One Year

Dear friends,

A year ago, a stranger gave me a gift I still carry in my pocket most days. On one side of the little wooden coin is written: It is not your duty to complete the work. On the other: But neither are you free to desist from it.
I received this coin with the quote from the Mishnah in front of a church in Hudson, NY at the end of an interfaith vigil for black lives, just a few days after I jumped onto this happy bandwagon called The New Shul. As this first year with you all draws to a close, I find myself more often thinking ahead to the next one, but also taking stock of what we did this year.

We did a lot.

Almost as soon as Zach said goodbye we dove into learning. A dozen Chevrutahs (pronounced in these parts Shevrootah:) or learning pods on a variety of ideas, issues and questions were flooded by dozens of learning-hungry New Shulers and their friends, family and random people they told about the project. For me this was an opportunity to connect with many of you who I’d never met, and also to introduce you to some of my teachers. The powerful response to the chevrutahs confirmed my hunch about this place: This is a group of smart people interested in thinking, searching, discovering what the ancient is doing in their world, their mind, their soul.

When High Holidays came around we dove into reality head first: some of us were in person at the farm, some were on the screen when we all learned together on Rosh Hashanah eve that RBG z”l had died. This wasn’t going to be an easy year. But as the rest of the Days of Awe unfolded, with the help of the music, the body, the breath and the incredible participation of the members of several chevrutot, we arrived at that beautiful sunny afternoon in Queens for Neilah, the final prayer of Yom Kippur with hope in our hearts.

There was no shortage of memorable moments in the virtual months that followed. To name just a few, praying with Nilab, our friend from Women for Afghan women and hearing her story, spontaneous prayers of thanksgiving from members after the election, getting immersed in Talmud, Zohar and art in the Torah study on Jacob’s ladder, getting drunk with y’all as we read the Book of Esther on Purim and admitting to the kids that parents only pretend to know what we're doing, hearing Susan Neiman tell us that as a Jew she feels more comfortable living in Berlin than in Tel Aviv or Atlanta, sharing with each other artifacts left to us by friends and family who have passed, and so many more heart shaking moments.

When spring came around we threw ourselves into the Kumah Festival. The entire community seemed involved in one way or another in what felt to me like a transformative undertaking. 33 artists, activists and thinkers from within the community and without turned our attention to the spaces in which our faith world, our creativity and our action for justice come together. During the festival we created a forward-looking, truth-seeking attitude toward central Jewish questions like the Holocaust, Israel and Palestine and brought other issues like BLM, identity politics and food justice into the context of Jewishness. For 7 weeks we listened, watched, asked questions, worked to prepare ourselves to receive the Torah, which we did to the ecstatic sound of horns on Shavuot.

We survived this year. We grew. We sprouted new leaves. We began to see who we might become.

I’m already in preparation for the High Holidays. We are going to build on what we did last year as we step into the new in-person post-Covid reality. We will have a series of Chevrutot once again in the weeks leading into High Holidays. We are building an extraordinary musical team. And I can’t wait to find time to get to know all of you face to face.

I very much hope you can join me next Friday evening for the final Kabbalat Shabbat of this extraordinary year, where we will hear from some of the people who made this year so sweet, with all the challenges it brought.

Thank you for such a strange and beautiful year, for being on this wondrous journey with me. I look forward to continuing this sacred work with you all.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha