיבְכֶֽם׃

How can I bear unaided the trouble of you, and the burden, and the bickering!

הָב֣וּ לָ֠כֶ֠ם אֲנָשִׁ֨ים חֲכָמִ֧ים וּנְבֹנִ֛ים וִידֻעִ֖ים לְשִׁבְטֵיכֶ֑ם וַאֲשִׂימֵ֖ם בְּרָאשֵׁיכֶֽם׃

Pick from each of your tribes individuals who are wise, discerning, and experienced, and I will appoint them as your heads.” (Deut. 1:12-13)

But in Exodus, in a portion famously named for Moses’ father in law, it is Yitro who makes the suggestion. Yitro sees how beleaguered his son-in-law is, and says,

וַיֹּ֛אמֶר חֹתֵ֥ן מֹשֶׁ֖ה אֵלָ֑יו לֹא־טוֹב֙ הַדָּבָ֔ר אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַתָּ֖ה עֹשֶֽׂה׃

But Moses’ father-in-law said to him, “The thing you are doing is not right;

נָבֹ֣ל תִּבֹּ֔ל גַּם־אַתָּ֕ה גַּם־הָעָ֥ם הַזֶּ֖ה אֲשֶׁ֣ר עִמָּ֑ךְ כִּֽי־כָבֵ֤ד מִמְּךָ֙ הַדָּבָ֔ר לֹא־תוּכַ֥ל עֲשֹׂ֖הוּ לְבַדֶּֽךָ׃

you will surely wear yourself out, and these people as well. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone. (Exodus 18:17-18)

And Yitro tells him how to delegate to trusted helpers from among the leaders of the community. Is this a case of Moses forgetting how it happened? Or does his retelling tell us more about the internal crisis he was facing? Our reluctant and unlikely prophet, flabbergasted by how to lead the people, overwhelmed and unhappy, cries out and takes charge by delegation. A different version than in Exodus, where his gentle and thoughtful father-in-law seems to steer him towards a more peaceful way of being.

Let’s take a look at another vignette and see if it helps us to understand this one. In Numbers 13, God commands the people to send spies to scout the land of Canaan. They send tribal delegations into the land, and see how bountiful and fertile the land is. But they also see giants, and feel afraid. Caleb tries to rally the troops, but the rest of them are too fearful to move forward. In Deuteronomy, Moses says to the people, Go up and take possession of the land as God promised you--fear not and don’t be dismayed. And the people respond saying, “let us end agents ahead to reconnoiter the land for us,” and Moses approves the plan, sending a representative from each tribe. Moses recalls that the spies gave a good report, yet they refused to go up, flouting the command of God and sulking in their tents (Deuteronomy 1:20-26).

In both tellings, the people rail against God, showing faithlessness. God is enraged. In the Numbers version, Moses actually talks God down, convincing God to calm down, because if God acts in fury, the other nations will say “‘It must be because GOD was powerless to bring that people into the land promised them on oath that God slaughtered them in the wilderness’” (Num. 14:16). In Deuteronomy, Moses instead emphasized the consequence of their faithlessness: nobody except brave Caleb will get to move into the promised land.

I wonder if there’s a way to read these slight differences as shifts that reveal to us what Moses wants the new generation to hear. If we see Moses as a guide in the people’s spiritual formation, if we read his monologue in this week’s portion as a kind of lesson to the people as they prepare to arrive, finally, at the Promised Land, could we understand the change in perspective as a way of showing us a truth we already know? That every generation inherits the same Torah, but not the same question?

Ultimately, forty years have passed, and Moses’s audience, with the exception of Joshua and Caleb, is made up of people who were born in the wilderness generation, after the exodus. Moses himself is facing death. As he speaks to this people, his people, he is processing decades of difficulties and disappointment. A trauma-informed approach would have us understand Moses’ different retellings as an example of how trauma reshapes memory. In his changes to the story, Moses reveals a bit of his psychology, on the challenging power dynamics of leading the people, and on the ongoing triangulation he experienced between the people and God. As he prepares the people of Israel to live without him, he highlights certain facets of the experiences they’ve been on from Egypt through the wilderness.

In so doing, Moses becomes, in a way, the first midrashist1. He takes sacred events, and interprets them through his own lens. If Moses can reread revelation, how much more could and should we?

We live in an era of ever-competing narratives. With the rise of artificial intelligence, it’s harder than ever to know if we can trust what it is we see before us. With that difficulty comes the added responsibility to be vigilant in our interpretation. Checking sources, thinking critically, and investing our attention in seeking truth are all more important than ever.

In a 2014 episode of On Being with Krista Tippett, Rabbi Larry Kushner told an amazing story. He said, “I was leading a tour of the sanctuary…with the children in the congregation’s preschool. And then I figured as a piece de resistance I’d have them come onto the bimah…where there was an ark where we kept the scroll of the Torah. It was accessible via a big floor-to-ceiling curtain.

And I got them up on the stage, and I was about to call them — “Open the ark,” but I saw the teacher at the back tapping her wristwatch, which as you may know, is an old Talmudic gesture, which means your time is about up, bucko. So, I said, “I tell you what, [kids.] We’ll come back when we get together again in a couple of weeks. We’ll come back here, and I’m going to open that curtain there and show you what’s behind it. It’s very special.” And so they all say, “Shalom, Rabbi,” and like little ducklings, follow the teacher back to the class.

Well, the next day, the teacher shows up at my office with the following story. Apparently the preceding day’s hastily-concluded lesson has occasioned a fierce debate among the [kids] as to what is behind the curtain. They didn’t know. And, the following four answers are given, which is I think pretty interesting. One kid, obviously destined to become a professor of nihilistic philosophy at a great university, opined that behind that curtain was absolutely nothing. Another kid, less imaginative, thought it had a Jewish holy thing in there. A third kid, obviously a devotee of American game show television subculture, guessed that behind that curtain was a brand new car.

And the fourth kid…said “No, you’re all wrong. Next week when that rabbi…comes and opens that curtain, behind it, there would be a giant mirror.” From a four-year-old. Somehow, that little soul knew that through looking at the words of sacred scripture, he would encounter himself in a new and a heightened and revealing way.”2

In front of the ark during my ordination ceremony

I think reading Torah through Moses’s perspective in the book of Deuteronomy gives us the chance to encounter Moses in a different way, and also to encounter ourselves. If Torah is a mirror, then Moses’s retelling reminds us that Judaism has never asked us to pretend there is only one way to tell a story. Instead, it asks us to bring our whole selves, complete with our memories, questions, wounds, and hopes, into conversation with the sacred text.

Perhaps that is why Torah preserves both versions of these stories. It shows us that truth is often revealed in the conversation between perspectives. We preserve Moses’s interpretation alongside the earlier telling because Judaism trusts us and encourages us to wrestle, to compare, to question, and ultimately to seek wisdom rather than certainty.

One of the things I love about Judaism is that our quest for holiness includes the humility to believe there is still something left to learn, always some question left to ask.

As we begin this season’s reading of the book of Deuteronomy, may we have the courage to keep learning and seeking and exploring, changing our perspectives, challenging and interpreting what is before us. May we be discerning in the stories we consume, humble in the stories we tell, and open to the possibility that every time we open the Torah, we are looking into a mirror, discovering anew who we are and who we are still becoming.

Photo by Kinga Lopatin

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Photo by David Brooke Martin

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Levi taught: A procession of angels walks before every person, crying out, “תְּנוּ מָקוֹם לָאִיקוּנִין שֶׁל הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא, tnu makom la’ikunin shel haKadosh Baruch Hu! Make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching!’”

Every person! In the rabbinic imagination, this procession of angels walks in front of kings, and celebrities, and CEOs. The angels walk before the teenager walking into school, burdened by social pressure and a weighty backpack. They walk before the exhausted parent trying to unfold the stroller so they can go to the park. They walk before the elder, supported by a walker, making their way a little slower than they used to. They walk before the stranger.

If there is a parade of angels in front of every human being, each person created tenderly in God’s image, if this is how heaven sees human beings, why do human societies spend so much energy deciding whose humanity is worthy of recognition?

We gather tonight in celebration and commemoration. Our Pride Shabbat has its roots in the 1969 Stonewall Riots, and in the first march a year later, which was called the Christopher Street Liberation Day March, and in the 1999 and 2011 presidential declarations of Gay and Lesbian Pride Month and LGBTQ+ Pride, respectively. It also has its roots in our Jewish tradition. In our creation narrative, we learn that all people are created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God.

And because Judaism is a religion that requires action, we find ourselves here to pray, to connect, to celebrate together, but also to learn more and to be called to action. We know that this is a charged moment in America, as we approach our nation’s 250th birthday. According to the ACLU, there are 530 anti-LGBTQ bills in the United States, ten of which are active in Ohio. Civil liberties are under attack across our country and here in our own neighborhoods.

House Bill 249 passed the Ohio House and advanced to our state senate. The bill is framed as an “indecent exposure” modernization act, but LGBTQ+ advocacy groups argue the bill’s language is specifically designed to restrict both drag performances and gender-nonconforming expression in public spaces where minors may be present.

Put differently, this bill seeks to restrict the authentic presentation of trans individuals in public spaces.

House Bill 693, the Affirming Families First Act, seeks to prevent Ohio’s child welfare agencies from treating a parent’s refusal to recognize their child’s gender identity as abuse or neglect.

House Bill 798, introduced this year on Transgender Day of Visibility as the Privacy Protection Act, seeks to restrict K-12 and higher education students and employees from using bathrooms that do not align with the sex assigned to them at birth. It also includes provisions to ban public school staff from using names or pronouns that do not match a student’s legal birth name. Further, it prohibits the changing of sex markers on Ohio birth certificates, which creates a bureaucratic disaster for adults who aim to align their identity with their legal identification documents, including Real ID and passports.

To be clear, this already has ramifications. I’ve spoken to several trans and gender-nonconforming Ohioans about how this has created a sense of being trapped, with travel freedom severely restricted. When a passport doesn’t match other identification, passports can be invalidated. There’s a real fear that, if they leave the country as US citizens, they could be stuck across international borders, unable to come home legally.

This isn’t hypothetical; this is lived experience in 2026. And because of how our bureaucratic systems work, sometimes documents get sealed and cannot be changed, or cannot be accessed, and then folks have to go through the indignity, if they’re even able, to revert accurate identification to assigned sex at birth.

This is just a small sampling of the legislation in process here in Ohio, and just from these three examples, we see how there is an active attempt to limit the freedom of people who identify as LGBTQ+. This attack on civil rights is dehumanizing, demoralizing, and terrifying. Rates of depression, suicidal ideation, and suicide attempts are already significantly higher in the spectrum of the trans population when compared to the general cisgender population, which researchers attribute not to identity itself, but to societal stigma and discrimination. Taken as an aggregate, this minority stress plus the removal of civil rights is in its own right a deep crisis.

Let’s turn, for a moment, to the Torah. In this week’s portion, B’ha’alotcha, Moses gathers seventy elders and stations them around the Tent of Meeting. After speaking with Moses, God draws up the spirit that was on Moses and puts it upon the seventy elders, at which point they spoke in ecstasy.

וַיִּשָּׁאֲר֣וּ שְׁנֵֽי־אֲנָשִׁ֣ים ׀ בַּֽמַּחֲנֶ֡ה שֵׁ֣ם הָאֶחָ֣ד ׀ אֶלְדָּ֡ד וְשֵׁם֩ הַשֵּׁנִ֨י מֵידָ֜ד וַתָּ֧נַח עֲלֵהֶ֣ם הָר֗וּחַ וְהֵ֙מָּה֙ בַּכְּתֻבִ֔ים וְלֹ֥א יָצְא֖וּ הָאֹ֑הֱלָה וַיִּֽתְנַבְּא֖וּ בַּֽמַּחֲנֶֽה׃

Vayisha’aru shnei anashim bamachaneh shem haechad eldad v’shem hasheni meidad, v’tanach aleihem haruach v’hema baktuvim v’lo yatz’u haohelah, vayitnab’u bamachaneh.

Two of the men, one named Eldad and the other Medad, had remained in camp; yet the spirit rested upon them—they were among those recorded, but they had not gone out to the Tent—and they spoke in ecstasy in the camp (Numbers 11:26).

Someone goes out and tells Moses that Eldad and Medad are “mitnabim bamachaneh,” acting the prophet in the camp. Joshua calls out to have them restrained, but Moses responds, asking Joshua, “are you wrought up on my account? U’mi yitein kol-am Adonai n’vi’im, would that all of God’s people were prophets, that God inspired them!” ( Numbers 11:29).

This is such a fascinating vignette. The people expect prophecy to happen in a particular place, through particular people, and under very particular circumstances.

But Eldad and Medad defy that particularism by staying in the camp, and the spirit of God, God’s prophecy, rests upon them anyway. Joshua is alarmed; we might wonder if he feels threatened, or afraid that they’re violating some agreement with God. The subtext of his outburst is, “Hey! That’s not where prophecy is supposed to happen!” For Moses to reply with, “Would that all God’s people were prophets!” is so powerful. There is space for more connection with God among the people. There is room to make contact with holiness.

Throughout Torah, we see in our narratives and legal passages as people repeatedly try to draw boundaries around holiness. Human beings try to decide who belongs, who speaks for God, and who counts. But here, God seems uninterested in our boundaries. And over and again, holiness appears where people least expect it.

Across America and here in Ohio, legislators and public figures are increasingly focused on defining who people are allowed to be, whose identities are legitimate, whose lives deserve protection and recognition. This presents us with a spiritual problem, because in so doing, they are deciding in advance what kinds of people are acceptable, and where dignity belongs. They are declaring that some lives fit comfortably within the community, while others remain suspect.

Think about Joshua’s reaction again. We could read it as malicious, but we could also read it as chutzpadik certainty that Joshua thought he already knew where God’s spirit could appear.

Here’s where the wisdom of our angels comes back. The angles proclaim, simply, make way for an image of the holy one. Not, “make way for a person who conforms, whom we fully understand, who fits societal expectations.” Instead, they say: Make way for an image of the holy one.

Our ancient sages are making an astonishing claim with this midrash: human dignity is not earned! It cannot be granted by courts, or given by the majority, or even bought. Human dignity is essential to our being, because every single person inherently bears the Divine image.

On this Pride Shabbat, I’m thinking about how Pride is misunderstood as an attempt to declare superiority. This celebration, and the modern traditions that accompany this month of June, are about refusal to accept shame or disappear or sit idly by while people shout through their words and their legislation and their deeds, ‘there is no place for you here.’ Pride says, “I deserve to be in the world as the person I am.” The angels say, “make way.”

Photo by Y S

I find myself returning to Moses. When Joshua sees something unexpected happening in the camp, he immediately moves to contain it.

Stop them! He cries out. Make Eldad and Medad fit the rules! Make them fit our expectations! And Moses responds with one of the most expansive visions in all of the Torah: “would that all God’s people were prophets!”

That echoes my own prayer, that all God’s people were able to bring their full selves into the community, and share their gifts without fear, and know that God’s spirit rests upon them, that they are the vessel of the divine image. The question for all of us is whether we will respond to the beauty of human difference with Joshua’s fear or Moses’ imagination. Will we insist that holiness appears only where we expect it, or will we recognize that God’s spirit has always exceeded the boundaries human beings try to draw around it?

The rabbis of old imagined that angels parade before every person crying out, “make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching.” Maybe Moses would have delighted in that image, because when Eldad and Medad were prophesying in the camp, maybe Moses recalled his experience at the burning bush. Moses understood somehow that God’s spirit is often found precisely where we were not expecting to see it. Our task is not to narrow the path to holiness. Our job is to make way, for an image of the Holy One is approaching.

Photo by Mayur Gala

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There are parts of Torah we are tempted to read quickly, to skim, hoping their strangeness and apparent irrelevance will pass without asking too much of us. This week’s portion, Tazria-Metzora, with its eruptions of skin and rituals of quarantine, feels like one of those passages. It feels distant, archaic, even safely foreign to us today.

But then the world hands us a fresh horror we cannot scroll past.

This week, many of us finally saw coverage of an online “rape academy” designed to teach men how to sexually assault women. An online community, where tips and tricks for drugging intimate partners and raping them were shared. One website, whose core audience is based in the United States, saw a reported 62 million visits in February of this year alone.

Suddenly, the ancient text doesn’t feel distant at all. Tazria-Metzora, despite its focus on skin disease and broken boundaries, is not a medical text. Instead, it’s a text for the community. What do we do when harm appears in our midst, when it spreads, when it reshapes the fabric of trust, when it threatens the dignity that Torah insists every human being carries?

Torah teaches through this week’s portion that we must learn to see harm clearly, name it without flinching, and interrupt its spread before it becomes the air we breathe.

What does it mean to live in a moment when harm is not only present, but taught?

Photo by Salah Ait Mokhtar

Tzara’at, the disease featured in this portion, is not explicitly seen as a personal defect. However, according to the rabbinic tradition, it reveals an invisible ethical failure; the rabbis connect Miriam’s punishment of tzara’at for speaking out against Moses as evidence that the metzora, the one with tzara’at, must be removed from the camp. This isn’t just for their own sake, though. It allows for a disruption of harm, while creating a moment of reckoning and a chance to protect the vulnerable. We could understand from Torah, then, that harm spreads, and must be named and contained, and addressed as a collective, rather than allowed to fester.

Reading about the horrendous so-called “rape academy” reveals engineered harm. It’s egregious for so many reasons, but one that keeps getting stuck in my mind is how systematized and refined this teaching of wronging is. This goes beyond the lashon harah, or evil speech, of Miriam. This nefarious and vile online community is about cultivating dehumanization and violence. It contributes, horrifically, to a culture that trains people to override consent. This is, like tzara’at, communal contamination. If tzara’at marks the outward sign of moral decay, what would we call a system that trains that decay into others?

Photo by Rosanna Gaddoni

In the Torah, the ancient Israelites cannot ignore tzara’at, nor can they handle it privately and move on, nor can they hold onto the shame forever. Instead, there is a process. First, the issue is named and examined by the priest, so it starts with recognition. Then, there is separation, a quarantine to create space to prevent further spread. Finally, there is accountability and transformation, a path (however complex) back into the community. Following this process, we could understand Torah to teach that when harm endangers others, the community must act to stop the harm and reckon with it. The Torah’s laws here protect the community as whole, especially, and importantly, those most vulnerable to harm.

In today’s America, survivors of sexual violence are met with skepticism and disbelief. They are ostracized and isolated. They are made to carry the cost of others’ actions. In Tazria-Metzora, the one who spreads the contamination is removed, not the one harmed.

Is there a way to draw a parallel from the ancient camps of our ancestors to our modern digital ecosystems? In the days of old, the priests were the ones who helped protect the boundaries of the camp and stop the spread of tzara’at. Today, do we rely on internet platforms to manage this? Educators? Faith leaders?

What does it mean to “quarantine” harm in a world where it is algorithmically amplified?

As I struggle with this topic, I find myself returning to a few Jewish values. First, the idea that each human being is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the divine image. The online “rape academy” becomes a violation of people both by sexual assault and by teaching people to be sexually violent, to dehumanize. This is a particularly horrendous violation, because it creates multiple types of victims, and contributes to a culture where sexual violence is normalized.

The next value that comes to mind comes from the book of Leviticus: לא תעמוד על דם רעך--lo ta’amod al dam rei’echa do not stand idly by on the blood of your fellow1. Inaction is not neutral; it sides with the oppressor. As Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail,

“We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people.”

This leads to the third value I’m drawn to here, which is the concept of teshuvah, repentance. Like re-entering the camp after quarantine from tzara’at, teshuvah requires its own process. Here, one must stop acting in a harmful way, be held accountable, make repair when possible, and transform their future behavior (beyond a simple apology).

Teshuvah in this case cannot be a vague commitment to do better, nor can it place the burden on those who have already been harmed. In a culture where those who participate in sexual violence are rarely held accountable, repentance here will look countercultural. For individuals who consume this kind of content, or participate in its generation, teshuvah begins with a complete and immediate cessation of harm. It would require confronting ways they have been shaped by and contributed to a culture of entitlement to bodies and dehumanization. It would demand public accountability beyond private remorse, a reckoning and willingness to be changed, to be taught, and to relinquish power where it has been so awfully abused.

This feels unlikely, doesn’t it? After all, the release of the Epstein Files continues to deeply underwhelm in terms of accountability in the public sphere. I’m holding space for anger in this regard, because in the face of such evil, it is hard to even imagine any level of teshuvah that satisfies.

For the platforms that host and amplify this despicable material, teshuvah would mean actively identifying and dismantling networks that traffic in violence and accepting the ecosystems of harm they have cultivated.

For communities, for our community, for those who remain silent while witnessing these acts, teshuvah would mean refusing to look away. We have to believe survivors and create spaces where their dignity is restored instead of attacked. We have to educate toward a culture of consent and respect and recognition of shared sacred worth. We have to call out ways that silence and denial and discomfort have allowed harm to persist.

Our tradition does not allow us the comfort of looking away. When harm spreads, we are called to name it, interrupt it, and build communities where it cannot take root. Our teshuvah requires a reorientation towards refusing to accept a world in which violence is inevitable, and insisting instead on one where human beings are treated, always, as created in the divine image.

We must demand accountability from the systems that profit from harm. We must teach explicitly and repeatedly what consent and dignity look like. We must create communities where survivors are met with care instead of suspicion. We must refuse to normalize what should horrify us.

I dream of a world where accountability and responsibility go as viral as harm. If harm can be taught, if it can be allowed to fester, to spread, surely something else can be contagious. Let’s teach accountability and care.

Let’s have the courage to reshape our culture.

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That was the most important thing I have carried with me from a week of learning, conversation, and reckoning with hundreds of other Reform rabbis for our annual convention last week. We were hosted in the Bay Area, where we enjoyed (apparently) unseasonably gorgeous clear skies and warm weather.

Over the course of our program, we got to hear a fascinating and compelling narrative arc. Because if the future isn’t fixed, then neither is the fate of our democracy.

We began with futurist Lisa Kay Solomon, who helped frame our thinking around what is fixed, and what is flexible. She encouraged us to think about how to find agency amid complexity, and how to harness the power of improvisational thinking to see reality as full of offers, be more curious and courageous, and let go with humility. In a world that feels increasingly unstable, she offered a grounding idea: we function best when we hold strong values strongly, and strong ideas loosely. Hope is a posture that requires curiosity, courage, and a willingness to face the inevitably of uncertainty without shutting down.

That framing carried into the central focus of the week: the state of democracy, and the role we as faith leaders play in sustaining it.

Historian Pamela Nadell reminded us that antisemitism is not new in America; it is woven into the fabric of our history. Dr. Nadell encouraged us to question whether we have ever really been as secure as we imagine. In moments of instability, we tend to see the pass through the lens of nostalgia. That doesn’t build the future, but strengthening democratic institutions does.

On Tuesday, we had the opportunity to go out into the greater San Francisco area and engage in various organizations. In the preparatory session before our field trip, I joined together with two other colleagues in small group discussion around the tension between operating from a position of fear or anger, vs. operating from a position of courage and empathy. We traveled together to the Presidio (where we had lunch outside (!) with incredible views). We then had the opportunity to engage in discussion with the founders of the Courage Museum, and take a behind-the-scenes tour (since they don’t open officially for a few months).

The premise of the museum is simple and radical: we cannot build a nonviolent future without each other. In their concept, courage is about turning toward each other, learning and listening, choosing connection over division.

Following the program, I joined colleagues on an impromptu hike up the mountain through the redwood forest to ascend to Temple Emanu-El’s fabulous building, which was conceived of as the Third Temple (and has the dimensions and layout to prove it). As we ascended, I took in the feeling of sun on my face and the smell of the forest floor, the sensation of being absolutely tiny next to the hundred year old giants that stretched up to the very heavens.

That evening, we heard from Professor Marc Dollinger, and two Israeli rabbinic colleagues, Efrat Rotem and Benny Minich. Their presentation was about the changing tides of Jewish identity in today’s American and Israeli societies. I was particularly moved (as I so often am) by Rabbi Efrat Rotem’s reflections. She shared vulnerably about how the violence in Israel has caused a rift in perspective between her and her brother. They’re facing the same challenges in real time, but their approaches to understanding the war are different. Drawing on the story of Jacob preparing to meet Esau, she reminded us that our tradition holds multiple interpretations at once--we can often find what we’re looking for. The question is: what are we choosing to see in one another? That question feels especially urgent right now.

Right now, authoritarianism is on the rise here at home, and also in Israel. The guiding approach there seems to be “conquer, banish, settle,” a way of using a violent offensive as a form of defense. As seems to be happening here in America, the formerly peripheral or marginalized extreme voices have become mainstream. Ware observing what’s at stake when the values of democracy erode.

This leads us to our final plenary session called “Democracy and the American Jewish Community: What’s at Stake and What Can Be Done?” There, we learned with Aaron Dorfman, the director of A More Perfect Union, an effort to mobilize the American Jewish Community to protect and strengthen American democracy. There is a clear bridge between the ideals of democracy and non-violence.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a global erosion of democracy. The four primary markers of the backsliding of democracy here in the United States are toxic polarization, erosion of free expression, deterioration of democratic norms, and the undermining of free and fair elections.

A More Perfect Union is a transpartisan organization that is trying to face the many threats to democracy with courageous action. As the separation of powers is undermined and more power becomes centralized in the executive branch, we are bearing witness to the authoritarian hallmark of the closing of civic space, with coercion of NGOs, retaliation against independent media, and pressure into silence. Individual civil liberties are blatantly under attack. Nonviolent protests are being vilified, impartial investigations of agent-involved deaths are nonexistent, political opponents are being investigated, and overall we see a discrediting of democracy and normalization of authoritarianism. Rationalism becomes irrelevant when facts no longer matter.

One thing that Aaron Dorfman pointed out was the troubling lack of unified uproar about these dynamics from Jewish organizations across the country. But he did provide us with a plan to serve as an antidote:

1. We should make our commitment to democracy explicit, even with a board resolution to that effect.

2. We must stand up for democracy when it is challenged and publicly stand with and celebrate leaders who demonstrate courageous resistance

3. We should protect the vulnerable through mutual aid, nonviolent protests, and documenting interactions we bear witness to.

4. We should build and rebuild relationships and commit to solidarity: break bread, build trust! Relationships weave friction for authoritarianism.

5. Vote like your life depends on it—most especially working to close the gap in local elections, and striving to get 100% voting in our organizations

6. Participate in the RAC’s national Every Voice, Every Vote campaign to harness our movement’s power and build bridges across our communities in partnership

7. Love this country and channel that love into fierce protest and activism, including positive reinforcement for elected officials and law enforcement agencies that are working with democracy’s interests in mind.

At the end of the plenary, I got to present about the work my congregation did around Issue One in Ohio in 2023, some of the work I am proudest of in my career thus far. With help from Reform Jews across the country, we joined together in our shared efforts towards enshrining reproductive freedom in our state constitution. We navigated the process of a ballot initiative, and fought hard—and got a win! This work is possible. Engaging in civic advocacy can be empowering and meaningful, most especially when we do it in community. We won because people showed up, together.

Dorfman reflected that it’s hard to love something that feels broken. On the left, this tends to manifest as a lack of engagement. On the right, this tends to look like a refusal to admit that anything is broken. That’s the paradox of the phrase “a more perfect union.” Nothing can be “more” perfect, the same way something can’t be “very unique.” But it’s our ambition and our call as citizens of this great nation to protect democracy.

I have many takeaways from my time at the convention. But the one I want to share with you today is that hope is not lost when it comes to this project that is the United States of America. There is a path forward towards nonviolent courage. It begins with the bridges we build and tend to between us. Bridges of empathy and curiosity, bridges of compassion and understanding, bridges of mutual reliance and co-creation.

We’re about 8 months out from midterm elections. There will be many ways to work hard to protect democracy in the months ahead: getting trained to observe polling stations, being poll workers, helping get out the vote by postcarding and phone banking, and education around candidates and issues.

It will be easier to take the ostrich approach, put our heads in the sand, and hope that the people we disagree with will magically disappear. It will be easier to ignore the news, or to take a posture of denial that we are rapidly approaching authoritarianism.

This is not the time to take the easy path. This is the moment we are in, with all its complexity. I invite you to commit to protecting democracy and doing this work with me. The future is not fixed—we need to work hard to design a future that is nonviolent, courageous, and empathetic. It is going to take us all!

The erosion of democracy that we’re bearing witness to is not inevitable, nor is its outcome. A nonviolent, courageous, democratic future is still possible, if we choose it. If we build it, bridge by bridge, action by action.

Empathy is in short supply these days.

In a state of overwhelm with the world, I took my family to experience the magic of the movies. We saw the new Pixar movie, Hoppers. It was great!

In Hoppers, we see a teenager, Mabel, who has a love of nature cultivated by her late grandmother. Mabel happens upon some extraordinary technology: with the push of a button, she learns she can “hop” her consciousness into the body of an animal. One moment she’s human, and the next, she’s a beaver.

From inside the borrowed body, she sees the world differently. She can sense the rhythms of the glad, the thread of human development, and the fragile ecosystems that humans are so oblivious to as we pass through them. There’s great whimsy in the premise, but I found it to be an oddly compelling fantasy. After all, who hasn’t wondered at some point what it would be like to inhabit someone else’s life? Not just to observe it, but to experience it from within?

The creators of Hoppers give us the idea of a machine that makes it possible. And because this is how my brain works, I got to thinking about the call in the Torah that makes empathy a mitzvah, a sacred obligation:

In Exodus 23:9 we read, “You shall not oppress the stranger, for you know the soul of the stranger, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.”

We know the soul--because it is our own soul!

And in a couple of weeks, at our Passover seders, we will tell the story of our people’s time in Egypt, the miracles of leaving, the work of becoming who we are as a people. We are told to retell the story year after year, generation after generation, because we are supposed to feel ourselves in the story. Today, right now, each one of us. Why? So that we understand the moral obligation we have to see ourselves in the stranger, and to act accordingly, from a place of deep understanding and empathy.

It’s as if human beings already have within us the technological capacity to possess deep empathy. We don’t need a machine to let us hop into another body, because through conversation, engagement, and research, we have some capacity to hop into the other’s memory and imagination. In the movie, Mabel is able to experience their lives as her own, but importantly she also learns from hearing directly from the creatures about their lives. She’s able to ask questions, to find out more about why things are the way they are, what it is exactly they’re experiencing. Ultimately, the beauty of hopping is the ability to share language, in this case, across species. Hearing the truth of another’s lived experience is its own kind of hopping, and one we need to hold up.

Imagine, just for a moment, that we had a hopper machine of our own. You press a button, and the world tilts. You become a farmworker tending rows of strawberries in the high heat of August. You are a scared 17 year old girl, walking home late at night, keys clutched between your fingers. You are a child hiding in a neighbor’s house from someone trying to abduct your family. You are a river trying to carry the force of life while plastic bottles drift through your current. Imagine you inhabit each of those lives from their perspective and you feel for a moment what that body feels, what that life fears. And then return to yourself.

Would it change the way you vote? The way you consume? How you speak, or who you defend? Would it change what you refuse to ignore?

Photo by Mike Cassidy

Hoppers presents a machine that could create that transformational experience. The Torah imagines something simpler but perhaps just as powerful, because it imagines a people who remember what it felt like to be powerless in Egypt, and who use that memory as a compass for how to treat everyone else. No machine required.

We will probably never invent a machine that lets us hop into someone else’s body. But if we follow the commandments surrounding the retelling of our people’s exodus story, we don’t need one. Every time we ask ourselves what it might feel like to live someone else’s life, every time we let another creature’s vulnerability shape our choices, every time we refuse to look away from someone else’s suffering, we are doing a small act of hopping. Stepping, however imperfectly, however briefly, into another world. And if we practice enough, it stops being an experiment; it becomes a sacred obligation fulfilled.

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וְעָשִׂ֥יתָ בִגְדֵי־קֹ֖דֶשׁ לְאַהֲרֹ֣ן אָחִ֑יךָ לְכָב֖וֹד וּלְתִפְאָֽרֶת׃

Make sacral vestments for your brother Aaron, for glory and for beauty (Exodus 28:2).

We learn about the many component parts of the priestly vestments: a breastpiece set with stones, an ephod woven with gold, a robe hemmed with bells and pomegranates that served to announce the presence of the divine. Every detail matters! Holiness isn’t invisible, according to Torah. It is something that can be worn. It shimmers, it shines, it jingles. And, like a uniform for a modern-day job, the clothing in Torah isn’t just fabric! It was a signal to show who was authorized to stand very near to the sacred.

It happens (by rabbinic design) that we read this verse around Purim each year. At Purim, we read the Book of Esther, where the colors mirror those of the mishkan (tabernacle). In Esther, garments matter as much as they do in Tetzaveh. Esther conceals her identity and later adorns herself very deliberately before approaching the king. Her uniform, her costume, her clothing, shapes how she survives. What she reveals determines the fate of her (our!) people, and whether they will survive, too.

What we wear reflects to the world something about who we are, and it can signify belonging. It can symbolize who has the right to enter a room. And garments can also be political.

Today, Jewish women wrapping themselves in tallitot (prayer shawls) at the Western Wall are told that what they wear is disruptive, an affront--that the garments of public Jewish sanctity do not belong on their shoulders.

Parashat Tetzaveh would seem to disagree.

If priestly garments are made l’chavod ultifaret, for glory and for beauty, then they aren’t costumes, but work uniforms that communicate who is entrusted with proximity to God. Tetzaveh is interested in fabric and in authority. Who can serve? Who can approach? Who can represent the people before the Holy One of Blessing?

The Torah’s teachings aren’t frozen in ancient times, because debates about who are permitted to wear sacred garments have never really ended, they’ve just changed settings.

At the Western Wall, the last remaining visible remnant of the Temple complex whose priestly service Tetzaveh painstakingly describes, women are still told that certain garments do not belong on their bodies. Women are told that a tallit on their shoulders is a provocation, an interruption to the prayerfulness of the holy space. Many female presenting visitors have had the experience of approaching the Western Wall and having a woman drape you in scarves for “modesty.”

The Western Wall complex is split into three areas: a large men’s section, a small women’s section, and a third area called “Ezrat Yisrael” and Robinson’s Arch. This third area is in a separate section altogether, not part of the divided plaza. This third section is important, because it allows for mixed-gender prayer without a partition. In Orthodox Jewish prayer spaces, men and women are required to pray in separate areas. Robinson’s Arch allows for folks who are used to egalitarian prayer spaces to have a Jewish prayer experience at our holiest site in a way that feels comfortable and authentic to their own Jewish prayer life.

Earlier this week, a preliminary vote took place in the Knesset to criminalize egalitarian Jewish worship at the Western Wall. If enacted, any form of Jewish prayer not sanctioned by the ultra-Orthodox Chief Rabbinate would be punishable by seven years in prison. This proposal is egregious. It is an attempt to take mainstream Jewish worship in the Jewish state and criminalize it. The Reform Movement published a powerful statement in opposition to this proposal this week.

In addition to setting a dangerous, broader-reaching precedent that could erode religious freedom and harm pluralism writ large, this proposal seems to me to be directly targeting the inclusion of women in religious Jewish life. Policies supported by Knesset members reinforce a vision of Jewish public ritual in which authority is gendered and access is conditional.

The organization Women of the Wall (aka נשות הכותל) have fought since 1988 for women’s right to pray collectively and aloud at the Western Wall. They’ve fought for public Torah readings, shofar soundings, and the right to wear tallitot and t’filin. They’ve been arrested, and beaten, and harassed. They have been outspoken advocates for equality and justice warriors, all for the simple act of reading from our people’s sacred texts in a holy place. They defy “tradition,” which is an objective interpretation of glory and beauty, kavod and tiferet. Because of their gender, those in power determine the women are not worthy of wearing sacred garments.

Photo from Women of the Wall’s website

One thing that’s interesting (and unique!) about this week’s Torah portion is that it is the only one in which Moses’ name does not appear. It is as if he is hidden or concealed. Similarly, the Book of Esther has a unique omission as well, as it is the only book of the Hebrew Bible that does not contain God’s name. And even so, Esther steps into her power, uses hiddenness (an idea alluded to even in her name, which means concealed), and she rises to her station for the sake of her people.

In Esther, we read a verse I often refer to. In a moment of crisis, Esther’s uncle, Mordechai, gives her a hell of a pep talk. He says,

כִּ֣י אִם־הַחֲרֵ֣שׁ תַּחֲרִ֘ישִׁי֮ בָּעֵ֣ת הַזֹּאת֒ רֶ֣וַח וְהַצָּלָ֞ה יַעֲמ֤וֹד לַיְּהוּדִים֙ מִמָּק֣וֹם אַחֵ֔ר וְאַ֥תְּ וּבֵית־אָבִ֖יךְ תֹּאבֵ֑דוּ וּמִ֣י יוֹדֵ֔עַ אִם־לְעֵ֣ת כָּזֹ֔את הִגַּ֖עַתְּ לַמַּלְכֽוּת׃

“On the contrary, if you keep silent in this crisis, relief and deliverance will come to the Jews from another quarter, while you and your father’s house will perish. And who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.” (Esther 4:14)

God knows we have plenty of crises afoot, many of which we must decide how our gifts and positions of power might enable us to make a difference for the better. In this case, I find myself thinking about what it means to be a marginalized class in an ultra-Orthodox worldview.

Rabbi Rahel Berkovits puts it in a way that resonates with me. She teaches that one of her greatest experiences of the divine is simply the fact that she exists — alive, created in God’s image. Faced with texts that diminish women, she refuses to accept that inequality could ever be ratzon Hashem, the will of God. She is, in her words, “100 percent unwilling to accept that.”

Me too. A Jewish state that limits Jewish women’s voices at Judaism’s holiest accessible site is not protecting tradition. It is shrinking it.

Parashat Tetzaveh begins with a command:

וְאַתָּ֞ה תְּצַוֶּ֣ה ׀ אֶת־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֗ל וְיִקְח֨וּ אֵלֶ֜יךָ שֶׁ֣מֶן זַ֥יִת זָ֛ךְ כָּתִ֖ית לַמָּא֑וֹר לְהַעֲלֹ֥ת נֵ֖ר תָּמִֽיד׃

You shall further instruct the Israelites to bring you clear oil of beaten olives for lighting, to raise up an eternal flame (Exodus 27:20).

The light depends on those willing to bring the oil; it doesn’t burn on its own. In the Book of Esther, God’s name is never written. In Parashat Tetzaveh, Moses’ name is never spoken. Absence hovers over both texts like a held breath, and yet the story moves forward. The light does not go out. But hiddenness is not the same thing as erasure.

Esther begins in concealment. She passes, she complies, she survives, until her own personal survival isn’t enough anymore. “For such a time as this,” Mordechai tells her. There are moments when silence protects. And there are moments when silence collaborates.

At the Western Wall, women are told their voices are too loud, their garments too inappropriate, their Torah reading too disruptive. Policies backed by members of the Knesset reinforce a vision of Jewish public life in which women’s ritual presence is conditional, negotiated, contained. And so the question is not whether God is present there, but who is permitted to stand in God’s presence.

The Union for Reform Judaism has said clearly what my theology has always insisted: Torah does not belong to one gender. Holiness is not inherited through maleness. Glory and beauty are not male vestments.

Tetzaveh describes priestly garments made for glory and for dignity. Kavod and tiferet. If dignity belongs only to some Jews, it is not dignity. If glory requires women to shrink, it is not glory.

The eternal flame is fed by those who refuse to let it go dark. Esther walked toward the king knowing the risk because she understood that hiddenness, concealment, had reached its limit.

“For such a time as this” is about sacred courage. If Jewish women must still argue for the right to wrap themselves in tallit, to lift Torah, to let their voices rise in song at the Wall, if people of all gender identities cannot come together to pray in our holiest space, then our work of bringing oil for a neir tamid (eternal light) is not finished.

And, if we are heirs to Tetzaveh’s command, then we do not get to admire the flame from a distance. We are commanded to keep bringing the oil, and to insist that the garments of glory fit every body made in the image of God.

The light will not extinguish itself. The only question is whether we will tend it.

Photo by Todd Trapani

Like many people, one of the other things I love most about the Olympics coverage are the stories we get to hear about the athletes. We see their training regimens, their eccentricities, their coaches, and their families. We learn what is important to them, and what kind of journey they’ve traveled physically and emotionally to compete.

There’s a part of me that wants to pretend like I don’t cry watching things like Olympic sports, but those of you who know me personally know that that’s absolutely not true. I cry all the time watching the Olympics. I’m so moved by the experience of watching people become absolute masters of their craft, using their strength and fortitude and resilience to succeed on the world stage.

I confess that in my heart, I am a summer Olympics girl, though in recent years my appreciation for the winter games has grown immensely. This year in particular I’ve found a great deal of joy in watching Olympics coverage. I think part of this is closely connected to my journey of reframing my relationship with the American flag, and what it means to be an American in the global arena right now. I appreciate the reflections several athletes shared early in this year’s games about how carrying the flag doesn’t mean agreeing with everything the federal government is doing. I’ve been rooting for my fellow Americans, and have found particular joy in watching figure skating.

Last night, I was sitting on the couch watching 20-year-old Alysa Liu conquer the world with her free skate. Alysa is one of these classic Olympic comeback stories: she got totally burned out at age 16, feeling no joy in her sport despite her high levels of success. She decided to walk away and retire, because skating wasn’t leaving her space for anything else in her life. She reconnected with the sport accidentally, and realized she really did love lacing up her skates and getting out on the ice. She decided to come back to the sport and do it her way, with authenticity, on her own terms. To bear witness as she completely vibed with her music and her choreography, nailing every single jump--it was truly special to watch someone whose body just exhibited freedom, joy, empowerment, and skill in such a powerful, genuine way. We love a comeback story, because it reminds us that there’s always hope!

She won the gold medal skating to Donna Summer’s “MacArthur Park Suite,” which was a nontraditional (and excellent) musical choice. Liu is a person who demonstrates the joy and freedom of being herself. She’s got a frenulum piercing, which makes her smile unique. She has a signature halo hairstyle that symbolizes the rings of a tree and the growth a tree experiences year over year. She’s doing things her way, and not conforming to the “girl next door” vibes we might be used to in figure skating.

As I watched her gold winning routine, I was so moved to watch her be so exuberant and joyful and skillful. It brought tears to my eyes, because it’s exactly what I dream of for the kids I know in my life: that they should find something that speaks to their soul, something they feel passionate about, and do it their own way--and be celebrated for it. They’re not all going to go to the Olympics, and it won’t necessarily be sports, but I pray they’ll find something where they feel on top of the world, accomplished, successful, and joyful.

One of the things I noticed in my many hours of watching figure skating this week was that the commentators, as their title suggests, have a lot to say about the different athletes and their performances. It seems like the better a routine is, the less they have to say. They were almost silent during Liu’s routine, as if they were rendered speechless by the performance. To be able to just take in the way her routine lined up perfectly with her music, to watch her fly through the air with a smile on her face and an ease in her body, and to just see how beautiful it can be when it’s done just so perfectly was deeply inspiring and incredibly compelling to behold.

Photo by Wang Zhao

This shabbat, we read from Parashat T’rumah. There, all the Israelites are supposed to bring an offering, a gift of their own volition, something they can contribute to the mishkan (tabernacle). Different people brought different gifts: they needed wood, gold (metal, not medal), and fine fabrics, among other things. Some people were able to bring their skill: artisans, architects. We imagine some people brought food, feeding the designers and builders. Each brought their offerings according to their heart: מֵאֵ֤ת כׇּל־אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ me’eit kol-ish asher yidvenu libo.

I’m never going to be an Olympic figure skater, and that’s completely fine with me. After all, I’ve done none of the training, I have no relevant experience, and this isn’t a season of my life where that feels desirable or possible at any level. But I do have other gifts to bring. I try in this format, and in my work at my congregation, my work raising my kids, and the joy I aim to cultivate, to bring my t’rumah, my heart-filled offering, to my community and to our world.

And I bet you make a t’rumah, too. I think the Olympics give us an opportunity to do something beyond comparing ourselves to these incredible, hardworking athletes. They pour their souls into being excellent in their fields. What if we reflect on what it means to make our own genuine offerings, not in the Olympic arenas of Milan, but in the world we co-create with each other? What if we wake up every day and take our chance to make our offering to the world? I wonder what the world would look like if we built it every single day with the truest offerings of our hearts.

Alysa Liu came back on her own terms, as herself, making her own joy, and won gold. That’s her t’rumah. What’s yours?

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