Stop the Fighting

Dear friends, 

My nieces and nephews hear the sounds of rockets falling. My parents, walking or driving along, hear the alarms, and either rush into the entrance room of some building, or lie down on the ground with their heads covering their heads. Thank God I’m past the age when my friends are at the Gaza border, awaiting orders to invade. I am filled with fear for those I love in Israel. 

I have never been to Gaza, nor do I have friends there. But my heart goes out to the people there, I fear for them, pray for them, call my representatives primarily on their behalf. They suffer the worst burden of this conflict. They are in the gravest danger.  

In this war, my Palestinian friends in Israel are in danger too. Not only from the rockets from Gaza, but from Jewish fanatics. Before the rockets and the bombs were beatings of Arabs and other provocations perpetrated by right wing organizations supported by the government. In my hometown, Jerusalem, there were nightly attacks on Arabs for weeks. Those led to terrible retaliations and riots, including on Temple Mount, where the Israeli police shot stun grenades into Al Aqsa Mosque, the holiest Muslim site in the holy land. That was a (preventable) point of no-return. All this leaves us not only with a war in Gaza, but with the biggest confrontation between Jewish and Arab citizens of Israel in decades. Today many were injured in these confrontations, and one Jew and one Muslim were beaten to death by mobs. 

Less than a month ago, on Israeli Independence Day, I shared with you the terrifying thought that because we happen to live in that rare historical period when a Jewish state exists, we have no choice but to take part in its story. I hate to come at you so soon after, when you are probably still chewing on that suggestion, but I still believe that to be true. As Mordechai says to Esther: 

“Do not think that because you are in the king’s house you alone of all the Jews will escape. For if you remain silent at this time, relief and deliverance for the Jews will arise from another place... And who knows but that you have come to your royal position for such a time as this?” 

You and I are in the king’s house. We are in the United States of America. If anyone has any power over the one agent who has control of Israel/Palestine, the Israeli government, it’s our government. We should not remain silent. We should demand that our representatives do everything in their power to stop this violence by restraining the Israeli government. If you are concerned for the safety of Israelis as I am, know that we are privileged to live in a period when Israeli military response is not in danger. The residents of Gaza, Israel and the West Bank are in danger. So what’s on us is to call our representatives, to come out to the streets, to post and yell and pray in all the ways we know how - that Israel restrain itself, that the violence stop.  

Obviously Hamas must restrain itself too. Obviously, the Israeli government does not function in a vacuum. Obviously, there is plenty of blame to go around. But I tell you this from the depths of my conviction: my family and friends’ survival in Israel depends on the American demand for restraint.  

There is a lot more to say about what led to this situation. We will talk about it more in the coming months. But for now there is one prayer, one call that I have: Stop the fighting now. 

Perhaps more importantly, if you have friends or family in Israel/Palestine - check in on them, send them your love. Let them know you’re thinking about them. And if you would like to speak with me about this painful situation please do reach out. 

With love and prayers for a quick end to the fighting,
Rabbi Misha 

Reclaiming Redemption

Dear friends,

Before I share some thoughts about our exciting evening planned, and the politics of food in Judaism, I would like to acknowledge the terrible tragedy that took place last night in the Galilee. At least 45 people lost their lives and dozens more were injured when they came to celebrate the holiday of Lag Ba'Omer at the grave site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. The grave is one of the most special, I dare even say holy places I have visited, and the scene there on Lag Ba'Omer is electrifying. It is not for nothing that it attracts so many thousands of people each year. Yehi Zichram baruch, their memory be a blessing, and we pray for the healing of those injured.

This week I share a piece of a longer paper I wrote a few years ago that tries to dig and find what lies beneath Kosher laws. Enjoy.
 

The moment I truly grasped the meaning of the phrase “Do not cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk” was during my son, Ezzy’s infancy. Being in the continuous presence of breast feeding, with all the love and sustenance it exudes, clarified to me what the Torah is talking about here. A baby is given life by his mother’s milk; Physical life through the milk itself, and spiritual life through the comfort and love she receives from her mother, as expressed in the act of breast feeding. The milk is not only a symbol of the physical life, but of love; of the miraculous nature of our bodies, gifts of the divine, and the miraculous nature of our souls, who can but give gifts of love. It is the unification of divine and human love, which is the only food any baby mammal can live on. The Hebrew word דוד means both lover, and the breast of a woman. The word שדי refers either to God’s most intense name, her innermost essence — or it can mean “my breasts.”

The Torah knows us well. It understands that just like we may use something for the obvious purpose it was intended to perform, we may also use it otherwise. We may, in fact, use this life-giving force on which babies depend to kill them. And then eat that baby soaked in the substance we turned from sustainer to killer. We may, through our תאווה, or unchecked desire, turn the life and love into death and hate. Not only could we mindlessly destroy the love that brings together God and humanity, but we could do so by subjugating the life force to the purpose of death.

This poetic verse fragment, out of which flowed the most elaborate section of Jewish law, captures humanity’s incredible capabilities when it comes to cruelty. We are capable of a mindlessness that erases all wrong, of a twisted sadism that requires creativity and inventiveness, of acts of deep horror, which we claim to do in the name of God or goodness, of ignoring and burying our instincts toward decency under the thickest layers of excuses, all the while maintaining our high opinion not only of ourselves but even of our actions. This fragment comes to reflect these capabilities back to us, so that we draw a line in the sand between inflicting pain, and inflicting unspeakable pain. In Judaism, the fragment tells us, cruelty is not always forbidden. Excess cruelty always is.

This evening, as part of the Kumah Festival we will be gathering to think on our relationship with the food we eat. With leaders in the field of food justice and food ritual we will seek a mindfulness with regards to what goes into our bodies. This mindfulness is at the heart of the Torah’s demand on our kitchens. Join us tonight at 8pm for a musical, thought-provoking evening of ritual pickling. Don’t forget a cabbage!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha
PS
Link to share this letter HERE.

In Its Mother's Milk

Dear friends,

Before I share some thoughts about our exciting evening planned, and the politics of food in Judaism, I would like to acknowledge the terrible tragedy that took place last night in the Galilee. At least 45 people lost their lives and dozens more were injured when they came to celebrate the holiday of Lag Ba'Omer at the grave site of Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai. The grave is one of the most special, I dare even say holy places I have visited, and the scene there on Lag Ba'Omer is electrifying. It is not for nothing that it attracts so many thousands of people each year. Yehi Zichram baruch, their memory be a blessing, and we pray for the healing of those injured.

This week I share a piece of a longer paper I wrote a few years ago that tries to dig and find what lies beneath Kosher laws. Enjoy.
 

The moment I truly grasped the meaning of the phrase “Do not cook a baby goat in its mother’s milk” was during my son, Ezzy’s infancy. Being in the continuous presence of breast feeding, with all the love and sustenance it exudes, clarified to me what the Torah is talking about here. A baby is given life by his mother’s milk; Physical life through the milk itself, and spiritual life through the comfort and love she receives from her mother, as expressed in the act of breast feeding. The milk is not only a symbol of the physical life, but of love; of the miraculous nature of our bodies, gifts of the divine, and the miraculous nature of our souls, who can but give gifts of love. It is the unification of divine and human love, which is the only food any baby mammal can live on. The Hebrew word דוד means both lover, and the breast of a woman. The word שדי refers either to God’s most intense name, her innermost essence — or it can mean “my breasts.”

The Torah knows us well. It understands that just like we may use something for the obvious purpose it was intended to perform, we may also use it otherwise. We may, in fact, use this life-giving force on which babies depend to kill them. And then eat that baby soaked in the substance we turned from sustainer to killer. We may, through our תאווה, or unchecked desire, turn the life and love into death and hate. Not only could we mindlessly destroy the love that brings together God and humanity, but we could do so by subjugating the life force to the purpose of death.

This poetic verse fragment, out of which flowed the most elaborate section of Jewish law, captures humanity’s incredible capabilities when it comes to cruelty. We are capable of a mindlessness that erases all wrong, of a twisted sadism that requires creativity and inventiveness, of acts of deep horror, which we claim to do in the name of God or goodness, of ignoring and burying our instincts toward decency under the thickest layers of excuses, all the while maintaining our high opinion not only of ourselves but even of our actions. This fragment comes to reflect these capabilities back to us, so that we draw a line in the sand between inflicting pain, and inflicting unspeakable pain. In Judaism, the fragment tells us, cruelty is not always forbidden. Excess cruelty always is.

This evening, as part of the Kumah Festival we will be gathering to think on our relationship with the food we eat. With leaders in the field of food justice and food ritual we will seek a mindfulness with regards to what goes into our bodies. This mindfulness is at the heart of the Torah’s demand on our kitchens. Join us tonight at 8pm for a musical, thought-provoking evening of ritual pickling. Don’t forget a cabbage!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha
PS
Link to share this letter HERE.

Prayers of the Floyd Family

Dear friends,

The Floyd family, and the events of this week have filled my mind with beautiful questions about the nature of prayer. I watched many different family members react to the verdict, and every one of them spoke about prayer. George’s brother, Philonese was described as sitting in the courtroom throughout the entire trial “in prayer.” Another brother, Terrence said: "I believe because of prayer, we got the verdict we wanted.” Speaking about prayer, a cousin of George’s said that over the last year the family was flooded by so much love coming their way that she doesn’t know whether she will see such love again in her lifetime. These are three very different attitudes toward prayer, each of which invites contemplation on what we mean when we use the word.

Of all of the powerful moments, though, perhaps the strongest was watching the Floyd family pray together, led by Reverend Sharpton. Before the words emerged, the Reverend had the family and close friends link arms, as if to say prayer is a physical uniting of people. It begins in the body, and continues so long as the bodies are united, so long as our bodies are praying. The family then lowered their heads, and remained in that position until the prayer was completed. One of the lines of prayer Sharpton spoke was also of a physical nature:

“We believe in a god who can even get through the cracks in a jury room.”

Jews have different ways of physicalizing prayer. We cover our eyes with our hands at times, wear a Talit, wrap ourselves in Tefilin. We stand still, we bow low, we dance three steps back and three steps forward. Outside of the traditional houses of prayer we “pray with our feet” at marches and rallies (Heschel). We “praise the great name through dance.” (Psalms) We “Love God with all your heart, with your entire body, and with everything you’ve got.” (Deuteronomy)

Rabbi Akiva was begged by his students to stop resisting the Romans who were torturing him to death. He told them his whole life he had been waiting for the opportunity to fulfill the commandment to “love God with your entire body,” and now he has that opportunity. His body is said to have expired as he uttered the word “Echad”, “One,” which ends the Shma: Adonai Echad, God is one.

I wonder whether George Floyd was praying in his last minutes. The very physical words he spoke: “I can’t breathe,” have since become a powerful prayer that has moved millions to take their bodies out to the streets to demand justice.

This evening’s Kumah Festival gathering will expand and explore many of these themes. Bringing together two dancers and a trumpet player, we will touch upon how the body interacts with the world of spirit and of justice through dance. Davalois Fearon will share excerpts from a dance piece about her nephew who died of asthma due to medical and environmental racial disparities. Famed trumpeter Frank London will express breath and prayer through his horn. And Sarah Chien will dance live a Shabbat prayer at the close of this momentous week.

We can’t quite link arms, but we can link screens, eyes and minds.
I hope you’ll join us tonight at 8pm.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

PS
Link to share this letter HERE.

Hopeless Hope

Dear friends,

Something extraordinary happened this week. 280,000 people gathered from across the universe, most of them from Israel and Palestine, to mourn those killed on both sides of the conflict. The joint Israeli Palestinian memorial ceremony, hosted by Combatants for Peace and the Bereaved Parents Forum, and sponsored by dozens of organizations including The New Shul, is laying the ground for a different future. In a time when most Israelis are vaccinated and almost no Palestinians are, the ability of people to transform a day of mourning those the other side have killed into a day of affirming our unity in the face of massive pressure to conform filled me with new energy. Thanks to this event I find myself unusually hopeful on this week of the 73rd anniversary of the creation of the State of Israel. This despite any hope for a solution or even an improvement in the situation there any time soon.

Activism is a funny business. It often involves an ongoing sense of failure. In the Israeli left (what remains of it) that sense is acute and un-ignorable. Here in the US too, when we see another video of a black man killed by police, and then the same week one of 13-year-old Adam Toledo shot with his hands in the air, we feel the despair, the failure of our attempts. But the fruits of one’s actions can, like a fig from a freshly planted fruit, take 70 years or more to appear. In the meantime, we look for a different kind of fruit. One that can be found within our actions themselves.

My father, David Shulman, who we will have the privilege of listening to and asking questions of this Saturday morning at our third Kumah Festival event, has spent much of his life deep in the endlessly thankless world of Israeli-Palestinian activism. Amazingly though, and anyone who has been in the West Bank on some Quixotian mission knows this well, the work is also endlessly rewarding. How could that be?

In his book, Freedom and Despair, he quotes Wittgenstein:

“...it is clear that ethics has nothing to do with punishment and reward in the ordinary sense. This question as to the consequences of an action must therefore be irrelevant..... There must be some sort of ethical reward and ethical punishment, but this must lie in the action itself.”

In working for good we have to divorce ourselves from the result of our action, and instead do it because it is the right thing to do. This sounds like a contradiction. Why do it if it won’t amount to anything? This is the question that leaves the skeptic, the depressed person, the doubter in bed. Sometimes it leaves me in bed. I write about activism today, but what is activism if not a metaphor for any action we take in the world? I come to pray and hear that question – Why do it if it won’t amount to anything? I come to write a play, or sing a song, or teach or read or exercise or write an email, and many times that question creeps up - Why do it if it won’t amount to anything?

Pirkei Avot in the Mishnah teaches the concept of “Lishma,” or “for its own sake.” Torah that we do for its own sake, divorced from what will or won’t come out of it, taught Rabbi Meir, ends up bringing the greatest rewards. Anything we manage to do for no other reason but to do it, is the greatest type of action. Despair, my father teaches, can help us act in that way:

 “...speaking of the ground for action I think it’s time to reclaim despair, which is as good a ground as any and better than most. Since the results are not the point, despair has a role to play. One despairs: the wickedness is all too present and effective, we cannot stem the tide with our bodies or our words, we confront a faceless system embodied in the faces of the soldiers and bureaucrats and settlers that we meet on the hills. I recommend despair as a place to start. It is in the nature of acting, of doing the right thing, that despair recedes at least for a moment, and its place is taken by something else: hopeless hope for example. Those who work these furrows know that hope is not contingent. Sometimes the worse things get, the more hope there is, for hope is an act of the deeper self, or the freer part of the person, what some would call a spiritual act.”

We have no control over the way the world behaves. We cannot see the results of our actions. Let us allow these truths to free us to behave in all the best ways we can.  Then we might be filled with an endless supply of hopeless hope, which has the power to move us to keep doing God’s work for the simple reason that we know it to be good.

I’m excited to see you tomorrow morning at 10am.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

PS. Here's the link to share this letter.

Praising God on the Train Tracks

Dear friends,

This Sunday, as part of the Kumah Festival we will be commemorating Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which takes place today. In an event that will search for a way to acknowledge and mourn the past while leading us toward a new, forward looking relationship with memory. It will be an extraordinary coming together of artists, survivors and activists, centering around a personal story of redemption, even joy of one of our community members at a unique, theatrical commemorative event in Poland for her family members, some of whom were murdered by the Nazis.

A few years ago I was in Germany and Poland for a fellowship, and thought deeply about the relationship between light and sadness, between pleasure and suffering, between my body here in the present, and my mind traveling back to the past. I share with you this rather personal piece I published about the hardest day I had during that trip. It's longer than my usual letters to you, but attempts to dig into some of the questions and complexities we will be exploring this Sunday. Please read it HERE.

The memory of the dead, our tradition reminds us, is a blessing.

Rabbi Misha

Rise Up Moroccan Style

Dear friends,

Tomorrow night we begin a seven-week journey that will attempt to lead us from doubt to acceptance, from possibility to actuality, from the Red Sea to Mount Sinai. We begin our Kumah Festival learning from the former black slaves of Morocco how to transform their Boulila, their chains, into Hamdulillah, praise, through music.

Gnawa, the musical form we will enjoy a concert of, is a mystical Moroccan Muslim tradition, with roots in the pre-Islamic faiths of the Sub-Sahara, where the black slaves were taken from beginning in the 11th century. Like the slaves in our country, their song was their refuge and their offering, rising to the heavens like smoke from an altar. When our ancestors emerged onto the other side of the Sea of Reeds they broke into song:

My song to Yah is my strength
In it I am redeemed.

They must have been singing their way through 400 years of slavery before that as well. Otherwise, how could they have known that in music a person can find redemption, regardless of their circumstances? Singing can do that in part because it demands honesty. Like the Blues, Gnawa music expresses sadness, difficulty, rage. It brings us in touch with reality as it is. It’s through that straight look at who and what we are that the beauty and the gratitude can emerge.

Out of the narrows I cried out: Yah!
She answered me with wide open space.

The music then opens up into celebration, which will be our main mode tomorrow.

Mimuna, the Post Passover celebration of the Jews of Morocco takes fear and mistrust and flips it on its head. The tradition is said to have begun in the 18th century, when the Muslim neighbors of the Jews would bring them platters of leavened food and sweets as soon as the holiday was finished. They would eat and sing together in a joint celebration of brotherhood. Today we are in the narrows of distrust between Jews and their Arab neighbors, so we will take a page from the Moroccans and bring together Jews and Muslims, Hebrew and Arabic, new and old to make music. The ensemble, which includes Grammy-nominated, award-winning musicians, will combine traditional Muslim Gnawa songs to Allah with devotional songs by Moroccan Jews and verses from the Psalms. I’ve gotten some sneak previews of the music. It’s transportive, beautiful, meditative, invigorating.

Kumah means Rise Up in Hebrew (and the similar Kumu means the same thing in Arabic). The Kumah Festival is devoted to the overlapping spaces between faith, art and politics, three realms in which we often need help to find the energy to rise. I’m sure our musicians, Ran, Eden, Eran and Samir will start us off on the right foot to begin our march from the lip of the sea toward the great mountain of God.

Please invite one and all to join us — and if you can, bring a pair of headphones or a Bluetooth connection to a speaker to enhance the experience. And if you haven’t already, please complete the two-second registration form.

Shabbat shalom, and see you tomorrow night at 7:30!

Rabbi Misha

PS. If you'd like to pass this on here's the link to the letter on Medium.

What's this Freedom For?

Dear friends,

We have some live virtual theater coming our way tonight, so I’ll begin with a line from a play:

PHARAOH: When you finally get this freedom, Moses, what are you going to do with it?

That line from my play, Pharaoh (that's him in the picture above) which was scheduled to open a year ago, keeps coming back to me these pre-Passover days. We are used to thinking about this holiday as a story of slavery to freedom. The deeper story though, might be about after freedom is achieved. The reading of the Shma, said three times a day, ends with the following statement:

אני יי אלוהיכם אשר הוצאתי אתכם מארץ מצרים להיות לכם לאלוהים

I am Adonai your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt to be your God.

We did not come out of Egypt for the sake of being a free people, but for the sake of being God’s people. We are not, as Hatikvah the Israeli national anthem puts it, Am Chofshi, a free nation, but Avdey Hashem, Slaves of God, as Rabbi Yehudah Halevi put it.

What’s interesting about this is the notion of being freed in order to be a slave of God is that to some people it is the saddest, most convoluted and dark expression of freedom, while to others it implies the only true purpose, infused with total and complete liberation. Personally, I suffer from split personality on this one. Sometimes I abhor the notion, reject it and deny that it is has anything to do with the truth. Other times I yearn for it, pray for it and work hard to make it a reality.

It hinges, of course on the meaning of this word, God. If God is ultimately the LORD, as appears in many biblical translations, if it is the ultimate authority, mascot of the patriarchy, punisher of deviants, confiner of what we eat, who we befriend and how we think, then none of us at TNS want to be a slave of God. If, however God is יהוה, being in all tenses which we can sometimes forget ourselves to, the boundless, indivisible source of all, the Kol Dmamah Dakah, sound of perfect silence, which transcends our lives and deaths, the wind and the care and the pleasure and the coming together: well hey, sign me up to be a slave to that.

In other words, God is both total freedom and total limitation, depending on your perspective. Whatever we land on, Passover is an opportunity to look for a way to be with and in the infinite, the true. We invite Kol dichfin and kol ditzrich, all who are hungry and all who are in need, without differentiating between one person and another. We invite the parts of ourselves that are hungry, needy, ill at ease to join the table and sit comfortably in the momentary expression of the eternal.

It is likely that we were given our freedom for the sake of celebrating Passover; to enjoy being alive, to feel the love of those we are with, to ask questions and contemplate what is, to sing what is known as the Hallel Mitzri – the Egyptian Praise Session, to know that even when we feel like things are missing, Dayenu, our cup overflows.

When we meet this evening at 6pm we will, however be taking a serious look into the opposite of all of this, the vision of freedom offered by The Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition as brilliantly elaborated by Fyodor Dostoevsky in 1879. We must look at the lies of freedom in order to get free. We must see the frighteningly compelling manipulation that is presented to us by the world and ourselves in order to rid ourselves of it, before we celebrate the Passover.
For this purpose we will be gathering this evening to witness and discuss a short play, using only the words of Dostoevsky, performed by an incredibly skilled and experienced actor named Jon Huberth, and directed by the equally talented and celebrated theater director, Michael Posnick.
I can’t wait.

I hope you can all join us at 6pm for an evening that will include some prayers and music, but will focus primarily on this excerpt from The Brothers Karamazov.

Wishing you all a happy, peaceful, Passover. May we all find the pleasures of freedom and use them to be slaves of all the right things.

Shabbat shalom and chag sameach,
Rabbi Misha

PS. If you'd like to pass this on here's the link to the letter on Medium.

A Crime of Cosmic Proportions

Dear friends,
I’m excited to share a pre-Passover video with you all. But first a short response to this week’s sad events.

With Passover around the corner we hear the call of freedom. This week’s parasha, Vayikra begins with Moses hearing God’s call. We heard one this week coming out of Georgia and echoing around the country. Of the many statements issued on the violence, the one that resonated most with me was of a local theater called The Tank. I adapt their statement and share it here:

The New Shul stands in solidarity with the Asian, Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community and condemns the recent alarming incidents of hate and violence, and the ongoing culture of white supremacy and silence that has led to them. Now is the time for those of us who are non-AAPI to examine our own complicity in this culture, find ways to amplify and lift up voices who are graciously teaching in this moment, participate in trainings so we might do more, march and donate.

To our AAPI members and friends,
we commit to doing better.

Our tradition attempts to set us up for moments like these, so that we might succeed in doing the right thing. One of the ways we do that is by talking about the many facets of freedom. This year at the School for Creative Judaism, where TNS children learn Hebrew and Judaism, the annual theme is the Year of the Philosophers. We might be the only Hebrew school in the entire world to have a philosopher in residence, our very own David Ponet. So I took the opportunity to invite David to a philosophical conversation about freedom, Passover and some Jewish philosophers who have illuminated the topic.

The video attempts to speak to people of various ages, so if you have kids get them some matzah and grape juice or some type of snack and see if they have good answers to the questions posed. There are some suggested instructions for eating, drinking and discussing embedded into the video, which will be fun for everyone.

Please send me any reflections or answers to the questions you come up with. David and I are excited to hear your thoughts.

Two final things: Shabbat Ohr will be this evening at 6pm with Rabbi Nicole Fix.

Next Friday evening we will have a pre-Passover Dostoevskian Shabbat get together in which we will do a bit less praying, and more freedom reading together of pieces from Dostoevsky’s The Grand Inquisitor, one of modern literature’s greatest challenges to our traditional understanding of the concept of freedom. Invite your friends!

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Hearts Building Gods

Dear friends,

This week’s Parasha is perhaps the most New Shul of them all. Its hero is Bezalel Ben Uri, the artist who builds the Mishkan, the travelling desert temple. But before he appears, we learn of another bunch of heroes who allow him to do his work. These are, well, most, if not all of the Jews.

“Take from among you a donation to God: whosoever’s heart moves him, let him bring an offering of the Lord;”

Moses isn’t asking for money. Instead perhaps they have:

Gold, silver and bronze; 6 blue, purple and scarlet yarn and fine linen; goat hair; 7 ram skins dyed red and another type of durable leather; acacia wood; 8 olive oil for the light; spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense; 9 and onyx stones and other gems to be mounted on the ephod and breastpiece.

In biblical terms this list means something like “anything you got.” Today we might say Bring new materials and recycled ones, objects of all type and manner, anything at all that we could use to make our joint, moving palace of human-made divinity.

Next, the people are invited to take these materials and make the temple out of them.

All who are wise of heart among you, come and make everything the Lord has commanded.

Now we get a long list of everything that must be made, the inside and out of our greatest collective work of art; the Mishkan.

The tabernacle with its tent and its covering, clasps, frames, crossbars, posts and bases; 12 the ark with its poles and the atonement cover and the curtain that shields it; 13 the table with its poles and all its articles and the bread of the Presence; 14 the lampstand that is for light with its accessories, lamps and oil for the light; 15 the altar of incense with its poles, the anointing oil and the fragrant incense; the curtain for the doorway at the entrance to the tabernacle; 16 the altar of burnt offering with its bronze grating, its poles and all its utensils; the bronze basin with its stand; 17 the curtains of the courtyard with its posts and bases, and the curtain for the entrance to the courtyard; 18 the tent pegs for the tabernacle and for the courtyard, and their ropes; 19 the woven garments worn for ministering in the sanctuary — both the sacred garments for Aaron the priest and the garments for his sons when they serve as priests.”

If you read through that last list with the attitude we often reserve for lengthy, far too detailed biblical passages, consider that each item is a piece of art made from the heart of lay people invited to participate in this grand event; From the materials, rich and simple to the time volunteered by craftswomen and laymen. There is a reason why the heart is mentioned more times in this chapter than in any other in the Torah.

It’s at this point in the story that we reach the verse that may be the crux of the entire episode:

וַיָּבֹ֕אוּ כָּל־אִ֖ישׁ אֲשֶׁר־נְשָׂא֣וֹ לִבּ֑וֹ וְכֹ֡ל אֲשֶׁר֩ נָדְבָ֨ה רוּח֜וֹ אֹת֗וֹ הֵ֠בִיאוּ אֶת־תְּרוּמַ֨ת יְהוָ֜ה לִמְלֶ֨אכֶת אֹ֤הֶל מוֹעֵד֙ וּלְכָל־עֲבֹ֣דָת֔וֹ וּלְבִגְדֵ֖י הַקֹּֽדֶשׁ׃

Each person whose heart carried them, and every individual whose spirit has filled with generosity came and brought an offering to the Lord for the work on the tent of meeting, for all its service, and for the sacred garments.

The commentator Ohr Hachayim explains the difference between being “carried by your heart” and being “filled with generosity” by your spirit: The latter is one who is moved to give what he has. The former however, one “carried by your heart,” means “One who volunteers beyond her ability, out of the expanding goodness of her heart.”

We volunteer or give when we feel a stake in a project. In this chapter we see women and men participating in whatever ways they can, sometimes beyond their means or abilities. For many of us at TNS who work or dabble in the arts, we know what that feels like. I have no time? No money? No strength? When we get into a project none of that matters.

This Mishkan, the abode of The Presence needed to be filled with the objects and work of the members of the Israelite community. That’s what made it theirs, and what made their God, the God of them present in it.

It can be the same with our community. The more each of us feels moved to participate, to give of what they have and know how to do, the greater the presence of our New Shul version of God, (or UnGod if you prefer). In the Kumah Festival, which we launch next month, we are very excited to enjoy the work, art and ideas of many of the talented people in our community, as well as some from beyond.

I look forward to seeing you and your generous hearts this evening at 6pm at Kabbalat Shabbat, where we will hear some music from Ran Livneh, one of the musicians who will open the Kumah festival for us with an ancient new sound from Morocco.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Jack, Hero of Time

Dear Friends,

Bnei Mitzvah ceremonies during pandemic are unique, often surprisingly beautiful events. Each of those I’ve conducted have had a tinge of sadness for the fact family and friends can’t gather to celebrate in person, which over the course of the ceremony seems to get absorbed into the pride and joy of the young person in question and their parents, and the love and excitement that somehow cuts through the screen from those not physically present. That sense that we have all witnessed something important take place inevitably fills the space; what I sometimes call the arrival of God, and other times think of as collective human intention. Or in simpler terms: ritual.

Of all these special events, the first one I led, last May, stays with me in particular because of the sad circumstances that surrounded it. The Bar Mitzvah boy’s beloved grandfather died from Covid not long before the event. The Bar Mitzvah became an opportunity for the family to gather, carefully, feel each other’s love, and the continuation of the family tradition; to find peace and happiness even in the shadow of death. And it underscored something that is a part of every B Mitzvah, but even more so during Covid: that these young people are doing an incredibly brave and loving act for their families.

During that time I was taking the Pandemic Poetry workshop with the wonderful Joanie Fritz Zosike, and wrote the following poem about that first Covid times Bar Mitzvah, which I share with you now.

Jack, Hero of Time

On her deathbed she took her son’s hand and commanded:
“Make sure my grandson gets Bar Mitzvahd.”
Then she said:
“Do Jack’s Bar Mitzvah.”
And again. And one more time,
“Do it!”
Now the boy receives his father’s Talis
Bought by his grandmother
And steps up to the Torah
In the shadow of death.

It is the timeless time of the Great Pandemic of two thousand and twenty
Which took his grandfather’s life
And the family cautiously gathers
In Grandma’s back yard
But really on Jack’s shoulders.
Grandma spoke as death moved in her
And that speaking continued
Her words echoing in the silent
Death of her isolated husband.
He has been gathered to his people
And his grandson has gathered his.

Hallelujah, he sings
Praise the God of Truth!

She who can no longer speak
He who can no longer sing
Find their voices through their Grandson’s
Strong lungs,
Sweet notes that emerge from his
Growing, changing body.
They who no longer change thank God
With the mouth of him who is transforming.

“Can dust sing? Does it speak Your truth?”
A living challenge from the ancient hero
Who carried his people on his shoulders
And his poems for thousands of years
Carried
Carry us even today
As we stare at the dust particles
Gleaming in the sun
And know we are alive.
Instead of the finished poet
We have a new young hero
To live out the words of his grandmother
And her grandmother
And all the generations of dust
Who know they can no longer speak
Words they have not said.
“I am only half me,” says the young man to his people.
“The other half is them that came before me
And you who live with me.”

We speak the names of the dead.
In their name we praise The Presence.
“Yitgadal veyitkadash sheme raba,”
He speaks the ancient words
With his clear, sweet, changing voice.

Rabbi Misha

Reality on Hold This Evening

Dear friends,

Happy Purim! I'm psyched to celebrate with you all this evening.

Purim is healthiest of our holidays, because we get to embody the opposite of our so called reality. Finally we rid ourselves of ourselves, our ideas, our understanding of how things "are." Such a ridiculous pretense, to imagine we understand such things! And so we embrace NAHAFOCH HU, the upside down. We embrace not knowing, Ad Delo Yada. We ride the wave of insanity and take a bath in the absurd. We wash our minds in thought-altering liquids. We hide who we are from ourselves and others. We live another's life for a day.

Tonight's celebration will be an attempt to do all of that through completing eight tasks. Four of them were decreed by the rabbis, and four by the people throughout the generations. Here's what you will need (in advance is great, but you can cobble it all together as we go as well):

The r A b B i S said :::)
1. READ the Megillah. We will share the link tonight but you will be happier if you print it out.
2. Give presents to loved ones. Bring a thing, a thought, a hug, a word for someone you love.
3. Gifts to the poor. We will share a link to donate this evening.
4. Eat! Bring something to nibble, or a full feast. Popcorn might be a good way to go as we are going to read through the whole Megillah!

The P e O p L e said:::/!
1. Dress in costume. This may seem childish or not necessary. It's not. It's really at the heart of losing ourselves to this more primal reality, which we will no doubt accomplish through our Upper Torso Costume Contest!
2. Make noise! Use groggers, musical instruments, spoons, pots, pans, vocal chords or any other device.
3. Get drunk. Again, this may seem unnecessary. You know your body best. And there are kids around (including mine!). But Rabbi Zach had this great tradition of Who's drunker than the rabbi, which I plan to uphold this evening. Bring your booze of choice!
4. Forget everything. If we follow the guidelines set up by our ancestors we are guaranteed a moment of total undoing.

See you at 6pm HERE!

Rabbi Misha

Hidden Footprints

Dear friends,

The month of Adar, month of joy in the Hebrew calendar, began for me one week ago with a sighting of a few families of dolphins swimming happily in the frigid ocean. I am spending a week by the rather stormy Atlantic, and despite the weather have been able to watch large birds fly over the water, medium birds fly high and plunge down into the water, and small birds with long beaks run into the very shallow water, all of them in search of fish. I am a human, and as such can only see the surface of the water. What lies beneath it is a matter of the imagination, fueled by memories of diving, nature films and dreams. Watching the birds, sighting those dolphins, has given my imaginings a taste of what lies hidden from my eyes. Every time I see the dolphins the reality of the depths, which my mind long knows to exist, is in plain view for half a second; and I am filled with joy.

It is what the Psalmist calls a “zecher,” a faint memory, or a trace;

זֶכֶר רַב טוּבְךָ יַבִּיעוּ, וְצִדְקָתְךָ יְרַנֵּנוּ

So many hidden footprints

Springs of Your goodness

Singing joy, singing justice.

(Psalm 145)

Not all things hidden are happy revelations of course. I am reading The Bridge of San Luis Rey, one of the great American novels on the topic of faith. Thornton Wilder, the wild genius takes a headline: a bridge collapsed in Peru and five people were killed, and then proceeds to reveal the lives of those five people, and the moment in their lives in which they died. It is a mining of the richness of every human being, a revealing of what we know but is hidden from us: that every person who died this week in Texas, or from Covid, or any other piece of information that we see as a line in an article, is a whole world. This is sad of course, but I prefer to live with the knowledge that I am surrounded by richness rather than vacantness. In the moments that I know I live with rich, beautiful, complex realities, when I can know that much is hidden from me even if I may be obsessed with what I see and experience, in those moments I am less alone, more content, part of a whole.

There is a group of psalms composed by the descendants of the Torah’s greatest renegade, Korach, who challenged Moses and in turn was swallowed by the earth. The Midrash tells us that Korach and his followers now live at the deepest, darkest place in the bottom of the ocean. The first of these poems, Psalm 42 expresses an awareness, even within the abyss of despair, to the hidden realities at play, and a certainty that they will be revealed to us. Those will be happy moments, grateful moments, quiet moments. I will leave you with the Psalm and its continued return to the image of water, which even our souls are likened to.

As the hart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God.

My soul thirsteth for God, for the living God: when shall I come and appear before God?

My tears have been my bread day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God?

When I remember these things, I pour out my soul in me: for I had gone with the multitude, I went with them to the house of God, with the voice of joy and praise, with a multitude that kept holyday.

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted in me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.

O my God, my soul is cast down within me: therefore will I remember thee from the land of Jordan, and of the Hermonites, from the hill Mizar.

Deep calleth unto deep at the noise of thy waterspouts: all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me.

Yet the Lord will command his lovingkindness in the day time, and in the night his song shall be with me, and my prayer unto the God of my life.

I will say unto God my rock, Why hast thou forgotten me? why go I mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?

As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God?

Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Traditions of the Living and the Dead

Dear Friends,

Willow, a bright twelve-year-old student answered my question in a way I had never heard before. “Why do you want to have a Bat Mitzvah,” I asked. “Tradition,” she said, “should be something we think of every day.” The reason Willow is right is simply because tradition is something we live with every day of our lives. The Jewish tradition is one piece of that. The particular traditions of our families past, present and future is another. And then there are the traditions that go beyond our family, our people, our faith.

I thought of these traditions this week as I heard Jamie Raskin, the lead prosecutor in the impeachment trial, describe his daughter, Tabitha’s response to the insurrection in DC. “I don’t want to come back to the Capitol,” she told her father that day. As he told the story, you could feel a father’s brokenness at the shattering of a tradition he received from his parents, and was passing down to his children, one called American democracy.

I also thought of these traditions when I watched Reverend Raphael Warnock’s sermon that he gave at Shabbat service at The Temple, an Atlanta synagogue, ten days after his election to the senate. That day a cyber attack shut down the livestreams of all Atlanta synagogues, reminding us that we live with hateful traditions as well, every day. But the reverend’s sermon spoke to another tradition, MLK’s Beloved Community. That day, Warnock said, speaking of the day of his murder, MLK was busy working on his War Against Poverty. Today we live with those traditions too. When we mark Black History Month, when we work for equality, we are continuing the life work of heroes like John Lewis, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and harkening back to our prophets all the way back to Moses, who in this week’s parasha says: “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest,” a practical law reflecting a tradition deeply attuned to the poor and the vulnerable.

Rabbi Ponet once described Judaism to me as the art of living with our dead. That is one possible explanation of the word tradition. Reverend Warnock offered another:

“Our life’s project,” he suggested, “ought to be longer than our life span.”

What our ancestors began is being completed by us. What we are beginning will be completed by those who will come after us. When we say MiDor leDor, from generation to generation, we are describing our life as a link on the same chain as the dead and the not yet born, all of us bodies of tradition.

In a real way, we live with our ancestors and those we lived with and have died every day of our lives. When we are gone, those we leave will live with us every day of their lives. We are connected to the past and to the future. Tradition is a revelation of that truth.

The Hebrew word for tradition, Masoret, underscores that. It means a passing; Passing on, passing away, passing back, picking up the baton passed to us, and passing it forward when we pass on into eternity.

When we come together for Shabbat this evening we will be living out our tradition. We will be children to our parents and grandchildren to our grandparents. We will be parents and grandparents and great grandparents to people we may never meet in person. We will be friends of those we loved and learned from and lovers of those we never knew we taught.

Join me tonight at 6pm to light the lights, sing the songs, and discuss the myriad ways we live with our ancestors, and they with us every day. Our musical guest will be the wonderful Jack Klebanow, who many of you know from our Niggunim chevrutah.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Face פנים

Dear friends,

We seem to have fixed our issue with Medium, so everyone should be able to open the letter without a problem. I love getting your thoughts and comments, so please continue to send them to me, or to respond in the comments section on Medium. And please send us any feedback about the experience reading it there.

The letter is about French philosopher Levinas' notion of the face. It begins like this:

Emmanuel Levinas explains it like this: when we see another’s face, we are commanded “Thou shalt not murder.”

The sixth of the Ten Commandments, which we read this Shabbat, is unnecessary since it is written on the face of anyone you allow yourself to see. The process unfolds as follows: we walk around the world in complete self-absorption, following the totally natural way of human beings, which is to say selfish desire. If anything or anyone comes in the way of fulfilling our desires, we find a way around it, through it, dispensing of it as we see fit. It is the way of all creatures and we are no different. One thing can come in the way of our selfishness, and that is encountering another’s face. At that moment an immediate psychic transformation occurs. Over and Against our human instinct we rise. Thou shalt not murder, we are commanded, and with it an understanding of other people and an acknowledgement of their reality. Suddenly we know we are not alone in the universe.

Why does the face hold such transformative power?

The Hebrew word for face is panim. It is the same root, almost the very same spelling, of the word for inside, pnim. After playing in the snow I told my boys בואו ניכנס פנימה, let’s go pnima, inside, or toward the interior. The English verb To face something, means to look at it. “Face your partner,” an acting teacher might say, meaning stand opposite them and look at them. “Face your history,” an BLM activist might demand, meaning stare at it, see it clearly for what it is.

In Hebrew the same verb, to face, or lehafnim means to internalize. “Atah batzava achshav, Tafnim!” An IDF sergeant might have said to a rebellious 18 year old in basic training: “You’re in the army now, internalize it!” Meaning, understand it deeply within your body so that you may change your behavior.

In Hebrew the face is a revealer of the inside of a person. When we see a face, we see the person, like in a soul-x-ray machine. We don’t actually see the face when we are looking properly, but what is behind it: the uniqueness, the struggle, the story, the spirit that is behind the skin, flesh and bones that make up that face.

When we bless our kids on Shabbat with the words Yisa Adonai panav elekha, May Adonai turn her face toward you, we do not mean God’s physical face, but the inside of God, the heart and force and spiritual make up of divinity, of world-ness, of reality, of time, place and action, of Truth.

Moses, Torah tells us, was the only one to ever see that - to see God face to face. But we have the ability to see something arguably far more beautiful: the face of a fellow traveler, of a loved one, of a teacher, of a stranger, and a friend.

One gift the pandemic gave us, which like the Israelites in the desert, we complain about quite often, is the focus that Zoom and other virtual meeting spots place on people’s faces. Lets try to remember that this week when we FaceTime with our people for the thousandth time since last March. May we continue to practice the ability to see each other’s faces — on and off our screens — and the oceans they reveal.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

The Hallelujah Tree

Dear Friends,

Smack in the middle of Prospect Park stands a majestic tree with dozens of dancing arms and an enormous protective lump jutting out at eyes’ height. Its chunky roots sprawl out and cover the area beneath its trees all around its fat trunk, far too wide to hug. I’m not the only one attracted to it, which is evident by the dollops of paint in different colors that people have left on that protective lump, in the way that is done to holy trees in India, or the Jerusalem mountains. It’s been there for a while, probably eighty or ninety years according to a ranger I met there once, who also explained that the lump is a scar, evidence of a disease that overtook the tree, forcing it to grow the lump over the sickness.

When my third son, Manu was a baby most mornings would begin with a run in the park to this special tree. He would look out from his stroller at the lake, the trees, the sky, the ducks, geese and seagulls, hearing his father sing his morning prayers. Then the stroller would stop, Manu would be pulled out from his stroller, and be walked around the big tree to the sounds of this strange and beautiful Hebrew word: Halleluyah. His little hands would touch the tree. As he grew, his little voice would utter a syllable or two: Ha, or lu, or luya. Halleluyah was one of his earliest words. It meant Tree.

Nowadays Manu goes to daycare, so I don’t make it as often to the tree. It’s not as fun without him. But on Tu Bishvat, the New Year for Trees, I go. Two years ago I asked the tree what it would like for its birthday. It sent me on a Don Quixotian mission: “Reach out to the ultra-orthodox community,” she said, “and see if you can find allies who would begin a culture shift there away from using the immense amount of plastic utensils that they waste.” The strict demands of Kosher laws often lead them to rely and enormous amounts of disposables. So I wrote some letters, spoke to a few people, and ultimately failed that herculean task.

Yesterday, Tu Bishvat, I received a different message. With the recent news of the ice in the arctic shrinking at incredible speed, the Amazon forests raped and burned, Australia, California, all the disasters of the past year, I expected a dire call to action. I was surprised:

“Inspire change through the appreciation of the beauty that is,” said the tree, “rather than the threat of beauty lost.” She quoted scripture:

“עבדו את יי בשמחה, Worship God with happiness.”

I looked around at the surrounding forest, the birds flying from branch to branch, the semi-frozen lake, the people walking by with their dogs. Trees, I thought, are the embodiment of the word local. They live what is in front of them and around them, not what is beyond. Suck in the water from the earth, absorb the sun from the sky, be in the stillness, sway in the wind.

We have learned a thing or two about what local means in this pandemic. Perhaps we have more to learn. Perhaps we can still practice being in our place more, seeing the tree across the street, the bird on the windowsill, the sunlight, the falling snow. Perhaps this summer we might make it out to Bear Mountain, or Harriman, or to one of our local beaches. Perhaps we might even make it out to our local natural spots this winter, or make an extra walk to the Hudson, Central Park, or around the neighborhood in a way that allows us to absorb the beauty we live with, and to experience that fleeting sensation: happiness. And perhaps that happiness, if we can find it, will give us the encouragement we need to work with hope for this planet that we live in, and love.

“Then,” as our Shabbat prayers tell us, “all the trees of the forest will sing with joy.” And us along with them.

HALLELUYAH!

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Misha

Come to Pharaoh

Dear friends,

When the prophet Haggai returned to Israel from the exile in Babylon, much like we seem to have returned home this week, he found the Jews depressed, “each person rushing to their own home,” with no eyes for others, or for the rebuilding of the temple for which they returned. He gathered the Jews in front of the ruins of the temple and said: “Today is the day the Temple was erected!” The prophet could sense the tremendous potential for rebirth in the air, which the people had no clue about. “The seed is still in the barn, not even planted. You see no grapes on the vine, no figs, pomegranates or olives on the trees, yet they are coming: the blessings start today.”

This week’s Parasha is called Bo, meaning “come!” Where should we come to, you might ask, “el Par’oh,” to Pharaoh. That’s right, come to Pharaoh, says God to Moses, as if that’s where God is. Or maybe it is?

We’ve heard this verb before. Noah was told: Bo el hateva, come to the ark, which the commentators understand as: enter the ark. So “come to Pharaoh” is an invitation to enter Pharaoh, where God sits waiting. What?!?! That doesn’t sound quite right, does it?

Well, it does to me, but that’s because I spent ten years immersing myself in Pharaoh, as I wrote and later performed a play that tells the exodus story from his perspective. God said “come to Pharaoh,” and I did. Guess what I discovered? Like the rabbis suggest, I found the worst of myself: the deepest denial, the darkest blindness, the most foundational lack of empathy, the stubbornest inability to learn.
Come, says the voice, come into that.

Not sure you want to go there? Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first?

Bad? Ok. The bad news is you’re already there… The Hebrew verb Bo, with its various grammatical formulations is a masterpiece of time travel. We are taught in the Talmud: מתוך שלא לשמה בא לשמה, Out of a good deed done for the wrong reasons, come good deeds done for the right ones. In other words, doing something good begrudgingly, or for selfish reasons will lead us to do them for the right reasons. The seed of the unselfish act of goodness often lies in the selfish one. Coming means “in formation.”

One more grammatical example: the world to come, olam haba. The Hebrew is more honest than the English. That world is not “to come,” at some theoretical later point in time. Rather, it is Ba, coming. In a sense it’s already here, as my middle age body reminds me most days. The sun has come in biblical Hebrew means it has set, which means it’s on its way back, basically already here.

In Hebrew everything that is coming is already there. You might as well come to Pharaoh, since you’re already there.

Ready for the good news?

We don’t always notice the good things going on. Our eyes have a way of seeing what they were taught to see.

When I came to Pharaoh I didn’t only find the worst of myself, but also the best: complete belief in human abilities, total excitement about divinity, the most honest form of generosity. I found love. I found brokenness. And I also found deep, painful flaws in Moses, his God, and the entire monotheistic enterprise, all of which give me important insights into who I am, who we are, and who we want to be. When the pandemic is over I plan to remount this play (it was scheduled to open in March 2020….), and then you’ll hopefully get a better grasp of what I am laying out rather tersely here. But one thing we can agree on already I hope, my friends, is that there is a lot coming our way, and much of it is good. Let us come to the places we see as light and find the darkness. Let us come to the places we see as dark and find the light. Let us know that the seeds of good things to come have been planted, many of them by us, whether we feel them or not.

I hope to see you this evening at 6pm for kabbalat shabbat, where we will continue thinking about seeds in preparation for Tu Bishvat.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

Not So Passive Resistance

Dear friends,

James Meredith walked into the campus of University of Mississippi in 1962 escorted by three jeeps full of soldiers, the first African American student there. As a symbol of the Civil Rights Movement one might expect Meredith to support MLK’s vision of nonviolent resistance. In her book, Learning from the Germans, Susan Neiman describes an afternoon in Meredith’s Jackson, MS home, in which she discovers a very different attitude toward resistance. She writes:

His goal in 1962 was not to integrate the University of Mississippi, which he viewed as a minor and timid objective, but to “physically and psychologically shatter the system of white supremacy in Mississippi and eventually all of America, with the awesome force of the United States military machine.”

This week, as I prepare for our event with Neiman on Sunday, and with much of the country seeming to punch back against the racist uprising, I find Meredith’s voice compelling. In our Torah portion, Va’era, the oppressor faces chance after chance to relent. When he doesn’t there is no workers strike, no march, no vigil, but a violent strike at the heart of Egypt. Seven plagues in total this week, beginning with turning water – the source of life, and the residing place of God in ancient Egypt, into blood – the expression of death.

Of all the myriad of attitudes toward violence that our tradition voices, “turn the other cheek” is hard to find.

This week a hero of mine died. His name was Ezra Nawi and he was a Jerusalemite plumber, Iraqi Jew, openly gay, lively and colorful man who spent the last twenty years of his life protecting the impoverished Palestinian inhabitants of the South Hebron Hills region from their heartless oppressors. If you’ve ever visited that part of Palestine you would know that the reality of life here is one reminiscent of both Apartheid South Africa and the segregated American south. When no one else in the Israeli left knew what to do about situations like this one, Ezra followed his feet out into the villages, where people live in natural desert caves, tents or shacks. He got to know people, speaking to them in his mother’s Arabic. He would spend his days visiting one village and another, helping them with what they needed. Often this involved accompanying them to their fields, wells or schools. Sometimes it meant arranging legal or medical assistance, getting supplies through checkpoints, and other tasks that a person of privilege can do in these types of environments. Over the years he taught a generation of activists how to do the work, which often involves dangerous situations, arrest and vilification.

Shortly after I first met Ezra, and joining him occasionally on his daily trips from Jerusalem, Nissim Mossek,a documentary filmmaker started coming along as well. This week I found myself watching pieces of Citizen Nawi, the film Nissim made about Ezra (which you can view HERE). Ezra’s non-violent philosophy is on glorious display. It’s not meek. It’s not silent. It can be aggressive, taunting, questioning. This often got him in trouble. Scene after scene shows Ezra employing tactics of passive resistance in the least passive way imaginable: speaking, disobeying, laying out the truth of people’s suffering and cruelty.

Ezra Z"l was not a religious Jew, except that he embodied the tradition so much more deeply than the so-called religious settlers he was so often in conflict with. Verses like הוֹכֵחַ תּוֹכִיחַ אֶת עֲמִיתֶךָ , “Reprove your neighbor, Rebuke him!” were self-evident to him. The last time I visited him, a year ago, he showed me the T shirt he had made and worn that day in a protest. It read: Why are there no Ashkenazis in the Border Police? למה אין אשכנזים במגב? Speaking directly to his fellow Mizrachi Jews, who are sent to the front lines to perform some of the ugliest tasks, he pointed to a reality of racism still present in Israeli society, that is pitting Jewish Arab speakers against non-Jewish Arabs. It’s not a question that will win new friends, it isn’t soft, but it’s true, and takes courageous people like Nawi and Meredith to express.

Perhaps Ezra’s attitude is valuable to us in this moment. The combination of creating meaningful relationships with those in need as the basis for change, with speaking directly and truthfully to those we view as acting out the vision of the oppressors; perhaps this combination might help us understand our task today, this Martin Luther King weekend. In any case we have to remember that MLK's vision requires action and courage, and is designed to remind us not of our weakness, but of our power.

I know Susan Neiman will help us define both our role and our power Sunday at 11:00am.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

When my soul folds over me

Dear friends,

Many things are true today that seemed like dreams a week ago. We are in a state of vulnerability and potentiality. We have been confronted with beautiful and terrifying realities. What do we do? Who do we trust? This evening’s kabbalat Shabbat will give us an opportunity to come together, take a breath, smile, and then talk about the meaning and content of faith, in general, and in this moment in particular.

This week’s Torah portion takes us beyond the primordial faith world of the Book of Genesis. No more Abrahams with their uncrackable belief in and adherence to God. From here on we will be in a world filled with doubt. Moses knows God is real. He sees him in the flames of the bush. But he doesn’t want to do what God tells him. He knows people won’t believe him, neither Hebrews nor Egyptians. He begins the great task of his life reluctantly, with not only a heavy mouth and a heavy tongue, as he describes himself to God, but also a with a heavy heart. Yet he goes.

The Haftarah describes a similar first encounter between the prophet Jeremaiah and God:

God: Before you were formed in the womb I knew you, and before you came out of the womb I dedicated you to be a prophet for all nations.
Jeremaiah: Ummmm…. I’m a just a kid and I can’t even speak properly.
God: Why don’t you start with a prophecy of doom and destruction?

Jeremaiah also reluctantly begins his life task. But the first prophecy begins not with anger, but with love:

זָכַ֤רְתִּי לָךְ֙ חֶ֣סֶד נְעוּרַ֔יִךְ אַהֲבַ֖ת כְּלוּלֹתָ֑יִךְ לֶכְתֵּ֤ךְ אַחֲרַי֙ בַּמִּדְבָּ֔ר בְּאֶ֖רֶץ לֹ֥א זְרוּעָֽה׃

“I remember the kindness of your youth, the love you exuded like a young bride, the way you followed me into the desert, to unplanted lands.”

Faith drives us. It moves us to act. And yet we often experience it as fleeting. There and then gone, present and hiding, working behind the scenes of consciousness, and then at times not even there, we feel. Jeremaiah seems to me to describe it here as a memory we live with. Jonah seems to see it more as an act of sudden remembrance, when he cries out from the whale:

When my soul folds over me
I remember Adonai
And my prayer goes to You.

Faith is something Jonah remembers in moments like the ones we are in, times when we feel ourselves to be in the belly of a whale, our souls folding over us.

Jonah’s faith has a name: Adonai. It is what moves him to run away, and then to fulfill his task. This evening, amidst the songs, the light and the wine, I hope we will try and think together on what or who we might say our faith is directed at, how it drives us, whether we carry it inside us like a memory Jeremaiah style, if it’s like a switch that turns on in unusual moments like it is for Jonah, or if we experience its mysterious force as something entirely different. Hope to see you at 6pm.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha

May this year bring....

Dear friends,

The new slate is here. Hallelujah!

May this year bring health.
May this year bring peace.
May this year bring new shoots in place of those that withered.
May this year bring us together.
May this year bring motivation to act for good.
May this year bring new ideas.
May this year bring a sharpening of minds.
May this year bring a softening of hearts.
May this year bring new sights.
May this year bring better listening.
May this year bring sweet smells.
May this year bring far away flavors.
May this year bring awareness to ourselves.
May this year bring caring for others.
May this year bring acceptance of our limitations.
May this year bring rejection of the barriers to our imaginations.
May this year bring honest accounting.
May this year bring forgiveness.
May this year bring crisp concentration.
May this year bring clean intentions.
May this year bring alignment.
May this year bring unexpected transformation.
May this year bring learning, learning, learning.
May this year bring the memory of creation.
May this year bring forgetfulness of our oppressions.
May this year bring righteous anger.
May this year bring gratuitous love.
May this year bring the lies to float visibly upon the truth like oil on water.
May this year bring a vast spaciousness.
May this year bring comfort in the narrow spots.
May this year bring us out into the world.
May this year bring us home.

And may we look back at 2020 and see that all of these are true for it too.

Shabbat shalom,
Rabbi Misha