Mobile Sanctuary 2025

Today is a national boycott to protest corporate greed

Dear friends, 

There’s another way to look at this period.  

It’s true that everyone is anxious. It’s true that people are afraid, for good reason. But since September 11th, 2001 I don’t remember such a palpable, collective desire in this city to do something for the common good. Everyone I speak with seems obsessed with finding some meaningful way to respond to what they’re seeing happen in this country. This is a power that will be harnessed. And the current confusion will give birth to new modes of thinking that will seed the landscape of the coming years.  

This week’s parashah finds our ancestors in the creative wilderness of Sinai. They’re in new territory, homeless, with only God to guide them, and only each other to trust in. If you think 2025 in America is scary, imagine most other places and most other times where our people have been. Imagine the desert, where out of the precarious reality a new way emerges that will endure for thousands of years. 

The first step toward harnessing this incredible energy is to offer a channel to pour it into. Here’s what it looks like in the parashah: 

“יהוה spoke to Moses, saying:  
Tell the Israelite people to bring Me gifts; you shall accept gifts for Me from every person whose heart is so moved.” 

Our hearts are ready to give. If we thought it would make a difference, what would we not do or give? The Hebrew is even better than the translation. אִישׁ֙ אֲשֶׁ֣ר יִדְּבֶ֣נּוּ לִבּ֔וֹ literally means every person whose heart volunteers them. I think it’s safe to say that our hearts are volunteering us. We’re just not yet sure for what. 

“These are the gifts that you shall accept from them,” the good book continues: 

“gold, silver, and copper;  
blue, purple, and crimson yarns, fine linen, goats’ hair; 
tanned ram skins, cattle skins, and acacia wood;  
oil for lighting, spices for the anointing oil and for the aromatic incense;  
lapis lazuli and other stones for setting, for the priestly garments and for the breastpiece:” 

In other words, bring what you got. There are infinite ways to contribute. We each have the issues that speak to our souls. We each have what to give, what to contribute. Even those who have nothing material to give are invited to find other ways to give. 

“all the men and women whose hearts moved them to do the work that יהוה, through Moses, had commanded to be done, brought it as a freewill offering to יהוה.” 

Finally, the divine charge concludes: 

"They will make Me a sanctuary, and I will dwell among them.” 

We are building the mobile sanctuary of holiness for our times. It is a creative endeavor that would have never come about if we were at home in what we know. Next week I hope to offer some thoughts on one avenue into which we can pour our concern and good will. For now, let’s turn our confused, despondent disbelief into a focused voice of creative resistance.  

Tonight will be a great opportunity to practice, when we meet for Shabbat to celebrate an adult Bar Mitzvah, examine a historical moment of creative Jewish resistance, and take refuge in our great queen, Shabbat. Hope to see you there.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Unlimited Monarchy

Malbim: Rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser

Dear friends, 

Occasionally the bible speaks directly to our current political reality. The Book of Esther, which we will read on Purim usually offers some illuminating view of America. But it wasn't until I happened upon the Malbim's 19th century commentary on Esther a few weeks ago that I understood what political bible commentary looks like. I offer you here Rabbi Meir Leibush Weisser, known as the Malbim's resonant introduction to Esther, which seems influenced by living in most countries in Eastern Europe, some in Western Europe, the Ottoman Empire, and an extended stint as the chief rabbi of Romania. He was even offered the position of Chief Orthodox rabbi of our fair city, which he declined. See if you can read it without thinking about the USA in the year 2025.

"An understanding of this story demands that I make a brief introduction into how monarchies functioned when Egyptians, Medes, and Persians controlled the world stage.

There were two types of monarchies: The first was a monarchy in which the king was elected by the people. The second type of monarchy was rule by force, in which the king conquered the country and became its ruler against the wishes of the people.

From these two appear two different types of governing: A. The powers of the king in the first type of monarchy were limited. The limitations to his actions are known. The limits of his powers were legislated already at the time of his election. Upon taking office, the king swore to follow the laws and practices of the country. B. In the second type of monarchy, however, the powers of the king were unlimited. He does what he desires. Though he might seek the advice of ministers, he did what he wanted, changing the laws of the country and its practices as he saw fit. He is the king and the law maker, all in one.

There were five major differences between these two types of monarchies:

1. In the limited monarchy, the king was [seen as] taking care of the country, the head of state who legislated and was responsible for leading the country in its wars and in all of its issues. The people, in turn, pledged their allegiance (were subservient), accepting their duties to the king and agreeing to do things for mutual welfare, such as to pay and so on. In the unlimited monarchy, such as Sancherib and Nevuchednetzar, however, the country was totally subservient to the king, and its people were thought of as his slaves, and he can do whatever it is he wants with them, just as a master does with a slave he has bought for money.

2. The national treasuries in the limited monarchy belonged to the state. In the unlimited monarchy, they belonged to the king himself, like Pharaoh and Nevuchednetzar.

3.  The king that ruled in a limited monarchy was not free to make major policy decisions without the approval of the country’s ministers. The unlimited monarch had no such restrictions, he would destroy and fix everything himself, without giving a thought to asking for advice or receiving permission at all.

4. The limited monarch was bound by the laws of the country and its [religious] dictates. The unlimited monarch could change the laws as he wished.

5. The capital city could not be changed in a limited monarchy; the king had to rule from the same city as his forebears. The unlimited monarch could change his capital city as and when he wanted. With this introduction we can proceed to the Purim story.

More next week!

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

On the Power of Self-Evident Truths

The Educational Bookstore in East Jerusalem was packed this week in response to a police raid. Photo by Oren Ziv

Dear friends, 

Yesterday a few people saw my name in the NY Times in print so tiny that the page could contain all 350 rabbis who signed an add titled “Jews say no to ethnic cleansing.” When they reached out to congratulate or challenge me on it all I could do in reply was to quip: “I really had to think hard on whether I support ethnic cleansing or not.” Any denials of that phrase have been undone by the explicit dream of our president. So, no matter what you think about the practicality, political calculations, or even the ethics of this "plan," supporting it means you're willing to entertain what is known as ethnic cleansing as an option. Which I am not.

Ethical decisions on the political front have, in a way become much easier of late. I don’t feel the weight of complexity like I did a year ago. Here’s another simple one: Earlier this week the Israeli police raided two branches of a world-famous Palestinian bookstore in  East Jerusalem, arrested the owner and his nephew, and seized a selection of books — including a children’s coloring book and a book by Chomsky. Some of those books, believe it or not included the word Palestine in the title(!), much like a few of the books in the bookstore in my neighborhood in Brooklyn. Still, somehow, I hesitate to support arresting the owners of Lofty Pigeon Books on Church Avenue, and confiscating those books.  

On this side of the world, last weekend I heard from a worker fixing a leak in my bathroom that “everyone got deportation orders.” This is the general state of affairs in our city. Though this may be troubling on the practical front, since the city will grind to a halt without the immigrants who keep it running, there’s a more important aspect to it: Jewishly speaking, like both examples above, there is absolutely no question where to stand on this issue. 

These are three issues that for Jews are literally no brainers, because they are baked into our bodies through trauma and collective and family memory. We viscerally oppose ethnic cleansing because we were “cleaned out” of Israel several times in our history as an attempt at cultural genocide, and then forcibly removed from most places we lived in. We oppose confiscating books because the books of the people of the book have been burned and confiscated countless times. And we oppose deporting refugees and other poor people desperately seeking survival and better life because that is the story of every Jew. 

It feels silly writing down these self-evident truths. It’s like saying that a tree opposes being transferred to a dark basement, or that an apple is against a ban on watering fruit trees. The first of the Ten Commandments, which we read this Shabbat doesn’t just say “I am YHVH your God,” but continues “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, the house of bondage.” The memory of our oppressions is our most primal animator. This is both our beauty and our tragedy.  

We may or may not like that fact. We may hate ourselves for being so deeply attached to our history. We may want to run away from ourselves, like Jonah running away from God. But we will fail. We are Jews like trees are trees, and that means that just like we breathe air, we oppose certain political actions. The current alien behaviors of large parts of our people will be corrected in time. בזאת אני בוטח, as the Psalmist sang, “in that much I have full trust.” Our work is to be who we are, and speak the obvious when our lips are so moved to do. 

One way to do that today is to order a book from The Educational Bookshop in East Jerusalem. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

What's Our New Song?

"the pillar of cloud moved from in front of the people and stood behind them."
Photo by Ghiora Aharoni

Dear friends, 

It appears as though a shift has happened. Everyone I speak to is looking for the right way to act, to respond, to not respond. The old playbook doesn’t feel right. What we did in the past isn’t working. How we thought about the world was off. Though the work hasn’t changed, the methods may need to.  

This evening begins Shabbat Shirah, Shabbat of song, on which we read the Song of the Sea, our song of amazement at being delivered from the hands of our enslavers into freedom. We’re supposed to sing, but this year we’re not sure exactly what or how. “How can we sing the song of God in this cold, foreign land,” asked the exiled psalmist. He was yearning for Jerusalem, which he was kicked out of by the empire. Today this poet’s descendants threaten to do the same to their cousins. As for us, we’re still here where we were, but feel, how shall I say, out of place. 

The wondrous second verse in the Song of the Sea reads: 

עזי וזמרת יה ויהי לי לישועה 

It’s impossible to translate eloquently, but might be rendered as:
 
My strength
and the song of the goddess 
Have become my saving grace. 

It’s the phrase זמרת יה, “the song of the goddess,” or “God’s singing,” or perhaps “the divine soprano,” that I think might be helpful in the context of finding our new song. God’s singing is never static. My sixteen-year-old told me this week that the first definition of God he’s heard that makes any sense to him is that God is change. If that formulation has some truth to it, and it very well may, then God’s song can never be the same. You can never dip your toe in the same godsong twice. It is in constant motion. Being present enough to hear it, and certainly to sing along to the song of the universe is dependent on our ability to notice, adapt to, and accept what is.  

As the poem implies, there is great strength in that ability to be with change. We have in this world a fortress of strength that is unchanging, stable as a rock - and next to it there is the unbreakable power to be in flux. “One should always be as flexible as a reed and not as stiff as a cedar,” taught Rabbi Elazar in the Talmud. 

Tonight, I’m excited to gather to wash the world away with our singing. Every Shabbat we “Sing a new song to God.” It’s a type of unlikely miracle that a group of people can’t repeat music identically, even in the precise Western mode of making music. That's what allows us to be able to sing new songs. Perhaps music brings out our godliness. There will be four wonderful musicians, food and a significant number of the only ones I really trust to help us find our new song: kids. 

If you haven’t yet experienced our Brooklyn Shabbatot in Fort Greene, they’re pretty great (and easy to get to from anywhere, right behind Barclays Center).  

I hope to see you there. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Darkness is for Dreaming

Brooklyn, winter 2025

Dear friends, 

I've been sitting with my rabbi, Jim Ponet, and another of my rebbes, Elana Ponet for the last couple of hours studying Torah and discussing this moment politically, in an attempt to figure out what should go in this letter. It all revolves around this week's parashah, Parashat Bo, in which we go from the 8th plague, Locusts, through to the final Plague of the Death of the Firstborn Son. The ninth plague, Darkness is described as a darkness so thick that it paralyzes you. If you were standing when it started, you'll stay standing til it ends. If you were sitting, you'll stay in your seat. Then comes a dramatic showdown between Moses and Pharaoh, which leads to the final plague. But the part we found most compelling in its strangeness was chapter 12, when right before the 10th plague, suddenly the action stops. Then we are thrown into the future, where Jews will be remembering this very story by performing a series of elaborate rituals involving symbolic foods and sacrifices called "Passover." I offer you little bits of this lively study.

Rabbi Jim says:
Yesterday was the beginning of the Hebrew month of Shvat, which signifies that spring is coming. Whether we are ready for it or not some hope is approaching.

Elana adds: It's the season of seeds. In the earth.

Rabbi Jim: Hazorim Bedim'a  - those who plant through their tears -  and I'll add their sweat and blood - Berina Yiktzoru - will reap with happy song.

Elana: The question is what do we want to plant right now? What do we want to grow? We're not just responding to things we don't like, we are planting!

Rabbi Jim: In this week's parashah,  in the middle of a disaster for Egypt, and the Hebrews running for their lives from Egyptians who want them dead - in the middle of this the text suddenly stops and says: 
By the way, from next year through eternity you're going to mark this very day by a festival. It tells us exactly what we will do with the matzah and the maror and the rest of it. It makes order of the chaos.. As we call Passover: The Seder (Hebrew for order). This moment that we are living through right now is not only Hipazon, rushing around madly to get the matzah out of the oven before the Pharaoh changes his mind.  It is a learning moment. This is either a moment of birth or of death. We are pregnant now. We are in a dangerous pregnancy. 

Elana: We don't know what kind of birth it will be, if it's a boy, a girl, twins, Caesarian, we don't know.

Rabbi Jim:
This week we saw Bishop William Barber speak. He was asked: "They're taking away DEI. What are we going to do?" He said: "We first need to think about what worked and didn't work."

Elana: He called it an analysis. We're not going back, we're figuring out how to build a better system.

Rabbi Jim:
This moment, said the Bishop, is an opportunity to review and rethink what we have done. So we are not going back, we have to think about where we are heading.

Me: That moment in the parsha when suddenly the high stakes drama pauses for a carefully thought out lesson in ritual, is a pause to consider where we are and where we are going. It's a short pause. We have only one night to do it. Halayla Hazeh, like in the Four Questions. This night. A night to ask questions and to discuss and plan our improved dreams for next year and beyond. Tomorrow morning, as soon as dawn hits we wake up and get going.

Elana:
Not wanting to see the darkness is a doomed attempt to escape it. Let's use it to dream. 

Shabbat shalom, 

PS. I hope you join Daphna, Yonatan and the rest of the musicians for Shabbat in the Upper West Side this evening.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Gifts from the Ancestors

Itamar Dotan Katz's photos of our amazing Jazz Shabbat last week 

Dear friends, 

In a flash of gratitude that raised him from the muck of reality my Talmud teacher, Reb Dovid Neiberg let fly: “Where would be without Rashi?” Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki, the 11th century French genius revealed to all the generations that followed him the hidden lights between the letters of the Torah that had been discovered by all the generations that preceded him. Rashi is so key to Jewish thought that it’s hard to find an edition of one of the books of the Torah, the Tanach or the Talmud that doesn’t include his commentary. This one person shaped the way millions of Jews from the 11th century onwards understand themselves.  

The unthinkable, insane task of writing commentary on both the written and the oral Torah (known nowadays as the Old Testament and the Talmud) is a significant one, which no one else to my knowledge has managed. But the more amazing thing is the ability to do it selflessly. What makes Rashi so significant is that he almost never offers his opinion. Instead, he passes on what he was taught. These sacred texts are very old. We don’t know what their authors meant. We used to, however, have explanations and elucidations that were passed down, some of which may have gone all the way back to the time the texts were written. Rashi is perhaps the last holder of that orally transmitted treasure chest. 

We are currently studying the Book of Exodus based on Rashi’s interpretations in our weekly Torah Byte (Thursdays at noon on Zoom, you’re all welcome to join). An educator to his core, in this week’s parasha, Rashi goes from explaining Hebrew grammar, to spelling out theological concepts, to translating odd Hebrew word formulations to highlighting how Moses himself used methods of Torah study still used today.   But his greatest gift of all is the way he fills for us the relatively sparse biblical narrative with thousands of little, tiny stories that enliven the text.  

When Moses and Aaron go meet Pharaoh by the Nile in the showdown before the first plague, he pulls this ditty from Shmot Rabah, an ancient collection of midrashim:
“Pharaoh would tell people he was god, and therefore did not need to relieve himself. Every morning he would go alone to the Nile and relieve himself.”

Now, instead of imagining this encounter between Pharaoh and Moses taking place in the presence of all of Pharaoh’s attendants, we begin the story with this intimate, revealing meeting. Suddenly our intense narrative begins with humor, and the power dynamic between the two leading characters is filled with raw humanness.  

Shortly after we reach the moment when Aaron puts his staff to the Nile and turns the water to blood. Here Rashi uses another ancient midrash to explain why it was Aaron’s staff and not Moses’ that turned the water to blood:
“Because the river had protected Moses when he was cast into it, therefore it was not hit by him neither at the plague of blood nor at that of frogs, but it was smitten by Aaron.”
Not only does this remind us of the cruelty that kicked off this saga, but it also gives dimensions of love and care to the natural elements, like the river. It shows us through a brief story the underlying message of the entire book: within the cruel times there is care, there is deliverance, there is the presence of God. Within the plague there is a memory of love.  

The last plague we reach in this parasha is hail, which receives an enigmatic and dramatic description in the Torah: 

“The hail was very heavy—fire flashing in the midst of the hail—such as had not fallen on the land of Egypt since it had become a nation.”  

Rashi’s words, based, again on an ancient rabbinic midrash take the story to a new plain. He takes the image of fire flashing in the midst of hail and writes: 

“A miracle within a miracle! Fire and hail mingled, although hail is water! But in order to perform the will of their Creator they made peace one with the other.” 

If fire and hail can get along, maybe democrats and republicans can too, Israelis and Palestinians, fascists and anti-fascists. Maybe the story of our deliverance and liberation is that of all of us succumbing to the will of our creator and making peace. Perhaps the first step is for all of us to see the miraculous gifts hiding in plain sight, like the treasure troves left to us by the minds and pens of those who came before us. 

Before I sign off I’ll invite you to support an important mutual aid project in LA. The Fire Poppy Project supports renters who are Black, Indigenous, of color, and/or low-income whose homes were either burned down or contaminated by toxic smoke and ash in the Eaton Fire. 

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Devil Flees

Dear friends, 

An auspicious weekend is upon us.
It brings together four events with cosmic significance.

Be'ezrat Hashem we will see the first three hostages come home, and the fighting stop in Gaza. 

We will mark Martin Luther King Day, and recommit ourselves to his legacy of active, nonviolent struggle toward the just causes of equality and peace.

On the same day we will witness the inauguration of a new president; new in a narrow sense, and as old as time in others. 

And it will all take place on Shabbat Shmot, on which the story of our liberation from slavery begins, when at the start of the long and arduous journey toward freedom we are promised: "I will be with you."  

Our response to the confluence of these powerful forces of exaltation and dread is to meet in Harlem, where a building with a Star of David outside might be a synagogue or an African American church inside, to find liberation through Jazz music.

Some exceptional musicians will be guiding us, including Arnan Raz, who's been called “One of the leading lights on the international jazz scene" (UK Vibe). Arnan's latest album transforms old Israeli classics into pulsating Afro-Cuban post-bop numbers. 
And we are thrilled that Frank London will be making his New Shul return tonight with his trumpet, and a tune from his album Spirit Stronger than Blood.

"The devil," said MLK, "the originator of sorrowful anxieties and restless troubles, flees before the sound of music almost as much as before the Word of God.
The gift of language combined with the gift of song was only given to man to let him know that he should praise God with both word and music, namely, by proclaiming the Word of God through music."

Join us this evening at the National Jazz Museum of Harlem for a prayer for, and celebration of liberation through the magic of Jazz.

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Shehecheyanu

Dear friends, 

Thank God, it appears that we have made it through this war. With the help of the hidden forces of the universe we will likely live to see some of the hostages come home, the IDF withdraw from most of Gaza, and some type of sanity and safety return to the land of our ancestors. Seasoned hostage deal negotiator, Gershon Baskin wrote that he believes that Egypt and Qatar received promises from the incoming American administration that it would “ensure that this war would end with this deal.” It appears that the fire will soon cease.

I am filled with tears today. Some are tears of heartbreak. This agreement came many months too late. Too late for most of the hostages and their families. Too late for the the 405 Israeli soldiers who lost their lives in this war. Too late for the tens of thousands of Palestinians killed (a recent report suggests the Hamas numbers of around 45,000 were too conservative, and the number is closer to 70,000.) 

The question is whether it’s too late for anything resembling healing. Gaza is in ruins physically. Israel is in ruins spiritually. Which, if either, will be able to rebuild? 

My tears are also tears of joy. The prisoners are coming from darkness to light. The grip of fear, hatred and helplessness is loosened. Life returns. Breathing channels open. Food and medicine can flow back into Gaza. Those whose homes are still intact can return to the north of Israel, the south of Israel, and to Gaza.

Ultimately, my tears are tears of relief. They’ve been there all along under the surface. As my body held the tension of this war, they were locked inside. Now, despite the uncertainty, the challenges ahead, the trauma that will continue to haunt us, I sense the softening aura of a ceasefire. In that softening, through the uncertainty of this moment and its complexity I allow a prayer to emerge:

Barukh atah Adonai eloheynu melekh ha’olam shehecheyanu vekiymanu vehigiyanu lazman hazeh. 

Blessed are you Adonai, our god, ruler of the world, who gave us life, and kept us in life, and brought us to this moment.

May the agreement be implemented fully. May the hostages all come home safely. May the wounded heal. May the leaders who brought about this disaster be held accountable. May the mirrors be rebuilt so we can see ourselves properly. May the windows be rebuilt so we can see each other clearly. May we learn from the longest war in our history that for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict there is no military solution. 

Shalom. Salam. Peace

(And come celebrate the ceasefire at our Jazz Shabbat this Friday).

Rabbi Misha

Platonic Love

Click on the photo to hear Yedid Nefesh 

Dear friends, 

I remember one of the first times I was aware of the love I had toward a friend. I was fifteen, and whenever I could I’d go out to Mevaseret, outside of Jerusalem to my friend, Erez’s house overlooking the wadi. We would hang out in his room in the attic listening to Shlomo Artzi records and wander the deserted streets of the suburb at night looking at the stars. Erez’s father had passed away suddenly a few months earlier, which colored that entire hangout period in a deep, beautiful and sad blue. Erez was in an epic love affair with Shira that would last seven years. We were both straight, and there was nothing sexual about our friendship. There was, however, a strong intimacy and a magnetic closeness. It was, I would learn further down the line, distinct from, but similar in certain ways to being in love. 

Hebrew has two words for “friend.” The most common, chaver comes from the root of togetherness. Erez was certainly my chaver, a person I spent a lot of time with. But chaver can pale in comparison to yedid, the other word for friend, which comes from the root Dod, love. A yedid is a distinctly non-sexual lover. Erez was, and still is to this day, my yedid.

When Shabbat approaches, we sing a devotional poem to God called Yedid Nefesh: Soul Friend, or Lover of my Soul. It’s somewhere between a love song and a prayer from one 16th century lover by the name of Rabbi Elazar Azikri to his god.  

יֶעְרַב לוֹ יְדִידוּתָךְ, “Your friendship is more pleasing,” he writes, 
מִנּפֶת צוּף וְכָל טָעַם, “than the most perfect nectar, or any conceivable flavor.” 

It might be tricky for some to imagine the type of intimate friendship I had with Erez applied to God. For me, that longing, that platonic desire, makes perfect sense at the end of a long week, with its challenges, sprints and anxieties. God, that perfect lover sitting in wait for my most beautiful self to emerge, is the companion I find in my inner regions when I am at peace. Generations of ancestors have taught me how to seek an ephemeral, ungraspable, untouchable lover. Through their poems, their prophecies, their repudiations and consolations, through their music, their strange rituals, their expounding of verses, their laws – so many of which are attempts to express a deep and impossible love – through all of these and more I allow myself to understand what an intimate, platonic love with a not-human source of existence might be. It makes it possible for me to speak to the friend of my soul through ancient rhymes saying: מַהֵר אָהוּב, כִּי בָא מועֵד, "Quickly, lover, for the moment has come." הִגָלֵה נָא וּפְרשׂ, חָבִיב 
עָלַי אֶת סֻכַת שְלומֶךְ, "reveal yourself: spread over me your tent of peace."

Azikri wrote the poem in the forests of the high mountains of the Galilee, where our poetic Friday evening prayers were first assembled. Tonight we’re going to assemble in the dense human forest of Greenwich Village to bring in Shabbat. We’ll pay attention to the words and melodies of the main devotional poems that along with Yedid Nefesh make up our Kabbalat Shabbat prayers. Our good friend and collaborator, Seth Ginsberg will be there with his mandolin and some contemporary melodies as our musical guest. I hope you’ll come. Yedidut, friendship, is something we all need more of. 

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

The Secular-Holy

Dear friends, 

In Chaim Potok’s The Chosen, which Ezzy was assigned to read over break for his Hebrew school class, Reuven, the main character receives from his father a history of Hassidism. He learns how the Besht, the founder of the movement found meditating and praying in the forest far more important than studying Talmud. So Ezzy asks me “if Hassidism is about not studying Talmud, why do Hassids today study Talmud all day?” “Well,” I mumble, “they study Talmud in a very different way than Jews did before Hassidism. You can study it just for the sake of knowing it and showing off your knowledge, or you can study it to see how it relates to your life.” 

He’s staring at me. So I pull out the decidedly not useful tractate of Talmud I’ve been studying, Moed Katan. I read him the opening line: 

מַשְׁקִין בֵּית הַשְּׁלָחִין בַּמּוֹעֵד וּבַשְּׁבִיעִית,  
One may irrigate a field that requires irrigation on the intermediate days of a Festival as well as during the Sabbatical Year. 

“You see,” I instruct him, “you could easily study this purely to collect information. Us Shulmans don’t have any “fields that require irrigation,” Jews long ago found ways around most of the rules of the Sabbatical year, and at The New Shul even the rabbi doesn’t follow Jewish law on most issues.” 
“Okay.” 
“But there may be some deeper lesson that does relate to our lives. That’s what Hassids look for when they study this today.” 
“I’ll take your word for it.” 

Ezzy went back to reading. But I was left wondering what lessons I could manage to find in these ancient discussions, which seem thoroughly unrelated to life here in New York in 2025. 

All holiday long I’ve been meditating on uselessness. I have a deep sense that the actions I take which appear to have no value in the eyes of the world are the very ones that give my life value; That it’s the nothings I do that matter most. Even as I sit here staring at my open Talmud my eldest son walks by and says: “That doesn't look like work.” (I had told him yesterday that I’d be working from home today.)  

So studying this Talmudic tractate about obsolete prohibitions makes a certain type of sense. As do the concepts of the Sabbatical year and the intermediate days of a festival. A Sabbatical year (Shnat Shmitah in Hebrew), when our farmer ancestors were forbidden from farming for a year is a deep challenge to our modern ethos of utility, and the American ethic of work. Studying how the rabbis made sense of it leads one to contemplate the balance between utility and pleasure, and imagine a healthier work-life balance.  

The same goes for the concept of "intermediate days of a festival." These, called Khol Hamo’ed, or the secular-holy are the middle days of Passover and Sukkot. The beginning and end of both week-long holidays are days of strict rest. During the middle days, though there is no prohibition on things like using electricity, and certain types of work are permitted. And yet, these are not regular workdays. On these days of Khol Hamo'ed I’ll often see Hassidic families hanging out in Prospect Park during the day, for example. The concept of secular-holy, or partial rest strikes me as another building block of a healthy balance between work and rest. 

In the Mishnah I quoted above the rabbis are hashing out what the secular-holy should consist of. Their opening statement about the“field that requires irrigation” tells us a lot. On the days we call secular-holy we may work only on what would otherwise collapse into oblivion. If the field in question can survive on rainwater or dew, without our intervention,  don’t touch it. Rest! If it can’t - do the minimal work of watering it. And if it’s somewhere in between, for example if the purpose of watering it is to enhance output, to maximize profits, to squeeze more out of the earth – but the field’s survival is not at stake – don’t do anything. 

Imagine how different our world would look if we defined even one of our five workdays as secular-holy in that way.  

May 2025 bring our ideas about what we must accomplish, and how often we should relax into a harmonious balance. Despite what it may seem, maybe the Talmud could be useful toward that after all. 

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

From Tamar to Pelicot

Dear friends, 

The real story of resistance of this period in the Jewish calendar comes not from the Maccabees, but from the Parashah that accompanies the first few days of Hanukkah. The hero is not a warrior fighting an empire for religious freedom, but a woman using the tools of the patriarchal system to outsmart the patriarch. This will begin dark but stick with it to find some holiday light.  

Here are the rules of the game in the second millennia BC when the story takes place:  

Women are considered property owned by their husbands, who can take as many wives as they please, and/or visit prostitutes. Their purpose is presumably to have and raise children. If they don’t, they are considered useless, and they are taught to feel unfulfilled.  

If a husband dies, the next of kin – normally his brother - takes over the marriage and is expected to impregnate the widow.  

If he doesn’t, the widow has no recourse and lives the rest of her days wasting away with no partner, no children, and certainly no sexual activity, while the next of kin can do what he wants and suffers no consequences.  

In that dark position, very little light can crack through the thick walls of misogyny.  

Our story begins with our patriarch Jacob’s son, Yehudah, marrying off his son, Er, to a woman named Tamar. Er swiftly dies, leaving Tamar a widow. Er’s brother, Onan, must now marry Tamar. However, the Torah tells us: “knowing that the offspring would not count as his but as his deceased brother’s, (Onan) let his semen go to waste whenever he joined with his brother’s wife.” This selfish behavior displeases God, and Onan dies as well. Widowed a second time, Tamar is moved into her father-in-law Yehudah’s house to wait for the youngest brother to come of age. He eventually grows up - but won’t marry her. The years go by. 

Finally, Tamar decides to take things into her own hands. She sees that only the patriarch of the family can fix her situation. When her father-in-law Yehudah goes out of town, she follows him, covers herself up, and solicits him as a prostitute. As payment, he offers to send her a baby goat, which she accepts but asks to take his seal, his cord, and his staff as collateral. Concealing herself throughout, Tamar sleeps with Yehudah, and conceives. A few months later, when Yehudah hears that his daughter-in-law, Tamar, is pregnant, he commands that she be taken and burned for having sex out of wedlock.  

“As she was being brought out,” the biblical narrator tells us, “she sent this message to her father-in-law, ‘It’s by the man to whom these belong that I’m pregnant.’ And she added, ‘Examine these: whose seal and cord and staff are these?’”  

When Yehudah receives the message along with his personal items he had given her as a deposit, he recognizes his shame. “She is more  in the right than me,” he says. Tamar is released, and months later goes into labor. 

The birth scene is described with some unique details, which remind us of the birth scene of these babies’ grandfather, Jacob, that we read in the Torah a few weeks ago. Jacob, you’ll recall, while still in the womb, grabs his brother Esau’s foot in an apparent attempt to come out first and win the firstborn son's birthright.  During Tamar's birth the twins exhibit a completely different attitude. Baby Zarach seemed to be coming out first. The midwife even managed to tie a string around his little wrist. But unlike his grandfather, Jacob, Zarach allows his twin, Peretz, to emerge first. The patriarchal urge for competition and domination, which haunted Jacob his entire life, is replaced by one of generosity and trust. 

This new attitude is expressed also through the babies’ names. The firstborn's name, “Peretz” means to break through, and the second, “Zarach” means to rise, like the sun. Together they signify breaking through an unbreakable ceiling into the dawn of a new day.   

Tamar's story is far from a heartwarming story of progress. Tamar suffers and then uses every tool she’s got to survive the careless, powerful men who hold the key to a bearable existence. She succeeds, and every generation since, men and women read her story and see its echoes in their own lives. I’m certain many have gained strength and hope from it. 

Some might say we are still fighting the same societal structures that were in place in biblical times. The objectification of women harrowingly present in this Parashah has morphed, not disappeared. The person who a jury in our fair city unanimously agreed raped a woman (though legally he was “only” liable for sexual abuse) was just elected president. Gisele Pelicot was tortured by men coming from every walk of life. 

Others would say that the long line of courageous, righteous women-- from Tamar to Pelicot--have radically improved the situation of half of humanity who identify as female. The cracks in the facade of the biblical patriarchy have perhaps not yet brought down that iron wall altogether, and who knows if it ever will. But they have certainly widened those cracks to shine so much light for all of us to clearly see straight through the shadowy haze of male domination.  

This Hanukkah let’s celebrate the women who gave us the light of resistance, and support those spreading that light today. 

I hope you can join us at the bar this evening for Shabbat on Tap, where we will discuss the looong history of Jewish resistance, and how it can inform our various struggles today.  

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Protective Presence

Rabbi Arik Ascherman this Sunday in the Upper West Side

Dear friends, 

“I often think about our ancestors in Europe who would get pulled out of their homes in the middle of the night, or attacked in the streets of Germany, and imagine how different they would have felt if there were a non-Jew standing with them to protect them,” said Rabbi Arik Ascherman on Sunday morning. “I can’t promise you that we will prevent evacuations of villages,” he said, “but I can promise that we will be there physically with them, in the villages under threat, and in the courtrooms fighting for their rights.”

Rabbi Ascherman was laying out the heart of his current work in the West Bank, which he calls protective presence. It’s what my father did this week when he slept in the Jordan Valley village of Ras El 'Ain in case the nearby settlers would raid the village in the middle of the night, as they’ve done often recently. I did something similar a couple of years ago with Rav Arik, when we accompanied shepherds to the pasture and stood with them when the settler from the local outpost came to scare them and their sheep away. Just be there with them.  

This may seem remote, a hopeless struggle across the ocean in a part of the world turned more and more upside down every day. But the notion of protective presence is a spiritual stance that is germane to both the socio-political struggles ahead here in the US, and our day to day actions with those we love. Consider these words Rav Arik spoke: "Our job in this coming period is to protect those we can protect and prepare for the time when things will be better, so that when that comes - and it will - we can hit the ground running.”  I haven't heard a clearer definition of what our task will be in the coming years.

We will certainly need some heroes, like my neighbor Meghan who in 2018 couldn’t bear the news of the children separated from their parents at the border, so she flew to Texas and started working on uniting immigrant families. Her instinctive action became a grassroots organization of women called Immigrant Families Together, which united dozens of families. “We have proven you really can do something as one person and one collective of concerned people,” Julie Schwietert Collazo, the Executive Director of IFT proclaimed a couple of years in.  

But protective presence is a concept that far transcends the ups and downs of the political world. When Rav Arik talks about it, he leans on a tradition that sees physical presence in times of need and joy as qualitatively higher than other actions. These are political acts of tremendous power, human acts of the greatest import, and spiritual acts of the highest order.

In the morning prayers we find this paraphrasing of the Talmud: 

אֵלּוּ דְבָרִים שֶׁאָדָם אוֹכֵל פֵּרוֹתֵיהֶם בָּעוֹלָם הַזֶּה וְהַקֶּרֶן קַיֶּמֶת לוֹ לָעוֹלָם הַבָּא. וְאֵלּוּ הֵן. כִּבּוּד אָב וָאֵם. וּגְמִילוּת חֲסָדִים. וְהַשְׁכָּמַת בֵּית הַמִּדְרָשׁ. שַׁחֲרִית וְעַרְבִית. וְהַכְנָסַת אוֹרְחִים. וּבִקּוּר חוֹלִים. וְהַכְנָסַת כַּלָּה. וּלְוָיַת הַמֵּת. וְעִיּוּן תְּפִלָּה. וַהֲבָאַת שָׁלוֹם בֵּין אָדָם לַחֲבֵרוֹ וּבֵין אִישׁ לְאִשְׁתּוֹ. וְתַלְמוּד תּוֹרָה כְּנֶגֶד כֻּלָּם. 

These are precepts, the fruits of which a person enjoys in this world, while the principal is preserved for them in the World-to-Come. They are: honoring father and mother, performing deeds of kindness, early attendance in the House of Study morning and evening, bringing guests into your home, visiting the sick, participating in a wedding, accompanying the dead to the grave, concentrating on the meaning of prayers, making peace between fellow people and between husband and wife— and the study of Torah is equal to them all. 

At least half of this list of transcendent deeds necessitates physical presence. When we visit the sick, our presence protects that person and aids their recovery. When we go to a wedding, our presence elevates the couple. When we attend a funeral, we are physically accompanying the body on its last journey, as well as protecting the mourners with our care and love, without which they would be in a far deeper state of despair.  

The Shechinah, the presence of God has protective powers. Perhaps even more so human presence.  

This week marked International Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the signing of the UN’s Human Rights Declaration. Rabbi Ascherman, who for decades ran Rabbis for Human Rights, and today runs Torat Tzedek, The Torah of Justice, is a truly unique presence in our world. Despite the hordes of religious Jews like him who see Jewish people’s rights as qualitatively different than others’, he cannot but see the image of God in every person, and the ever-present light in our tradition calling out א-ח-ד, O-n-e.  It is that protective presence that shields his compassionate, forward-looking world view and allows him to keep maintaining his protective presence of Palestinians in the West Bank. Those of us lucky enough to know him continue to maintain our view of a compassionate, active Judaism, thanks to the presence of Rav Arik and others like him. 

This evening, at 6pm we will be gathering for Kabbalat Shabbat in Brooklyn (followed by dinner from Mimi’s Humus!). One of those transcendent acts I listed above was bringing peace between fellow people. Given how elusive peace feels in these times, I've invited my better half, Erika Sasson, to share a recent story from her work in peacemaking, which brought together two families in the aftermath of the death of a loved one. I hope you'll join us.  

May we bring our protective presence to the lives of those we love, and those who are in need.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Freedom and Exile

Hannah Arendt's final interview, 1973.

Dear friends, 

This week we concluded our deep and illuminating communal study of Diaspora, led by our philosopher in residence, Dr. David Ponet, in which we read texts by Jean Amery, George Steiner, Edward Said and Hannah Arendt. Since we were eager to share some of what we picked up , I put some questions to Dr. Ponet on the topic, and I am glad to share his reflections with you.

MS: Thank you David, for such a great series. What did you learn from these past five weeks of dealing with the question of Diaspora?

DP: I learned so much on so many dimensions. 1) that studying with other people is an enriching experience that itself constitutes a powerful salve against the feeling of diaspora to the extent diaspora is something negative that one wants to mitigate. 2) It's an incredibly rich topic that touches on the core of what it means to be a human in the world and forces us to ask how we should or want to live in the world. 3) that diaspora has its gifts and challenges and that the experience of diaspora attaches to so many peoples 4) that one cannot be in diaspora without some sense of home. 5) that diaspora is not limited to being literally inside or outside the homeland. I could go on....

MS: We were all struck by the universalist beauty of Palestinian thinker, Edward Said's essay Reflections on Exile. Do you think the Jewish sense of exile is unique?

DP: Good question. I want to say there is a Jewish sense of exile. We are an ancient people with a long history of exile and of relating to the exilic condition. "Next year in Jerusalem ' strikes me as foundational. I'm wary of saying unique because I only know what I know and only know the traditions I know but there is certainly a distinctly Jewish obsession with exile. We are hardly the only exiles, but we have our unique story and tradition and practice. 

MS: Like Said, Amery and Arendt were forced exiles. Amery survived Auschwitz, and Arendt a camp in France. When I read them I couldn't help but see the Jewish and Palestinian exile as mirroring realities.

DP: Of course there are differences in the historical accounts between Jews and Palestinians, but I think we do well to recognize how they mirror each other. Both Amery and Said are humanists. When Said talks about exile and Amery asks "How much home does a person need?" they are writing about the human condition. not the Jewish or Palestinian condition. Everyone needs some semblance of security, of trust in the world, some measure of home, in order to live.

MS: While we read a few thinkers, we kept coming back to Hannah Arendt. What's the pull so many of us have to her writing? Why is Arendt worth reading now?

DP: For so many reasons. Because she has insight into evil and its limitations. Because she lived through the worst forms of tyranny and totalitarianism and serves as a cogent warning to us about what we can do to avoid these freedom-destroying forces. Because in the darkness she finds light, reminds us that we can be free, that we can start new things, but that we must do this with other people, in concert with others, if we are to be free. Because when the world seems destined toward doom and gloom she rightfully asserts that the world of human affairs is a world defined by the emergence of infinitely improbable events - and that we may even be able to build a world that is habitable to humans.

MS: Arendt writes in What is Freedom:
"It is in the very nature of every new beginning
that it breaks into the world as an "infinite improbability," and yet
it is precisely this infinitely improbable which actually
constitutes the very texture of everything we call real. Our whole existence rests, after all, on a chain of miracles, as it were the coming into being of the earth, the development of organic life on it, the evolution of mankind out of the animal species."

Can you explain how her ideas on freedom relate to diaspora?

DP: Freedom for Arendt turns on action, making appearances in the public domain with others, performing and creating new things (enterprises, polities, alliances, communities, etc.).  Public speech constitutes action for Arendt. The diaspora can be a place of profound possibility for freedom - where there is common space to act in concert with others and build something new. But diaspora is not one experience. It can also thwart any possibility for freedom if it's an exile that forces full retreat into the private or interior self. But similarly a homeland which cuts off the possibility of action, of natality, of beginning also stymies freedom.

MS: In that light Amery's question might shift from "how much home does a person need," to "How much is too much home?"
I hope we can find the balance between too much and not enough home, and maintain the freedom that allows us a sense of being at home in the universe. Thank you so much Dr. Ponet, and we look forward to your next chevrutah!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

PS. if you'd like to read any of the essays mentioned above please reach out to Itamar. And a special thank you to Natalie Cohen for suggesting and helping us plan this chevrutah. 

Rabbi Misha

Eternal and Temporary Home

Our musical guest this evening, Kane Mathis

Dear friends, 

On Tuesday we brought Adam’s mother, Barbara to burial. Barbara was an extraordinary woman who lived fully and richly for 95 years. Though she traveled the globe once she was retired, reaching all seven continents, her home was always New York City. She was lucky in that regard. She was born, lived and died in the same city that was very much her home. 

Whenever I am at a Jewish funeral, one of the things I contemplate is when in the Jewish calendar this person passed. There often seems to be some cosmic resonance to it. My grandmother Riva z”l, for example, who told me that the most important moment in her life was when the Lubavitcher Rebbe looked into her eyes, died on his Yahrzeit.  

So, as we drove out to the cemetery in Long Island, I was conscious of the resonance of this week’s parashah, called Chayei Sarah, The Life of Sarah. The parashah begins with Sarah’s death at the ripe age of 127 and takes us through the family’s mourning process.  

Sarah’s husband, Abraham had led a very different life than Barbara z”l. He was born in one place, lived for a long period in a second, then moved countries, bopped around between Canaan and Egypt, and finally settled in Be’er Sheba in the south of Canaan. The first words that the Torah records coming out of his mouth after his wife’s death are: 

“I am a foreigner, a temporary sojourner.” 

גֵּר־וְתוֹשָׁ֥ב אָנֹכִ֖י 

He speaks these words to the locals who have been living there their whole lives. It is his opening line in an exchange designed to turn him into a local through the act of purchasing a burial plot. The beginning of the end of moving around, of restlessness, of nomadic existence, is the purchase of a spot to bury his wife, which is large enough to later bury him too, and two generations further. This is the meaning of home.  

Death, Heschel taught us, is homecoming. We return to the Kaddish, to the ancient rituals and languages, to the earth from which we came. יהוה נתן יהוה לקח יהי שם יהוה מבורך, we say as the casket is lowered into the earth, “YHVH gave and YHVH took back, blessed be the name of YHVH.” We move on from this temporary life to what we sometimes call our “eternal home,” a home about which we know very little other than the fact that it is, at least in a certain sense, eternal.  

On Rosh Hashanah I asked the community Rabbi Bahya Ibn Paquda’s 1000 year old question to us: Have you accepted yet, your condition in this life as a Ger, a temporary sojourner? To Ibn Paquda, accepting this condition is not sad. It is, or can be the source of our happiness, of our empathy and therefore our connection with others, of our ability to enjoy our limited time. This condition is what drives people like Barbara z”l to travel the world and take in all that our incredible city has to offer.  

That ability to soak up the beauty of life is part of what Ibn Paquda called “preparing for death.” In his view, this preparation is the single most important thing a person can do. In a way, preparing for death is the greatest thing to do with one’s life. It encompasses making the most of your time, doing as much good as you can and living as close to truth is possible. But one aspect of this work is more straightforward: giving some thought to where and how you’d like to be buried, or what you imagine home might mean for your body after you’ve passed. Where and near whom would you like the vessel you inhabit, your body to come home to? 

On Tuesday, after the burial the family stayed by the gravesite for some time. They placed stones on the graves of other family members buried in that plot. They read the names on tombstones of other relatives they never met who were buried there. They stood in the gentle, fall sunshine together, talking, reminiscing. In that moment, by the ancestral family plot, in that cemetery that the Jews consecrated over a century ago, the shadow of death didn’t seem scary or ominous. It felt as natural as coming home. 

This evening we’re going to come home to our community for Shabbat. This last period has brought up for many of us a sense of alienation and foreignness from where we live. But although we may be temporary sojourners on this earth, we are at home here in New York, and our community is as New Yorker as a New Yorker can be. I hope you join me, Daphna, Yonatan, and our wonderful guest musician, Kane Mathis this evening at 6:30 for a sweet coming home to Shabbat. 

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Two Types of Looking Back

Lot's Wife by Humberto Chugchilan

Dear friends, 

Remember that tender moment in the Torah when Lot’s wife is turned into a pillar of salt? I’ve been thinking about it this week.  

On Tuesday evening I was lucky enough to see Hadestown on Broadway. Hadestown is a musical play on Greek mythology, which peaks in a tragic moment of looking back. Orpheus goes down to Hades to rescue his beloved, Eurydice. Hades lets them leave on the condition that she walk behind him through the perilous journey, and he never look back to check on her. They try. He fails, and she is doomed to a life in the underworld. 

On the way to the theater, I looked back – at the news, and was doomed to 24 hours in the underworld of my mind. I stopped reading American news since last Tuesday night, but I have yet to cure myself of my addiction to Israeli news. That’s where I learned that the next American Ambassador to Israel, as well as the administration’s special envoy are no doubt going to work to fulfill Trump’s promise to Miriam Adelson to annex the West Bank, and likely build a few Jewish settlements in Gaza along the way. I also got another update on what has now become an undeniable campaign of ethnic cleansing and starvation in Northern Gaza. What followed were 24 hours in the underworld, where it was crystal clear to me that under current circumstances, these American appointments are nails in the coffin of the place I grew up in as I know it. 

In this light, it became impossible to not see Hades, the dark seducer of souls to the safety of meaninglessness and despair, as one of his contemporary manifestations in the world. Tears flowed when Persephone said her time above ground was too short (she’s entitled to six months each year before she goes back down for the rest). More welled up when Eurydice signed her life over to Hades. And a little lake emerged when the one believer left, the god of music and spring, Orpheus let his love get the better of him and looked back to doom his beloved.

The truth is that I find myself entirely uninterested in the type of looking back and analyzing that that so many brilliant minds are currently engaged in around the elections. I am not interested right now in looking back to the past to learn how we ended up here. I am not interested in the punditry of this world. That, for me, right now is the meaningless, dangerous noise that turns me into a pillar of salt overlooking the Dead Sea.

But there is another type of looking back that I am interested in.

I do want to look back at the world to come, that world of truth that is captured in between the lines of the ancient books. I’m interested in looking back at the poetry of the prophets and their clues on how to be. I’m interested in looking back into the eyes of the homeless guy at the end of my block, and the line circling around the block of the food pantry at the church down the road. I’m interested jn looking back at the suffering faces of those thrown aside, trampled on and forgotten in every single country in the entire world. I’m interested in looking back at what is happening to people right now in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, to what is happening to women in Afghanistan and Iran and so many other countries, to pregnant women in Texas, to gay people in Nigeria and Saudi Arabia and other countries with a death penalty for homosexuality, to look back on humanity right now and open my heart to my brothers and sisters of all types with whom I share the earth.

The 16th century Italian rabbi Obadia Sforno explained the prohibition to look back at the burning of Sodom like this:

אל תביט אחריך. כי הרעה תתפשט עדיך כמהלכת אחריך ולא תזיקך אבל אם תתעכב להביט תדבק בך כמו שקרה לאשתו כאמרו ותהי נציב מלח:

Don’t look back, because the evil spreads toward you, as though she is marching behind you. However, she will not harm you unless you delay yourself by stopping and looking back. Then she will cling to you.

We have to be selective with what we look back on in order to protect ourselves from the sticky bad stuff lurking in our rear view mirror. We have to look back. The question is at what.

This Shabbat, let's look all the way back. Zecher lema'aseh bereshit, we say about Shabbat - a reminder of creation. Let's look far, far back to that time when light first came to be, and after it the sky, the mountains, the trees, the stars and the animals. And let's remember that sixth day too, when human beings first appeared, mirror images of the divine.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

A Time of Ingathering

Our students doing Tashlich in Prospect Park

Dear friends, 

Tuesday night at 11pm a Talmudic phrase flashed through my brain: 

בִּשְׁעַת הַמַּכְנִיסִין — פַּזֵּר. בִּשְׁעַת הַמְפַזְּרִים — כַּנֵּס. 

"At the time of gathering,  disseminate  At the time of dissemination, gather.” 
Brachot 63a

There are times of ingathering, and times of spreading out, times to go global and times to go local, times to influence others and times to enrich ourselves our close circles. This time, it struck me, is a time to come inside, study ourselves, be together, think together.   

Despite appearances, there is a real opportunity at hand.  

I’ll try and express something about that through this week’s incredibly apt Torah portion: 

וַיֹּ֤אמֶר יְהֹוָה֙ אֶל־אַבְרָ֔ם לֶךְ־לְךָ֛ מֵאַרְצְךָ֥ וּמִמּֽוֹלַדְתְּךָ֖ וּמִבֵּ֣ית אָבִ֑יךָ אֶל־הָאָ֖רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אַרְאֶֽךָּ׃ 

יהוה said to Abram, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 

The literal message seems to be – move to Canada. But the Torah is not a literal messenger, and Jews have never treated it as just a literal history. When we treat the language of the Torah literally, we remove its life force. Similarly, when we stay on the surface of things happening in the world, seeing them only through the prism in which we’ve been staring at them (through our screens,) we beat the life force out of them.  

The rabbis help us infuse life into these words. Rashi offers: 

Go Forth (Lekh Lekha) in the Hebrew literally means “go for yourself” — it means go for your enjoyment and your benefit.  

Rashi suggests seeing the change commanded upon us in a positive light. We are not running. We are not reacting. We are not refugees. We are responding to the change by shedding old layers from our past and allowing ourselves to be curious about what new layers will appear. 

The 17th century Prague rabbi Kli Yakar has a slightly different translation than Rashi for Lekh Lekha. He understands it as “Go to you,” And writes: “Go to you, to your essence.“ 

Abraham is being commanded to go inwards and find a truer part of who he is. He is being sent to the place where appearances evaporate into what they really are. It is a land where the noise of this world quiets, and the sounds of the world of peace become audible. This land that Abraham is being sent to is not geographical. It’s a place that is accessible anywhere. It’s the holy land of the spirit, which he is being commanded to find.  

This is a time of gathering. Of coming into our communities and our selves, of learning and seeing anew, of finding new truths, new ways, new spirit, new braveries. 

I know this is not easy, and for many in our community will take a period of mourning. That is important, and can’t be skipped over. It was when I spent time with children on Wednesday that the task ahead became clear. These young people are powerful, sensitive smart beings who we can count on. They've got our backs and our futures. They're shrewd, and so many of them were politically born on Tuesday night. However, they need us to have their backs in this moment. They need to see us modeling living with purpose, strength and curiosity in the face of our anxieties and disappointments, much in the way we saw our parents and grandparents do. That is the challenge of this moment. 

Let us use this time of gathering to come together to support one another, learn and grow, so that when the moment comes for the Time of Dissemination – and that time is already on its way - we are ready and eager to jump into the world with all of our love and energy. 

Step 1 will be in a few hours at our two Shabbatot this evening in Brooklyn or Upper West Side. You can still join, and I really hope you will.

Shabbat shalom, Shabbat Menuchah, Shabbat Ahavah,
A Shabbat of peace, a shabbat of rest, a shabbat of love.

Rabbi Misha

What is Mine to Do

Logos in action

Dear friends, 

The world has gone mad. Human beings have abandoned morality. One person alone remains righteous and blameless. This person will save us from extinction. 

That’s not Gal Gadot. It’s the biblical account of Noah, which we read this Shabbat. Like an apocalyptic Hollywood blockbuster, it sets us up to identify ourselves as the one person who still sees clearly despite everyone else’s lies and cruelty.  

וַיַּ֣רְא יְהֹוָ֔ה כִּ֥י רַבָּ֛ה רָעַ֥ת הָאָדָ֖ם בָּאָ֑רֶץ וְכׇל־יֵ֙צֶר֙ מַחְשְׁבֹ֣ת לִבּ֔וֹ רַ֥ק רַ֖ע כׇּל־הַיּֽוֹם׃  יהוה saw how great was human wickedness on earth—how every plan devised by the human mind was nothing but evil all the time. 

נֹ֗חַ אִ֥ישׁ צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים הָיָ֖ה בְּדֹֽרֹתָ֑יו  
“Noah was a righteous, innocent man in that generation.” 

The Italian Renaissance commentator, Sforno, who will be our focus in our weekly Torah class on Thursdays this fall, explains the words צַדִּ֛יק תָּמִ֥ים, righteous and innocent: 

Righteous – in action. 
Innocent – in thought. (Hebrew  - במושכלות) 

The Hebrew word, Tamim, translated here as innocent, implies wholeness and simplicity along with blamelessness. What Sforno points out about Noah is that his mind maintained a simple truthfulness, an ability to remain perfectly on point in ethical and intellectual matters which led his fellow humans astray. This is our constant work. 

How can we do that? 

An earlier Roman has a suggestion or two: 

“I do what is mine to do. The rest doesn’t disturb me. The rest in inanimate, or has no logos, or it wanders at random and has lost the road.” 
Meditations, Book Six, 22

Imagine voting for a candidate who speaks like that. 

Marcus Aurelios, the second century AD emperor of Rome, was, compared to other Roman emperors, as “righteous and innocent” as they came. Much of his Meditations are simple ways to maintain innocence, simplicity and goodness in a world filled with lies and madness.  

Reading Noach this week, with Tuesday upon us, reminds me of what might be the most important issue in this election, which has been all but forgotten these past months. A flood is upon us. There it is in Spain. In Florida. In North Carolina. It’s coming our way.  

The word Logos, which the emperor used above, is an ancient concept still used in philosophy. In this case it means something like the logical structure of the universe. There are rules that govern the natural world, and rules that govern the relationship between actions and results. The Torah expresses it like this: 

וַיַּ֧רְא אֱלֹהִ֛ים אֶת־הָאָ֖רֶץ וְהִנֵּ֣ה נִשְׁחָ֑תָה כִּֽי־הִשְׁחִ֧ית כּל בָּשָׂ֛ר אֶת־דַּרְכּ֖וֹ עַל־הָאָֽרֶץ׃ {ס}          
God saw how corrupt the earth was, for all flesh had corrupted its ways on earth. 

Human moral corruption leads directly to the corruption of the earth itself.  

So what are we to do? How are we to save the planet in the blockbuster of our lives? 

“I do what is mine to do,” said Aurelios. I build my ark. Make the window in it according to the instructions. I send out that dove when its time, and see the rainbow appear out of the clouds. 

These next few days, let’s do what is ours to do, and may we be rewarded with the rainbow. 

Rabbi Misha

PS.
Heads up - next Friday we have two great Shabbat gatherings with prayer, music and food, one in the Upper West Side with Daphna and one in Brooklyn with me. Regardless of what happens on Tuesday I think it will feel good coming together, so we hope to see you there.

Rabbi Misha

Buddhist Reflections from a Soho Bookstore

Suzanne Tick led our community Mandala project 

Dear friends, 

I’ve been spending a lot of time with my brother, Tari, a Buddhism scholar from a mountain village near Jerusalem, whose been here for the last few weeks. He lives the incongruity of an inquisitive mind, a compassionate disposition, and a hippy community in the midst of a country dominated by notions of fixed identity, right wing policy and war. He has to somehow reconcile Buddhist ideas of emptiness, of the incredible power of the mind to create what we see and experience, of the tenuous nature of what we call reality, with the world around him. The Buddhist ideas guide him, and it’s been rubbing in on me, softening and loosening some of my stiff mental positioning. 

When I ask myself how this coming election could possibly be so close, I am reminded that my reality is as constructed as anyone else’s in this country. Tari described entering a bookstore in Soho and immediately getting swept away by the bountiful variety of thinkers on the shelves, thinkers of a different angle than he’s used to seeing in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv. Of course they are not one type of thought, and offer an array of views, but the book selections reflect a certain way of seeing the world, much like any newspaper reflects its world view by the way it defines what is happening in the world. That bookstore, he felt, created a world impenetrable to other worlds of thought. In the world of the Soho bookstore, people who experience a different world and therefore think differently make no sense whatsoever. They might as well be aliens. 

None of this denies the logic of the worldview created by, or perhaps reflected in this bookstore. It is very real.  

Today is Simchat Torah, the day on which we celebrate the Torah, as well as the day on which, according to the Jewish calendar the horrendous massacre took place in the south of Israel one year ago. The rabbis taught that there are “Seventy faces to the Torah.” By this they meant that different people see vastly different things in it, none of which are necessarily truer than the others. The Torah is a reflection that creates reality, much like the Soho bookstore. It is a very powerful mirror. 

This creative mirroring effect is expressed powerfully In the Sukkah tractate of the Talmud. In the end of days, the rabbis tell us, God will finally kill the Yetzer Hara, the evil inclination that lives in each of us. Both the righteous and the wicked will gather for the Yetzer Hara’s funeral, and both will weep. 

"For the righteous the evil inclination appears to them as a high mountain, and for the wicked it appears to them as a mere strand of hair. These weep and those weep. The righteous weep and say: How could we have been able to overcome so high a mountain? And the wicked weep and say: How could we have been unable to overcome this strand of hair? "

 We see different things in the same reality. This week for example, one sees a war against Hizballah terrorists in Lebanon, and another sees ethnic cleansing and murder in northern Gaza. So should this undo our convictions? Should we simply relax and let the world roll on in front of our eyes? 

The Talmud gives a clear “No!”  

"They said about Hillel the Elder that when he was rejoicing at the Celebration of the Sukkot he said this:
If I am here, everything is here; and if I am not here, who is here? "

If we deny the outlook that we carry, even knowing that it is only one part of a multi-faced reality, which we ourselves played a major part in creating, we essentially deny our own existence. If we’re here, with our own minds, bodies and hearts, we have no choice but to participate in this world. Otherwise we’ll be living in someone else’s world. If we can carry the awareness of other realities while we live our own deeply and fully, then we come close to the active, humble life that the both theTorah and the Buddha ask of us.

Shabbat shalom and Happy Simchat Torah,

Rabbi Misha

Gratitude

Daphna, Rabbi Misha, Rotem Levin and Osama Iliwat on Yom Kippur. Photo by Gili Getz

Dear friends, 

It’s like some kind of ancient spell. You say certain words, throw some ingredients into water, wear certain clothes and put your fist to your chest. And as your body empties, your ears, mind and heart open up and some transformation occurs. This year more than others I find myself changed from these holidays, opened up, refreshed, ready to live as best I can. I sit in my Sukkah with gratitude. 

What an incredible 10 days we had together. 

We began with Rabbi Jim’s poetic riff acknowledging how tough this past year was, and how difficult it is to feel like something ended when the war continues. Aviya came up to me after our first service of the year and asked what many were struggling with: How am I supposed to celebrate the new year in the midst of this war?  

The following morning by the river we sang The Times They Are A-Changin' amidst Shofar blasts, and marveled at our next generation chanting Torah (Cyrus! Barbara!) and performing a play of Jacob’s dream (Dov!).  

After the grownups moved on that day, there was a special moment with fifteen teens who stayed for Tashlich. Before we did Tashlich, I asked my nieces, Laila and Be’er who are visiting from Israel, to describe what the last year has looked like over there. They described waking up at 6am in a tent on the beach 10 miles north of Gaza on the morning of 10/7 to sirens, and the continued fear they lived with. The local teens shared with them the kind of things they’ve been seeing all year on social media, of families in Gaza and Lebanon crying for help. It was a real moment of balancing each other out by listening openly.  

On Kol Nidrei night everything was washed away by Dana’s singing and Saskia’s bass. But by nighttime, I felt a real Yom Kippur reckoning set in. I asked myself if I had mis-spoken, if my words that night about the occupation lacked precision, if the heaviness I felt in my heart was what the holiday was about, or if it’s about dispelling that heaviness; Is it about guilt or about forgiveness?  

The following morning the sweetness emerged rapidly though, in the form of twenty teens standing proudly in front of the community and chanting: “And you shall love!” Veahavta! That overwhelming sight gave us all so much naches, contentment, peace. From then on we were looking forward, not back. We sang the Mi Khamocha with Adeline, Lucy and Zoe. We listened to 14 year olds Emilio and Adeline chant Torah, we witnessed Amy chant Torah for the 20 somethingth year in a row, and we watched Chloe and Naomi perform Jacob and Esau’s reconciliation as a piece of ritual theater.  

When Osama and Rotem took the stage to tell us how they transformed from fighters to peace activists, we were ready for their message. “I learned that Judaism is a religion of love,” Osama, whose children deal with discrimination and harassment from religious Jews on an almost daily basis in the West Bank, told us. There was that moment, in which he paused, remained silent for several seconds, and finally said in Hebrew : Peace will yet come upon us, עוד יבוא שלום עלינו. That moment was what this day was invented for: knowing wrong, knowing change, knowing hope. (If you missed it HERE's the recording)

When the holiday came to close, after a raucous Neila party, it was especially moving to have the Shul’s co-founder, Holly Gewandter blow the shofar as she has done for most of the years that the Shul has been around - but this was the first year I experienced it in person. 25 years of making magic rose to the heavens like a prayer. When we took that gorgeous Mandala of flowers that Suzanne led us in creating, and shook it and blew it to the wind, we let go of our attachments and our obstacles, and invited new beauty into the world. 

Thank you all so much. Especially our ritual and musical team: Daphna, Yonatan, Dana, Saskia, Tripp, Arnan and Yuval, and to my closest partners on bringing this all to life: Susan, Itamar and Judy. Deep gratitude to everyone who helped, supported, chanted, read, led, organized, set up, tore down, taught, prayed and sang. 

I hope you all come by to volunteer tomorrow at the soup kitchen in honor of Sukkot. 

Happy Sukkot! 

Rabbi Misha

Suzanne Tick led our community Mandala project 

Excitement, Especially Now

Dear friends, 

This week I’ve been getting excited. Yes, the world rages on. The stupidity knows no bounds. One of the worst leaders we’ve known is speaking at the UN as I write. But a few gatherings with New Shul friends this week have reminded me that on Wednesday evening we get to bring together this unique band of seekers and find the best way to begin a new year.  

My excitement began, as it often does, with the music rehearsal. It’s not just that this group is incredibly talented, which it is. It’s not just that we’ve been making music together for a few years now, and find each other in the music so naturally. It’s not just that the songs themselves feel like coming home. It’s not just that if there’s one thing we need right now on the path to healing, it’s to sing. It’s that on a real level, we’re all friends, and we feel lucky to be doing this together. What a rare and marvelous combination of beauty and love. 

A couple days later I got the opportunity to spend some time with Ellen Gould, who along with Holly Gewandter created this Shul 25 years ago. She spoke about the transformative experience that the Shul’s meditation chevrutah has provided. The weekly meditation has helped her and her husband Daniel find peaceful ways to navigate sickness, troubles and distractions, and have given her a deep understanding of Jewish ideas she thought she’d never connect with. But what lies at the base of the experience are the powerful bonds with people in the group.  

Hearing Holly and Ellen describe the creativity that exploded in the Shul’s early days is exhilarating. Immersive theatrical rituals, finding new ways to transform prayer into art, sitting at downtown bars to dig into the nature of the universe.  It always reminds me what we’re doing - channeling all of the gorgeous Greenwich Village world of arts and ideas into this old tent, this singing shtetl, this group of friends who insist on keeping it real, relevant and full of love. 25 years strong! 

Finally, this week I had the good fortune to meet up with a few friends at Susan’s studio to study. We read pieces of a medieval text, as happens in little study groups. But as often happens when New Shulers get together to learn, something real took over. People shared out of a space of vulnerability, responded out of a place of listening and care, and asked questions that aren’t exercises in cleverness. We weren’t there to defend our positions, to protect the fortress of what we know, but to see things we haven’t been able to see, and to discover something new. In our search for understanding we found a place of trust. 

On Wednesday evening we come together to do all of this and more. Beyond the music and the ideas we have a couple special additions to the holidays this year. Three things I'm especially excited for: We're going to have not one, not two but three young people, recently B Mitzvahd chanting Torah, and another three performing short pieces of ritual theater. On Rosh Hashanah Tashlich, and then again on Yom Kippur afternoon we're going to hear from our recently minted Philosopher in Residence, Dr. David Ponet about two Twentieth century Jewish thinkers who are deeply illuminating about our times, Hannah Arendt and Jean Amery. And on Yom Kippur we will hear from incredible Israeli and Palestinian guest speakers, Osama Iliwat and Rotem Levin about their stories of transformation from men of war to peace activists in search of a new narrative for the Holy Land. 

A new year is dawning on our 25 year old tent. May the light of discovery shine upon us. May the light of friends and music bring us home. May the light we create warm this world.  

Let's begin again.
I can’t wait. 
(if you haven't signed up - let's go!)

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha